C. Box - The Highway

“Great,” Gracie said sullenly.

“Yeah,” Danielle said. “I let that guy have it. I guess you should thank me for saving our lives, I guess.”

“Gee, you think?”

Danielle shrugged and flipped her hair back. The close call and hearing back from Justin seemed to have filled her sister with confidence and arrogance, which was her normal state.

Gracie said, “Did you text him about the engine light?”

“No way. I don’t want to worry him.”

Gracie covered her face in her hands.

After a few moments, Danielle’s phone chirped. She looked at the display. “Oh, no,” she said. “Shit!”

“What?” Gracie was suddenly buoyed: It was their mom. She talked to their dad. They were busted. They would have to turn back or drive to Omaha.

“Justin says he looked on the Internet and there’s a big wreck or something on the highway. It’s closed up ahead of us. Shit!”

Gracie didn’t have the same reaction. She thought, We can turn around and forget this whole thing. We can drive straight through the night to Omaha to Dad. We can get ourselves out of this! Relief flooded through her.

Danielle said, “He says not to worry. There’s another way to Helena but we’ll need to get off I-90.”

Gracie didn’t want to reveal her true thoughts, and said, “We shouldn’t leave the interstate. I don’t want to go out there”-she gestured with her chin toward the black mountains to the south-“we don’t want to be on crappy little country roads.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Danielle said, dismissing her. “He says it’s not a bad drive but we’ll need to go back through a corner of Yellowstone Park. He’s going to e-mail me a map.”

“No way,” Gracie said.

“That’s what we’ll do,” Danielle said flatly. “It’s time we got over that Yellowstone trip. This is our opportunity to put it behind us.”

“No way,” Gracie said.

“We’re looking for the exit to Laurel,” Danielle said, “Highway 212.”

As she said it the headlights lit up a green highway sign that read: LAUREL 4 MILES.

“We’re in luck!” Danielle sang.

“Let me talk to him myself,” Gracie said. “Call him and hand over your phone or I swear to God I’ll make you turn around at the next exit and drive to Nebraska.”

Danielle huffed and rolled her eyes. She said, “Don’t you trust me?”

“Ha!”

Danielle punched the speed dial, held the phone up to her ear, and said to Justin, “J-Man, Gracie needs to hear from you directly. She’s getting cold feet and she’s making squeaky noises about not coming. So just give her the directions and she can navigate us there.”

Gracie couldn’t hear what Justin replied because her sister kept the phone close to her face, but whatever it was made her smile. But she held out the phone.

“Justin,” Gracie said. “I’m nervous about going off the interstate. Are you sure we should do this?”

His voice was deep and calm but resigned. He said, “Hey, Gracie. It sounds like you guys are coming to visit. I wish I would have known about it.”

“Me, too.”

“I can’t believe your mom let you.”

“She didn’t.” Gracie turned away from her sister, who was glaring. “So Danielle didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?” There was panic in his voice.

“She thinks we’re driving to Omaha to be with our dad right now.”

“Shit, Gracie,” Danielle said. “You’re such a narc.”

Gracie ignored her. “She did talk our dad into it, but you know how he is. But Mom doesn’t know.”

Justin sighed. “There’s probably no talking Danielle out of it, is there?”

The question confirmed Gracie’s suspicions. She shot a quick glance at her sister, who looked back anxiously. Gracie felt a sudden and unexpected pang of sympathy for her sister. Justin wasn’t enthusiastic about seeing her after all. He might have given her signals-the texts and calls that weren’t returned certainly should have conveyed something-but Danielle had blissfully chosen not to notice. Danielle was rarely denied anything by anybody.

“Maybe you could do it,” Gracie said. She held the phone tight to her face so Danielle couldn’t overhear Justin’s side of the conversation and realize what they were talking about.

“Do what?” Danielle asked.

Gracie ignored her.

Justin said, “I can’t just tell her not to come now. You guys are close and it’s dark. It might be dangerous to drive back all that way tonight.”

“That would be okay with me,” Gracie said.

“But would she do it?”

Gracie looked over at her sister, at the determination in her face. At the way she gripped the wheel.

“Probably not,” she said.

“Maybe you guys can stay here tonight and I can talk with her and you can go see your dad in the morning. I can talk to my mom about making up the spare bedroom. But telling her … man, that won’t be fun. You know how she gets when she’s mad…”

“You’re telling me ?” Gracie said.

Justin laughed.

“What are you two talking about?” Danielle spat. “Are you talking about me?”

“Okay, so what we’ll do is make sure you get here in one piece.” Justin sighed, “Then we’ll worry about the rest later.”

“Okay,” Gracie said. She anticipated Danielle trying to wrest the phone from her and dodged her sister’s outstretched and grasping hand.

“Let me look at the computer,” Justin said, and she could hear keystrokes. While he found the site he wanted, he said, “So you bumped heads with a trucker, huh? Some of those truckers think they own the road, don’t they?”

“This one did.” She glanced up and there were no headlights in her rearview mirror. “He’s way behind us now.”

“Cool,” Justin said. She could hear voices of other boys in the background. Someone whooped, and Justin shushed him. “Okay, I’m sitting at my friend Eric’s computer and I’ve got Google Maps up. Where are you exactly?”

“Just a few miles from Laurel,” Gracie said. “Maybe three.”

“Great. I see where you’re at. The Montana Department of Transportation site says the road is closed between Park City and Columbus. But you’ll hit Laurel before you get there and that’s the place where you can get off the interstate and go around. It says they might keep the road closed all night so this is the smart thing to do. Now let me talk you through this. I’ve gone on this road before with my dad, and it’s a really cool drive. It goes right on top of the mountains and drops down and cuts the corner of Yellowstone Park and comes back up into Montana.”

“Yellowstone,” she repeated. “That place doesn’t have a lot of good memories.”

Danielle had stopped grabbing at the phone now that she was assured they were talking about the route to Helena.

“Believe me, I know,” he said. “But you won’t even be close to where we were on that pack trip. Not even close. And you won’t need to get off the paved road. You’ll barely be in the park and if you keep going you’ll come up through Mammoth Hot Springs and be back on track.”

He outlined the route on 212 from Laurel south through Rockvale to Red Lodge, and from there to Cooke City and Silver Gate via the Beartooth Highway and into the northeast corner of the park. Then they should exit the park at Gardiner, Montana, and drive north on Highway 89 to Livingston through the Yellowstone River canyon back up to I-90 and on to Helena via Bozeman.

“It sounds complicated,” she said.

“Yeah, but it isn’t,” he said. “There are only a few roads and I’d guess there won’t be much traffic at all except for other people who know how to go around the closed road. I’m looking and it doesn’t seem to be snowing on top of the mountains. That could be a big problem. But right now it looks like a clear drive and I’ll be right here the whole time tracking you on the screen. If you get confused, just call and talk to me.”