“No. Not more fun. Just… relaxed.”
Finn was right. Zadie was feeling better than she had in years. Maybe this road trip wasn’t such a terrible idea, after all. “Let’s play again, only with higher stakes this time.”
“I’m listening.”
“Whoever loses has to go up there and sing.”
This brought a devilish grin to Finn’s face. “Winner gets to pick the song.”
Zadie hesitated momentarily. “Fine.”
The cowboy belted out his last “I’ll be okay” and the instrumental faded out. A woman with teased blond hair stepped onto the stage to take his place and he handed her the mic with a small nod. Zadie zeroed in on the woman and waited for a premonition to come knocking. But nothing happened.
Zadie blinked hard and tried again. Every muscle in her body clenched from concentration, even her bones felt the strain, but it was not enough. Whatever magic had been working through her minutes ago was now out to lunch.
“Well?”
“Well, nothing. You win,” she said, defeated.
Finn slid her a glass of water. “Here. You’ll need this.” Zadie took a huge gulp and tried not to think about all the ways she could potentially humiliate herself.
Four songs later, it was Zadie’s turn to perform. Thankfully, only a handful of people were looking in her direction. Most of the patrons were understandably more interested in the bottles in theirhands than the woman standing uncomfortably onstage clearing her throat for the third time.
“Woooo!” called a voice from the back of the room—Finn’s, obviously. For some reason, this show of support succeeded only in making Zadie more nervous, and she inadvertently heaved a shuddering breath into the microphone.How did Mom used to do this every week?she thought helplessly.
The instrumental track began to play. Zadie thought back to Nora and her singing along to “Piece of My Heart” by Janis Joplin as they drove home from a swim lesson at the YMCA. The memory was so strong, she could almost smell the chlorine.
“‘Didn’t I make you feel…’” Zadie began timidly.
She had belted it out at the top of her lungs, wet tendrils of hair dripping on the leather seat. Nora rolled down the windows, and Zadie sang into the street like her life was a musical. She hadn’t sung like that in years. She wasn’t as talented as her mom, but she was better than this, better than the shrinking violet who was being drowned out by her own instrumental track. So she closed her eyes—
—and sang.“‘Take it!’”
A few more heads turned in her direction. She spotted Finn dancing along in her seat. Zadie could feel her body start to move with the music, too.
Zadie was pretty sure she was enjoying herself. She felt free. It didn’t matter that barely anyone was paying attention to her. In fact, it was better that way. In that moment, she was singing out an open window, hair flying behind her, with no audience but the passing cars.
As the second chorus started to build, she looked back at their table, expecting to see Finn singing along, but she wasn’t there. Thinking she might have looked at the wrong table, she scanned the bar, holding up her hand to block out the glare of the stage lights, but saw no sign of her sister.
In an instant, the high Zadie had been riding was gone and panic had set in. If Finn wasn’t in the bar, where was she? The bathroomwas behind the stage. She would have noticed if she’d gotten up to use it. Zadie stopped singing while the instrumental continued to play. “Finn? You there?” she said into the mic. More heads turned in her direction, but none of them were Finn’s. She hastily shoved the mic back into its stand and ran off the stage.
Zadie burst through the front door into the parking lot. The moonlit outlines of cars were all that Zadie could see as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She scanned her surroundings but saw no people, no Finn. Beyond the parking lot were more cars moving at blurring speeds. Zadie hurried to the edge of the highway. “Finn!” she called out. A truck shot past, its wheels spitting dirt at her: a warning. She thought she might find her sister wandering along the shoulder sticking out her thumb, lost in the memory of some aimless hitchhiker, but all she saw was a tumbleweed caught in a piece of construction fencing. As she watched it struggle to break free, her mind went to a darker place. She shifted her gaze from the side of the road to the road itself.
She didn’t see any sign of Finn between the bright orbs of white and red, although, without streetlights to see by, there was no way to know for sure. Zadie shouted her sister’s name again, but the drivers of the speeding cars couldn’t hear her. No one did.
Pulse hammering, she turned back toward the bar. That’s when she saw her; still in one piece, astride a parked motorcycle. “Finn!” Zadie cried as she sprinted over to her. “What the hell are you doing?”
But as Zadie drew close, she realized her sister couldn’t hear her. With every involuntary twitch of her body stilled, Finn looked as though she had been turned to stone. On her face was a wrenched expression, encapsulated in marble and polished until her eyes glistened so much they appeared wet. Zadie recognized the expression. She’d seen it on their mother.
She grabbed her sister by the shoulder and shook her hard. “Hey! Wake up!”
Finn snapped out of her hypnosis as if someone had just thrown water on her. She looked at Zadie, confused, then down at the bike.“Whoa!” Finn vaulted off the motorcycle and backed away. “Holy shit,” she muttered, threading her fingers behind her head.
Just when Zadie thought the nightmare was over, Finn threw one of her cryptic curveballs. “It was real,” she gasped. Finn may have not wandered onto the highway, but hearing her talking like she’d just stumbled out of Narnia didn’t exactly put Zadie’s mind at ease. “Whatwas real?”
“The motorcycle.”
“I don’t understand.”