Blood

The betrayal, I thought as I walked down the aisle. I looked at my mother, half-turned in the pew, dabbing the edges of her eyes with a handkerchief, and at Ryan’s parents, their postures perfect and faces expressionless, their forever state. I looked at my clueless father, who forced a reassuring smile as my arm shook beneath his. Finally, I looked at Ryan on the platform ahead. He was beaming, ravishing in his tux. With a jerk of his head, he even managed to quiet his giggling groomsmen as I approached the altar.

When I took my place across from him, he gave my figure a reverential once-over that, during the priest’s long preamble, momentarily made me reconsider what I was about to do. Our relationship had skirted the pitfalls they warn you about, been the kind of Christian love church folk preach. But I couldn’t ignore a sin. I couldn’t forget what I’d seen. The texts, the pictures, the infidelity. Marriage was the mistress to whatever evil was between us now.

His face tipped me off that I’d stopped smiling. When Ryan was concerned about me, the wrinkles above his eyebrows parted and tilted upward, like a bridge raised for a tall boat. I wondered if he knew that I knew. I cleared my throat loudly, which silenced the priest, and raised my chin. “Ryan,” I said, “This won’t work.”

In an instant, I watched him descend from disbelief to sorrow, a physical crumble, before letting him see my eyes slide toward his father, who was staring at his lap in the middle distance. He’d been handsome once like his son, but now his jowls drooped over his collar, his belly over his belt. I’d been shocked when I saw his naked body appear on my phone two nights ago, shattered when I read the lewd message he’d addressed to my mother, sent to me mistakenly. They’d been sleeping together for months, he admitted during a hallway confessional at the rehearsal dinner. Nobody else knew.

Ryan’s father kept his eyes glued to his slacks. My mother had followed my gaze to him, and I could see her head drop like his when she realized what I’d discovered. “How could you?” I screamed. I leapt from the stage and lunged for her neck, hoping to suffocate her before she could respond. My father tore me away, my gown disheveled, my face slick from the tears. A few people shifted in their seats. The wood beneath them creaked. The rest were frozen in curiosity, awaiting the next scene in this story they would recount for years to come.

I gathered myself in the aisle while my mother cupped a hand over one side of her head. I’d ripped an earring out. A red smear on the lace of my dress confirmed it. As I walked briskly out of the church, I considered this blood, her blood. Wasn’t none of mine anymore, I thought.

The Opening Pages of Exit 59

            David had been on the road for just over two hours when he decided he was lost. The highway had narrowed to two lanes, and the trees surrounding it had grown tall and thick. A seafood truck in the right lane offered some hope that he wasn’t heading towards some unknown abyss, but when he squinted at the faded green signs that lined the road, he didn’t recognize any of the places on them. “Goddamn it!” The words cut through the air conditioning’s hum and, for a moment, offered him his only company on this trip north.

            He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a rest area. David usually relied on his parents’ GPS device to guide him, but the device had run out of battery while he was still in Massachusetts. He clenched his fist and began pounding the vacant passenger seat, infuriated by one unshakeable truth: he was entirely responsible for his current situation. He’d forgotten the GPS’s charging equipment during his rush to leave the office, falling victim to the pull of this promising Friday night. Even more frustrating, the equipment had been lying behind his keyboard since Jeremy had returned it before lunch. It had been staring at him all afternoon, daring to be slipped into the little black pouch that was holding the GPS. Consumed by other tasks and his own tendency to procrastinate, he never obliged. He only now saw the consequences of such laziness.

            Feeling several beads of sweat crawl down his forehead towards his Ray-Bans’ rims, he gave the seatback one last thump before wiping his brow and picking up his dead smart phone, another casualty of his negligence. He’d left work with thirty-six percent of his phone’s battery life remaining, trusting himself to refrain from checking the battery-draining social media apps he perpetually monitored. He assumed it would be enough juice to last the two-hour trip to Shannon’s house, where he could easily borrow a charger from one of the “hundreds” of partygoers.

            What he hadn’t anticipated was receiving upwards of 200 text messages in the first half-hour, his friends bombarding each other with short declarations of excitement about the night’s festivities in a group thread. David was a frequent texter, but even his phone’s battery couldn’t have been prepared for this onslaught, its farewell coming after an exchange between two of his friends that included a bunch of vulgar videos David couldn’t resist viewing.

            Praying for an act of technological intervention, he tapped on the phone’s screen and buttons in a futile attempt to stir it, something he’d been intermittently doing since the screen went black. No luck. For the first time in years, he was completely disconnected from anybody he knew, and it could hardly have come at a worse time; central New Hampshire was frighteningly unfamiliar to him.

