Chapter 4: Some Dance to Forget

On the other side of a very light sleep, there is blinding
whiteness, piercing even against my closed lids. My eyes fly open,
and the light sears into them. It's painful and disorienting. There
seems to be nothing else but the brightness; all my other senses are
dulled into insignificance.

Headlights. Coming right at us. Then, well, *not* as our car dives
to the right and the guardrail comes rushing toward me.

That's not really accurate. The rail stays where it is. It is us
rushing towards it.

Sam is cursing as he manhandles the car, jerking it back to the left
again, keeping us from the edge of the drop-off. There's a sound
like an explosion, and the hood of the car tilts precariously to the
right. I close my eyes and we are going forward and sideways at the
same time, and Sam's forearm suddenly crashes against my chest and
forces me backwards, further into the seat.

I open my eyes at one point and we are spinning, slower than you'd
think, sliding across wet pavement as the car makes horrible,
horrible noises that make my teeth ache in addition to everything
else.

The chaos is illuminated by high beams: sea, guardrail, yellow line,
rocky hillside. Sea, guardrail, yellow line, rocky hillside. I look
down and see a trail of orange sparks being thrown up from the right
front tire. Closing my eyes again, I fight my stomach, which is
moving in much the same way as the car.

When we come to a stop, and when I dare to open my eyes, we're
sitting perpendicular to the double yellow lines—the same lines the
pick-up truck that almost killed us had just crossed. We're in the
middle of the road, but it doesn't matter because the highway is
deserted, except for the somewhat Satanic glow of the rogue truck's
taillights. I look past Sam and watch the vehicle until it flies
around a bend and is gone from my sight forever, the only hint it
had ever been there the taste of adrenaline and bile in my mouth.

We're facing the high wall of the cliff we were winding around the
edge of. We nearly hit it head on.

This is so Wyle E. Coyote that I just can't even handle it right now.

Toby speaks first. "Everybody?"

Josh is very quiet and I twist around and look at him and see that
his face is completely without color, stark in the headlights
bouncing off the rock in front of us and back into the car. I can
tell from the way Toby is looking at me that my face must look much
the same. It wasn't a pleasant way to be awakened for either Josh or
me.

Toby leans forward and surprises me by touching my forehead, pushing
my hair away. His fingers whisper across my brow bone. I stare at
him, too stunned to move. His hand falls away slowly and he
explains, "I thought you'd cut your head. Just a shadow."

"Sam?" Josh asks finally from directly behind me, finding his voice
before I find mine. He sounds a little high pitched and airy.

"Did you see that? Son of a bitch," Sam growls, then says
louder, "we almost went off the edge!"

"Yeah, but we didn't. We're okay," Josh says quietly. Reassuring
himself, I think.

"We blew a tire." Sam kills the engine, and I feel anxious. I want
to tell him that he should move the car from the middle of the road.
And then wonder why. With the exception of one truck that caused all
of this, we haven't seen anyone else in several hours.

"Okay," Toby says. "We'll fix it."

The lights are still on and the car is making an annoying little
dinging noise to let us know that.

The Pacific Highway. After midnight and a violent winter storm. In a
car that apparently has just broken.

It's not a really good situation. It was also written in the stars
that this should happen, so I'm not really as stunned as Sam, Josh
and Toby seem to be.

Instead, I'm struck most by the absolute, all-encompassing quiet.
We're perched too high on a cliff to hear the waves' assault on the
rocky shore far below from inside the car. The constant hum of the
motor and the drone of the radio fled us very quickly, and no where,
no where is there another car to be heard. Even the truck is long
gone from us now. The sky has even silenced itself, with not a
single plane flying overhead.

It's eerie and chilling and the fact that I'm surrounded by three
men who earlier tried to protect me doesn't comfort me much in that
the way they fought for my honor was to pull out their wallets. Not
going to work in this damn cliché setting for a psychotic man with a
hook for a hand to come upon us.

Self-consciously, I slide my elbow nonchalantly up the side of the
door and push down the lock while I try to look like I'm smoothing
my hair behind my ear.

