Read Online Hick by Andrea Portes - Free Book Online Page B

way, no how. I should just do what I would have done without knowing anything about it.
    I take the vial, put it up to my nose and sniff at it like she did.
    Nothing much.
    “You gotta snort harder, cover your other nostril and sniff it up fast.”
    I do it like she says and It’s like someone just burnt a hole through my nose and back into my eyes. It feels like pins and needles, numbing me from inside my face. I sit back and wait to start seeing things. She reaches back for the vial, takes it from me and puts it between her legs, out of sight. We’re both sniffing to ourselves, not talking, just sitting there, rubbing our noses, electrified. She reaches for a cigarette and offers me one. I’m like her now. I’m a big girl. I can take it. I roll down the window and light my cigarette off hers, leaning forward. I have this feeling, this amped-up feeling like I’m better than I am, like we’re movie stars and this is the part where you’re meeting us for the first time and wondering who we are and what danger lies before us.
    Outside, all there is rolling past us is two giant orange trucks, scooping out the side of a hill and one man with a bullhorn, yelling orders.
    “When do I start, um, seeing things?”
    “Seeing things?”
    “You know, hallucinating, like, seeing stuff . . .”
    She laughs out loud but doesn’t look back at me. Her eyes in the rearview, serious and mean. She keeps scrunching her mouth together and licking her lips. She has that look in her eyes like my uncle used to get when someone from out of town came into the bar, like she’s chomping at the bit to start a scrap.
    “Well, kid, there ain’t no seeing stuff goes along with this. that’s not what this is, see. This is not one of those things that takes you out of everything. No sir. This is something that puts you right back in.”
    I nod, meaningful, pretending I know exactly what she’s getting at. I feel fast, now, anxious. We’re going about 100 miles an hour but it feels like 900 and I feel like any second now we’re going to catapult off the ground and fly straight into the stars.
    “Um, Glenda, do you ever go to church?”
    “Nope. Lookit, kid, God doesn’t go to church . . .he goes on first dates and stuff.”
    “Well, you ever seen him?”
    “Not at church, that’s for damn sure.”
    “Well, have you ever seen him on a first date?”
    “Lookit, kid, stay focused, we’re gonna need to stay awake if we’re gonna make it in time.”
    “In time for what?”
    This is the first I heard of any time constraint, schedule, or anythingto do with the outside world, the world outside this car, the world outside this movie with this woman and this girl and this bunny rabbit.
    I don’t like it.
    “Oh, I’ll tell you later, It’s kind of a long story. You know, I’ve got some things you might be interested in. Little things. Along the way. Things you could do for me or with me or we could do together, helpful things. I mean, you never know, this could turn out to be a real blessing.”
    She turns back and looks me over, up and down.
    “Are you wily, kid?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Are you wily, you know, street smart, like, if a ship sank and you were on it, you know you’d be the one waiting, floating on some piece of bark when the rescue boat came, sharks circling around you, sunburned. That kinda thing.”
    “Yeah. Yeah. I guess I am. I don’t wanna toot my own horn, but I do believe I am.”
    “Yup, that’s what I thought. You seem like it. Seem like there’s something kinda mean up in there. Seem like you’d catch on quick.”
    The sun is coming up behind us. I can just start to make out the rows upon rows of corn streaming up along beside us. At this speed they look like a jagged leafy fence, smudged, blowing by.
    “Why do you keep that bunny rabbit in the front seat?” I just ask it, might as well get it over with.
    She doesn’t hear me, or maybe she does and chooses to ignore it.
    “You know one thing