            He wiggled around in his seat, adjusting his shirt and shorts. The June sun had been beaming through the driver-side window for over an hour, and his legs and back were coated in sweat. Jimmy had told him to take the exit for Breyer Hill Road “immediately” after getting on I-89, but he’d been driving for at least twenty minutes on the interstate and hadn’t seen a sign for it yet. The logical move would’ve been to double back, he knew. He briefly considered this option before deciding to keep going, foot glued to the pedal, clinging to the notion that everything would sort itself out. It was how his life had always worked. You could call it a charmed existence, a distorted view even, he supposed. But how many people got lost—really lost—in this day and age? None he’d ever heard of.

            He loosened his grip on the steering wheel and looked to his right. The seafood truck had drawn even with him. Its driver was a burly man with a dangling goatee and a large tattoo on his exposed left arm. He noticed David’s too-long glance, nodding and half-smiling at David as a power ballad blared from his stereo. David didn’t acknowledge him, returning his eyes to the road and speeding past the truck. Growing up as a quasi-rich suburban kid, he’d learned a long time ago to avoid engaging with this type of person. Any attempts to relate would simply be fuel for the man’s vicious inner monologue, the one silently blaming the trust fund baby for all of his life’s shortcomings. There was nothing to be gained.

            The sign snuck up on him, but he managed to make out its words as he zoomed past it:

EXIT 59

Meriwether

2 MILES

He peeked at the car’s clock: 7:28, plenty of time to make it to Shannon’s party. A minute later, another sign indicated that a gas station was located a quarter of a mile off of the exit. He could stop in there to call his sister, Brittany, and she could look up the directions to Shannon’s. He exhaled deeply and laughed at himself for being so nervous. You’re such a pussy.

            The gas station was farther from the highway than the sign suggested, but David had no trouble finding it. An oval sign spelling out Meriwether Gas & Convenience in Old English font stretched high above the trees, visible for miles in any direction. As he approached the station, David’s relief continued to swell. He wasn’t looking forward to explaining his situation, but at least he wouldn’t be in danger of missing the party—or worse—anymore. He’d even be able to fill up on gas, though the prices were higher than he would’ve liked.

            Pulling into the station, David took in the dilapidated lot before him. Tall grass filled cracks in the pavement so pervasively that the asphalt looked as if it had been haphazardly dumped on a field, which, as he thought about it more, he supposed it had been at some point. Two pumps lay on top of this mixture of green and pavement, and another one stood between them. The box of a building behind them was missing almost all of its roof shingles, and its once-white exterior was severely weathered.

            The place looked deserted.

            He slumped in his seat and ran his hand back through his well-coiffed hair, feeling the tacky remains of that morning’s mirror session stick to his fingers. Maybe his suburban eyes were unjustly critiquing the place, he hoped. He slowed the Corolla to a stop beside the upright pump and walked towards the rundown structure, pushing his Ray-Bans up onto his forehead. When he peeked through the building’s plexiglass double-doors, the store was completely empty. The descending sun illuminated rows of bare shelves and empty refrigerators lining the walls. The station had clearly been abandoned for some time.

            Standing next to a vacant building in a rural area evoked the beginning of a horror film, and with each breath, David could feel his body expelling the calmness he’d built up in the minutes before arriving at the station. He scurried back to the Corolla and drove away quickly, jetting down the single-lane road before he could even consider his next course of action.

            Several minutes passed, and though his heart wouldn’t stop throwing itself against his chest and his legs were doing their best to register on the Richter scale, he refrained from getting back on the highway, mindful of his earlier humiliating panic. A store with a phone he could borrow had to be nearby, he reasoned, ignoring the part of his brain that was still drawing parallels between horror movies and his current situation.

            The road brought him into a heavily wooded area with towering trees and shade, a welcome reprieve from the sun. He kept the Corolla at thirty-five miles per hour—he had no idea what the speed limit was—and swiveled his head at every bend, fully expecting a creature, human or otherwise, to launch itself onto the car’s hood at any moment. He tried to get a feel for the surrounding area, but the trees were unyielding in their protection of the land behind them.

            Five minutes later, David caught a glimpse of a field tucked behind a thin row of trees to his right. He let up on the gas and pulled over. Leaning across the center console to get a better look, he could see that the field stretched for at least a quarter-mile from the base of a small hill. He imagined crops had once grown on this land, but it was now a famished terrain, brown patches of grass interspersed with small ditches. His gaze moved up the hill. Beyond its ridge, the point of a roof pierced the horizon. It was encouraging.

            He drove for another minute or so until he came to a stop sign. He instinctively turned right and was soon relieved to see a sign indicating that Meriwether Town Center was straight ahead. It was the fourth time he’d read the word “Meriwether” in the past half hour, and his mind began to turn. He’d heard of the town before. Even though he couldn’t remember why, the mere fact he’d heard of it meant there had to be something there.