Page 50 of Chasing Stardust

The Tesla slows to a crawl as we approach a line of state police cruisers with lights flashing and an overturned tractor trailer blocking the road ahead. The trooper directing traffic from the middle of the road detours the line of vehicles off the highway.

Another alert pops up as we turn onto a rural road, following an old minivan and a newer pickup filled with trash bags.

I look up from the display and meet his gaze. “Are we going to make it?”

“We’ll be okay,” he mutters, as if trying to convince himself as much as me.

A mile or so down the road, the minivan turns onto a gravel drive, but Dash sticks with the pickup, following it up a winding hill for several more miles—and several more alerts.

The truck pulls into a church parking lot, then whips around and heads back the way we came. My stomach plummets. In the twenty minutes since we left the highway, we’ve passed three churches but not a single gas station, convenience store, or any other signs of civilization.

“Should we . . .” I gnaw on my bottom lip.

“It’s too late to turn around.” Dash points at a winding line on the navigation panel. “This road should circle back to the highway at some point.”

My fingers drift to a loose string on my shorts. “If you say so.”

We pass a small barn, where an old man loads a wire crate onto a rickety trailer hitched to a faded-green pickup. Several yards past that, with nothing but open road and rolling hills as far as the eye can see, Dash slows to a stop on the gravel shoulder.

I jerk my head around. Other than the old man with the green truck, the road is deserted. “What happened? Why are we stopping?”

Dash drops his head to the steering wheel with a dull thud and points at the battery icon.

The little red triangle winks, mocking me.

“It died?” My heart jumps into my throat. “But you said—”

“I know what I said.” He bangs his forehead against the wheel. “I was wrong.”

“You were wrong?” I gape at him. “Well, don’t just sit there! Do something!”

“Do what?” He lifts his head and glares at me. “Give it CPR?”

I refuse to dignify his snarky comment with a response. Maybe he’s content castigating himself all day, but I can’t sit and do nothing.

I rifle through the clutter in my tote. “Jeanie’s Triple A card is in here somewhere. A good jump should buy us a few more miles, right?”

“Triple A doesn’t service Tesla batteries.” He fixes his gaze on me. “But they could tow it to the supercharger.” He grabs his phone from the console and flips it open, then stares at the tiny screen for the longest time.

“What?” I uncurl my fingers from my palms, itching to shake the answer out of him.

“No service,” he croaks.

I check mine for a signal. Not only do I have no service, but my battery is almost dead. “Okay, so we go with plan B.”

This is where he’s supposed to come up with a brilliant, rich-college-graduate contingency plan. Where he reaches into his black bag of tricks and MacGyvers us out of our current situation, saving the day yet again. Right?

Wrong.

He throws his phone into the cup holder and drops his head to the wheel again, defeated. “I didn’t think I’d need a plan B.”

This is bad. Armadillo-in-the-radiator bad. But sitting here staring at the dead battery icon on my phone won’t solve anything.

With a loud huff, I shove Mom’s diary into my tote, unbuckle my seat belt, and throw open the door.

Dash jerks his head up, gaping at me. “Where are you going?”

“Unlike you, I’m actually going to do something.” I climb out of the car, ignoring the stench of manure wafting through the air. “One of us has to.”