My head aches, and the bed is vibrating.
No.
It’s not a bed.
The sour, throat-burning stench of diesel smoke accompanies the rumbling, and my face is pressed against a rough synthetic rug. With a gut-tightening sensation of fear, I know where I am.
Pops has done it again. All these years he’s threatened Big Ma that he was going to come and take his kids back, and he’s done it. I am in Pops’ rig, lying on the floor.
We’re not moving, and I’m glad, because he tossed me back here like a rag doll. Last night I went to bed at about ten thirty, finished reading my chapters in Fat Kid Rules the World for English, and then shut off the light before Big Ma could yell at me. I remember hearing the phone ring, then a voice – voices. And then, nothing.
Last time, Pops took Looley and me to ice cream. Big Ma let him, ‘cause she thought it would be good for us to know him; after all, Looley was six, and I was ten, and Looley hadn’t never seen him, and I barely remembered him. Ma never did believe what our mother, Lily, said about Pops, and so Big Ma thought she knew what was best. Pops took us to ice cream, all right. In Nevada, two states away.
“You girls gonna stay with me, now,” Pop informed us over butter-brickle cones at the Thrifty ice-cream counter. Looley just looked at him with her mouth open, but I chundered ice cream all down the front of the counter. Pops hustled us out of there right quick.
I thought Big Ma had finally gotten tired of us, had decided that we weren’t worth the effort of putting up with me and my mutant reading habits and Looley’s habit of wetting the bed and crying every night. But six months later, when social services and the detective Big Ma’d hired finally tracked us down, she’d been crying too hard to talk when she’d taken us into her soft, bony arms. Yeah, bony. Big Ma wasn’t big anymore. She wore off all her fat worrying about us.
Pops went to jail for about six months, and was on probation for two years.
He got off probation yesterday. And here I am today.
“Looley?” My voice is hoarse. It is pitch black in here.
I expect to hear something: a groan, a whisper, but there’s nothing. I reach out my arm, and feel along the floor, hunting for a shoe, a bit of her leg. I reach out my other arm, stretch out my legs until they bump the cabinets that are behind the driver’s seat.
In this small space, there is nobody here but me.
The rig isn’t stopped, it is idling. We are at a weigh station somewhere, maybe halfway across the country, maybe only fifty miles from home. If I wasn’t so thirsty, I might scream, see if anybody can hear me, but the noise from this stupid rig is so loud I can’t hear myself think. Pops wouldn’t let me go to school last time. He cut Looley and my hair, dyed Looley’s with shoeblack, and wouldn’t let us outside.
Why does he want us?
“My girls! My girls!” Big Ma had said over and over again, holding us and rocking us every time we woke up that first week back. “My girls.” Like we weren’t anybody else’s.
I am twelve now. I know a few things. I know my mother didn’t leave us with Big Ma because she didn’t love us. I know I might not ever see her again. What Pops thinks is his, he wants to keep.
I need to go.
My arms feel rubbery. I bend my legs ‘til my heels are solid on the floor. I roll over to my side, then up, careful not to touch anything, not to make a sound. On hands and knees I creep forward, expecting any moment to run into something that will clatter and fall and sound an alarm.
I move forward, sweeping my arms out in front of me, still looking for Looley. In a few moments, my fingers brush the enameled metal of the cupboards.
There is a space at the base of one of the cupboards, to allow air to circulate between the cab and the truck’s living space. I feel along the cabinets until my fingers feel the breeze. Lying on my back, I scooch forward, hoping to see something, but all I can see is the word ‘hell’ in red letters, staring down at me.
I blink, bewildered, until the ‘he’ suddenly turns into an ‘s,’ and I realize it is the digital clock on the console. It is only 11:35. Only an hour has passed since I’ve been gone… an hour or a day. I roll onto my stomach, and fumble with shaking hands for the latch that opens the way between the living space and the rig. Pops isn’t in the cab.
It’s my only chance.
This story brought to you by this picture, by Flickr user Fragilocyte. I’d say you could find more with the usual suspects at Ficktion.ning.com, but mostly they’re on vacation. Hurry on September.