Holding My Breath [Wattys 2016]

1 0 3 ~ R u s t y

                 

Present Day ~ July 24, 2011

I hate to think that maybe, just maybe, getting lost is a lot worse than being found. When you're lost, there's that fear of what is going to come next. The question of how long it will take for things to finally catch up to you. How much time you have left to find your way before someone else finds you.

I'm not quite lost anymore. But now I know what's going to come next. I've been found. Caesar's watching. He's waiting. Everything that's happening now is so close to the end that it's ten times as terrifying as it ever was before.

But Toby, he's still lost. He can't possibly understand why everyone in his life just left him. He can't be okay. Not with Caesar near him. Whenever I think of that disgusting excuse for a human being getting close to him, I want to scream. I want to break something. I don't want to just sit here.

I want to go back and pull the trigger when I couldn't before.

I'd die for Toby.

I will die for him.

We hit a pothole in the road and I yelp. Blue shoots me an apologetic glance, then turns back to the road. He's talking into his phone. I'm silent.

I want to thank him, for everything. Before it's too late. I know we don't have long. This road isn't going to last forever. I have maybe an hour, tops before we get there.

I can hear his dad on the other end of the phone, his voice raised.

"No dad, we can't come back. We know where he is. And he's got her brother." He pauses while his dad talks. "I'm sorry, Dad. I--" he pauses. A minute later, "I'm not turning around. It's too late."

He shakes his head and stops listening to the phone for a minute while turning a corner.

"Do you want me to drive?" I ask softly.

He just shakes his head.

"Yeah," he says into the receiver. "She can tell you where it is." He hands me the phone. He mouths to me, "The playground."

I nod, hesitating before holding the phone to my ear. "Do you know where the bridge is?" My voice shakes a little.

"Yes." His voice is stern and sharp. It digs into me. Blue didn't want me to go. I told him that there was nothing that he could do to stop me. It took a lot to convince him, but eventually we came up with a plan.

And now we're in his truck, turning onto the freeway, with a bag of rocks weighing down in my stomach.

"On the side that leads to Wallen, there's that little circle of shops and a park in the middle. The playground is there." I stop for a moment, then keep talking. "I'm sorry Jack. I don't know what else to do."

He doesn't reply to my last statement but says something else instead. "I'm going to call their station and get some people out there to look for him."

"No," I say before I even decide to. Blue looks at me sideways and I clear my throat. "I mean, if you send people there now, he might just kill Toby. You have to wait until we're there. I can stall him."

"Anna..."

"It's Rusty." I don't know why I'm defending my title. There's only one person in the world right now that I would want me to call me by my real name. And he's going to die if I don't get to him fast enough.

I hear Jack sigh on the other side of the phone. "Rusty, we're going to try and meet you there. Where are you now?"

I look out the window and tell him the exit we just passed on the highway.