Last Breath (3 page)

The TransAm honked impatiently.

Cassidy washed the car again. As she moved around it, hose in hand, she thought how eerie the tinted glass made the car look. It gave her a weird feeling to glance at the window and see nothing but darkness, as if there were no one in there, no one at all. Like, she thought as she wiped the hood dry, a futuristic car that drives itself.

Creepy.

It occurred to her as she gave the driver’s door one last, quick swipe with her rag, that the car might belong to a benefactor. Someone who wanted them to make tons of money and was willing to go through the car wash repeatedly to help out. And didn’t want to take credit for his generosity.

Nice guy.

The window slid open a crack. The bill that slid through the opening was a crisp, new twenty.

“Please wait for your change this time,” Cassidy said quickly, delving into the pack at her waist. But her fingers were so cold, they moved slowly. Too slowly.

The TransAm didn’t wait.

It was gone in a splash of cold water before Cassidy’s fingers had closed around the correct change.

She stared after it for a long time, absent-mindedly fingering the crisp twenty.

“Pretty dumb, if you ask me,” a voice said from behind her.

Travis. In the same blue plaid flannel shirt and blue windbreaker he’d been wearing the first time she ever saw him. With the same intense expression on his lean, bony face.

Cassidy turned around, zipping her pack closed. “Dumb? Oh, not waiting for his change, you mean? Yeah, I guess it is. I think the guy is just trying to help us out. With a car-like that, I suppose he can afford it.”

“I wasn’t talking about a car,” Travis said, his voice as cold as Cassidy’s hands. “I didn’t see any car. I was talking about someone who just got out of the infirmary fooling around out here in the cold in wet clothes. That’s what I meant by dumb.”

Cassidy bristled. So he
had
known she was sick. Well, not really
sick
, the way Travis was making it sound. Just an asthma attack. You didn’t get those from being soaked on a chilly day. Anyway, if he wasn’t going to help with the car wash, he should keep his opinions to himself.

But he never did. Travis had told her he was the first person in his family to go to college. His father had lost the family farm to bad debts, moved to the city and worked in a factory, and died an unhappy man. Travis was determined that wouldn’t happen to him. He did go to parties and dances and had joined several groups, but his main purpose in being at Salem was getting a degree.

She had accused him, on that last day, of being too serious, and he had accused her of joining too many activities just to prove a point.

Two opinions that might as well have been left unexpressed.

“A,” she said crisply, “I’m not fooling around, I’m washing cars. B, we had a water fight, not that it’s any of your business, and C, it
isn’t
any of your business.” Tossing her hair, which was spiralling into rust-colored corkscrews from being wet, she turned her back on Travis and moved toward the next car in line, a blue Chevy.

When she glanced over her shoulder a few minutes later, he was gone.

Good. She already
had
a perfectly good father. She wasn’t in the market for another one.

Still, Travis had a point. The sky was a dark charcoal-gray now, and the air continued to turn colder. She was freezing.

“Why don’t you go back to the Quad?” Sawyer suggested when he joined her during another lull and found her shivering. “Take a nice, hot shower and get into some dry clothes.” He smiled down at her. “Can’t have you getting sick again.”

Why couldn’t Travis have said it that nicely, instead of calling her “dumb”?

“I’m okay,” she insisted. “I’m running this thing. I can’t chicken out while everyone else is still here.”

“Sure, you can.” Sawyer took off his wind-breaker and draped it around her shoulders. “That’s
why
you can leave, because there are so many other people here. You don’t have to do everything yourself, Cassidy. Haven’t you ever heard of delegating responsibility?”

Travis had said almost the same thing, during that last lengthy argument they’d had. Irritated, Cassidy said sharply, “Things are starting to pick up again.” She glanced around the parking lot. “Here comes another batch. When this group thins out, I’ll go dry off, I promise.”

They went back to work.

This time, the black TransAm pulled up to Cassidy so slowly, so quietly, she didn’t notice it at first. Busy finishing an old red VW bug, she was backing away from that car, rag in hand, when the backs of her knees collided gently with metal.

She turned to face the familiar black car with its protective window glass.

It was filthy again.

