The Summer the World Ended (11 page)

She sulked.

“Be right back. Gotta hit the head.” Dad slid out of the bench and made his way to the bathroom.

Riley got two more bites of egg down before a tall waitress with strawberry blonde hair and
way
too much perfume walked over.

“Are you okay, sweetie?”

“Huh?”

The woman looked in the direction of the bathrooms and crouched, whispering, “Have you been kidnapped? We’ll stall him and get a cop here right away. You don’t have to be afraid. He can’t hurt you.”

She blinked.
That’s
why they were staring at her. Rumpled clothes she’d worn three days in a row, the expression that must be on her face, how quiet she’d been. “I’m okay.”

“What did he threaten you with?” The woman looked at the bathroom again, as if terrified he’d catch her here.

“Nothing. He’s my dad. Chill out.” She pushed potato around the plate. “My mother died two weeks ago, an’ I gotta move across the country.”

The waitress hesitated, looking back and forth between her and the other servers. “Okay… Sorry, we just assumed. He didn’t look quite right.”

Riley scowled at the woman. “He’s not creepy, he’s my dad. We’ve been driving from New Jersey. Not sleeping much.”

“Sorry, sorry.” The waitress stood. “You looked so… forlorn.”

“S’okay. Guess it’s better to ask in case you were right.”

The woman hesitated, as if not quite believing her.

“Would he have left me alone if he kidnapped me?”

“Depends on what he threatened you with, honey.”

“I’m fine, really.”

Riley stabbed the half-omelet on the plate, and stared through her reflection at the highway.
This feels like a horrible dream. This is someone else’s life. When do I get to wake up and go back to being me?

She startled when Dad plopped himself down.

“What’s got you so jumpy?”

“They didn’t think I was too skinny. They thought you kidnapped me.”

“Well, I suppose I did. Not like you wanted to leave home.” He offered a wistful smile.

“I didn’t want Mom to die.” Riley pushed her plate away. Her father gave her a scolding look until she got up and moved around to sit next to him. “You’re still my dad.”

He put an arm around her and kissed the side of her head. She leaned against him and finished her lunch, wondering if her future might not totally suck.

he view outside the truck seemed like something from another planet. Aside from small tufts of brush, Riley hadn’t seen anything green for what felt like an eternity. Last night’s motel stop hadn’t left much of an imprint upon her memory. Exhaustion finally caught up to her and sent her tumbling into sleep. Per a short guy with massive eyebrows and a tweed blazer behind the front desk―who had been
way
too chipper for 7 a.m.―the place had offered complimentary breakfast: cold eggs and rock-hard bacon.

Dad kept quiet for most of the morning, though he did smile more in the past four hours than he’d done in two weeks. She craned her neck to look at the horizon, glancing right, straight ahead, and out his window. Everything was the same―flat open nothing with a single line of road. Riley spent a moment admiring her father’s profile and six-day beard. He didn’t seem as creepy as when she’d first seen him. Enough of his little habits rang true in her memory to tamp down her weak sense of unease. The way he held his mug, the way he hunched ever so slightly forward in his seat, and his aversion to loud noise all seemed ‘right.’

Riley pulled her right foot up onto the seat and let her cheek rest against her knee. Her flip-flop fell off. She brushed her fingers over her toenails; the glittery blue paint reminded her Mom hadn’t been gone that long. Heaviness settled in her chest, though she didn’t cry.

Everything outside looked the same, save for the distant haze of a couple of mountains along the horizon. Miles and miles of rolling pale sand covered with a haze of short green scrub brush stretched into the distance. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the sound of her mother’s voice. Somewhere on her phone or laptop, she had a couple of videos she’d taken of Mom. At least two were from birthday parties, and one had been her attempt to prove to Mom she drank too much. For a moment, Riley thought about deleting that one when she could, but changed her mind. Any memory of Mom was a memory she wanted to keep―even an unflattering one.

A little past noon, they passed a brown sign bearing the words, ‘Elephant Butte Lake State Park.’ Riley couldn’t help herself and giggled. Less than twenty minutes later, Dad took an off ramp labeled ‘Truth or Consequences’ soon after an overpass.

“Gee, that doesn’t sound ominous at all.” Riley stretched.

The truck shuddered as they slowed and went around a giant rightward turning circle that let them out on a smaller two-lane road. Off to the right, traces of civilization poked up out of the desert. Closest was a large building she assumed to be a hotel, rectangular with large square windows and bands of brown. When they passed in front of it, she smirked at the Holiday Inn logo.

“I wonder if their beds are any more comfortable than the boards we’ve been sleeping on.”

“You’ll be in your own bed tonight.” Dad smiled. “Won’t be much longer now. Just gotta cut out onto 51 East through Las Cerezas.”

“Geez, they have Walmarts here?” Riley pointed at a sign passing on the right.

He laughed. “Yes, Riley… Civilization
has
penetrated the desert.”

