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On the growing list of things to be irritated about, spending her last five dollars is pushing the limit of what am I willing to put up with today?
“Not fucking this,” Heather sourly mutters, stiffly turning away from the gas station taquitos calling her name from the rotating oven dispensary. She settles, reluctantly, on a pack of Slim Jim and Strawberry Banana SoBe (no Mango flavor to be found, do the disappointments ever end?)
Heather would try the sticky fingers method but the drawn out lecture if she got caught isn’t worth it. Not if she’s stuck in a car with Dad for another three hours.
Mournfully departing with spare change and meager snacks she doesn’t want to ration, it’s either that or the trail mix that isn’t so mixed anymore after she picked out all the M&Ms and half empty water bottle. Though on reflection, a lukewarm fruit flavor drink is even grosser, she’ll have to chug the SoBe.
Dad finished refueling the car, now using a provided squeegee to clean the front windshield. This time of the year there were plenty of bugs to be caught in the crosshairs of a car going seventy five down the highway.
Flip flops pounding loudly on cracked pavement, he catches the sound of her arrival and acknowledges her with a tired smile. They were on the road before dawn, and it was currently somewhere around two in the afternoon.
Dad points to the plastic bag in Heather's hand with the squeegee. “Didn't get anything for me?” he jokes. “Nope, get your own Slim Jim,” Heather flippantly responds, shaking the bag for good measure.
He mutters something about snarky teenagers that she dutifully ignores.
Summer has shifted from a temperate mid-eighties to a broiling ‘fry an egg on the pavement’ heat during this road trip. The AC in the piece of junk car Dad bought runs on a wing and a prayer, more often than not blowing warm air than cold.
Settling back into the car, Heather already misses the cool air in the gas station. With this kind of heat Heather discarded wearing anything more than a thin tank top and tight jean shorts, shoulder length hair drawn into a tight ponytail. She needed to dye it again, soon, brunette strands overtaking the blonde. While she’s at it, she might as well get a new haircut, it was too hot to have anything more than to her ears.
Boredom is the real enemy over being broke or the misery of an uncomfortably warm car. She'd nap to pass the time if she could, but her sleep was scant lately, troubled.
Heather has struggled with bad dreams for a long time; one prominent theme when she was younger was being abducted for real instead of the aborted attempt from some psycho when she was five. Heather shifts in the car seat, leaning towards the window and tuning out the noise and sensation of Dad behind the wheel again and rejoining the interstate.
The subsequent murder was judged not guilty. Dad hadn't meant to push the kidnapper off the platform onto an oncoming train, he'd only been trying to grab Heather, too confused to scream for help.
Everything went wrong after that. The way Dad acted, the case might as well have been ruled differently. Constantly moving, the different aliases her dad used, even Heather’s name being changed.
The pink beverage nestled in her lap sweats through the plastic bag, numbing her skin.
Right now, her nightmares were terrifying concepts that never plagued her before. Surrounded by fire, the threat of burning alive becoming more and more a reality until Heather jolted awake, shaking.
Where she is, why such a thing is happening, she can never remember. But the fear lingers.
Recently finishing Firestarter didn't help, probably. The library in the town they left was small and underfunded, it however boasted a considerable collection of horror books. Stephen King quickly became a household name despite the hemming and hawing from Dad over the ‘sensitive material’; she was fourteen, tales about creepy clowns and haunted hotels didn't scare her.
Heather forgot to return the book to the library in the whirlwind of cramming their belongings into the car and leaving. Dad similarly forgot to turn in his audiobook, so it's not just her bearing the sin of overdue literature.
Speaking of, she managed to unearth the audiobook from an opened cardboard box in the trunk while trying to find their shared selection of CDs and cassettes. A fruitless endeavor, packed god knows where.
Heather can’t remember if Dad finished the story or not, it had been at such a low volume she completely tuned it out besides swapping discs at his request.
The radio was there, begging for airwaves, but her dad got all jittery when signals were lost and all you got were sputtered, distorted noises. The radio might as well be busted, the rumbling of the car the only thing filling the silence.
Tired of it, Heather reaches under her seat, pawing around until tugging out the audiobook case.
“Is the CD in there done?” she asks, breaking whatever reverie Dad had been in.
“The whole thing is, actually. Mind putting in the first disc again?"
Heather hums, deftly flipping the cover open and selecting the next CD and swapping it out, watching the audiobook slide in and wishing it was her copy of Nimrod instead. Like Dad wouldn’t keel over listening to punk rock.