Josh is still fighting for his bearings. He was asleep longer than
any one. He didn't even wake up when we pulled into a brightly lit
gas station…the last sign of civilization we've seen, shortly after
our rendition of Silent Night. "Where are we? Is this San Francisco?"

I look out over the deserted seascape, increasingly haunting as
moonbeams bleed through clouds to pool on certain surfaces while
others are too dark to be silvered by any light at all.

And I can't help it. "Yes, Josh. This is San Francisco. It was blown
away in the storm, but we thought you needed your sleep. And so
we're just stopping here to have a little gander--"

"Okay, so it's not San Francisco. That's all you had to say. A
simple *no*. So where are we?"

"No one knows," Toby mutters.

"Fredrick knows." I murmur. "But he's probably not going to tell us
now."

"What does the GPS say?" Josh wonders, sitting up and trying to get
a look at it around my shoulder.

"Sam turned it off," I say helpfully, then add "hours ago," and Sam
gives me a most ungrateful look.

"Why the hell would you do that?" Josh shrieks. "And where the hell
are we? Are we even in California?"

"Of course we are!" Sam assures him and then more quietly
says, "I'm pretty sure of it..."

"Turn it on! What have you done?" Josh is trying to climb over me
and Sam to get to the GPS. He is stretching as far as possible and
he just can't quite get it. Naturally, I don't help him out.

"Look, there was a bad accident on the Interstate. I knew how to get
to California 1. So here we are. It's south to San Francisco. How
hard is that? And I hate to tell you, but Frederick can't tell you
anything about fixing a tire!" Sam's voice is climbing here, and his
knuckles are going white on the steering wheel…probably because all
the color in his body seems to be flooding into his face. There's a
vein in his forehead that's becoming particularly prominent.

Sam takes navigation very seriously.

Josh blinks a few times. "Fredrick?"

"Never mind!" Sam shouts. Then he seems to *realize* he is shouting
and sits back, loosening his hold on the steering wheel with effort.

"Feel better?" I say soothingly.

"Much," he nods. "Thanks."

"Are we going to get out of the car and have a look at the tire, or
are we going to have a group therapy session now?" Toby inquires, and it seems to me to
be a fair question.

I don't really want to open the door, but Josh is behind me and is
suddenly urging me to let him out –and right *now*. When I hear the
noises he's making and realize his stomach has just caught up to
him, I practically bolt from the car, forgetting about my bad toes
and putting my full weight down upon them.

By the time I realize how badly it hurts, it's too late to remove my
weight from my right foot. It doesn't stop me from trying, though. I
stumble and try to hop on my left foot, but I lose my balance. And
fall flat on the pavement, catching myself with my palms and
skinning them.

I hear Josh being rather violently sick over the guardrail as I push
myself up off my stomach and ease down onto my butt on the wet
pavement, careful not to let the toe of my boot touch the ground for
fear of any more contact. I am unable to contemplate standing again
just now, though the water biting through the fabric is so cold that
it is circling to a burn.

In fact, my toes hurt so bad that I think I may have to join Josh in
a moment.

I look around me and see little bits of tire tread everywhere in the
glimmer of headlights, littering a zig-zag of black marks swerving
from one side of the highway to the other. I'm particularly
distressed to see just how close some of those marks are to the
guardrail. The car is sitting on its rim about three feet away from
my thigh. It's cold as hell, and the wind hasn't let up as much as I
thought it had from the confines of our car.

"For the love of God!" Toby mutters as he comes around the car and
gets a look at Josh, then me. "You people are thirteen kinds of
worthless. What the hell's wrong with you?"

"I fell down," I say, though I consider it rather obvious.

Josh straightens up only so he can turn around and collapse heavily
against the rail. "I have a sensitive system," he admits, for
perhaps the first and only time. He presses the heels of both hands
above his eyes and bends over, taking deep breaths. Weakly, he
adds, "I'm not a damned cat, by the way. I'm about out of lives
here."

Sam is in the trunk now. His shoulders have completely vanished
from sight.

