In front of them, blacktop bisected by a faded yellow line. And there, lying in the middle of the road on her back, a woman.
Though, perhaps not quite a woman. She looked young, a girl on the verge of womanhood, her hair wet and plastered against the ground. She wore a yellow dress and white slippers that looked like they belonged to a ballerina. Her eyes were closed. Don couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not.
“We have to help her,” Don said, going for the door.
“Stop,” Rodney snapped. Don looked at him. Rodney stared straight ahead at the girl in the road. A second ticked by. Thentwo. Then three. Then, “We don’t know what’s going on. It could be a trap.”
“A trap? For what?”
“I don’t know,” Rodney said. He glanced at the side mirror. Don did the same out his own window. No one behind them. No people, no cars. Through the trees, the same. Nothing they could see aside from a wet forest. “We should just go.”
“We can’t leave her here,” Don said. “She might be in trouble.”
“She might be dead,” Rodney countered.
They both screamed when the girl sat up and turned her head to look at them. She stood slowly, her soaked dress clinging against her slight frame. She brushed the hair hanging off her forehead to the side, and then lifted her other hand and waved, fingers wiggling. Her right eye was blackened, swollen. It looked as if she’d been punched in the face.
“Stay here,” Rodney said, hand on the door handle.
“Not this time,” Don said, and heard Rodney curse when he shoved open the door. The air was thick, moist. The mist coated Don’s hair, his face. Rodney clambered out of the RV and joined Don at the front, the headlights momentarily hidden behind them. Don shivered as rain droplets landed on his exposed skin.
“Are you all right?” Rodney called to the girl, who was standing about fifteen feet down the road.
The girl said, “Are you real?”
Don gripped Rodney’s hand.
“We’re real,” Rodney said. “Are you hurt? Do you need help?”
The girl said, “I want to go home. Can you please take me home?”
And then she put her face into her hands and began to sob.
Her name was Amelia, and she didn’t want to be touched. When Don had tried to take her hand to lead her to the RV, she’d snatchedit away, hissing at him like a feral cat, eyes wide and blazing. Don kept his distance after that.
They got her inside, gave her a towel. She dried off with it, slowly, mechanically, never losing the strange, shocked expression. When asked if she wanted to change out of her dress into something warmer, she refused. “This is my dress,” she told them. “I made it. It took me three months. I pricked my finger with the needle. It bled. Don’t worry about my eye. It’s fine.”
How old are you? they asked.
Eighteen, she told them. She’d just had her birthday two months before. There were balloons and cake and presents and music and friends and boys. She got a purple phone case for her phone, a new saddle for her horse. She was very happy with them, she said.
Where are your parents? they asked.
At home, she told them. They were waiting for her. Could they please give her a ride? She didn’t want them to worry. She didn’t have any money, but she was sure she could get some when they dropped her off.
“We don’t need it,” Rodney told her. “As long as we can get you home safe, that’s payment enough.”
Don agreed, but she made him uncomfortable. It had to be shock, the way she spoke: a flat monotone, all while barely blinking. Her face—heartbreakingly beautiful—looked like a mask, the skin pulled tight. But who was he to judge how people took the news about the end of the world?
They put her in the front, Don behind her on a bench seat where the small kitchen table folded out from the wall. He watched the back of her head. She never turned to look at them, always staring straight ahead, even when she began to talk. Every now and then, Rodney would glance in the rearview mirror, looking at Don. He got it too. Something was wrong. That feeling only intensified the longer she spoke.
Amelia said, “Two years ago, I met a boy. He was traveling with his family. They were from Maryland. He had green eyes, the color of grass. They came to the ranch because Daddy knows horses. He knows them so well. People come from all over and pay him to go riding in the hills. I help. Daddy taught me everything he knows. He said that if I wanted, the ranch would be mine, one day. I thought about that a lot. Did I want to stay here? Or did I want to explore? Could I do both? But I worried. What if I left and didn’t want to come back? Would he love me any less? I didn’t think so, but I’m their only kid. Mom and Daddy tried for another, but it wasn’t meant to be. I wondered if I would end up resenting them if I stayed. Like I wasn’t given the chance to go somewhere else. Turn left up here, please.
“The boy came, the boy with grass eyes. His name was Chris, and he’d just turned sixteen. He was so excited! He’d been on horses before, but never out in the open like this. His parents came too. They stayed for three days. On the second day, Chris and I went for a walk. It was sunny. He told me he wanted to hold my hand, but he was too nervous to try. I laughed at him but held his hand anyway. It was warm, smooth. City-boy hands. Mine were rough, callused. I liked the way it felt. He had long fingers and was always biting his nails. He said he wanted to live in a place like this. He was from a city and didn’t like how loud it was. Sometimes, he said, he couldn’t hear himself think. But out here, it was so quiet. Out here, it didn’t feel like his brain was on fire.
“I didn’t understand how powerful silence is. I liked the sounds of people in another room, a truck pulling up the driveway. The radio. The TV. Phones. Everything is loud all the time, and when you take that all away, it’s so quiet. You can start to hear the blood moving in your body.
“We talked about so many things. He told me about his friends. How they went to the mall because no one else was ever there.He told me about his school, much bigger than mine. He liked video games. And played basketball. His favorite food was tacos. He said they made good tacos at a place near his house. There were more people in his whole grade than at my school. He didn’t know everyone, not like I did. And I thought that must be exciting. To see something new. To find people you hadn’t seen every single day of your life. I told Chris I was scared of leaving, but he said that everyone was. You didn’t know what was out there, but the more you pretended it didn’t exist, the more left behind you got.