Chapter 7

“Mimi, don’t minimize or compare yourself to her. You’re not, not anything like her. You aren’t.”

“We didn’t have it good growing up, and—”

“I know, Grandpa drank himself into the nuthouse, and your mother acted like everything was normal.” CJ used his shoulder to wipe his face. “That doesn’t mean she had to follow in their footsteps. You didn’t.”

“When I was a baby, she was just nine. She had to take care of me. She protected me, took beatings for me. I couldn’t have made it without her.”

“She put you in the same position.”

“It was my choice,” Mimi said, leaning back with more force. “Your mother was seventeen, she had a baby, and your father left.”

“And she—”

“We need a way to cope. An escape; she turned to drugs,” Mimi said. “I hate it, hate what happened, but she’s my sister, I love her.”

His anger fizzled, sucking away CJ’s energy. “Thank you for staying with us.” They were both trembling. He hugged harder, pulling Mimi into him.

In the car, CJ was afraid to look at Mimi. He hadn’t said much since their emotions waned. Mimi had suggested they get back on the road, and for over an hour, they had been mostly quiet. CJ was thinking about his lips touching her neck, and wondering if Mimi’s breasts tingled the way his arm had after touching them?

Mimi said, “I’m starving.”

“Me too, and Sam needs fuel.”

“You gave your car a boy’s name?”

“No, she’s a girl named Sam, Samantha.”

Mimi’s smile made CJ feel as if his whole being had breathed a sigh of relief. “She seems more like a Maybelline.”

CJ squinted an eye. “Ah, Chuck Berry?”

Mimi nodded and started singing, “Cadillac doin’ ‘bout 95.”

CJ picked up, “Bumper to bumper rollin’ side to side.”

After dinner, while Bob Seger was working on his night moves, Mimi suggested a game. “I bet I can name more songs about traveling by land than you can. You start.”

“I’m in love with my car,” CJ said.

“Okay, I guess any mention of car, truck, train, or roads is okay,” Mimi said. “How ‘bout, Thunder Road. It’s already in the tape deck, so we can listen to it.” She hit play.

CJ glanced at Mimi’s feet on the dashboard, pink toenails, and followed the bare skin until it ended at the dress. Bruce Springsteen sang about Mary taking that long walk from her front door to his back seat.

Time and distance became less important while they went back and forth: Turn the Page, Racing in the Streets, Magic Bus, Traveling Man, Midnight Train to Georgia, Route 66, Locomotive Breath, and so on. Mimi never mentioned the song she had quoted when she said she was going with CJ, Born to Run, and he kept Fast Car to himself.

It had been close to midnight when they reached the North Carolina rest stop. The picnic tables were the same. CJ stared into the woods. Crickets chirped, and diesel engines idled in the distance behind them. “You change your mind about me coming with you?”