Toby divides a contemptuous look between Josh and me and turns back
to Sam, who appears to be digging even more deeply into the trunk.
His feet have almost left the ground at this point, and I wonder
exactly how large the space could be.

"Now what the hell are you doing?" Toby growls and splays his
fingers across his head, tapping against the crown with his index
finger. "I'm surrounded by idiots."

Sam's voice is muffled, but I hear both panic and disbelief in it
when it drifts out to us. "There's no spare."

"Sure there's a spare," Toby says in a dismissive tone, laced with
just a little uneasiness. "Did you lift up the compartment in the
floor there?"

The heels of Sam's feet return to the highway as he starts edging
backwards. I hear a thump and see the trunk door bounce further
upwards as presumably Sam cracks his skull open upon it.

Oh God, what a sight we must make. Me sprawled out in a puddle,
unable to get up and gather my dignity around me because I've
suffered a massive injury to my big toe. Josh, pale and clammy and
unable to stand on his weak knees after vomiting into the Pacific.
Sam, swearing and staggering and holding what will probably be a
good-sized knot on the back of his head.

I finally make it to my feet---alone mind you---the men so bent on
protecting my honor earlier have apparently got better things on
their minds now. I hobble over to the rail very slowly. Josh has
recovered somewhat, and he, Toby, and Sam are all standing, inches
apart, staring down into the trunk. They are bathed in the red wash
of taillights, and it's creeping me out a little bit.

At first, there was a lot of screaming. Then they all began crawling
around the car, under the car, searching for the spare. Then they
all stood and stared at the flat—or rather, nonexistent—tire for a
bit. Finally they have reconvened in front of the open trunk.

They haven't said anything in awhile.

And then Toby voices aloud the observation Sam made fifteen minutes
ago. "There's no spare."

I sort of tune them out at this point. I gather that Josh is
shrieking about the rental car company and how he's going to sue
their asses, and Sam is whole-heartedly agreeing to represent us
all. Toby is cursing fluently, holding up his cell phone and walking
back and forth, trying to get some sort of a signal.

I'm trying very hard not to fall over the rail and into the ocean
below and wondering exactly what kind of damage I've done to my toe.

Josh calls to me over his shoulder. "CJ, are you going to help us
out here?"

"You're the strategists. You da men. I'm the Press Secretary. You
come up with a plan and then I'll brief the…" I look around for
someone to brief. And settle on, "I'll brief Fredrick."

Then I snort softly at my own cleverness. They do not.

I expected to be met with glares, or more likely, stones, but Josh's
eyes get wide and he smiles. "Claudia Jean, you're a genius. We'll
turn on the GPS! Maybe it can give us information on how far we are
from…something."

"Oh yes," I say politely, "excellent," and stay where I am as Josh
leaps into the car. Sam and Toby come around to stand outside the
open driver's door.

The night is still and the air is growing heavy with a fog the likes
of which I have never seen before. The fog is thick enough that it
seems to insulate me against the pure sea air beyond it.

When the GPS comes on, I can hear it clearly through the open car
door.

Frederick was apparently either injured in the mayhem, disrupted by
the storm, or, in my opinion, just really pissed that we turned him
off, because over and over, no matter what Josh does to it, the
black box just repeats, "turn around here. Go back."

"Good advice," I say quietly to the Pacific.

*

We, not one of us, gets phone service here. We belong to one of the
most amazing digital networks in the country…in the world…and
there's not a phone among ours that works right now. Which explains
why after more discussion that I thought strictly necessary, we are
walking down the Pacific Coastal Highway.

Clarification. They are walking. I am struggling, alone, behind
them, half-hopping, half-limping and I'm sure it's the most
ungraceful sight in the world. Not that they are paying enough
attention to appreciate it.

They are men on a mission, on a hunt. For what, I don't know. A
spare tire is my first guess. I would settle happily for a blanket
and a bed. And a bone saw with which to amputate my toes.

They seem to not notice that I've dropped back, oh, fifty yards or
so, and that the distance is growing. And damned if I'm going to ask
them to slow down.

