Page 127 of Valley Girls
Rilla would pawn that broken watch of Petra’s. Didn’t have the money. Couldn’t make it. Rilla pulled Petra’s gear into her bag, and slid down the ladder. She’d show her. Her heart raced and bolstered her courage.
•
Rilla waited with her bag between her knees on the boulder by Petra’s car until they arrived in the parking lot.
“Hey. I looked for you this morning.”
“I had some work,” Rilla answered, trying to seem at ease. As if nothing had changed. She picked up the bag. “Anyway, I wanted to get this to you, before I forgot.”
Petra took the bag and looked inside. “Are you going to have enough gear for The Nose?”
“Oh yeah. I’m good.” She’d been working nearly every day, and with some luck, duct tape, fishing line, and absolutelynothinggoing wrong, she thought she could manage.
Petra frowned. “You sure? You can totally keep these longer. It’s no big deal. I know you’re working. It takes time to build up a rack.”
“No.” Rilla swallowed. “I’m all good. I’ll be ready.”
“Two more weeks,” Adeena crowed. “I’m nervous already.”
“Two more weeks.” Rilla nodded. A pit in her stomach started. “And after that, France.”
Petra’s brow pinched, but she smiled and looked over. “Yeah. France.”
Rilla watched her go, her hand in her sweatshirt pocket to grip the gold watch she’d taken from the Grove. A stab of guilt cut through her stomach, but she swallowed it away.
Yeah, in France.
Thirty Eight
The Valley was silent and cool, and Rilla tiptoed her way out of the house, keys clutched tight in her fist. A quiver of unease drifted through her stomach, but she’d been over it all night. It would be simple and quick. It was Thea’s interview day—immediately following work—so she’d be gone longer than normal. Thea wouldn’t even notice her truck was missing. In the end, Rilla would have the money she needed for France. There was no reason to back out now. All she had to do was drive to the closest bigger town and pawn it.
The drive to Merced went smoothly. The sun slipped up the canyon walls and she emptied out of the mountains in the desert just as the last bit of sunrise melted away into day. She was making great time, arm out the window, and all her unease melted away.
By the time she slowed, looking at the GPS and shifting the truck along the roads, the heat of the day descended and the back of her shirt and her thighs were drenched in sweat. It was hotter out here in the open desert than the last few days in the Valley.
Finally, she pulled up along the street, where the GPS announced her destination. It was a row of flat stucco houses with small aluminum windows on a wide, cracked concrete street. She was halfway done. With a breath of relief she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, Rilla switched off the engine and slid out of the hot truck. The pawn shop was a gray stucco building with a chipped red door and bars on the windows. A full sycamore stood in the lot next door, dancing patterns on the sidewalk. Rilla took a few deep breaths and walked in.
The man wore a ratty Harley T-shirt and cargo shorts and even though she knew she should be afraid, nervous, there was something so familiar in him that she almost cried and hugged him as if he was a long-lost cousin. All summer she’d been working so hard to be something better, bigger, bolder, and feeling so alone when no one around her looked recognizable. Knowing she was the bottom regardless of whether she examined it by class, economy, and culture. And in a pawn shop in Merced, California, she felt all that slip away and she only had to be Rilla Skidmore.
It wasn’t a great feeling. But it was home.
“I need to pawn this,” she said, dropping the watch she’d stolen from the Grove onto the glass.
The guy rubbed his face and nodded.
In less than five minutes, she was back in the truck, and heading out of Merced. The fields flashing past her window, endless, eternal, and washed out in the bright sun.
About a half hour in, a faint, sweetly burning smell started, and she scanned the fields and horizon looking for the smoke.
She noticed the engine light too late. And the speedometer falling, even though she was pressing the gas harder.Shit. She yanked the truck over to the side of the road, the dust kicking up and mixing with the smoke now pouring out of the seams of the truck hood.
Shit. Shit. Shit. She jerked the handbrake up and jumped out of the truck. She had her phone, but who could she call? She wrapped her hand in her shirt and tried to open the hood, but it burned when she touched it. A vision of herself on a criminal clip flashed in her head. She looked around, shading her eyes against the heat and the sun. She’d figure something out. There were nothing but orchards as far as the eye could see. Dark mountains shimmered faintly on the horizon, partially hidden by haze. A dust devil whirled, soft and delicate and eerily silent in the dry dirt field, spotted with sparse almond saplings, across the road.
A heaviness hit her chest. What had she done? She was out in this wasteland of farms, alone, panicking while the truck poured smoke, knowing she was a hairsbreadth away from the same thing she’d always been.
She exhaled and put her hands on her hips. Okay, what next? Maybe she could walk somewhere. Pulling out her phone, she opened the maps and zoomed out. And out. And ...
Was this even working? No signal. She looked both ways on the empty road and the sweat rolled into her eyes. Shit. She had to do something.
