STATE TROOPER
Charlie’s heart gallops. A state trooper is pulling up beside them. Almost as if she willed him into existence. Now all she needs to do is get the trooper’s attention without Josh seeing.
Charlie presses her forehead against the window, the glass cool against her skin.
“You okay, Charlie?” Josh says.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Just a little carsick.”
A warm breath rides the sibilant second half of the word. It hits the window, creating a tiny circle of fog on the glass. Charlie stares at it, not blinking until it fades.
She speaks again.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to puke or anything. It always passes.”
The window fogs again, this time in a slightly larger patch. Charlie counts off the seconds until it disappears.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Josh notices the trooper, too, because he taps the brakes a moment, bringing them below the speed limit.
“You sure?” he says.
“I’m sure.”
A fresh bloom of fog spreads onto the window. Charlie counts again.
Another nine seconds.
Not a lot of time. But possibly enough.
She runs a finger along the glass, moving it in a pattern, tracing letters that don’t exist.
Yet.
Charlie turns toward Josh, making sure his eyes are still on the road. Then it’s back to the window, her forehead meeting glass, looking backward to track the state trooper’s progress. When the police car’s front bumper runs parallel to the Grand Am’s back one, she gets to work.
“I’m feeling better already,” she says. “Cooling my forehead helps.”
The twin huffs from those last two words create a circle of fog twice the size of the previous ones. The countdown begins.
Nine.
Charlie does another quick check of Josh.
Eight.
She returns to the window.
Seven.
She twists her body, blocking Josh’s view.
Six.
She presses the tip of her index finger to the glass and begins to write.
Five.
The first letter is three quick lines in the fog.
Four.
Another letter, this time one long line followed by three short bursts.
Three.
And another—two quick slashes.
Two.
The final letter. A slash and a swoop.
One.
The fog vanishes, taking with it the word she’d managed to scrawl.
HELP
“You ever get that way?” she asks Josh. “Carsick?”
The circle of fog reappears on the window, as does the word “HELP,” written backward so it can be read clearly by the trooper when he drives past them.
As the police car gains on them, Josh gives the brakes another brief tap. The reduction in speed brings the two vehicles in line. They travel side by side a moment, Charlie’s hopeful heart thumping even harder when she spies the trooper behind the wheel. He looks tough. A bulldog with a buzz cut. And all Charlie needs to get his attention is to breathe.
If that doesn’t work, she’ll scream.
So loud he’ll be able to hear her through two panes of glass.
Then the trooper will switch on those beautiful red and white lights and Josh will have no choice but to pull over and Charlie will run. She doesn’t care if Josh turns out to be harmless and she looks stupid. At that moment, all she wants is to be out of this car, free from Josh and all the doubt and uncertainty he carries with him.
Charlie inhales, gathering her breath, hoping for a cloud of fog on the glass that will last ten seconds, maybe longer.
She exhales.
The window fogs, obscuring the image of the trooper in the next car over as the word she drew starts to form.
HELP
Josh hits the brakes again. Harder this time. Enough for Charlie to feel momentum tug her against the seat belt as she watches the trooper pull ahead of them. A moment later, the state police car has passed them completely. Charlie’s heart, so wild seconds earlier, all but stops as the trooper keeps moving, his patrol car getting smaller with each passing second.
She’s missed her chance.
All because Josh tapped the brakes.
Did he do that on purpose?
More doubt.
Enough to heighten Charlie’s desire to get out of the car by any means possible.
Her hand drops back to the door handle and gives it a squeeze. God help her, she’s going to have to jump.
Right now.
The good news is that the highway has narrowed to two lanes—likely the reason the state trooper passed them on the right. He was running out of road. And maybe Josh knew that, hence the tapping of the brakes that foiled her plan.
Charlie sneaks a glance at the speedometer.
Now that the trooper is a Matchbox car on the horizon, Josh has increased his speed to sixty miles an hour.
Fast.
Too fast for the road ahead, which runs next to the Delaware River, hugging the mountainside in a series of tight turns.
And definitely too fast for her to leap from the car like she now knows she must do. Even if she could survive the jump unscathed—which she can’t; not at this speed—there’s now nowhere to go. On Josh’s side of the highway is more highway, a low stone wall, then river. Charlie’s side is nothing but mountain, rising high into the night sky, its trees and crags barely visible.
Charlie had always liked this stretch of road, for both its wild beauty and its incongruity. With its peaks and pines and wide expanse of curving river, it reminded her of something more likely to be found out west and not on the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. When passing through with Nana Norma or Robbie behind the wheel, she’d roll down the window, take in the fresh air, revel in the scenery she found beautiful in any season.
But that was always in daylight. She’s never traveled through this canyon at night until now. It changes things, the darkness. It makes the familiar foreign. The innocent suspicious.