The Miles Between (15 page)

“Who do you think Mr. Nestor really is?” she asks.

“A serial killer,” I answer. “That's what I told him.”

Seth laughs. “Sure. He systematically kills his students by boring them to death? We already have one of those at Hedgebrook. Bingham. We don't need another one.”

“He was probably just a sub,” Aidan says.

“Lost in the garden?”

“No. Ditching like you.”

“Right,” I answer. Aidan can never quite let go of his concrete world. But, then again, I can never quite let go of the one I am in either. It's disconcerting to think that he and I might be a good balance.

“Which way now?” Seth asks.

I look at the crossroad. “Straight,” I answer. “No, left. Left.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I think.

The road becomes narrower and curves and bends. Houses are set back, mostly obscured by acres of foliage.

“Pricey part of town,” Aidan observes.

“This the way?” Seth asks.

I nod. But I am not sure. How can I tell him I don't exactly remember where my house is? I was eight the last time I was here, and eight-year-olds don't pay attention to directions. It is not streets and road names that matter to children, but landmarks, like a windmill, a rusted-out wagon, a long row of mailboxes, twin stone pillars with lion sculptures topping them. Where are these guideposts?

The road twists and dips, winds and curves.

And stops. We are at a dead end. No house.

The car idles. “I don't think this is it,” Seth says. “Unless your parents live in a rabbit hole.”

“Why don't you ask directions?” Mira asks.

We all turn and look at her. We are in the middle of nowhere, and there is no one around. Mira shrugs. Point taken.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “We must have made a wrong turn.”

“No problem,” Seth says, turning around the car. “What did you say the address was again?”

“It's 829 Ravenwood.”

We backtrack to the last cross street we passed, and Seth stops and looks both ways. He looks at me. I shake my head. I want to slide beneath the seat with the empty cups. What seventeen-year-old doesn't know where her house is?

Seth eases out onto the road. “Let's try—”

“Over there!” Aidan's arm juts between us and points to the right. “There's someone.”

Several yards down the road, an elderly man with a wide-brimmed hat sits in a chair between two baskets. One holds apples, and the other, bunches of miniature sunflowers. A sign facing our direction reads:
FRIUT AND FLOWRS 4 SAEL
.

“Funny. I didn't notice him when we passed by before.”

“Poor old guy,” Mira says. “Not too much business way out here in the boonies.”

“Wait here.” I hop out and run over to him to ask directions. “Excuse me? Do you know—”

He waves his hands and shakes his head. “No English. No English. Flowers? Flowers?”

I try my rusty French. He repeats: “No English. No English. Apples?”

My almost nonexistent German.

“No English. No English. Cheap. Cheap.”

I walk back to the car.

“That was fast. What did he say?” Seth asks.

“He doesn't speak English or any language that I recognize. Maybe we'll find someone else—”

Seth puts the car in park and opens his door. “Let me give it a shot.”

We watch Seth talking with the old man. I see the same gestures he gave me. No. No. No. And then suddenly the old man smiles. He laughs and stands and gives Seth a hearty slap on the shoulder. Many nods. Laughter. It is like they are old friends. He pulls an apple from the basket, rubs it on his shirt, and gives it to Seth. They shake hands, and Seth returns to the car.

“What was that all about?” I ask.

“Tagalog. The old guy speaks Tagalog.”

“What!” Aidan says.

“Did he give you directions?”

“Yep. Second left. Veer right at the fork. First left.”

“Tagalog,” Aidan mumbles. “We're lost, and the only person in sight speaks Tagalog, which Seth happens to know.”

Mira, Seth, and I look at each other. Mira's brows rise. Aidan is speaking to his lap, not us. The universe and its numbers are clearly expanding at much too fast a rate for him.

Seth puts the car into gear. “Hold on,” I say. I open the glove box, grab three of the hundred-dollar bills, and jump out of the car. A few yards away, I turn and call back to the others. “We're his only customers. It should be his fair day too, right?”

