Mila Santos Is (Not) Dead

xvi: a highway exit in pennsylvania

MILA'S HANDS gripped the steering wheel, white at the knuckles. She only wanted to get through Ohio tonight. She wasn't asking for much. Just Ohio. She just wanted to cross the Indiana border before passing out from exhaustion. She needed to put as much distance between herself and New York as she could.

At the rate she'd been driving at first, she'd thought she could do it, no biggie. It was just a ten hour drive. She'd be there by one a.m. if she didn't make any stops.

And then she hit rush-hour traffic.

Even in the thriving, bustling metropolis of Jonestown, Pennsylvania—population: less than 2,000, what the fuck, is that even a city?—traffic at just after five was stand-still.

Mila blew air out of her nose and pap-pap-papped on her horn.

... Jonestown ...

... Jonestown ...

... Jonestown ...

A snow-covered land. It was just a little coating of snow this far south, like powdered sugar on top of a lemon bar. The kind of snow that instantly turned to a gray slush on the highway. Hilly, but Mila wouldn't go as far as to say it was mountainous. Their punk-rock radio station was elusive amid the slew of Christian pop stations, but it was there, and Mila had it blasting. Jonestown... was dark, night draping over the town like a heavy blanket. The sun had set half-an-hour ago. Mila was groggy and tired and just wanted to get off the road.

... Jonestown ...

... a massacre, Guyana, a cult, cyanide, revolutionary suicide, a mass suicide, a murder-suicide, no, a massacre, a massacre, a massacre, nearly a thousand dead, and the tapes, the tapes, the tapes, Mila had heard the tapes, had heard the children screaming, had heard the eerie silence afterwards, the stillness that was so much more unsettling because you knew what had happened to those children ...

This was not that Jonestown. But Jim Jones' voice still echoed in Mila's head from the tapes. Nothing he had said, but the way his voice sounded. The grating way it washed over her skin. Knowing she was listening to a man capable of such horrific acts. Knowing he was actively carrying them out. Knowing the children had died. Knowing...

Her car shot forward. Her head snapped back.

Her foot was still on the brake.

She'd been rear-ended. Of all places: Nowhere, Pennsylvania. Jonestown, baby.

Mila's body burned with annoyance. Instinctively, her middle finger shot into the air. She turned her head over her shoulder.

The woman behind her—hair swinging in a high ponytail, white, middle-aged, plump—gaped at Mila, her eyebrows furrowed. She motioned to the side of the road, signaling for Mila to pull over. The woman pulled over, killed the engine, and got out, wringing her hands together.

Shit... If Mila pretended she wasn't there, maybe she'd go away. Mila looked straight ahead and pretended not to notice her. Obviously, this brilliant idea didn't work. The woman knocked on Mila's passenger-side window. She couldn't pretend not to notice her now. She cranked the window down.

"Are you all right?" the woman asked. "Can you step out with me? We need to decide if we're going to report this or not."

Mila had to think fast. Pretend not to understand her.

"What?" Mila asked in Spanish, cocking her head and batting her lashes. She tried to look adorable and innocent and confused and, above all else, harmless. "I don't speak English." Never mind that the directions on her GPS were clearly in English. Mila hoped the woman couldn't read.