For lack of anything else to do, Heather decides to inspect the object at hand, flipping over the case to read the book’s synopsis. She skims over it quickly, a frown growing. “I didn’t know you liked crime novels, Dad.”
He shrugs, fiddling with a curl of dark brown hair that’s stubbornly broken free of the slicked back hair style. Dad’s greying hair intermingles, and Heather would joke about him dyeing his hair to cover it up, but just as noticeable are the deepening wrinkles on his face.
Some things you just can't hide.
“I don’t dislike it. I don’t usually read it, is all. Or listen.”
Heather turns up the volume of the radio, notching the knob higher until she can clearly hear the narrator.
“If Anton ‘the fat man’ Dubovic had ever earned a Boy Scout merit badge in Fire Prevention I wouldn’t be in this mess.
If the two sluggos with the fat man weren’t scared to death of him, one of them might mention that spraying high-octane gasoline around a garage could have unpleasant consequences for all concerned.
Everett Krieger, the sage of Wall Street, is screaming loud and clear about the fire hazard, but since Krieger is currently trussed up and the object of that high-octane drenching, his opinion isn’t given much weight by the fat man.
One spark, one gunshot, and the whole place goes up like a napalm strike.”
The narrator’s masculine voice is flat, sardonic. The epitome of the world weary, gritty, hard boiled private eye.
Can’t even escape the heat from a story, aren’t we all a happy pair?
“So why are you listening to it?” Heather asks, quieting the disgruntled Alex Casey with another turn of the knob.
“I know the author is all. He wrote a story for the magazine I worked for as an editor years ago. Now he’s a bestseller, this is his third book.”
“Ask him for an autograph, why don’t you. Or, wait, you used a fake name, right? Guess that’d be awkward.”
It comes out more snide than she intends. Heather fumbles for her drink, quickly uncapping it and taking a prolonged drink.
But the pride in his voice irks her, a little.
Harry Mason, though not a huge name, has still been nestled in the bookshelves of different stores. Heather knows, she checks every time. She also knows about the manuscripts done during idle time, when he wasn’t picking up odd jobs like magazines, newspapers, whatever.
“Dad…don’t you ever want to publish a book, like you did before I was born?”
Dad’s grip on the steering wheel tightens, those flashes of discomfort at any mention of his life before her. Because of her? Heather has never been brave enough to ask.
“Maybe some day, Heather,” he replies lightly.
What, when we’re not constantly packing our shit up, staying somewhere for less than two years, if that?
As they cross the border to another state, the daunting thought triggers of this being her life until - what, she moves out? Meanwhile they’ll upend their lives, who knows how many more times; any chances of making friends gone, barely making it through one school year.
“Dad, all of this moving,” Heather grimaces. This isn’t the place for it, to voice the frustration that she chokes with weaker and weaker hands. Her grip is slipping, until all Heather wants to do is yell about how damned sick she is about their nomadic life.
The heat only makes it worse, the threshold for patience and understanding rapidly shrinking the more sweat that beads down her temple. Heather thunks the back of her head against the head rest. “Never mind.”
He seems to sense her shifting mood anyways. “I understand this isn’t easy–”
“No, you don’t understand, Dad!” Heather bursts. “This sucks, can we stop pretending this is normal? The moment I get used to one place, when I’m finally not the loner new kid, we’re out the door. Like we’re, we’re running away all the time.”
“Heather, it's not like that.”
"What are you so scared of? Why can’t you just tell me?”
Strained silence answers her. Hot, frustrated tears prick her eyes, turning her skin splotchy. What Heather wouldn’t do to sit inside a deep freezer, shut the entire world out until it was just her and the cold.
“I’m sorry.” Dad finally says. “I don’t want to push you away, Heather. I’m more scared of that than anything else.”
Heather’s anger deflates, guilt taking its place. She doesn’t want to push him away either.
“It’s okay, Dad,” she sighs, wiping her face.
“No, it’s not.” His voice is firm, brown eyes very serious when he turns to face Heather.
“How about this? Where we’re going is it, no more moving.”
There might be sensitive topics between them, bridges too fragile to cross, but Dad always kept his word. It's why Heather manages a tentative smile, willing to believe the promise.
“Good, I like the name of the new place.”
Daisy Villa.
Heather read the white flower signifies new beginnings. Perfect.