Free Tabula Rasa by Kitty Thomas Page A

shocked he’d had it in him to give any kind of
shit about my outcome at all. And I wondered idly if he’d worked
past that and was now suddenly over giving any kind of shit about it.
    Trevor was the type who’d always had to be talking, and everything
out of his mouth had been either baiting me for a fight or had seemed
like a weird attempt at gaining my approval. Shannon didn’t seem to
give a fuck what I approved of.
    When we were finished, he went to throw out the trash. When he came
back, he said, “Use the bathroom now if you need to. I’m not
stopping again until I’m ready to stop for the night.”
    I got out of the SUV, and he followed me up to the ladies’ room. He
went inside and had a look around. I don’t know what or who he was
looking for. I’m not sure if he had some paranoia that made him
check the safety of every space before using it or if he thought
there might be some other person in there, and I might ask for help.
    Whatever he was looking for, when he was satisfied with what he
saw—or didn’t see—he went outside to wait.
    I can’t describe the luxury and meaning of an actual bathroom. I’d
spent long periods of time back in the park just standing in the
suite’s bathroom, wishing flushing toilets and hot showers were
still a thing. And now they were. It was like Christmas. I flushed
every toilet. I turned on every faucet.
    I know that’s extremely strange, but it was like I couldn’t quite
believe these were real things that functioned, and I had to test
them all out just to make sure the world still worked. It was like...
if every sink and toilet worked, grocery stores and malls still
existed. That’s just the leap my brain made. Even seeing all the
lights off the interstate and going through a drive-thru, I still
felt the need to test the reality of every modern convenience I came
upon. Just to be sure.
    When I got outside, Shannon gave me another of those assessing cold
stares. He’d obviously heard all the flushing and running water.
Before I knew what was happening, he’d swiftly spun me around and
pressed me against the brick wall outside. He patted me down.
    “Okay, let’s go,” he said after a moment.
    “W-what was that about?”
    “Making sure you didn’t make a weapon or have a cell phone.”
    “Make a weapon out of what?” And as if some dinky rest stop
bathroom weapon was going to have any effect against someone like
him. I wasn’t that suicidal.
    “You were in there a while, and then there was all the flushing and
faucets. I thought you might be masking some activity you didn’t
want me to know about like making a weapon or calling for help.”
    The more he worried I was going to kill him or call for help, the
more I worried that maybe I really needed to be considering those
options.
    He kept a brisk pace back to the SUV while I stumbled along—like
I’d just learned to walk last week—trying to keep up with him.
    “Where the hell would I have gotten a cell phone?” I asked when I
reached the passenger door, already out of breath. As if Trevor would
have let me have one. Yeah, we had electricity. We could have kept
one charged, but that would have completely defeated his
end-of-the-world charade.
    “There could have been one in the tower when we went up for shoes.
I should have gone in with you and watched, but you were already so
skittish, and I was more concerned with getting you out of the park
undetected.”
    “In the reality I was living in, cell phones no longer functioned,
and even if they did, the cell phone companies would have all
collapsed, preventing service from being provided. And the battery
would have died anyway. So, no, I didn’t have a cell phone.”
    “Right,” he said, looking almost human in his momentary
embarrassment. “I can’t believe how elaborate his scam was.”
    The way he said it, it seemed like some part of him respected or was
impressed with the effort. Like professional admiration or something.
    The SUV beeped