The old man's jaw drops as I place the three bills in his hand. I choose a small bunch of sunflowers from his basket and run away before he can stop me. As soon as I jump back in the car, Seth heads down the road.

Mira offers one more toast. “Here's to sunflowers and directions!”

Seth turns at the second left. The road is narrow, trees hugging close, their fallen leaves providing a carpet of orange and yellow for us to drive on. Still not recognizable. “Very generous of you,” Seth finally says. “Why do you carry so much money in your glove box? It's not the safest place, you know?”

“Especially with a convertible,” Mira adds.

Aidan grunts. “But I bet the old guy is glad that you keep it there. He can quit for the day.”

I shift in my seat. I glance sideways at Seth. “The money?” My fingers run through Lucky's woolen coat. “Oh, the money. That. It's there because. Well. It's not exactly mine.”

“What do you mean, it's not
yours
?” Seth asks. “You're carrying somebody else's money around in your car? And spending it?” I notice his last three words are an octave higher.

The world dims. Can time stand still? In these few seconds, I am convinced it can—that the world really can defy logic. At least the logic we know. That the unexplainable is part of the science that makes the world spin, like mystery is the blood running through its veins. I move forward and backward in time at lightning speed, thinking, weighing, remembering, while the three of them are caught in a timeless fog. We've come so far since this morning.
Nice car, Des. Can Aidan come? Whose car? Go. Go
.

And then time circles back around, the way it always does. It catches the gear that left it suspended, and there is no way around it. “I have a secret.”

Mira is delighted. “More points for Des! I love secrets!” Her smile disappears as she leans close and whispers, “Is this a real one, Des?”

“Wise up, Mira,” Aidan says. “Most likely she's going to tell us she has
two
baboon hearts—a spare that she carries in her purse.”

“This one's true, Mira,” I say. “Not that the others, weren't.”

Mira nods. “Of course.”

“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “I'll just lay it out: I don't know who this car belongs to. It's not mine. I simply found it with the engine running and—”

“What?”

Seth slams on the brakes and swerves to the shoulder of the road. He and Aidan are both spouting a string of curses. Seth gets out of the car and slams the door. He walks to the front of the car, slapping his forehead, and then slams his hands down on the hood. “
Are you nuts?
”

“Seth!” Mira yells.

“Do you know what she's done?” Aidan yells back.

“She's stolen a car!”

“We've stolen a car!”

“We need to listen—”

“Don't act so high and mighty! You know you suspected something before now!”

“Suspected something! Yeah! Like borrowing a car, not
stealing
it!”

“Our faces are probably already plastered in post offices!”

“Can we say we borrowed it?”

“We're accessories!”

They're all shouting over each other and not leaving me any space to explain.

“Please!”

Baaaa!

Lucky jumps up on the dash, disturbed at the commotion, and for a brief moment, they are silenced.

“Listen to me!” I yell. “Let me explain! Can't you see? We were meant to have this car! It was there waiting for us! The door was even open! I swear!” I throw open my door and step out and find myself passionately pleading for the day. I have never passionately pleaded for anything in my life, and the more I plead, the more I am energized. It feels suspiciously and deliriously wonderful. Delirious?
Is that what they think I am?
Maybe so. It runs through me like a spiked fever. I talk in a loud frenzied stream so they can't stop me. “Look at today! The four of us! Aidan and the president! Lucky in the road! The car! The money in the glove box! It's a fair day!
Our
fair day! Something happened. Maybe it was Mr. Nestor. Or something in the air. Or my calendar. Or something else. I don't know. But this day was made for us!”

