Touching Smoke (2 page)

Well, maybe it would be different this time. Maybe Amalie would behave for once. Maybe she’d go away. I believed that nearly as much as I believed the sleek, black motorcycle racing to catch our fender was on its way to rescue me.

The sun gleamed off the rider’s black helmet, and as I watched, he raised a hand and gave me a two-fingered salute.

My lips twitched, and I raised a hand and waved back through the side mirror. Deep down, I stifled the mindboggling pulse of familiarity that warmed my chest. I didn’t know him, yet the pull was unmistakable, as was the distinct sense of Déjà vu at seeing that exact bike a few days ago at a gas stop in Nova Scotia, and then again periodically for as long as I could recall, but always from a distance and always gone when I tried to get a closer look.

I must have been waving for too long, because my mother’s voice broke through my train of thought. “Fallon? What are you doing?”

I quickly stuffed my hand back between my thighs. “Nothing.”

But Mom wasn’t fooled. She took one glance into the rearview mirror and lost all coloring in her face. She cursed under her breath and floored the gas pedal.  

Somewhere on Highway 1 heading west, four sets of jagged burn marks mar the asphalt where the Impala had all but ripped through the concrete. Black smoke billowed, choking the clear sky with the stench of burnt rubber. The motorcycle screeched, swerving under the attack. But where most would have shaken a fist and thrown a few curse words, the rider righted himself, leaned over his handlebars and sped up.

We were doing a hundred, and climbing. The needle quivered as we accelerated to speeds the Rust-Bucket was not accustomed to; the Impala groaned and shuddered, but kept pace.

“What’s going on?” I shrieked, partly out of soul chilling terror, partly to be heard over the clashing roar of two engines battling, one ours, the other the speeder behind us.

“Get down!” Mom shot back, hunched over the wheel, eyes narrowed on the road.

I wasn’t given time to follow orders. I was thrown back into my seat as the acceleration jumped nearly off the radar. I didn’t even think the Rust-Bucket could go that fast.

“Hold on!”

Jagged gashes scarred the leather dash where I clawed, forbearing, as I was smashed against the door. My skull ricocheted off the glass with a sickening thud, sending a burst of light exploding before my eyes.  My spleen slammed into my ribs when mom suddenly hammered down on the brakes. My heart had already taken shelter into my throat, thrashing like a captured bird struggling for escape. I would have been panicked, but I was already having trouble reminding my lungs to breathe and my brain not to explode.

The Rust-Bucket nearly flipped. For a split second,
that’s
exactly what I was expecting, and in that second, my heart forgot to beat. I watched, paralyzed from the brain down, as the car skid as though on ice, rolling dangerously close to the ditch on the side of the road. The world seemed to clash, swirling in smears of greens and blues. I might have screamed, but even that seemed unlikely when I’d forgotten how.

Behind us, the motorcycle screeched, sounding like a desperate cry before it swerved under the rider’s erratic attempts at trying to miss the back end of the Impala. I was twisted in my seat before it even registered that I was no longer frozen. The leather headrest tore under my nails as I scrambled into the backseat, over duffle bags, blankets and fast food wrappers to watch with crippling horror as the bike squealed once before disappearing over the edge, into the ditch.

My soul screamed before the sound tore through the soft tissues of my esophagus and exploded from my lips. Time screeched to a halt. Everything froze, except the loud cracking of my heart and the bike, doing a nosedive over the lip and crashing.

“No!”

“Fallon!” Only when my mother’s blunt nails peeled the skin on my arm did I realize she’d stopped me from throwing myself out the door.

I kept screaming. My sanity raged against reality. The world spun and dipped. Flashed crimson. Everything roared, swallowing the animal-like howls tearing through my lungs.  I felt deranged, completely unhinged, like someone losing something so utterly precious to them that the very idea of living was unbearable. It was inconceivable. I wanted to die. I wanted to throw myself out of the car and dive into the ditch and… and what? What was wrong with me?

“Fallon? Fallon, calm down!” Although soothing, my mom’s tone did nothing to calm the hysteria eating me up inside.

“Don’t leave him!” I pleaded, only just then realizing I was sobbing like my heart would cease beating if I stopped. “Don’t leave him! Please!”

“We have to go,” she said, still holding on to me as she used her free hand to maneuver the Impala back onto the road.

“No!” I shrieked, renewing my thrashing, throwing myself against the door. “Don’t leave him!”

But she didn’t stop, and I was taken away, away from the other half of me.

Mom pulled over an hour later and let me out. I fell to my knees on the stretch of gravel, making up the side of the road, retching dry bile. Bits of rock cut into my palms and knees through the fabric of my jeans. Blood oozed from the gashes along my bruised knuckles. I didn’t recall where I’d gotten the cuts, but I guessed from trying to break the car window. My arms ached and there were splotches of black and blue all along my forearms and the heels of my hands. Jagged puckers of flesh marred the back of my arm where my mother had restrained me, kept me from throwing myself out of a moving car, although I wished she had. Something told me the gnawing pain would have been far less had I just leapt to my death and ended it there.

“Fallon…”

“Why did you do it?” I didn’t need to glance up to know my mom was standing above me, a grief-stricken look on her face; her remorse thickened the air around us and dripped from her voice. “Why did you do it?” My shoulders shook beneath my broken sobs. My cheeks burned from the consistent flow of tears. “Why?”

“It’s okay—”

I slapped away the hand she placed on my shoulder. My head shot up, anger suffocating me. “You ran him off the road and then just drove off! You killed him!”
you killed me!
But I didn’t say it out loud. It was crazy enough inside my head.

