The Girl in Red

Just thinking about the possibility of a spy in a window made Red glance behind her and squint at all the residences for a twitching curtain. It was not impossible that someone had survived in this little town and that they’d refused to go to a camp and that they were watching Red and Adam right now and they had a rifle ready if it looked like the two of them would get up to any mischief.

The trouble is, Red, that you can imagine too many possibilities. And imagining all the possibilities can get you in hot water just as easy as not thinking things through.

Too much consideration and she could end up lost in the weeds, paralyzed by the vast permutations of potential outcomes.

“Who cares if there’s a back door?” Adam said. “It’s probably locked, too.”

Red shrugged. “It might not be. Isn’t it worth checking? We could at least save ourselves the trouble of breaking glass.”

Adam opened his lips, his ready-to-argue face on. Then abruptly he closed his mouth, turned, and went around the right side of the building.

Red hurried after him, surprised by his lack of response but also relieved. She didn’t know how much longer she could avoid arguing with him. Being so considerate went against the grain of her personality. She felt her stiff shoulders relaxing as both she and Adam cleared the corner of the building. She couldn’t see the road from there nor the second-story windows of the few buildings that had them (it was not only a one-horse town, but a one-story town for the most part) and that meant they couldn’t see her either.

A weedy field, littered with crumpled cigarette packs and dirty soda bottles, bordered the small parking area. Past the field the trees stretched up again into the forest.

There was a car parked behind the station that hadn’t been visible from the road—a modest-looking blue Ford sedan. Red wondered if it was the owner’s car.

Adam reached the back door first—he had a head start, and Red was distracted looking around for possible spies. The door was a solid gray and the keyhole was part of the silver knob.

Red thought it strange that there wasn’t a deadbolt as well—those little door locks seemed like they would be easy to pick. Not that she really knew anything about picking locks other than what she’d seen in movies, where someone with a bobby pin or a paper clip always seemed to be able to get around a securely locked door. She supposed that the owner didn’t see the need for extra security. There wasn’t even a camera over the back door, and she thought every gas station had video cameras these days.

Adam paused in front of the door, his hand hovering over the knob. Red wondered why he was hesitating. He looked up at her and smirked.

“Bet it’s locked,” he said.

“Bet it’s not,” she shot back. “And if I’m right you have to take five useless things out of your pack and carry all the extra food we get from here.”

“Who decides what’s useless?” Adam demanded.

Red thought for a second. “I pick three things and you pick two. Fair?”

“Fine,” he said. “And if I’m right then you have to carry all the extra food.”

“There’s nothing useless in my pack to get rid of,” Red said. “Where would I put it?”

“That’s your problem,” Adam said. “Deal or no deal?”

Red felt a little pang when Adam said that. It was something Dad always said, a phrase from a TV game show that he liked to watch, and for a moment she heard him saying it and could see the twinkle in his eye and she wondered how long it would take for a person’s heart to finish breaking.

“Deal,” she said.

Adam grabbed the knob. It turned easily and the door swung open.

Red laughed at the expression on his face. “You made the deal. Now you’re stuck with it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled. “You pick three things and I pick two.”

The back door opened into a small storeroom. To the left there were industrial cleaning supplies and rolls of extra toilet paper stacked on metal shelving next to a miniature desk. Red peered at the contents, always curious about other people’s lives. The desk was scrupulously tidy, all the unpaid invoices in a tray marked “unpaid.” Red assumed all the paid invoices were in the file drawer. She opened the drawer and saw a line of file folders with months and years marked on the tabs in a neat hand.

A calculator sat next to the tray and a cup with several black Bic Cristal pens—the owner clearly preferred only one type of pen and Red knew the brand because it was the one she liked best, too.

It was an odd thought to make her melancholy, but it did. They had shared something—a small something, to be sure, but it was still a shared trait. They liked the same pen, and now Red would never know what else she and this person might have in common.