This was ridiculous. Was it a joke? Was he testing her to see if she’d even realize that this was his third car wash of the day? One thing she
was
certain of, it wasn’t anyone she
knew
. No one she knew threw money around so carelessly.

She walked around to the driver’s side. There they were, two little plastic hearts.

Cassidy hesitated. There was something about the car that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Maybe it was the eeriness of the dark glass. Or maybe it was the elusiveness of the driver. All of the other drivers rolled down their windows after their wash, joked with their car washer. Maybe talked for a minute, said they were pleased with the job.

Not this guy. He barely cracked the window.

Another impatient honk sounded from the TransAm.

What choice did she have? She couldn’t very well rap on the window and say, “I’m sorry, sir, but you’ve had your two turns today. That’s all we allow.” Besides, he was
paying
.

And pay he did, this time with another twenty-dollar bill so new, it crackled when he pushed it through a tiny opening in his window.

And although Cassidy scrambled to yank change from her pack, he was gone again before she had it unzipped.

The little red hearts flew, banging against the door as the TransAm raced from the parking lot for the third time.

“That is the weirdest thing!” she murmured, slipping the crisp twenty into her pack. Maybe in the future she’d keep a lookout on campus for the TransAm. Creepy though it was, if she saw it, she should thank their generous benefactor.

By the time the clouds split, sending a torrential downpour across campus, Cassidy was safely back at the Quad, showered, dried, and wrapped in fresh, dry sweats. She was lying on the floor, her head resting on her money-stuffed fanny pack, hand in a bag of microwave popcorn sitting beside her. Ann and Sophie were sitting on the beds, each armed with a hairdryer. Sawyer was sprawled on the floor, and Talia, in a black sleeveless catsuit, her hair in a ponytail, was doing calisthenics in a corner.

“We did okay today,” Sawyer said, nudging Cassidy’s foot with his own. “Right? Looked like just about everyone on campus had a dirty car.”

“And some had dirty cars more than
once
,” Cassidy said, reaching up to pull her pack from beneath her head. Groaning with weariness, she sat up. “I had this guy in a black TransAm, who came back
three
times. And the really nutty thing was, the car was filthy each time. Even though I’d just scrubbed it from hood to trunk. Couldn’t believe it! But,” she waved the red pack in the air, “I’m not complaining, because we made fifty dollars off this guy!”

Sawyer whistled through his teeth. “
Fifty?
For three car washes! Didn’t you give the guy change?”

“He wouldn’t wait. The minute his car was clean, he tore out of the parking lot. Didn’t you see him, Sawyer?” Cassidy unzipped her pack.

“TransAm? Don’t remember. Look, it was a circus over there: After a while, all the cars blurred into one huge, multicolored mass of metal.”

“The windows were tinted. Really dark.” Cassidy pulled her cache of car wash funds from her pack, fingering through it for the three crisp new bills. “It’s a really creepy feeling, looking into a car and seeing nothing. Like there might not be anyone in there.” She moved her fingers through the thick pile of bills, expecting at any moment to encounter the bills that felt so different from all the others. But all of the bills felt soft and worn. They all felt used.

Where were those crisp, crackling
new
ones?

Although Cassidy went through the pile of bills three times, once rapidly and then twice again, more slowly, there were no crisp, crackling, brand-new bills.

There was no ten from the driver of the TransAm.

There were no twenties from the driver of the TransAm.

The money that had been thrust through the small window opening three different times by the driver in the cream-colored parka sitting behind the eerie, dark glass, was gone.

W
HEN CASSIDY HAD SORTED
through the pile of bills for the third time, she sank back on her heels, shaking her head. “It’s gone,” she said, glancing around the room with a perplexed expression on her face. “The fifty dollars is gone.”

“You counted your money already?” Sawyer asked. “I haven’t added mine up yet.”

“No, I didn’t count it. But the money I got from the guy in the TransAm was all brand-new. Three brand-new bills, one ten and two twenties. I could almost smell fresh ink on them.” Cassidy glanced down at the pile of bills on the floor. “Not only are there
no
twenties in this pile now, there isn’t a single new bill.” She flicked at the pile with a finger. “These are all
old
.”

Sawyer laughed. “Cassidy, that money might not be new, but it’s still good.”