Seth walks around to my side of the car, his face almost comical in its sputtering anger. He leans close. “Listen to me! Listen very carefully. There is no such thing as a fair day, Destiny! Check in to planet Earth for once in your life! We took a car! Somebody
else's
car! A damn nice car!” His eyelids flutter, and he takes a deep slow breath. It makes three veins in his neck pop out. “What we did is called
grand theft auto
.” He points and glares at the front seat. “And now look! It even has a hole in the seat!” His hands squeeze against the sides of his head as he walks in circles. “Destruction of property! Grand theft!” His hands shoot upward. “Expulsion won't begin to cover this! A hole in the leather seat! A gaping hole!” I notice he is beginning to sound a little delirious himself. He stops and glares at me. “How is
that
fair?” He shakes his head. “You are so disconnected from the real world it's pathetic! You pretend like you're there, but you're really invisible. The real Des never shows her face except when she gets caught and—”

“Stop right there! Don't you dare lecture me about connection, Seth Marshall Kaplan!” I derive great pleasure in his dropped jaw. “That's right! I know your middle name and a hell of a lot more! I have
your number
, Seth. Some people are easy to figure. Aidan and Mira, they wear their
neuroses all over their faces. But you took me longer to figure out, and I finally realized
why
.” Now he looks worried. Good. I move closer. “You're not that different from me. You just wear a different kind of invisibility. You fly under the radar, all right. That smoothness, your easy smile. But you're a chameleon. You're whatever you need to be at the moment so you can fit in. At least I'm consistent!”

“It's true, Seth,” Mira says. “You do have an easy smile.”

Aidan's face screws up. “Neuroses?”

Seth sputters for a moment. Is it embarrassment or anger I see in his eyes? He turns away and walks back to the other side of the car. “We're going back!” He pulls open his door.

“Stop! Wait!” Desperation pricks at my back. “Here! I have another coincidence for you!”

Aidan cuts me off. “No more coincidences!”

Seth chimes in, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Just what we need!
Another
story!”

“
Please. Just listen
.”

“Not a chance!”

“We're out of here!”

“Stop! Both of you!” Mira says. She leans over the seat and snatches the keys from the ignition. Her voice is a growl. “
I
want to hear. So we
are
going to listen! Go, Des.”

Mira's fierce posture catches them off guard. I make my case fast.

“On December 5, 1664, a ship sank off the coast of Wales. There were eighty-one passengers on board, but only one survived. His name was Hugh Williams. Over a hundred years later, on December 5, 1785, another ship sank in the same place. All sixty aboard drowned, except for one passenger. His name was Hugh Williams. And then on December 5, 1860, in the very same waters, another ship sank. There were no survivors except for one person.”

I don't have to finish the last sentence of my story. I can see it on Aidan's and Seth's faces.

“Hugh Williams,” Seth finally says.

I nod. “That's right. And you can't blame it on the Law of Truly Large Numbers. The universe isn't that old or that big! Sometimes there's a destiny that we can't understand. Unimaginable things happen. Far stranger things than a car being at our disposal. Nothing has changed from this morning, when you wanted to come with me, except that now I've been honest with you.”

Seth rolls his eyes and looks at Aidan. They both look at Mira, who is still clutching the keys in her fist. She appears to be deep in concentration. She pinches her chin.
“It might be wise for us to name our children Hugh Williams, don't you think?” She looks sideways at Aidan and winks. “All three of them.”

Aidan tries to maintain his scowl, but the magic of Mira weakens him. He grins and shrugs. “I suppose we're already in trouble. No one's come looking for the car yet. What can a few more hours hurt?”

Seth sighs, turns, and throws his hands up in the air, a captain facing mutiny. He whips around sharply to face me again, still breathing hard, like he has just run a marathon. He is not happy that I have exposed him. His eyes narrow. He smiles. Not a happy smile but like a cat who has cornered a mouse. “I'm the only one who can drive. So before we go anywhere, I declare a game.”

“A game?” I don't have a good feeling about this.

“Truth or dare.”

Not good at all. “What's the dare?”

“We drive straight to the market in Langdon and you call Hedgebrook. You tell them you took the car.”

“And kidnapped us,” Aidan slips in.

Not so bad. He's an amateur at this, really. I lean forward, bracing myself against the car. “And the truth?”

“An easy one, that is, if you have the same guts to tell the truth as you do to steal a car.”