Guilty

“We were only on the highway for about half an hour before I started getting nervous,” the boy said. “So I got off 95 and just kind of... wandered. I knew the area fairly well and we had a map, but we didn’t really need it. We needed time and to just get as far away as possible. I remember driving through all these little towns just praying that they didn’t have their radios or televisions on—crossing my fingers that their little police force wouldn’t be pulling over every black Ford pick-up truck that happened through. These were lazy little towns for the most part, but that also meant that they would have those nosy Neighborhood Watch sort of people.”

The girl made a sound of disgust. “They’re not always a bad thing, Dylan. I mean, if I really was kidnapping you, it would be a pretty good thing for them to be nosy jerks.”

“Except that we never got pulled over. Nobody looked twice at us, Ash.” The boy made a sound of assent. “The Neighborhood Watch types are more interested in who’s screwing whose wife and what kind of cell phone Mrs. Jones just got eight-year-old Carl.”

“Carl? Really?” The boy’s voice asked, sounding concerned. “What kind of name is Carl for an eight-year-old? Who wants to say, ‘oh, there’s cute little Carl!’? Carl is a fat man name.”

The girl huffed. “Exactly. Carl is a fat man or a spoiled little brat before he becomes a fat man.”

“Valid point,” the boy conceded. “Anywho, we wandered through all these little towns until about eight—it was just starting to get a bit dark and we were getting really hungry, so we found a drive-through and sat in the parking lot to eat. I’ll be honest, there were a lot of things I think we both wanted to say but neither of us wanted to face. If you said anything aloud, it might be true. Instead we listened to the local radio station and ate our burgers.” He paused to heave a sigh before continuing reluctantly. “That’s when the first news bulletin came on... An AMBER alert asking people to look out for Dylan Hart, age seventeen, five foot seven, slender, with blonde hair and brown eyes—possibly in the company of suspect Ashton Harper, age seventeen, five foot ten, medium-build, with black hair and blue eyes. The radio personality said I was wanted for questioning in several cases, including a house fire earlier today at 48 Beech Street, Ipswich, in which two people were injured and now in critical condition.” The boy paused again and this time there was a sniff instead of a sigh. The voice continued, sounding slightly watery, “That’s Dylan’s house. Silas had set her house on fire, with her parents inside.”

Here the tape clicked as if it had been shut off. When it resumed, the boy sounded slightly more composed. He cleared his throat.

“That night we didn’t drive much further—just another half hour or so. We parked in a sporting goods and camping supply lot and stayed there. As... Horrifying as it all was... I think we both realized that there wasn’t anything we could do. I gave Dylan my sleeping bag and got a sweatshirt and pants for myself. We slept in the truck that night.”

“I didn’t sleep,” the girl’s voice corrected. “I just lay there and listened to your little portable radio, waiting to see if they would mention the- the fire or anything else.”

There was a silence except for a steady whisper of fabric. The boy took over narration again. “In the morning we got up and went into the camping supply store and bought anything that Dylan or I could possibly ever need. I already had plenty of gear but she needed hiking clothes and a zillion other things. Even being careful with money I think we made their sales year.”

The girl interjected, saying, “We only spent eighteen hundred total—on everything we’d bought up to that point. That’s not gonna make their year, Ace.”

“Well, it’s a lot of cash, Dylan!” The boy’s voice replied grumpily. There was the sound of laughter in the background. “Oh, shuddup. Anyhow, we were in there for four hours. By the end I was down to three thousand, one hundred forty seven dollars and eighty six cents,” Now harder laughter was heard. The boy continued petulantly. “And we packed up and got out of there. We played our parts well—as the cute, rich young couple going for a long summer camping trip—but the whole thing made me nervous. It wasn’t exactly low-profile, and frankly, if the police had spoken to Silas they would know I’m an avid hiker and that I know the White Mountains well. We were all over the news—it was only a matter of time before someone caught up with us.

“We left with our new gear and drove for about an hour before stopping somewhere to pack it up in Dylan’s spanking new back pack and my grimy old one. Dylan actually looked pretty happy ripping tags and pulling plastic off of things. We hadn’t really spoken all that morning—yes, we’d acted, but she wasn’t talking much... Understandably, of course. I just remember watching her tear the tag off her hiking boots and stuffing her feet into them and looking so damn pleased with herself.” The girl’s voice scoffed. “You did! It was pretty cute, despite the situation,” the boy confessed.

“Only you would ever be thinking about how 'cute' I looked at a time like that, Ace.” The smirk was evident in her voice.

“So what?” He asked and continued without waiting for an answer, “We got all her stuff packed into her giant backpack and headed off again. I was getting nervous driving around in Uncle Silas’s truck. Technically it was mine—my name was on it along with everything that my parents had owned—but he was sure to have reported the fact that I had it to the cops. I remembered a small auto shop further north that always had nondescript-but-running cars. I’d had to stop there once to beg for water for my radiator. It was way up there in the boonies, near the Canadian border, so I hoped they might be a bit more lax about selling a car to a seventeen-year-old.” The boy took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, on our way to the auto shop, we ran someone over.”