Set Me Free by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Author:Miranda Beverly-Whittemore [BEVERLY-WHITTEMORE, MIRANDA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446569613
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

WILLA

Day Three

Mitchell, Illinois, to Salina, Kansas Friday, May 9, 1997

Wilia wanted to drive. She needed distraction. She needed to live in a trance. When she reemerged forty-five minutes after leaving Nat alone at the car, she held out her hand. “Can I have the keys?” He wasn’t about to deny her a thing.

The land flattened. As they plowed through Missouri and into Kansas, she could see farther and farther into the distance. She fixed her eyes on the highway unspooling into the horizon. The sky was blue and enormous. Dirty snow lurked in the fields on either side of the road.

To Nat’s credit, he didn’t try to fix anything with words. He didn’t speak much at all. Which was the right thing. Willa was angry and confused. But she also felt an odd sense of relief, as if her whole life up until this moment had been lived underwater. Finally, she got to know the way the earth scratched under everyone else’s feet. She didn’t want her father’s words to distract her from feeling this, whatever it was named: this sickness at the bottom of her stomach, this chill up her spine, this humming in the cavern of her head. All she wanted was to look at the world and drive into it.

When they got to Salina, Kansas, Willa didn’t want to leave the car, even though the night was long dark and she was exhausted. They had stopped twice since the Mississippi, and both times were only because they needed fuel. The first time Nat brought her a sandwich and a Coke. The second time he made her get out and go to the bathroom. She loved the car more and more with each passing mile. She loved knowing its established perimeters: that the snacks were in the canvas bag wedged behind the passenger seat, that Ariel’s favorite spot when she awoke was the sunny armrest between the two front seats, that the old Volvo whined when Willa tried to push it above seventy. The dimensions of the car were Willa’s armor. Outside, the world slipped silently by.

HELEN

Stolen, Oregon Wednesday, October 16, 1996

In the girls’ locker room, Helen conveyed her shoulders into the stream of hot—nearly scalding—water. She was trying to warm up. Bed was plenty toasty, what with the dog and the comforters and the hot-water bottle and the wool cap Amelia had knit, but by morning the woodstove was ice-cold, so getting out of bed was torture. Even Ferdinand groaned when his feet hit the floor. It didn’t matter how many layers of wool socks Helen had on. Her travel alarm went off and she spent a good fifteen minutes wrestling with the terrible reality of having to get out of bed.

That was the worst of it, though. All the other things about the cabin that she had feared had, in fact, been okay (so far, knock on wood). It was not so terrible to be without a telephone. It was not so terrible to own

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