I rushed outside, where the nameless woman was carrying the half-filled bag that contained my every possession over to…
“Holy shit. Is that a motorcycle?”
I know what you’re thinking: maybe the helmet should have been a clue? Thing is, in Bakersfield, bikes were almost as rare as cars. Less so by the coast, it turned out, but this was only the third or fourth one I’d ever seen.
Smiley paused in the act of shoving my belongings into the bike’s saddlebags, and spun that yellow face back in my direction.
“Are you slow or something, Bakersfield?”
I felt my cheeks flame—and when you’re as pale as I am, that sort of shit is visible from orbit—and tried to redeem myself. “What’s it run on? The grid?”
“Battery… but that gets its juice from the grid,” she acknowledged, turning back to the bike, and bending over to tie the saddlebags shut. “One charge can get me to the Bay and back.”
I nodded, almost as impressed by that statistic as I was by the way the line of her legs led up to a truly spectacular ass. Before I could say something truly stupid, she spoke again.
“If you’re coming, get over here. And stop staring at my ass.”
Either Smiley had eyes in the back of her head or…
…or she knew how almost-eighteen-year-olds thought.
I’m guessing it was probably the latter. The flame in my cheeks now a bonfire, I joined her at the bike.
“It’s a thing of beauty,” I decided after a moment’s pause.
“You’d better be talking about the bike.”
I actually had been, but I bristled anyway. “And if I wasn’t?”
Her voice clashed and sparked. “Then you’re even dumber than I gave you credit for, Bakersfield. Boy like you…”
“I’ll be eighteen in two and a half days,” I corrected her, “and if you knew anything about my life—”
“Boy like you,” she repeated, “needs to learn manners before some woman a whole lot less patient than me teaches you some. With a welding torch.” She slid one leg over the bike and took her seat. “Now shut the fuck up and get on the bike.”
I hadn’t survived my early years in the orphanage by letting people push me around. But there was a time for defiance and a time for caution… and when people start talking welding torches, the time for defiance is well and truly over. I squashed down my anger, and tried for a more reasonable tone.
“Do I get a helmet?”
“Not unless you earn it, and the chances of that are lessening by the word.”
“This is bullshit,” I muttered to myself—one last pointless moment of defiance to salvage my pride—before climbing on behind her. “Do you at least have a name, or should I keep calling you Smiley?”
For a long while she was silent, the two of us frozen atop an immobile motorcycle, Mom’s ghost standing just off to the side. Then she shrugged. Once again, I could hear the laughter in her voice. “Call me Your Majesty.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I almost passed out.
It was enough to make me miss the Finder.
CHAPTER 8
Unlike Mr. Grey’s car, the bike was practically silent; just a low hum of a motor and the sound of rubber on asphalt, both buried beneath the wind rushing past us. It was slower than the car—if that death trap had gone twenty-five, we were doing fifteen at best—but the open air made it a shit-ton more exhilarating. I held on tight, ducked my head into Her Majesty’s shoulder to avoid bugs flying into my face, and concentrated on not falling off.
When we hit the incline, finally climbing into the mountains Mr. Grey had pointed out, our pace slowed further. We were still going faster than I could run—especially up a hill that steep—but it was a damn sight slower than the Finder’s car. The sun slid down the sky in front of us and the hours crept by.
Two people, neither of them small, inching up an otherwise deserted road towards the rapidly setting sun?
Guess we made a pretty good target.
The sound reached my ears right after Smiley stiffened in front of me—a dull, echoing crack, that was swiftly followed by our bike spinning onto the shoulder. Somehow, she kept her hold on the handlebars.
I didn’t keep my hold on her.
Guess it’s good we were going so slow by then. And that the roads had turned to shit, leaving the shoulder mostly overgrown. All I know is that I didn’t split my head open when I fell, even if the asphalt did chew right through my shirt and jeans to bite into the flesh beneath.
I landed on my side, which was probably the other reason my head didn’t go splat. It left me in perfect position to see the bike careening wildly up the shoulder, to hear another two cracks of what must have been gunshots, and to see Her Majesty knocked out of her seat. Bike spun one way, she went the other. Both lay still.
All those nice things I said about the road south of Bakersfield?
I’m taking them back.
•—•—•
I lay on my bruised and bleeding side for all of a minute before my brain kicked back into activity. Maybe it was the sight of Mom, standing nearby, totally unconcerned. Or maybe it was the silhouettes of figures picking their way down the hill as the sun embraced the tree line.
I staggered to my feet. Between my earlier electrocution and the crash, I was barely mobile, but nothing seemed to be broken—nothing I needed right then anyway. I cradled one arm against my chest and looked up to where Smiley and the bike had been swallowed by darkness.
That’s not some sort of fancy metaphor or anything, mind you; the sun was almost entirely gone, leaving the whole hill in deepening shadow. I couldn’t