Her lips tightened and relaxed as though working out a way to speak. War raged behind her eyes, now staring straight through me.

“Get in the car,” she said so simply I actually blinked.

“What?”

She turned away and started for her door. “Get in the car!” she repeated louder.

I didn’t move from my kneeling position in the dirt, my legs useless. I was prepared to sit there forever if I had to.

“Fallon!” she snapped through my open window. “Get in the car! Now!”

The bones in my neck cracked painfully when I snapped my head around to glare at her. From that angle, all I could make out was her forehead, but that was enough.

“I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me what the hell that was!”

“I’ll leave you here!”

“Then leave!” I looked away, folding my arms over my chest like a defiant child.

“Fine!” She started the car and drove off in a cloud of dust.

I didn’t watch her go. I sat staring at the wall of trees barricading the highway. They’d never looked so tall or ominous from inside the car. But out there, sitting amongst them, I felt almost insect-like. The approaching darkness didn’t help.

“I don’t care!” I told myself, hefting my aching body to my feet and starting back. I had to know if he was all right.

It amazed me how quickly night swooped down when one was on foot, in the middle of nowhere, without a single shred of light in sight. And even though I told myself there was an upside to not being able to see, none of which I could think of just then, but after tripping on my own feet for the hundredth time, those reasons became hazy… fast. Then like all good wildernesses, with the dark came the biting cold. I very quickly began to appreciate the warmth and security of the Rust-Bucket. But I refused to turn back.

The night pushed against me, feeling almost solid to the touch. I waved a hand in front of my face and saw nothing. A more rational voice in my head warned me to stop before I wound up in a hole or lost, but the pull just behind my belly button denied me. With every step, it grew stronger until it pulsed like a second heartbeat inside my chest.

It was undetermined how long I had walked. Even if I wore a watch, which I didn’t, time was iffy in the dark. But my legs were beginning to hurt, and the clicking of my teeth was beginning to drive me insane. I rubbed my bare arms, working to get some semblance of heat flowing. The toe of my sneakers caught something and I stumbled.

Is it really worth it?
A voice in my head demanded when I righted myself and plunged onwards.

“Yes!” I panted aloud.

My mother wasn’t a murderer! She didn’t run people off roads. She couldn’t even take a pen without driving back four miles to return it. She was honest and kind and…

Then clearly, she had a good reason! The guy could be dangerous.

I faltered.

Why hadn’t I thought of that? My mom never did anything without a reason. Maybe she had a reason this time.

I started to head back, but stopped.

I couldn’t leave that guy out there. What if he was hurt, or worse? What if it was traced back to the Impala and my mother?

No, I had to do this. I had to find him.

The gravel crunched beneath my dragging feet. It was the only sound for miles. All sorts of horror movie scenes flashed through my mind, scenes of disembowelment, torture and cannibalism, making the decision seem even more reckless.

Stay where you are, Fallon.
The voice was unfamiliar, and oddly sexy. It wasn’t the whiny tone that usual haunted my conscience. This tone was deep, husky and male.

I stopped walking, if for no other reason than because I was clearly losing my mind. I jabbed a finger into my ear and wiggled. Was it normal to hear male voices in the middle of a deserted highway?

I didn’t get the chance to dwell on it when a set of headlights pierced the darkness from in the direction I’d come from. I recognized the vibrating groan even before the Impala rolled up and stopped alongside me.

Ashamed for giving up so easily, I circled the hood and climbed into my seat. The warm interior enfolded me like a blanket. The leather creaked beneath me. All wonderful, comforting things. I didn’t stop my mother when she turned the car around and headed west once more.

We arrived at a little settlement just a few miles east of Quebec without ever exchanging a single word. At some point, we had both come to the same conclusion;
that
night never happened and we would never speak of it.

But despite that, I combed the morning paper with a fine-toothed comb, searching for even the slightest mention of the rider or his motorcycle. Surely, it would be all over the place if he didn’t walk away from it. I tried not to envision him lying in that ditch, battered, bleeding and dying. I tried not to think of the deserted highway and the possibility of no one seeing him. But most of all, I tried not to resent my mother for it. She must have had her reasons for what she did. Maybe she was in as much shock as I was and couldn’t talk about it.

But none of my rationalizing stopped the march of red, hot fire ants ravaging everything inside me, eating me, consuming my very soul. I felt torn, alone and powerless to stop something I had no control over. Even then, my anger was self-rooted. I hated myself. I hated just sitting there. I hated not being there, with him, in that ditch, saving his life. I hated feeling that a piece of me had been torn from me needlessly, abandoning me in the cold depths of a bottomless ocean. I wanted to cry, to run.

I glanced across the table to where mom sat in the driver’s seat, staring tiredly out the windshield.  Pinched lines hugged her tense mouth. Her face was drawn and tinged slightly gray. She’d aged ten years since the incident. I wondered how I looked.

The town we pulled into, like the rest of the province, was canopied by an angry blanket of black clouds. Rain pelted the windshield, rendering the drive nearly impossible. But mom maneuvered every bend with a white-knuckled grip until we found cover under the eaves of an old motel. The hunched keeper showed us to our room — room thirteen — and gave mom the keys. He eyed me with something akin to pity before hobbling away. I was used to it. You would think I had
orphan
tattooed across my forehead the way some people looked at me sometimes. Maybe I looked like a waif, a pitiful creature all thin and gangly with no real attractive features. But, thankfully mom missed the gesture, or we would have been out of there so fast the man’s graying head would have spun for days.