The other driver was still in his borrowed guard uniform. He shucked off the camo, revealing a blue t-shirt and jeans underneath, and stuffed both his and Steve’s uniforms under the trucks’ front seats. Then we lined up the stolen vehicles, braced the branches in place, and the drivers jumped out. I had worried that the weight of the trucks would cause them to get stuck in the dirt along the shoreline. But here the winter season proved a benefit for once...the cold and the lack of rain had dried out the bank, turning what would have been a sloppy mud pit into a rock hard path of doom. Their engines roaring, our group’s twin monsters of transportation slid right down the short bank and into the water, quickly sinking beneath the black surface. By the time anyone found them, if they ever did, we would be long gone.
We all exchanged a few high fives and fist bumps then jumped into my truck and headed back into town one more time.
While Mike and the drivers joined the others on the bus, I took my time checking the rest of the route to South Dakota on the GPS, making the simple process take longer than it should have. I was stalling, waiting for Tarah. Except I’d never asked her if she wanted to keep riding with me or with the others.
Was she settled into a bus seat, comfortable and ready for the rest of the trip to get underway? I could imagine her all too happy to ride with a whole bunch of outcasts, pelting them with a million questions about spellwork for hours on end. Should I just get going without her?
I waited half a minute, then a full minute, the silence of my truck’s now empty cab expanding and pressing down on me so the drumming of my fingers on the steering wheel seemed as loud as a rock band gearing up for a concert. I turned on the radio, tried to find a station I liked, then turned it off again.
She wasn’t coming. I’d be finishing the trip alone.
I reached for the gear shift.
Tarah came flying out of the bus and around to my window.
“Hey,” she said after I rolled down the window. “Sorry, I was helping Kristina learn how to use the bus’s restroom.” She looked down at my hand on the gear shift. “Were you going to leave without me?”
I shrugged. “I thought maybe you’d prefer to ride with the others. Learn all their secret Clann ways, or whatever.”
“Um, yeah, eventually I’d like to. But I figure there’s plenty of time for that in South Dakota. Once we get there, though, we might not get another chance for just you and me to hang out together.” She hesitated. “I mean, if you want to hang out, that is. If you’d rather be alone, I totally understand.”
I jerked my head towards the passenger door, the combination of my relief and her cute awkwardness making it impossible not to smile. “Get in.”
She flashed a grin at me then ran around the front of my truck. While she hopped in on the passenger side and buckled her seatbelt, I let Bud know we were ready on the walkie talkie. Then we took off, back on the road to South Dakota with only a few more hours to go till we reached the safety of Sioux Falls. And for the first time, I felt really hopeful that maybe, just maybe, this crazy, unplanned journey might not end in disaster.
The next hour was the best I’d known in too long.
Tarah had a way of making me forget the world racing by outside the few feet of space inside my truck. I’d always loved this truck. But Tarah made me love it even more with the way she stretched her legs out across the seat or propped her ankles up on the dash. She made me laugh at the way she liked to play with the CD changer, making her nosy and opinionated way through my eclectic music collection. She made me smile at how she insisted on reading more spells to me from my new magic book, but only in the right order, using a penlight she found in the backseat.
It had been so long since I’d really laughed or even wanted to. But Tarah made it feel easy and natural again.
And then, with one push of a button, that too short moment of peace was shattered.
CHAPTER 13
Tarah
“Hayden, we’ve got to pull over,” Bud barked through the walkie talkie, making me flinch. “That little girl you were talking to earlier...something’s wrong with her. I’m trying to call 911, but my phone’s got no signal.”
Kristina.
“Pulling over now,” Hayden replied in the walkie talkie as he slowed down and pulled to the side of the road. Thankfully the traffic wasn’t too bad here.
Hayden and I both dove out of the truck the moment it was parked and ran to the bus. Bud immediately opened the door.
Hayden vaulted up the steps and down the aisle, joining the crowd that had gathered towards the back. Being tall had its advantages, letting him peer over heads and shoulders, while I had to crane my head and peer through an opening between shoulders to see several hands trying to hold down Kristina’s body as she thrashed like a wild animal. Her fluttering eyelids revealed eyes that rolled in every direction.
Then the energy in the air ramped up as the healers closed their eyes and focused.
Under the dim overhead lighting, the bus was dead silent.
“What’s wrong with her?” I whispered to Mike at my left.
“I don’t know. Nothing happened that I could see,” he whispered back, his eyes wide and staring at the little girl. “Everyone was sleeping. Next thing we know, she just started flopping around like that.”
“I think she’s having a seizure,” Pamela muttered without opening her eyes or letting go of Kristina’s head. “Give us a minute.”
“Hey, anybody got a phone with a signal?” Bud called out as he slowly made his way down the aisle to join us.
“Shh,” Pamela hissed.
“They wouldn’t get here in time,” Hayden told Bud, reaching for a plausible excuse as to why we couldn’t call an ambulance.
Grumbling, Bud tried punching buttons on his phone again anyways.
In those long, surreal minutes, I looked around me, remembering what Jeremy always said. It’s the details, Tarah, he said over and over. They’re the only way to keep yourself grounded. When everything around you goes insane and you can’t get your bearings, open your eyes and ears and look for the details. They’ll help you know the moment is real, that what you are seeing, smelling, feeling, hearing, living is real. And then, only then, will you be able to catch your breath and think again and remember that it’s just a moment in time and someday you’ll write about it and that moment will become a story the entire world can share.