Now You Say Yes by Bill Harley

Author:Bill Harley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2021-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Let’s go,” she says, unlocking the car. “Get in.”

Conor doesn’t move.

“Come on, hurry!”

Conor looks back to the store, and when he does, so does Mari. The bald man has come out from behind the counter and is confronting Sky.

“Forget him! We’ve got to go.”

And that’s enough for Conor. He gets in the back seat, but he doesn’t climb into the crate. Instead he just buckles up and huddles down, his hands pressing on the top of his head like he’s trying to keep it from flying away. Mari gets the car started, jams it in reverse, and turns the steering wheel. The car lurches backward, spinning three-quarters of a circle before she slams on the brakes, narrowly missing an air pump. As she heads toward the entrance ramp of the interstate, Sky bursts out the door of the store.

“Hey, hey, hey!” he shouts, running toward them.

Mari hits the accelerator and there’s a squeal as the tires leave a patch. Who knew an Accord could do that? They hurtle down the quarter-mile access road to the highway, and then she hears Conor say, “What about his backpack?”

His backpack. It’s in the trunk. Easy enough to keep going. But then, partly so she can give Sky a last piece of her mind, and partly because she doesn’t want anything left of what she’s just experienced, she pulls over twenty-five feet from the highway. She pops the trunk and flings open her door. As she steps outside, she can see Sky running for them, waving his arms. He’s still a hundred yards away.

When he sees Mari get out of the car, he slows to a trot. “What the hell?” he shouts. “Are you freaking crazy?”

Well, that definitely does it.

She pulls out his pack, undoes the top drawstring, and empties everything out. Then she finds his duct-tape wallet in the pocket on the top flap. She opens it and pulls out two twenties and some fives and singles, then hurls the wallet and whatever’s left in it in Sky’s direction. When it registers on him what she’s doing, he starts running again. She flings the backpack into a ditch, leaving his T-shirts and pants and underwear and mess kit lying on the pavement. She gives them all a kick, then turns back to the open car door.

“Wait, wait!” Sky screams, his voice now more desperate than angry.

“Thanks for the fill-up!”

Mari climbs in, slams the door, and guns the engine. The car hops again, the tires squeal, and she pulls out onto the highway. She doesn’t even look back to see the mess she’s left, though if she had, she would have seen Sky kneeling in the middle of his scattered possessions.

Her heart is hammering and she’s short of breath; the anger in her is fizzing over the top like a shaken soda can, dripping down the sides of her being, and slowly, slowly ebbing. She looks in the rearview mirror at Conor, and sees something she has never seen before. Conor is looking directly at her, and their eyes lock.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.