The Wright Way

Chapter 29 - The Wright Way

We hear the road before we see it, and by the time we catch a glimpse of it, Joshua is talking non-stop. It seems like some kind of a nervous reaction has kicked in, making him describe and discuss the events of the last night out loud—mostly with himself, for I prefer to save my breath and think. Yet by the time the distant noise of cars reaches our ears, his chattering is too insistent to make any thinking possible.

"Sounds like a highway," he says. "Hear that? Steady flow of traffic. Not that it helps us. Nobody will stop, definitely not on a highway. Definitely not for you. You look like a tramp."

"You do, too," I say. "You don't even have shoes on."

"I could push some grass under my T-shirt to look like I have boobs, and maybe then someone will stop."

"They'll speed away the moment they see you up close."

"Nobody could leave me behind once they see me up close." He bats his lashes at me.

I turn away with a growl. Apparently, the sounds of traffic have improved his mood considerably. To me, the return to civilizations only means that we'll be out in the open again and the decision about our next move has to be made.

Ahead of us, the trees get sparser, and the underbrush thicker, lower shrubs thriving in the sunlight they couldn't get deeper in the forest. Their branches grab at my jeans as I plow forward through them, until I find myself on the edge of the forest, squinting in the sun. A grassy slope curves down from where I stand until it reaches the road a few hundred feet away—not a highway, but a wide, paved country road with decent traffic.

"Hello?" Joshua calls out from behind me. "Can you help me through these bushes?" He waits for a moment and, not receiving an answer, sighs. "Never mind, I'll go around."

I observe the road and the distant roofs of what looks like a village or a small town or maybe just some buildings that are parts of a big farm. I have a pretty general idea of what lies across the river from the Wrights farms, mostly from my recent experience as a firefighter rather than from my childhood days spent in the area. We rarely crossed the river—there was nothing for us out there. Later, I've visited pretty much all of the villages and farms as a part of my fire company, but I don't recognize what I see now, at least not from this vantage point.

The cracking of a broken branch and some cursing announce that Joshua has found a way around the bush. I look aside to find him limping towards me.

"Well, thank you very much for your lack of assistance." He stops next to me and turns to take in the view. "Wow, a road! It's the Marple village down there, isn't it? I used to bicycle there for cow milk when I was a kid. Wouldn't refuse some milk now. Wouldn't refuse anything that's edible or drinkable, as a matter of fact." He turns to me. "Let's try to catch a ride?"

"To where?"

"Good question." He crosses his hands, eyeing me. "I'm open to suggestions. When you said we should disappear, did you have a plan in mind, or just hoped we would stumble upon an invisibility cloak?" He waits for an answer, then sighs. "Look, I can understand your reluctance to snitch on your beloved Uncle—I'm not eager for a head-on clash with a powerful crazy sect myself. Yet the disappearing act can't happen without preparation."

"It better happen," I say, "because it's our only option."

"But how?" He spreads his hands. "Do you have money? You need money to make it work, okay? And what you have in your bank account doesn't count, because we need an ID to withdraw it, and mine has burned while yours is probably in your apartment that is surely watched by your Uncle's people." He shakes his head. "Ethan, get real. We're not prepared for this. We need help."

"One step at a time," I say, my head reeling from all the things that need to be considered. "Let's go down there and catch a ride somewhere we can buy something to eat, and then we'll decide what to do."

"Do you have any money?"

"About twenty bucks." I slip my hand into my back pocket to feel the few coins I found there when I hung my jeans to dry last night. "Enough for a snack."

"Not enough to begin a new life." He pauses. "Could you borrow from your friends, perhaps?"

"No. That could endanger them."

I've been thinking about it. Even though Mike or some of the others could agree to help, they would also want to know what's happening, and if I told them, they'd demand I go to the police. Also, it could draw Uncle's attention to them. He must be pulling at all the strings he can right now to find us.

"Perfect. Then let's just lie down and die, should we?" Joshua rubs his face tiredly before pausing, his hands still on his face.

"What?" I say.

"I just had a thought," he says slowly. "Maybe I know someone we can turn to." He hums thoughtfully. "We might even get some initial capital there, too."

"Who are you talking about? Wouldn't turning to them endanger them?"

"It might," he says,and then, surprisingly, he smiles. "Yet... I've met your family, so perhaps it's time for you to meet mine."