The Attraction Read Online Free PDF Page B

hell are we?” Josh asked. He stood outside the Lincoln, and glanced from the torn and twisted map of the U.S. to the lunar landscape surrounding them.
    “Don’t get mad at me!” Griff said. “It’s not my fault! I took one turn.”
    “You took a turn?”
    “I got tired of the highway.”
    “You
what?
” Josh asked.
    “I thought Route 66 was here somewhere. I thought that’s what the sign said.”
    “Did you go south or north?”
    Griff shrugged, a hapless look on his face. “Maybe north.”
    “How long do you think you were driving like that?”
    Griff closed his eyes, as if doing so could make him remember. Then he opened one eye. “Not sure. Maybe an hour? Maybe . . . maybe a half-hour?”
    “All we have to do is turn around,” Bronwyn said calmly. “If we’re north. We just go that way.” She pointed to what she assumed was south, then, glancing at the sun, adjusted slightly.
    Josh thrust his hand out. “Give me those.”
    “Give you what? My smokes?”
    Josh grabbed the pack of Merits from her hand. He shook it violently until a cigarette popped out. He thrust it between his lips, and wrested the Bic lighter free from her grip. He spun the wheel until the small flame came up. He lit the cigarette.
    Bronwyn glared at him, and then her face seemed to calm. “They’re good for this kind of occasion,” she said. “Even if they kill you.”
    “Everybody dies from something.” He took a long draw of smoke into his lungs, coughing most of it back up. “All right. We need to figure out how to get the car back on the road. There are five of us. There’s no reason in hell why we can’t all get down on the other side of that ditch and push. We can bounce it back up.”
    “I’d say it would be a smarter use of daylight to go back to the highway. It can’t be that many miles back, over that ridge.” Bronwyn pointed with her cigarette. “Three of us stay here, two walk it. I don’t mind a walk. I can walk ten miles, easy. It’s not that hot. We go back and we flag someone for help. There’s gas stations and rest stops all over the place on the 10.”
    “I’m boiling,” Tammy said.
    “I’m not walking twelve miles,” Josh said. “Damn it.”
    “Me, neither,” Griff said.
    “I can do it. Ziggy?”
    Ziggy shook his head. “I got bunions.” Then, he added, “I inherited them from my grampa. Third-generation bunions.”
    Bronwyn looked at the others. “I’m not going alone.” Her eyes narrowed to slits as she stared at Griff.
    “If we all work together,” Josh said. “We can get the car out of the ditch.”
    Bronwyn looked at him with squinty eyes, her head cocked slightly to the side.
    Quietly, she said, “So you really think we can get it back on the road?”
    He glanced at the others, then back at Bronwyn. “Yes.”
    “It looks like we’d need a tow truck. Or some other kind of way to lift it.”
    Josh glanced back at the Lincoln, then at Bronwyn. He felt his heart racing, and he wasn’t sure why since he wasn’t panicked or all that worried. He felt something he hadn’t generally felt in life. Something that no one had ever demanded of him. He felt as if he knew how to handle this.
    “We can see-saw it up,” he said.
    “You study engineering?”
    “I didn’t have to,” he said, grinning. “When I was four, I spent a lot of time on see-saws. I got the gist. Look, it’ll take hours to walk back to the highway. If we all just pitch in, we can get out of this ditch and be on the road in less than an hour. I’m sure of it. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll walk with you. No, I’ll do better than that. You can wait here and I will walk to the highway and get help.”
    Her face brightened, and she nodded, slowly. “Okay. But will you do me one favor?”
    “What’s that?”
    “Don’t pretend.” She reached over and plucked the lit cigarette from his mouth and dropped it to the gravel. “You can’t fake being a smoker. You can’t fake anything.”
    3
    Josh had