Because if they discover that I have really injured myself in
kicking Lumberjack Joe, there will be hell to pay. They will never
let me forget it. The story of their chivalry, which will be
exaggerated and expanded upon with every telling, is going to take
long enough to die without the epilogue of them having to not only
save me but also carry me home.

God. They are so going to notice that I cannot keep up. I am short
of breath right now, I'm in so much pain, and I feel sick to my
stomach. Despite the chill of the air, a sweat is breaking across
the bridge of my nose and at the nape of my neck.

"CJ, what in God's name is your problem? What are you doing back
there? We haven't walked half a mile!"

I don't think I'd realized that I'd stopped completely until I hear
Toby's voice. It bounces off the rocks over my head and is thrown
out to sea. It sounds as if he's calling from above me, rather than
from down the very steep hill they've been walking down.

Sam, Josh, and Toby all pushed the car from the middle of the road
before we left it behind us. The headlights are still on to light
our way with more consistency than the intermittent moonlight. The
lights are throwing my outline down the hillside and over them. I'm
a little self-conscious at just how ridiculously long my legs look
in the distorted shadow.

Shielding their eyes against the bright lights behind me, they are
staring at me. "What's going on?" Sam calls.

"Coming," I call breathlessly and then grit my teeth. I can do this.
I've been in worse pain before and dealt with it. Not that I can
remember when by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm sure there
was a time.

They are now coming back up the hill towards me, because they can
see I'm clearly not coming any time soon. I'm still trying to gather
my courage to take a step forward. Knowing the kind of sharp agony
I'm going to feel, as if my bones are about to slice through both
tissue and skin, doesn't help much.

I'm living up to my Secret Service code name, which I've protested
to every authority I can think of, standing here on the pavement,
one foot hovering in the air.

And I'm pretty much still doing my impression of a freaking flamingo
when they all stop before me, breathless after their climb.

"Something's wrong, isn't it?" Sam asks me.

"I'll tell you. You boys, you're as quick as…I don't even know
what." I hurt too badly to come up with a simile…even a bad one.

"Well, what's wrong with you?" Josh wonders. "Cramp?"

This sounds like a better explanation than the truth, so I nod, and
then, to back up my story, place a hand against my side.

"You need to rest a minute?" Sam asks.

"Yeah, just a minute," I say, still breathing heavily, "Just one
small, short, minute…"

At this point, I make the mistake of meeting Toby's eyes.

Damn the man for seeing right through me. He isn't gracious enough
to be buying this, even a little bit. I think I say something to him
with my stare, with my defiantly raised chin, because he blinks and
then turns to Josh and Sam.

He tells them, "I'm done with the walking. You two go on ahead. We're going to wait
here. Find some help, why don't you, and come back and get us.
Preferably soon."

"No, that's stupid. We shouldn't split up. I'm fine now," I say,
because I still don't want Toby's help. "Let's just go."

They don't go, so I decide to, and put my foot down with
determination.

A cry escapes through teeth clenched to prevent just that, and my
knee gives in an instinctive attempt to avoid the pain.

Toby grabs me under one arm and Josh's arm comes around my waist and
between them, they keep me from hitting the pavement again. I feel
about four years old, but it hurts so bad that I cannot stop the
tears from rising up in my eyes. I'm fighting with everything I have
to keep them from scalding a path down my cheeks right now.

There is still sharp agony pulsing in white-hot flashes as Josh and
Toby very nearly carry me toward the guardrail. I feel dizzy and
sick and disoriented.

"What have you done Claudia Jean?" Josh asks softly as soon as I am
leaning against the wet rail and trying to pretend my vision hasn't
been almost completely obscured by my tears. This is so not me. This
is so not happening.

"Apparently, she's done some damage to her foot," Sam says wisely,
and I grudgingly nod. "Apparently she really did kick the hell out
of that guy."