They stopped at a Chevron to top off the tank and feed it some antifreeze and wiper fluid. As grungy as she felt in the same clothes she’d worn the whole trip, her surroundings were a far cry from Menlo Park Mall or anywhere anyone she knew would see her. No one here seemed to notice or care she felt frumpy.

Riley kept quiet as they headed south through a relatively large main road and hooked a left onto 51. Everything seemed so wide open. The mountains in the background still felt
weird.
Home had so many trees and so many people packed in tight, seeing this much space between buildings kept her staring around like a tourist. Most of the buildings were only one story and wide. Shops had strange names, chains that didn’t exist in the east. A square house covered in multicolored stone passed on the right, a picnic table in front and a large blue plastic playground to the right. Riley made a face. It looked like people randomly built structures here and there. To her Jersey eyes, most of them looked ramshackle, as if a stiff storm would knock them down. A moment later, a tiny white house passed on the left, shingles peeling from the roof, windows broken and boarded.

Why did Dad take me here? Everything’s falling apart.

Homesickness hit hard again, and she wondered what was going on inside Mom’s house. Were people looking at it now? Was someone walking through
her
bedroom at that very minute? Riley narrowed her eyes. Dad said he’d give her any money the sale produced. She’d let it sit in the bank until she could use it to buy Mom’s house back. Another four years, and she’d be eighteen, and no one could tell her where she could live.

Yeah, right.
She let her head fall back against the seat.
I’d need a job good enough to pay taxes.
I’m never gonna be able to go home.
Quiet tears slipped out of her eyes.

“Riley?” asked Dad.

“Homesick,” she muttered.

“A house is just a pile of wood. A home is everything inside, all the memories. Memories you can take with you wherever you go.”

“Okay, fortune cookie.” She chuckled and wiped her eyes.

“You know, it might be better for you to be away from there anyway. Everything would remind you of Mom.”

“What about stability of a familiar environment?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I gotta deal with Mom”―she still couldn’t say dying―“and, um, now I’m out in the middle of nowhere.” She sighed and let her arms fall to her sides. “Sorry. You didn’t have to take me in. I shouldn’t be ungrateful.”

“You’re wrong, Riley. I had to. I… You would’ve been happier with your mother, but we are still family.”

“Is it true what you said? You never divorced Mom?”

“Yep. We didn’t have
issues.
I only wanted to protect you two.”

“Russian assassins coming after us?” She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.

“Doubtful.” Before Riley could smile, he continued in a scary-serious tone. “They’re too busy right now with the situation in the Ukraine. I’m a mid-level programmer working on missile guidance routines and some encryption stuff for communication satellites deemed ‘nonsecure.’ I’m not a high value target to them. The threat is really from extremist cells from the Middle East and unstable regimes like Korea, and that whole Middle East mess, and I don’t think God even knows what the hell Putin will do next.”

She stared at him for a long minute in silence.
Holy shit.

“Sorry, hon. I’ve been trying not to scare you, but you keep asking.”

Route 51 snaked out of Truth or Consequences heading east. Large hills passed on either side, feeling a bit like they drove through a canyon. About thirty-five minutes out of the city, a tiny town sprang up around the road. One hand-painted sign read, ‘Welcome to Las Cerezas.’ Aside from a scattered number of private homes, she spotted a hardware store, a mechanic’s garage named Lonnie’s with a couple of Harley Davidson bikes clustered by the door, two churches, a couple of empty-looking warehouses, a Hernandez Grocery, and a place that looked like a restaurant with a fading sign over the door calling it Tommy’s. A slim one-lane dirt road curved around behind the hills to the south toward the hint of a trailer park in the desert.

“Are you sure this is considered civilization? I think there were more kids in my class last year than people live in this town.”

Dad smiled, though he didn’t say a word. A handful of pedestrians paused to stare at them as they passed. Most gave off a ‘what are they doing here’ vibe that left her feeling uncomfortable. One guy slapped his friend on the arm and pointed. As soon as the other man spun around, he too shot them a suspicious glower.

“What’s up with them?” Riley made eye contact with a tall, fat man in a cowboy hat, who shook his head.

“The place is a bit insular, hon. Don’t take it personally. They don’t like outsiders. I’ve lived here for almost five years now, and they still treat me like a foreigner.”

As if inspired by a sudden muse, Dad took a hard right. The truck lurched over a bump as it entered the parking lot of Tommy’s.

“It’s almost one and we haven’t eaten. Hungry?”

“Is this the only restaurant here?” She looked around again. “What kind of food do they even serve? The place looks like a roach factory.”

“Mexican stuff or burgers, mostly.” He got out. “None of that su-chee stuff you like.”

She exaggerated a sigh, and shoved her door open. “You seriously want to eat here?”

Tommy’s Restaurant was bigger inside than it looked from the outside. One long, rectangular room held a bar on the left and a number of battered tables covered in wood-patterned Formica on the right. The place smelled of beer and refried beans, but the spice in the air was not at all what she expected―it smelled appetizing.