Page 51 of Anywhere with You
“I’m sorry,” Cara said gently.
“She said that she would never go anywhere again that wasn’t the seawall in Galveston.”
“Where it’s crowded all the time and smells like petroleum?”
“Yep,” I said, though I usually loved Galveston. It was a fascinating and fun place with a kick-ass homemade candy store, but not a good destination for getting lucky on a sand dune. “And where you can get a cocktail quickly when you get attacked out of nowhere by a malicious jellyfish.”
Cara was silent for a minute, which stretched into two. I suddenly realized why.
“You want to give me an interesting fact about jellyfish, don’t you?” I asked, resigned.
“The smallest jellyfish species can’t be seen without a magnifying glass, and the largest can be more than six feet across and one hundred feet long,” she said quickly, as though afraid I might change my mind. Then she whispered, “And box jellyfish have twenty-four eyes.”
I laughed. “That is very interesting, Cara. Thank you.”
Soon, we stopped seeing small towns and traffic lights and, eventually, any other signs of civilization. We drove for hours in the drizzling rain through a flat desert with scrubby, dead-looking bushes. There were mountains in the distance and the occasional abandoned motel, but nowhere to even consider pulling over except the bare roadside when the storm worsened.
The rain grew so loud on the roof of the car that we could hardly hear the thunder. I watched the lightning, looking in those brief flashes for funnel clouds, though I had no idea if they had tornadoes in Arizona or California or wherever we were.
We’d been on the road at least an hour without seeing another caror building when there was a pop of electricity, and everything in the car turned off. The display screen was dark. There were no lights on the dash. The fan was silent.
Cara and I looked at each other.
She pushed the gas. Nothing happened.
Slowly, the car coasted. Cara steered it onto the shoulder, over the rumble strips, and stopped, shifting into park.
We sat for a moment in the quiet, listening to our own too-fast breaths and the snare drum roll of the rain.
“This is unfortunate,” I said.
Cara glared at me, opening her mouth, no doubt to tell me I was useless, then changed her mind and settled on reaching for her phone. After a minute of tapping, she said, “No signal.”
I stupidly checked my phone, with the same result.
Cara tried to start the car again, but nothing happened, not the slightest sound or flicker.
There was so little light that we could’ve been stuck in the damned elevator again if it wasn’t for the overwhelming noise of the rain. Neither of us seemed eager to try to talk over the sound, but at last, I leaned closer to her ear, trying to tell myself that I wasn’t going to take the opportunity to smell her hair.
“Stay with the car. I’ll walk and see if I can pick up some cell reception in a mile or two.”
“No,” Cara said, shaking her head vehemently.
“What?”
“No, I’m not sitting here alone while you go off like we’re characters in a horror movie. I’m coming with you.”
“Fine,” I huffed. “Come on, then.”
With all the packing we’d done, it turned out that neither of us had thought to bring an umbrella. Cara had a jacket that at least looked waterproof. I settled for holding a plastic bag over my head.
We got out quickly, locked the doors, and hurried in the direction of California.
Within minutes, we were both shivering.
“How is it this cold?” Cara asked.
“Maybe we’re at a higher elevation. Maybe a cold front brought the rain. Maybe—”
