“You’re damn right I am,” Chubs said, without looking up from his book.
Zu flipped the flimsy notebook open to a blank page and scribbled something down. When she held it up for him to see, Liam grinned.
“Whoa, whoa—long division? I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, ma’am. You still haven’t conquered your double-digit multiplying.”
I watched him hop out of the minivan, a flare of annoyance shooting up from my core. All of this would have been so much easier if he wasn’t the only one of us who looked old enough to pass for twenty—at least I’d feel a lot better knowing one of us could be out there watching his back. Liam must have felt my gaze burning through the back of his jacket, because he stopped and turned to wave before disappearing around the corner.
“You really have to stop encouraging him,” Chubs was saying to Zu. I glanced back, watching as he used the blunt end of her pencil to follow lines of numbers on the page. “He needs to accept reality at some point.”
Zu’s face scrunched up, twisting like a piece of hard lemon candy was stuck on her tongue. She punched him in the shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said, but clearly wasn’t. “It’s just a waste of time and energy to teach you this stuff when you’re never going to get the chance to use it.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. Flashing Zu a reassuring smile, I added, “You’ll be ahead of everyone else your age by the time things go back to normal.”
When had I started believing in “normal,” anyway? Everything I had been through up to that point could only be used as support for Chubs’s argument. He was right, even if I didn’t want to admit it.
“You know what I’d be doing if things were normal?” Chubs said. “I’d be picking which college I was going to attend later this fall. I’d have taken my SATs, gone to football games and prom, taken chemistry…”
His voice trailed off, but I picked up the frayed ends of his thought all the same—how could I not? These were the exact things I thought about when I let myself get to that dark place of should-be and could-have-been. My mom said once that education was a privilege not afforded to everyone, but she was wrong—it wasn’t a privilege. It was our right. We had the right to a future.
Zu sensed the shift of mood. She looked between us, lips moving silently. We needed a change of subject.
“Pffft,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning back against the seat. “Like you would have ever gone to a football game.”
“Hey, I resent that!” Chubs handed Zu her notebook. “Here, you need to work on your nines.” When he turned back to me, it was with a disapproving look. “I can’t believe you of all people fell for his cotton candy dreams.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You were in Thurmond for what—five years?”
“Six,” I corrected. “And you’re missing the point. It’s not that I believe in what Lee’s saying; it’s that I hope he’s right. I really, really hope he’s right, because what’s the alternative? We’re stuck hiding out until their generation dies off? We flee to Canada?”
“Good luck with that,” Chubs said. “Both Canada and Mexico have built walls to keep us out and them in.”
“Because they thought IAAN was a contagious disease.”
“No, because they’ve hated us all along and were only looking for the right excuse to keep our fat asses and fanny packs out of their countries forever.”
Liam chose that exact moment to reappear, four Styrofoam containers balanced between his hands. He was moving fast, almost at a run. I leaned over and popped the door open for him, and he all but dumped the containers on my lap.
“Oh God, what now?” Chubs cried.
“Whoa—” I began, trying to keep the hot food from spilling all over my legs and the seat. Betty’s engine started with a snarl, and suddenly we were rocketing backward. With the sheet blocking the back window, Liam had to rely on using the side mirror to navigate us down the road and up into the small back alley that divided the Waffle House from an abandoned jewelry consignment store. I braced an elbow against the door as he steered the old minivan past the Dumpsters to the cramped employee parking lot tucked away in a dead-end around the corner. The minivan lurched to a stop, throwing all four of us forward.
“We’re…going to stay here for a little while,” he announced to our terrified faces. “Don’t panic, but I think I saw…I mean, it’ll just be safer here for a bit.”
“You saw her.” It wasn’t a question; Chubs already knew the answer before he asked. “Lady Jane.”
Liam rubbed the back of his neck as he leaned forward. He had left the nose of the minivan out far enough so we could peer around Waffle House’s wall to see down the alleyway. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”
How was it possible that she had caught up with us?
“Holy hell,” Chubs squawked. “Pretty sure or definitely sure?”
After a moment Liam answered, “Definitely sure. She’s got a new set of wheels—a white truck—but I’d recognize that smug face anywhere.”
“Did she see you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably not, otherwise she and whoever her new boy toy is would have tried to run me down. They drove by just as I was leaving.”
I craned my neck forward, trying to see far enough past the wall of the restaurant to the alley opening. As if on cue, a glinting white truck rolled by, two dark figures in the front seats. Liam and I flew back against our seats at the exact same moment, looking at each other in alarm. I don’t think either of us took a breath until we were sure no one was coming down the alley to investigate.
He cleared his throat. “Um…how about you pass out the food? I’ll just check—”
“Liam Michael Stewart,” Chubs’s voice thundered from the backseat, “if you step one foot out of this minivan, I will order Green to run you down with it.”
“Don’t think I won’t,” I warned, knowing exactly what Liam wanted to do: go out and risk his neck by walking down the alley to make sure the coast was clear. When I handed him a Styrofoam container, he slumped back in his seat, accepting defeat.