Alexandra Bracken - In Time

SOMETIMES, even when the roads are quiet and the others are asleep, she lets herself worry she made the wrong choice.

Its not that she doesnt like the groupshe does. Really. They stick together and they play it smart, driving on side streets as much as they can instead of the highways, with the open, endless fear those offer. Theyre never mean unless theyve gone without food or sleep or both for too long, or when theyre scared. When they camp for the night, they sleep in a great big circle, and the girls like telling stories about the kids they knew in Virginia, at East River. They all laugh, but she has trouble putting the faces to the names. She cant remember where the lake was in relation to the fire pit, and she wasnt there that one time they all put on a play for one another. She wasnt there because she was with her friends. She was in a different car, a better one, a happier one. Because when the girls stop telling these stories, the same ones over and over again, theres only silence. And she misses the warmth of her friends voices, even if they were just whispering, lying and saying it would all be okay.

Maybe its badshe doesnt knowbut secretly shes glad no one expects her to tell stories of her own. That way she gets to keep them to herself, tucked tight against her heart. She presses her hand there when shes scared, when she wants to pretend its them teasing and laughing and shouting around her, and not the others. When she wants to feel safe.

She keeps her hand there all the time. Now.

The mountains around her are flying by and the girls are screaming that they need to go faster, faster, faster. She sees the car through the back windshield of the SUV. The man hanging out the passenger-side window looks like he is aiming the gun directly at her. The driver has a face like hed be willing to drive through a firestorm to get to them, and she hates him for it.

She wants her voice to join with the others screaming and crying. The words are lodged in her throat. The boy behind the wheel needs to stop the SUV, slam on the brakes, let the monsters chasing them get out of their own car and think theyve won. We are five to their two, she thinks, and if we can catch them by surprise

But their SUV is suddenly flying like its gone up a ramp. The seat belt locks over her chest hard enough to steal her breath in that one second theyre in the airthen theyre spinning, the glass is smashing, the cars frame is twisting, and not even she can hold in her screams.

LISTEN, no matter what anyone tells you, no one really wants this job.

The hours are endless and the pay is crap. No, I take that back. Its not the pay thats crap. Theres a sweet little penny in it for you if you can hook yourself a decent-sized fish. The only thing is, of course, that everybodys gone and overfished the damn rivers. You can drop in as many hooks as you want, buy yourself the shiniest bait, but there just arent enough of them still in the wild to fatten up your skeletal wallet.

Thats the first thing Paul Hutch told me when I met him at the bar this afternoon. Were here to do business, but Hutch decides that its a teaching moment, too. Why do people constantly feel like they have to lecture me on life? Im twenty-five, but its like the minute you take actual kids out of the picture, anyone under the age of thirty suddenly becomes son, or kid, or boy, because these people, the real adults, they have to have someone to make small. Im not interested in playing to someones imagination, or propping up their sense of self-worth. It makes me sicklike Im trying to digest my own stomach. Im no ones boy, and I dont respond to son, either. Im not your damn dead kid.

Someones smoking a cigarette in one of the dark booths behind us. I hate coming here almost as much as I hate the usual suspects who haunt the place. Everything in the Evergreen is that tacky emerald vinyl and dark wood. I think they want it to look like a ski lodge, but the result is something closer to a poor mans Oktoberfest, only with more sad, drunk geezers and fewer busty chicks holding frothy mugs of beer.

There are pictures of white-capped mountains all around, posters that are about as old as I am. I know, because our mountain hasnt had a good snow in fifteen years, or enough demand to open in five. I used to run the ski lifts up all the different courses after school, even during the summer, when people from the valley just wanted to come up and do some hiking in temperatures below 115 degrees. I tell myself, At least you dont have to deal with the snotty tourists anymorethe ones who acted like theyd never seen a real tree before, and rode their brakes all the way down Humphreys winding road. I dont miss them at all.

What I miss is the paycheck.

Hutch looks like he crawled out of a horses asssmells like it, too. For a while he was working at one of those tour group companies that let you ride the donkeys down into the Grand Canyon. They closed the national parks, though, and the owner had to move all the animals back to Flagstaff, before ultimately selling them off. Theres no work for Hutch to do there anymore, but Im pretty sure the woman lets him sleep out in the stables.

Hes been here for hours already; hes looking soggy around the edges, and when I walked into the dark bar, he glanced up all bleary and confused, like a newborn chick sticking its head out of an egg. His hair is somehow receding and too long at once, the wisps halfheartedly tied back with a strip of leather.

Trying to speed things up, I slide a crumpled wad of money his way. The stack looks a lot more impressive than it actually is. Ive been living off tens and twenties for so long Im convinced they stopped printing the bigger bills.

Its not that I dont think you can do it, son, Hutch says, studying the bottom of his pint. It just sounds easier than it is.

I should be listening harder than I am. If anyone knows what the jobs really like, its him. Old Hutch tried for six months to be a skip tracer, and the prize he won for that misadventure was a burnt-up, mutilated, four-fingered hand. He likes to tell everyone some kid got to him, but seeing as hes managed to burn down two trailers by falling asleep with a cigarette in his hand, Im inclined to doubt it. Still, he milks it for all he can. The sight of the gimp hand gets him sympathy drinks from out-of-towners stopping in the Evergreen. Some extra nickels and dimes, too, when hes holding a cup at the corner of Route 66 and Leroux Street, pretending his white ass is a military vet from the Navajo Nation. Somehow he thinks that combination elevates him over the rest of us bums.

Can I have the keys? I ask. Whered you park it?

He ignores me, humming along to the Eagles Take It Easy, which this bar has on loop apparently for no reason other than the fact that Arizona is mentioned once in it.

I shouldnt be buying this truck from him. I know theres going to be something wrong with it; its older than I am. But this is the only one I can afford, and I have to get out of here. I have to get out of this town.

Another one, he says stubbornly, trying to flag down Amy, the bartender, who is doing her absolute best to deny his miserable existence. She and I have talked about this beforeits hard to look at him. His teeth got bad over the years, and his cheeks sag so low theyre practically hanging like wattles against his neck. Hes only forty-five, but he already looks like the after photo of a meth addictthe mug shot of the killer on one of those crime TV shows theyre always rerunning. His breath alone is like a punch to the face.