Maybe the dragon would attack another car, blow up another station. Did she want that? No—it was horrible—but neither did she want the dragon on their tail again.
Then La Vitesse’s horn blasted. One long, insistent, unending bellow.
“No, Rose!” Bea screamed.
The dragon’s wings hitched. It flipped and turned, graceful as a swallow, scales shedding streams of smoke. Its eyes gleamed, two chilly points, square and level.
Bea lived in the bush. She’d seen plenty of cougars, and she knew this: when a predator’s eyes focus on you, two orbs in perfect alignment, you are meat, meat, and nothing but meat. Whether you live or die is no longer in your control. Your fate lives between the claws and teeth of another.
“Honey, why?” Bea moaned. But there was no answer, never any answer with Rosie. She did as she pleased.
From the time her daughter was born, Bea’s one goal was to keep her at home for as long as possible. With a kid as strong-willed as Rosie, that meant giving in, always. It also meant feeding her well. Tasty food, and lots of it. Though tiny as a baby, Rosie had always been a good eater. She’d grown big and tall—nearly six feet and still growing—with broad shoulders and big hands and feet.
The food was an important strategy. Bea knew from experience that, aside from weekend bush parties, going for pizza or fries with friends was pretty much the only thing a Hinton teenager could do to beat the boredom. Bea had been caught in that trap herself.
At sixteen, instead of getting on the school bus for the long ride home, she’d head to Gus’s Pizza. Then she’d wait outside the IGA grocery and try to catch a ride home with a neighbor. But that didn’t always work, so she started hitchhiking. The first two times were fine. But the third time, her social studies teacher picked her up. For a half an hour, he’d lectured her about the dangers of hitchhiking, and then pulled over and slipped his hand into her jeans. That’s how she got pregnant.
Bea didn’t want that to happen to her girl. So if the poutine at the L&W was good, Bea’s was better—the fries crispier, the cheese gooier, the gravy dark brown and chunky with lumps of salty hamburger. And that was just the start. Bea’s nut-crusted elk roast was perfection and her open-fire flatbread with homemade jam beat any cake. So when Rosie got to that dangerous age, she never even thought about staying behind after school. Why would she hang out with kids she hated and eat substandard snacks when her mom’s food was so good?
Rosie scared her teachers, but Bea didn’t care. If her daughter sat in the back of every class and did the bare minimum of work to pass, that was fine with Bea. And if she stomped down the hallways with her elbows out, glaring at the other kids from under her ragged dyed-black bangs and wore the same two Slayer T-shirts for a year, that was better than fine. Nobody would ever take advantage of her Rosie. Anyone who tried never tried twice.
La Vitesse blasted east, the speedometer topping out, the dragon still chasing them, and nothing ahead but open highway. Soon, they’d start climbing Obed Mountain. The engine couldn’t take it at speed. Bea had to do something, but she was too scared to think. Scared of what the dragon would do when the bus began toiling up that long, steep slope. And also, for the first time in her life, she was scared of her daughter.
Rosie hunched in Bea’s seat, her mouth set in a permanent sneer. The remnants of her blue-black lipstick smeared her chin. Maybe the biggest danger they faced wasn’t the dragon. Maybe it was Rosie. Maybe it always had been.
The kids knew Rosie was dangerous. They’d always known. Bea made a habit of looking away when the kids scooted past Rosie’s shotgun seat as if it were on fire. She ignored it when Rosie snarled at a tardy kid, and when she snagged a treat out of one of their backpacks, Bea treated it like a joke.
Bea knelt beside the driver’s seat and put a gentle hand on her daughter’s thick wrist.
“Honey, whatever I’ve done, I’m so sorry. But take it out on me, not the kids.”
Rosie’s brow furrowed. The bridge of her nose crinkled like she smelled something rotten.
“Don’t talk shit, Mom,” she snarled.
Bea moved her hand up to her daughter’s bicep and tried again.
“You’ve been angry for a long time, haven’t you? And now you’re in control. And you do have control. You’re making all the choices. So make the right one, honey. Turn us around.”
“Fuck, Mom, what do you think I am?” Rosie said. She took a deep breath and screamed, “Hang on!”
Rosie slammed on the clutch and brakes and spun the wheel. The momentum threw Bea down the stepwell. She hit her head on the door, hard. By the time she’d shaken off the pain and climbed to her feet, La Vitesse sat idling in the middle of Pedley Road, a gravel-top dead-end with nothing along it but a few old houses tucked back deep in the bush.
“Good girl, thank you. I’ll drive now.” Bea laid a hand on her daughter’s thick shoulder. It was solid as stone. Rosie’s right hand strangled the steering wheel and her left stuck stiffly out the window, twisting the side-view mirror to scan the sky behind them.
“No,” Rosie said quietly. “Stop touching me.”
Rosie shifted the bus into first gear, then second. They rolled up the road. Over the soft crunch of wheels on gravel and the engine’s low hum, the whump-whump of wide wings sounded, louder and louder. Behind Bea, the children sniffled and sobbed. Maybe Bea did too. She knew she should fight—but how? Bea had never hit anyone. Certainly not her child. Not ever. How could she have known it was a mistake?
“I’m sorry,” Bea whispered. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was too young.”
When Rosie answered, her voice was flat and emotionless. “Stop. I’m trying to think.”
“I should have made you play with the other kids. I wanted to keep you home. Keep you safe. I didn’t know what it would mean. That you’d be isolated. That it would be bad for you.”
Bea leaned her left cheek against Rosie’s arm as La Vitesse rolled toward the Pedley railway crossing. The lights flashed red under the white-and-black crossing sign. A train was coming, but Rosie was utterly focused on the side mirror, jaw clenched, eyes narrow.
The train’s low horn sounded in the crossing pattern. Two short blasts, one long, one short. Bea put a soft hand on her daughter’s fist where it gripped the wheel.
“We have to stop before the tracks, honey.”
No answer. Bea climbed to her feet. The fire extinguisher lay in the aisle, beside a tiny sneaker that had slipped off the foot of a terrified child. A child who was in her care. A child she had to keep safe.
She hoisted the heavy extinguisher in her arms. Bea knew herself. Violence wasn’t in her nature. She’d never raised a hand to anyone, even when she should have. Even when they were hurting her. Now she had to hurt her daughter. Had to. Lift the extinguisher high and drop it on Rosie’s head. That’s all.
But she couldn’t. She put the extinguisher down and turned away.
The bus’s front wheels bounced over the rails. The train raced toward them, a massive stack of silver metal topped by a curved glass windshield. Close now, so close Bea could see its wipers stuck at a low angle across the glass. Its horn screamed as it bore down on them with all its murderous weight and velocity. Rosie still had her hand out the side window, yanking at the mirror with her thick fingers.