The Chosen (A Talents novel)

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

When I opened my eyes again, the sun was starting to rise. I blinked rapidly, straightening in the seat. We were on a desolate, two-lane highway, flanked on either side by fields of tall grasses. My head was pounding with a headache so sharp and painful I could barely focus on the landscape outside the window.

I pulled my feet up onto the seat and wrapped my arms around my knees. “Where are we?”

Izzy didn’t look away from the road. “Washington.”

The vagueness of his reply bothered me, but I wasn’t sure I cared. Soft plush fabric rubbed against my feet. It took me a second to remember that I wasn’t in the familiar beige Buick. About ten miles outside of Danville we’d pulled up alongside a car stopped on the side of the road. A middle-aged woman wearing a pair of cheap sweatpants and an old t-shirt had gotten out of the car and approached us. Her features were bland and indistinct, and I forgot her face as soon as I looked away.

She’d handed Izzy her keys and he gave her his. We traded cars and I made one request. Please call Grandma, I begged. Let the phone ring twice, and then hang up. The woman said she would, once she got to a safe spot. Then she sped off without saying more.

Once we were buried in darkness, speeding along a road with no signs or street lights, Izzy had pulled over again. “Do you have a clean shirt you can put on?” he asked me. “In case we get pulled over.”

I pulled open my backpack. Inside was the change of clothes Cam had told me to grab. Not caring what Izzy saw, I pulled off my blood-stained shirt and put on the fresh one. Izzy wrapped my old shirt into a ball and got out of the car to throw it into the trunk.

I didn’t really sleep after that, just spaced out with my eyes closed. I should have been questioning Izzy about who exactly he was and why he’d followed us downstairs and where the heck he was taking me but I was having trouble thinking of any reason why it mattered.

Cam was dead. Who cared what happened next?

Now, with the sun rising and my eyes open, an image of his body in my lap, shirt covered in spreading crimson, covered my vision. No matter what I did, it kept returning. My stomach lurched. “Stop the car,” I said.

Izzy shot me a surprised look. “What?”

Bile rose in my throat. “Just pull over, will you?”

He checked the rear view mirror and then slid off the highway onto the shoulder. Before we had stopped moving, I was out of the car and hunched over the dirt, vomiting. I heard a car door slam, and then Izzy was next to me, his hand on my back.

I heaved until there was nothing left in my gut, and then stumbled back to the car and collapsed onto the seat. The air was still. All around us the brown grasses were turning pink from the sun as it rose over distant hills.

“Who are you?” I asked dully. “What do you want from me?”

“Let me get you some water.”

He opened the rear passenger door and rustled through a plastic bag. I didn’t look up when he returned to my side and handed me a tall plastic bottle. My throat kept closing when I tried to drink, so I rinsed out my mouth and spit the water on the ground.

“You should clean your hands.” He gestured toward my fingers, which were stained dark and sticky.

I battled a fresh wave of nausea, then held out my hand for the water bottle. My hand shook as I poured the water over the dark stains, and rubbed my hands together to loosen the dried blood.