The Past-Life Chronicles

13

My eyes flicker open. It's dark in the car, as if the hour is late. Disoriented, I sit up in the back seat. The highway passes steadily out the windows beneath an ominously gray sky. I slip my seatbelt back on.

At the click of the buckle, Mason eyes me in his rearview mirror. He's driving. "You sleep it off?"

"Sleep what off?" My voice sounds dry and groggy. I reach for my water bottle in the cupholder and twist off the lid.

Mason's eyes find mine again in the rearview, and my sleepy memory returns. He's referring to the panic attack—which we both know wasn't any ordinary attack—that overtook me earlier at the diner.

I take a swig of water. "I guess. Why's it so dark out?" I glance at the clock on the dash. "It's only two-thirty in the afternoon."

"Storm's coming," mutters Henry. I peek over at the passenger's side, hardly surprised to see not one, but two textbooks open in his lap, with his tablet lying on top of them. He swipes the screen, then cross-checks something in his books.

"Thirty minutes to Elms Creek," Mason reports, the GPS flashing from its mount in front of him. "We ought to check in somewhere, freshen up, eat. Then we should probably lay low until the weather passes. I doubt there'll be much to see in the rain anyway."

"What if it doesn't let up until nighttime?" I frown. This time of year, night falls before six P.M. "We won't be able to see the town in the dark."

"Might have to wait till morning, then," says Henry distractedly.

The answer irritates me. We didn't come all this way to sit in a hotel room for the whole afternoon just because it's raining out. Yet that's probably what Henry has in mind, seeing as he's brought a mountain of homework to climb.

"You don't have to spend every millisecond studying, you know," I snap.

He shrugs a shoulder. "I do, if I want to get out of crappy little towns like Middling and Elms Creek someday."

"You haven't even seen Elms Creek," I argue. "Mason just said we're still thirty minutes away."

"Yeah, and I doubt it's any different than the rest of these small Midwestern hick-towns we've driven by so far."

"Oh, I forgot; you're so elite, Dr. Hayes," I snark. "Sorry we white-trash peasants aren't elevated to your first-rate standards."

"That's right, Willow." Henry turns in his seat to regard me. "Keep chopping away at that chip on your shoulder. Pretty soon it'll turn into a nice, big dent."

"Screw you," I reply.

"You two literally argue like siblings," Mason remarks, adjusting his mirror. "At least when you're not flirting."

I drop my bottle, spilling water all over my jeans.

Great. Now it looks like I peed myself.

Henry resumes his books, as if nothing entirely mortifying—not to mention, totally inaccurate—has just been said. I'm left blotting my pants with the sleeve of my coat.

"It'll dry on its own." Mason winks at me in his mirror.

I glare at the back of his seat, my face hot. Highly uncomfortable in my now-damp jeans, I look down at my fingernails. Each has been bitten to the quick.

Mason thinks I flirt with Henry.

I did flirt with Henry. Back at the diner, just a little. Right before the memories attacked me. Before my head felt like it was going to explode from the weight of our shared past.