Shine - Lauren Myracle [94]
God, why would I think that? I put my hand to my stomach, feeling queasy again. Like when Jason was driving too fast down the mountain, and I saw the ground dropping off steeply just feet from the car.
Okay, focus. Where else might Beef have taken Robert? The woods? His house? Somewhere completely unexpected, like the dump? Beef loved the dump, and I was sure Robert did, too. I had yet to meet a boy, young or old, who didn’t.
When it came down to it, we had no idea where Beef and Robert were. I had a gut suspicion, but I didn’t want to say it in front of Bailee-Ann. At any rate, we weren’t going to solve anything by standing around with thumbs in our mouths.
“Jason and I’ll head up into the forest,” I said. “Tommy, you and Bailee-Ann go to Beef’s house. Look everywhere. Call out Robert’s name, call it real loud.”
Tommy nodded tersely. They headed out.
I turned to Jason and said, “Let’s go.”
“Wait!” Dupree called. “What about me? What should I do?”
I looked over my shoulder, unwilling to waste more time when so much could happen in the blink of an eye. “Um, try calling Beef on his cell, and keep trying. Call anyone you can think of who might have seen him. Other than that, just stay at the store, in case they come back.”
I fired out Jason’s cell phone number. Dupree hustled to find a napkin and scrawled it down.
“If you learn anything, call us,” I told him.
“Where to?” Jason said once we were in the car. He revved the Malibu’s engine. It died, and he twisted the key again. This time, when it caught, he roared out of the parking lot and took a right, which was the way I was pointing.
I directed him up into Pisgah Forest, past the fish hatchery and past the picnic spots enjoyed by families with young kids. We drove deeper into the forest, the heavy foliage dappling the road with green shadows and pockets of shade.
Jason left me to my thoughts as we continued up the winding road, and he said nothing about my tap-tapping fingers, which I couldn’t hold still. Maybe he had his own suspicions about where we were heading, or maybe he was using all his mind-power to try and keep the Malibu from stalling out. It wasn’t looking good.
I stared intently out the open window, pushing my hair back when the wind tossed it about. There were no other cars on the road.
“Come on, baby,” he said to the Malibu as the speedometer dropped from thirty miles an hour to twenty, to five. The engine chugged. “Come on. Come on.” The motor coughed, burped up steam through the hood, and went dead.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
He turned the car off, then on. The engine went rrrr-rrrrrrrrrr. He revved the motor, and the rrrrrr-ing grew louder, but refused to catch.
“Fuck,” he said.
“This is not happening,” I said. “This is not happening.” Only it was, so I got out of the car.
“Are we walking?” Jason said.
“Have any better ideas?” I replied, starting up the road. My thoughts went to bad places, like how Beef didn’t want Patrick telling him what to do, so he bashed his skull in with a baseball bat. When he didn’t want me talking, he left a warning held down by a slab of bloody tongue. What would he do to silence Robert, who couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life?
The forest was home to all sorts of dangers. Water. Rocks. Places to fall involving both water and rocks.
Beef’s teaching me how to be a man, Robert had said.
I’m his best friend.
We go to Suicide Rock sometimes ’cause of how peaceful it is. I ain’t jumped yet, but I’m gonna. If Beef can do it, so can I.
I started to jog.
“Cat, hold up,” Jason called.
Behind us, I heard the rumble of a motorcycle. It was coming up fast, and us the only ones for miles around. I stopped and held real still. We’d abandoned the Malibu, so we didn’t even have that for cover.
Jason caught up to me. “You hear that?”
Of course, I heard it. But the rider was down below us. If Beef and Robert had come up this way, they’d have passed this spot long ago.
“We need to get off the road,” Jason said.
“Wait.” I turned