The Gas-N-Go off Exit 41 is the last light for forty miles of pine dark, so I always stop there, always, even at 1 a.m. with a full tank, just to stand in that white flood of light a minute before the nothing.
There was a girl at Pump 6 when I pulled in. Maybe nineteen. Sundress, no car — that's the thing I noticed, no car at her pump, just her, standing at the nozzle cradle like she was waiting for one to appear. She caught my eye through the windshield and mouthed something. Help me.
I'm a woman who drives alone at night. I have rules. I did not get out. I cracked my window two inches and said, you okay? And she came toward my car, quick, too quick, and she said, He's in the trunk of the blue one. Please. He's still alive. Don't let them see you looking.
There was a blue sedan at Pump 2. A man filling it, big, unhurried, watching the numbers roll. I looked at him and he looked at me and something in my stomach went to ice water.
I told the girl to get in. She didn't move. She said it again — he's in the trunk, he's still alive — and her eyes were doing something wrong, staying too wide, not blinking against the light. I unlocked the passenger door anyway. You don't leave a girl at a gas station at 1 a.m. You just don't.
She didn't reach for the handle. She leaned down to my window instead and whispered, so soft I felt it more than heard it: I've been telling people that for six years. Nobody ever checks the trunk. They just take me home.
And she smiled, and she was gone — not walked-away gone, just gone, like the light had closed over the place she'd stood.
The blue sedan was pulling out. I don't know why I did it. I followed him half a mile down the pine-dark road with my heart going like a fist on a door, and then his brake lights flared, and he stopped dead in the middle of the empty highway, and his trunk popped open on its own.
I have never told anyone what was inside. I only know that I got out of my car. After six years, somebody finally checked.