They drove out of the city, fighting rush hour traffic again, the sky’s blue lowering until it lay over everything in the valley.Jem stopped at McDonald’s to pick up dinner.Tean wasn’t hungry, which meant Jem ordered for both of them, and that was how Tean found himself cradling a salad in his lap as they inched along in traffic again.
“But what if I spill it?”
“We’re going about five miles an hour.”
“But what if you have to stop suddenly?”
“I’ll clean the car tomorrow.”
“But what if—”
“Tean, sweetheart, it’s been a really long day.Eat the salad, please.”
So, Tean picked at the salad.It wasn’t bad.The lettuce was crisp.The chicken was fried, which added unnecessary calories and likely some trans fats, and Tean had read a study about the impact of fried food—
Jem’s groan started suddenly and grew louder.
“What?”Tean bolted up in his seat—almost spilling the salad in the process.He glanced around.“What happened?Was there an accident?”
“With the dressing.”
“What?”
“With the dressing!Eat the salad with the dressing!”
It took Tean a moment to remember the packet he’d set aside.“Oh.Well, see, it’s mostly sugar—”
“Teanthony Mortimer Leon!”
Tean added the dressing.Itdidhave a lot of sugar, but it also made the salad taste significantly better.
They crawled out of the city on I-80.Traffic eased when they reached the canyon, and then they turned south and followed US 40 toward Heber.It was a drive Tean had done plenty of times—many of them with Jem.And it was easy, after their garbage was packed away, to settle in and relax.Scrub oak flamed red on the flanks of the mountains, mixed with the dense, vibrant green of pine and fir, but all of it was quickly being swallowed up by shadow as the sun disappeared behind the ridge.
A two-minute snarl of traffic caught them around Heber, and then they were moving south steadily again.The valley widened.Other vehicles became fewer and farther between.The white ribs of snow fences gleamed orange where they caught the last daylight.Hog-wire panels threw nets of diagonal shadow.To the south, the reservoir was as thin as the lead of a pencil, and with the same smeared shine.
The hum of the engine, the familiarity of the drive, the warmth of the heated seat, Jem’s confident handling of the car, and, of course, the exhaustion of another sleepless night—Tean’s head dipped once, and he caught himself.The second time, it was too late, and he was already gone.
He didn’t know he’d slept until something tugged on him.He stirred, and Jem made a disgusted noise and said, “I’m just fixing your seatbelt.Go back to sleep.”
But Tean removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
Jem gave up on the seatbelt and said, “Damn it.”
“It’s fine.I should be awake.”
“Right.You don’t need to sleep.”
The tone was surprisingly grumpy, so Tean didn’t respond.He wiped his eyes some more and tried to blink away the gumminess.Finally he resorted to a drink of Jem’s Coke, which sent a rush of sugar and caffeine to his head and made his teeth throb.
When he settled back into his seat, long shadows striped the road.To their right, the waters of the reservoir spread out smoothly until they dissolved into the growing dark.
Maybe it was because Tean was still waking up.Maybe it was because the memory startled him, breaking the deep waters of his own mind.
“We used to camp here.”
Jem unwrapped his hands from around the steering wheel, then closed them again.“Yeah?”
“Gosh, it was a long time ago.Before my grandma died.”Clumps of sedge looked like ink brushes as shadow fell over them.“I haven’t thought about that in years.”