Free Kiss the Morning Star by Elissa Janine Hoole Page A

her hair, twirling it around her fingers. “It’s just…he doesn’t have the part. The plug, I mean. And it’s time for him to go home, you know? I don’t really know what we should do, but we can’t drive the car, not without any oil in it.” For a moment Kat’s face seems etched in glass—her expression still and nearing transparency. It scares me to see her so fragile. What will we do?
    The bell on the front door jangles, and a thin, timid-looking woman with a fuzzy-headed toddler comes in. She smiles at us and settles the little one next to the faded toy box in the corner.
    Moments later, the mechanic comes back into the waiting room, this time scratching his head. He shoots an apologetic look at the woman and then nods a couple times as though reassuring himself that he knows what he’s talking about. “I took a look at it—looks like the last person who changed your oil stripped the threads on the plug, then cracked it in half when they were trying to tighten it.” He glances at Kat. “You didn’t notice it was losing oil? That the stuff was dripping on the ground?”
    The little boy catapults himself toward the mechanic’s legs. “Daddy! Daddy home now?”
    “Whoa, buddy, easy.” He scoops the boy up into his arms.
    Kat shakes her head. “I guess I never really pay attention to the oil.” She scrunches up her hair again.
    The mechanic nods. “Well, I’d say you’ve been losing oil slowly but steadily for a while now. I can order the part from Casper, but honestly, Tuesday’s probably the soonest we’ll get it. Maybe Monday afternoon, but with the way stuff stacks up over the weekends, I don’t know. I already tried to rig a few temporary options, so maybe you could limp it down to Casper or something. I could try a few more things…” He trails off, looking at the young woman in the chair. She smiles sadly.
    Kat raises her eyebrows at me, and I look out the front window again. The wind has really picked up, and dust whips wildly across the parking lot.
    “Is—is there a campground or something where we could stay, somewhere close by?” Kat keeps twirling her imaginary pigtails and pursing her lips.
    The mechanic and his wife both shake their heads. “There’s the Comfy Time Motel,” says the woman softly. “I could give you girls a ride there.”
    We stand awkwardly in the middle of the room, between the couple. I tap my foot, nervous energy coiling and uncoiling in my legs, in my stomach. Kat was supposed to figure out all the car stuff before we left. It was on the list. We don’t have the money to drop on a motel room for two or three nights, at least not this early in the trip. I mean, we could do it, but it would set us up for problems later on. We have a pretty tight budget for lodging, although we do have some “fun” money set aside. I suppose we could use that on a motel and forget about having fun.
    “No, give me a little while. I can rig up something,” he says. “Probably.” He looks apologetically at the woman—his wife? Girlfriend? “I mean, it’s still pretty early, really.”
    She smiles, but I can see the weariness in her eyes, how much she really wants him to come home. “Yes, honey, work on it awhile more. It’s okay. We can come back for you later.”
    I can’t do this to them, intrude on their weekend like this. It’s not right. “We’re ruining your night,” I say. “It’s fine. We can figure something out.” We step outside to give them a chance to talk, and the wind nearly knocks us over. It’s major dust bowl action going on in the town of Gillette. Acres of topsoil whip through the air, swirling and eddying across the pavement.
    Kat shouts, throwing her arms up over her face. “Let’s go around the building!”
    We run to the lee of the garage, bent nearly double against the wind, which seems to suck the words out of me and fling them into the next county. “This is going to be a crazy night!”
    Kat huddles in closer. “I know!”