"Don't say anything!" I say angrily to Toby, although he hasn't, and
dash at the tears with my sleeve. The worst of the pain has passed
and now my toes all just throb meanly with every heartbeat. For
maybe the first time I realize how much pressure there is against my
shoes and wonder how much swelling there must be. Until I tried to
walk on my foot, the support felt good. Now, I want to rip my boot,
and possibly my foot, off immediately.

"Why the hell didn't you say anything earlier?" Toby shouts.

"It didn't hurt that bad earlier. It was kind of numb for a few
hours. I wasn't walking on it! Now it hurts!" I snap. "Happy?"

"No," Toby says softly, and I know he is distressed that I'm
hurting.

He suggests that Josh and Sam go look for some form of help. We
think, after peering further over the edge of the railing than was
probably wise, that there are lights down below, near the beach.
It's an incredibly steep walk, and probably a two mile-long one, so
I really don't think that I'm going to protest.

Josh tries to send Sam without him, citing all of this as Sam's
fault for turning off the GPS. Sam counters that this whole trip is
Josh's idea and that he should be the one to go.

They both stare dubiously down the long, dark road, and I think
they've seen the same movies featuring man-with-hook-hand that I
have.

"You could flip for it," Toby suggests casually.

Apparently, neither feels as if luck is with him, because in the end
they refuse to chance being the one sent alone, and both go. Sam and
Josh move away at a jog, their footsteps bouncing up off the cliff
side and returning to us in distorted echoes. I think normally Josh
would have protested moving any faster than his signature swagger,
but he's afraid of being left too far behind.

When the sound fades away and that strange, tangible silence wraps
around us again, I begin speaking just to break free of it. "So what
gave me away?"

Toby rolls his eyes. "You mean how did I see through the story that
someone who runs four miles a day on a treadmill was on the verge of
collapse after a half a mile walk? I'm just quick, I guess."

"Yeah, that's you. Quick as…" I try again, but come up with
nothing. "I just don't know what works there."

He's not paying attention to my words, because he's preoccupied with
my comfort. "It's cold. Think you could make it back up to the car?
We could sit there and wait."

I look up the hill, daunted by the severe angle of it. The
headlights from the car perched there stream over our heads, two
cylinders of brightness reaching far, far down the hill, and to the
frothy ocean beyond the curve that takes the road out of sight.

Toby sighs and says, "probably not a good idea, huh? Have you broken
anything?"

"I think so," I say, because this is clearly no time to be a hero,
in that I have already given myself away as a simpering wuss. "A
toe. Maybe two toes. Maybe all of them. I can't tell."

"Think we should look at it now?" he wonders and sounds like he's
afraid I'll say yes.

"No…let's not. It, it doesn't hurt very bad right now, and I don't
want to mess with it."

"You should have said something earlier, CJ. We could have gotten
you to a doctor or something. We could have at least given you an
Advil. Some ice."

"Toby, honest to God, if I'd have known how bad it was going to hurt
a few hours later, I would have screamed from the rooftops that I'd
hurt myself. I wasn't being noble."

"Here, you should elevate it." He shrugs out of his long overcoat
and he folds it over once and tosses it to the ground. "Sit there."
He takes me by the elbow and I hold onto the rail with the other
hand as I ease down onto the coat, one long leg outstretched to keep
the foot from touching anything. My muscles are starting to quiver
with the effort.

"What am I supposed to elevate it on?" I ask him, but before I
finish speaking, he's released my arm and he's come around to sit in
front of me, on the pavement, and he's very, very carefully taking
me by the calf and easing my foot into his lap, holding me steady by
the ankle.

The pressure of his fingers on my ankle is somehow soothing. I might
have flinched to have someone so near to my very sore foot, but I
trust Toby not to hurt it, accidentally or otherwise.

We sit like that for several minutes. Josh and Sam's footsteps and
voices have completely left us, and it feels like we might be alone
in the world. I look down the hill where our shadow has overtaken
the landscape.

It could be a tender scene. Toby cradling my injured foot. Except
that my heart is beating too fast because I'm caught between wishing
Toby will say something and hoping that he won't.

