“What crash?” Darcy asked, her forehead wrinkling in confusion.
I balked. “The crash at the exit in Virginia.”
Darcy stared at me like I was a crazy person. “Rory, you passed out in Virginia. There was no crash.”
There was no crash. As Darcy’s words washed over me, I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank god.”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Okay, if you’re done freaking out I’m going to sleep some more.”
I nodded weakly, pulling out my iPad and clicking over to my copy of The Emperor of All Maladies. I was too scared to go back to sleep in case I started dreaming again. But as I stared at the glowing screen, a faint smile flitted across my lips. We were on a ferry to a safe house. We were alive. And we were far, far away from Steven Nell.
My father and Darcy stirred just as the fog started to lift. To my right was dark blue w
ater and whitecaps as far as the eye could see. There was a clatter and a shouted directive, answered by another and another. The ferry was docking.
“Are we there?” Darcy asked with a yawn, looking out the window.
My father blinked the sleep from his eyes and reached for the GPS. It let out a loud double beep and flashed to life. The white screen displayed the message no one ever wants to see: NO SIGNAL.
Ahead of us, the car ramp was lowered. A man in a blue polo shirt with a white swan embroidered onto the breast pocket waved us ahead. My dad started the engine and sat up, clearing his throat.
“Guess we’re about to find out.”
He drove us off the ferry, bumping onto the ramp and into a small parking lot, where a man was handing out maps. My dad cracked his window to take one, and a warm, salty sea breeze tickled my skin. I pushed the button for my own window, too, breathing in as the fresh air surrounded me. Outside, seagulls cawed and a bell on a buoy sounded.
As my dad angled into a parking spot to look at the map, I watched the passengers disembarking onto the pedestrian walkway. It was mostly kids my age and younger adults, with a few middle-aged and elderly people peppered in. I saw two guys holding hands, the definition of opposites attract. The taller guy had dark skin and dark hair and wore a tight graphic tee and a funky straw fedora, while his boyfriend had white-blond hair and freckles, and sported a green polo shirt over shorts. But almost everyone else seemed to be alone, lost in their own thoughts. I sat up a little straighter as I noticed a carved wooden sign that was painted dark blue on the background, the words spelled out in raised white letters:
WELCOME TO JUNIPER LANDING
Above the message was a wooden swan, puffing its chest out proudly, its wings back and its head held high.
“Rory, do the pamphlets Messenger gave us have an address?” my dad asked, turning the map over.
I riffled through the papers on my lap and found a little card in the folder pocket with a house key taped to it. “Yep. Ninety-nine Magnolia Street.”
My dad dropped a finger on the map. “Got it,” he said. “Right on the beach.”
“Nice,” Darcy commented, slipping on a pair of sunglasses.
My dad pulled out of the parking lot and drove slowly into town.
The buildings were crowded close together, their wooden shingles weathered and gray, the white trim around their windows splintered in places. There were wide-plank porches; bright, beach-themed wind socks tossed by the breeze; and surfboards leaned up against doorways. At least a dozen bikes were parked all over, none of them locked up, and as we rolled by a butcher shop, I heard kitschy fifties music playing through a crackly old speaker. Every window had a flower box, and every business had a hand-painted sign and a colorful awning.
We passed everything from a bakery to a bathing-suit shop to a corner stand selling sunglasses. It actually reminded me of Ocean City, where we rented a house for a week every August. Definitely a vacation destination, which would explain all the young singles on the ferry. They probably came out from the mainland every morning to work. A place like this had to be booming in the summer.
The road opened up onto a town square and a pretty park with a stone swan fountain that spouted water into the air. A guy with long dreads and a knit cap stood in the center of one of the crisscrossing walkways, singing “One Love.” He had a red, yellow, and green guitar strap that looked like it had seen better days, and his guitar case was open on the ground in front of him. He kept time by tapping his bare foot.
“Way to embrace the stereotype, dude,” Darcy said under her breath.
Over his head, strung from lamppost to lamppost, was a big blue sign that read JUNIPER LANDING ANNUAL FIREWORKS DISPLAY! FRIDAY AT SUNDOWN!
I turned around as we passed the Juniper Landing Police Department, wanting to solidify the location of the small brick building in my memory, just in case. In the distance, I could just make out the top two points of a bridge above the wafting white clouds of the fog, which still hovered over the water.
“Why didn’t we take the bridge?” I asked, sitting forward again.
Pausing at a stop sign, my dad glanced in the side mirror, then turned to look over his shoulder.
“Because the GPS took us to the ferry,” he said impatiently.