West of the Sea by Stephanie Willing

Author:Stephanie Willing [Willing, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

30

The truck rattled loudly along the road. Even though Rye assured us everything was tied down in the back, metal stuff jangled and clanged anytime Margie took a curve a little fast or hit a literal bump in the road. The sounds made us all tense.

Margie had put her Rangers hat on Rye with a terse “Keep it low.”

With the headlights on bright and our faces in shadow, hopefully no one would notice a teenager driving a massive coffee truck with two kids in tow. We didn’t want any extra attention.

The moon lent a bit of light, but the country roads were so dark it was easy to imagine we were the only ones awake in the whole world. Except for the wild things.

Our headlights reflected off the eyes of coyotes, deer, and cattle. Armadillos scuttled at the edges of the road, and more than one armored carcass memorialized a valiant but failed attempt to cross.

I nodded off somewhere outside of Olney. It had been an impossibly hard day, and the ache in my muscles won out over the dread that had kept me in motion.

When I woke up, everything felt jumbled. With a heart-sinking dive, I remembered that Mama was missing, and that we had so many more questions than answers.

But my first question was: Why am I curled up next to Rye??? My whole body froze—apparently I’d used his shoulder as a pillow. There was even a tiny drool spot on his T-shirt. Oh my gosh, this was almost as embarrassing as him seeing me as a reptile girl. Or a kitskara, I tried the word out in my mind.

Rye’s face was pressed into the window, and he was snoring softly. Moving inch by inch, I removed myself from his shoulder and sat upright.

He kept sleeping. Phewww.

“What time is it?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“About one thirty a.m. We’re thirty minutes away from Glen Rose,” Margie said. She took a sip of green tea from her travel thermos and glanced down at Mama’s phone, where a map app was illuminated.

We were passing through a small town, but close enough to a city that Margie had a decent FM country music station playing.

We drove beside a large artificial lake with massive look-alike homes lining its shores. McMansions, Papa called them. The moon reflected off the surface, and the houses cast lights on the moving water.

“Pretty,” Margie said.

“Yeah.”

The scene felt surreal. Last night, Mama had gone outside and hadn’t returned, and now I was a hundred miles from home riding in a coffee truck with my big sister and the neighbor kid from down the road. I’d thought nothing would ever change, but now things were shifting so fast the ground felt like it was crumbling under my feet all over again.

In the dark, I couldn’t see the color of Margie’s eyes, but I saw how her hands gripped the steering wheel and the way she perched forward on her seat.

“Does driving at night make you nervous?” I asked her.

She hesitated, then said, “Yeah, I guess.

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