I wonder why we are still awkward with one another alone. We do fine
when Sam and Josh are around, but we still haven't hit our stride
together again.

He knows that too.

I guess he figures we've got nothing else better to do right now
than to try to get back on equal footing. I can't tell him to shove
it up his ass and walk away like I did during the whole Qumar thing.

"You had a nightmare, awhile ago. In the car," Toby begins, without
preamble, looking down at my boot. His hands still hold my ankle
immobile, so when I start a little in surprise, my toes are safe.

"I thought you were asleep."

"I was, off and on. I was awake when you woke up startled. You
started to tell Sam what you'd just dreamed, but you changed your
mind."

"It wasn't important," I shrug, wondering where he's going. "Just a
strange dream."

"It made me remember something that I haven't thought about in
almost twenty years."

"Yeah?"

"You went to the Middle East the summer between your Junior and
Senior year of college. With a relief effort of some kind."

"Yeah. The Red Cross."

"I'd just met you the Spring before. When I started dating your
roommate."

"I know all this Toby. I was there too." My tone is suddenly sharp,
because I'm afraid of where he's going with this. I'm afraid that
he's about to figure it all out.

And when I glance at the wedding band that still glitters on his
finger, I feel a familiar pull of something I don't even want to try
to recognize.

And I wonder what Andi told him and feel betrayed already, before I
hear it.

"I always figured you went to Afghanistan or Egypt or somewhere along
those lines. It was Qumar, wasn't it? You went there."

I'm still startled and starting to feel trapped, but I swallow hard
and say, "Yeah. I went to Qumar."

"What'd you do over there?" He asks casually, but I suspect he knows
exactly what we did over there.

"We tried to allay some of the suffering there, Toby. We had to do
it underground, quietly. We tried to help them. I got in my head to
try and begin some sort of change there, through the women
themselves. I talked to them when we brought them food, tried to
explain to them that it was within their rights to live outside of
fear. I took some video footage so the outside world could see what
these women are put through."

"How'd it go?"

"Well, we were caught and imprisoned for three days by the police
and all of my footage was destroyed and all of the food and other
aid we'd brought was confiscated. We were sent home, and lucky that
we were allowed to leave at all."

"So it didn't go well."

"No, it didn't go well." My jaw is starting to ache with the force
of the teeth I am clamping between every word.

"So you came back to school the next fall."

"Yeah," I say, impatient with his step-by-step approach. I don't
like to talk about this at all, and particularly not right now, and
certainly not with Toby. "Look, Toby, I don't know what you're
getting at, but I don't think—"

He interrupts me. "Andi told me that after you came back that you'd
wake up startled or that you'd call out in your sleep. She said that
you'd try to hide it, and that you never said anything about it.
But she'd hear you sometimes, crying at night. She said that for
about six months, she didn't think that you slept through the night
once."

"I didn't realize I was disturbing her."

"No…CJ, you weren't…that isn't the point. She just, she saw the
difference in you after you returned. You know something else?"

"What?"

"I noticed it too. When I visited that semester. I noticed it too."

"Noticed what?"

"I don't even know if I could explain it. When I first met you…" he
smiles and chuckles softly to himself, looking down the hill at our
shadows, and shaking his head. "You were in the process of setting
the world on its ear, CJ. You were so…I don't even know…you were
just on *fire*. You walked into a room and you owned it and you
didn't care who knew it. And you'd burn anyone who
disagreed with you. Including me, several times that year."

I remember several heated debates across mine and Andi's dorm room
and smile back at him for a moment. "Andrea would get so tired of
it, wouldn't she? She'd eventually leave us to go find a quiet place
in the lounge to study."

"It didn't stop us," he reminds me with the smile he reserves for
when he's feeling fondly toward me. "Nothing did. Not Andi, not
curfews, not graduation, not a thousand miles. Not a couple of
decades." The smile drops out of his lips then and he sighs
heavily. "Except for that trip. CJ, when you got back, you weren't
the same."

"Can you even begin to imagine the things I saw there, Toby? Of
course, I wasn't the same! And what would it say about me if I were!"