“I
know
it’s good, Sawyer,” she cried, exasperated, “but you’re
not
getting the point! There were three brand-new bills in my fanny pack when I left the parking lot. Fifty
dollars
worth! And now they’re
gone
.”

“Why would someone give you a twenty for a five-dollar car wash, and then not wait for his change?” Sophie asked. “Twice! That adds up to a lot of money, if you ask me.”

Cassidy nodded. “I know. But the weirdest part was, I scrubbed that car spotless…and fifteen minutes later, there it was, back again, and
dirty
again.”

“Must have been three different cars,” Sawyer suggested matter-of-factly. “They just looked alike, that’s all.”

Cassidy explained about the tinted window glass and the dangling hearts on the door. “It was the same car each time,” she said flatly. “That much I’m sure of. Anyone know who has a car like that?”

No one did.

“But you
did
see me washing it, right?’ she persisted. “At least one of those times, you must have noticed it.”

No one had.

“I didn’t get there until the car wash was almost over,” Talia reminded Cassidy. “And Ann said she and Sophie had just arrived, too.”

“Sawyer, you were there,” Cassidy said, a note of anxiety creeping into her voice. “You must have noticed it. It wasn’t just an ordinary car.”

But Sawyer shook his head. “I had my hands full. Wasn’t really paying that much attention to other people’s cars. Or maybe I’d taken a break.”

“Never mind the car,” Ann said. “What I want to know is, what happened to the money? If he really did give you fifty dollars, Cassidy, and you kept all the money you made in your fanny pack, it has to be there, right? Check the pile again.”

Cassidy’s head came up. Her eyes narrowed. “
If
he gave me the money? What’s that supposed to mean, Ann?”

Ann ran a hand through still-damp, wavy hair. “Well, where
is
the fifty dollars?”

“Ann Ataska, what are you saying? You think that I made up the whole thing? Invented it? Imagined it?”

“Don’t get upset, Cassidy,” Sophie cautioned. “Ann didn’t mean anything. But you sounded so positive that the bills were brand-new, and they’re just not
there
, right?”

Sawyer added, “It was really wild down there, Cassidy. I had to stop a couple of times myself and check the bills I’d been handed.”

“Oh, that’s so patronizing,” Cassidy cried. “You make it sound like I don’t know my left hand from my right.” She glanced at the faces in the room. And her heart sank as she realized what was happening.

No one in the room was convinced that she had ever had fifty dollars in brand-new bills in her possession.

Maybe they weren’t even sure that the TransAm with tinted windows and red dangling hearts existed.

If this discussion continued much longer,
she
would no longer be sure of anything.

“Forget it,” she said brusquely, jumping to her feet. She stooped to snatch up the bills and her pack. “Are we going to the movies or not?”

“Tell you the truth,” Sawyer said, “I was kind of hoping we could take in a movie right here, downstairs.” He glanced toward the wide window, sheeted with water. “It’s pouring outside. I don’t want to go back out in it for awhile. And it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for you to get soaked again.”

Cassidy’s teeth clenched. “Right! I might get sick and start hallucinating that someone was stuffing brand-new twenty dollar bills into my hands. Which is pretty much what you all think happened this afternoon, right?” She couldn’t believe it. Since when did Cassidy Kathleen Kirk imagine things?

There was an awkward silence.

To end it, Cassidy said lightly, “I’ll just go brush my hair. Don’t leave without me, okay?”

The sound of whispering outside the bathroom door as she brushed her hair made her furious. They were discussing her? Like a group of doctors consulting each other about a patient?

Well, there was
nothing
wrong with her!

She could remember the feel of those crisp bills in her hand, could hear the crackling when she slipped them into her pack.

She
couldn’t
have imagined it.

But her hand shook slightly as she put down the hairbrush. It still shook as she handed the money over to be kept in the Quad safe downstairs on the way to the movie.

The movie hadn’t started yet when they entered the basement rec center. A huge, square, wood-panelled room, it was packed with people. Except during midterms and finals, studying was not a popular Saturday night activity. Having fun, winding down after a week packed with classes, tests, papers and labs was the number one priority for most. On this Saturday night, the bad weather had limited off-campus activities, swelling attendance at the weekly movie.