Driving With the Top Down by Beth Harbison

Jenna King’s house, trying to fit in like it was her right to be happy there.
    She said bye and hurried out of Conor’s bedroom. Once she was back in the living room, Vince ran into her.
    “Where you been? I’ve been looking for you.”
    God, she didn’t even want to talk to him. Didn’t want to hear his voice. Just wanted this night over. “Can we go back to your house?”
    “Right now?”
    “I really…” She scrambled to think of a way to leave. She used her frequent fallback. “I wanna hook up. I’m bored of this and I wanna go back and do that.” A little piece of her died.
    “What we were talking about earlier?” He looked intrigued, and she knew she had gotten him.
    “Blow job.” No matter how desperate she was to leave, she wasn’t going to agree to become a viral video. Jailbird Gives Great Beak. “Yeah. Whatever. Fine. Let’s go.” Some small, stupid part of her hoped he’d hear the hesitation in her voice and that some sort of decency would prevail.
    No such luck. They were in his car and on the road in a flash.
    Once home, and having snuck in the back door, they went to the couch, where he kissed her for maybe fifteen seconds before she felt the familiar push on the top of her shoulders. Not wanting to be yelled at or embarrassed more, she went with it.
    She obeyed.
    At first she didn’t notice, being drunk and high and embarrassed, that he was holding his phone above her. By then it was too late to stop him.
    “Hey—?” she started, giving the camera full view of her face before she realized what was going on.
    “Babe. It’s okay. It’s just for me. I’m not going to show anyone. Now, finish.”
    So she did.
    It wasn’t like she had that much to lose.
    Not two minutes after she finished him off, her phone lit up. A text from an unknown number.
    Hey jailbird. It’s Conor, just givin you my number.
    It was like being trapped in hell and getting a postcard from someone in a happier world, living a happier life, with no clue what scene his innocent text had just been a chaser to.
    She wanted to be part of that world so badly, she could almost taste it.
    Almost.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    Colleen
    It had been Colleen’s vision that she would rise with the sun the morning she was leaving, then stop at McDonald’s—her favorite breakfast, truth be told—and hit the open road, blasting “Drive South” by John Hiatt. She had a whole playlist set up on her phone, actually. “On the Road Again,” “Drive South,” “King of the Road,” “500 Miles”—technically a train song, but miles trumped method—and more. Forty-two drive songs in all. She’d felt completely inspired, dragging them onto her Road Trip playlist.
    But instead of the sparkling clear June morning she’d envisioned, it was a drizzly cold leftover from what felt like October. The sky looked like a pile of wet towels at the gym, gray on gray on wet gray, swirling around the dank, still air.
    A bad omen?
    She shuddered.
    Honestly, she was filled with trepidation about the whole thing, and every third thought was that maybe she should cancel the trip altogether and just stay home and babysit Tamara. At least that way, she could have some alone time and just check on Tamara now and then to make sure she wasn’t lying on the bathroom floor like Nancy Spungen, with a needle in her arm.
    “Trailer’s all hooked up,” Kevin announced, coming up behind her and looking brighter-eyed and bushier-tailed than she thought he should, given that he was about to lose his wife for almost two weeks.
    He was probably just glad he wasn’t going to be stuck with Tamara.
    That wasn’t fair. She was talking about a child, after all. A troubled one, to be sure, but Tamara had been through a lot in her young life, so it was ugly of Colleen to begrudge her this time together. Particularly since Tamara was probably looking forward to it even less than Colleen was. What a drag this was going to be for her!
    “Are you sure the car can pull