Toby shook his head. "I'm not trying to say…Look, CJ, I know what
you saw would have affected you…but CJ, I can't help thinking, and
Andi couldn't help but thinking that something else happened there.
Something that rocked you more deeply than the suffering you saw.
And I don't know what it was."

"Toby, all that was a very long time ago, and it has nothing to do
with what's going on now."

"I think it has everything to do with what's going on now. You moved
through it back then, CJ. You moved through it and you got most, if
not all , of your fire back. The day when I told you to announce the
arms package sale to Qumar, you were so much like the girl I first
met that it threw me a little. I'd almost forgotten how formidable
you could be. But since the announcement CJ, you're the roommate
fresh back from there."

"Toby, you're talking like a lunatic. You know that don't you?" I
try to say lightly, but as with any other time I try to blow Toby
off, my voice, my eyes, my heart, betray me.

"I feel like I did that to you, CJ. I feel like I took the same
thing from you that you lost in Qumar. What was it? You need to let me in here."

I'm stunned into silence, because he shouldn't be allowed to lay me
open like this without my permission.

"CJ, are you going to tell me about what happened or not?"

My heart is thundering again, making my toes throb with renewed
meanness. It has been so very long since I've let myself revisit
this place that Toby's dragged me to. Because it came as such a
surprise that he remembers I went over there at all, and that I came
back changed, and that he and Andi both knew that I didn't sleep
well for half a year. I haven't had time to construct a logical
defense.

So I take an illogical one, jerking my foot from his grasp and
pushing myself off his coat and back onto the guardrail. Putting
space between us in the hopes that he won't be able to see me so
clearly from a distance.

"You're the last person in the world that I'll ever tell about
Qumar, Toby. Leave me the hell alone and don't ever ask me about it
again."

My words wound him, and that wounds me, and when we see triumphant
headlights peeking in and out of the curves below us—coming up to
get us, I hope—we still haven't said another word to one another.

In a few minutes, Josh and Sam spill out of an old Lincoln, followed
more slowly by a man in his late sixties, clothed in a bathrobe and
overcoat.

"Toby, CJ, this is Ernie. Ernie owns a hotel at the bottom of the
hill. He's going to take us in for the night."

"Excellent," I say, hoping that Sam and Josh won't notice the
tension between Toby and I. I turn to the older man and smile. "Nice
to meet you Ernie. You're my hero."

Ernie grins, but I get the feeling Ernie doesn't say much.

"How's your foot?" Josh asks, and comes forward when I grimace in
answer. "Let's get you in the car. You both look cold."

He and Sam both come forward, urging me to throw and arm around
their shoulders. As I do so, I notice Toby standing awkwardly to the
side, not sure of what to do.

He wants to help now, was only trying to help a minute ago. I feel
regret tightening my throat. I don't like to hurt Toby. There's
always something sad in his eyes, and I can't stand to see anything
I've said darken them any further. I have an ability to do just that
to him sometimes though, and it seems as if I've done so again now.

Josh and Sam put me in the back seat of the car so I can stretch my
foot out. Sam slides in on the other side and urges me to prop the
foot upon his lap, and I do, but I don't quite trust him as much as
I did Toby. Josh slides across the bench seat in the front of the
car, leaving Toby to sit on the front passenger side, in front of me.

We don't say very much as Ernie drives back up the hill so that Toby
can run gather our things and turn off the headlights of the car. I
assume that we're going to worry about the flat in the morning,
which is fine with me.

I watch the way his eyes are downcast as he crosses back in front of
the Lincoln's headlights. He's sorry. He's sorry my foot hurts, he's
sorry about Qumar, and he's sorry that he asked me about it.

And I have to remind myself that what happened in Qumar is not his
fault.

It's completely mine.

And so, when Ernie turns the car around and starts back down the
hill, I quietly reach my hand between the door and the seat, and
give Toby's shoulder a very light squeeze. He stiffens, but in a
moment, his hand comes to cover mine, and I know he accepts my
apology.