Free Living the Dream by Annie Dalton

who wants candy?” Aunt Jeannie asked brightly.

Chapter Eleven
    W e were sitting at a gas station, waiting for Aunt Jeannie and Aunt Evalina to come out of Dunkin’ Donuts. We were technically at a standstill, but with the engine running, the aunts’ ancient truck was rocking and shuddering, as if it just might go roaring off to Arizona on its own. While we waited I composed a new text to Reuben:
    The Agency wil find u, so stay strong. Wish I ws with ur srch party, not stuck in a truck with 3 crazy women.
    Once, on our soul-retrieval mission, Reubs saved the whole situation with a smile. He couldn’t be gone. How could he be gone when I could hear his husky, teasing voice inside my head as clear as day?
    Please don’t let the PODS have got him , I prayed with a pang of terror.
    To stop myself going mad, I tried calling Lola. She should have arrived in the Himalayas by now. But her phone was switched off and I just got a perky message.
    “Open the door. I’m dropping the damn Doritos!” Aunt Evalina was suddenly glowering at Aunt Bonita through the open window. Cody’s great aunts had seemed fiercely united in their mission to rescue her, but now they had Cody they were snapping and sulking like seven-year-olds; except seven-year-olds don’t generally chain-smoke.
    The aunts squabbled all the way from Maryland through the state of Tennessee, meanwhile working their way through shedloads of junk food. They kept offering snacks to Cody, but she silently shook her head. Now and then she sipped at a diet Coke.
    “That stuff rots your innards,” Aunt Bonita growled, exhaling clouds of smoke into the truck.
    “The child’s queasy, leave her be,” Aunt Evalina told her. She started flicking through the radio stations till she found a country music tune to hum along to. But after so many days on the road, even the aunts’ caffeine-fuelled energy levels were dropping. After three choruses of “Achy Breaky Heart”, their voices petered out. By the time we reached Nashville and drove by the Grand Old Opry, the world famous country music venue, I was the only person who actually bothered to look.
    We stayed the night in a motel where the decor was stuck in a 1970s time warp. Giant lime green and orange flowers loomed from every surface, making the room more claustrophobic than it already was. Cody fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Aunt Evalina and Aunt Jeannie were close behind.
    Aunt Bonita propped herself up on top of the lime and orange bedcover, her bare feet stuck out stiffly in front, her eyes glinting beadily in the light of the TV, as she watched CNN news with the sound down.
    A terrible flood had made millions of people homeless. The snows in the Himalayas were melting faster than anyone had predicted…
    Before I left I’d hastily downloaded Reuben’s tunes. I put in my iPod (just one ear-bud because I was on duty) and clicked on another of Reubs’ works in progress, “Earth Dreams”.
    Reuben has this way of mixing shimmering cosmic chords with gritty human beats borrowed from tunes I’ve lent him. His voice isn’t totally tuneful, but as a sound it works. When he reached the chorus, I broke into goosebumps as he sang:
    Born from the same star, you’ve come so far, Born from the same star, you’ve come so far, But the circle got broken, Earth was torn open, All her treasures stolen, and this wasn’t, this wasn’t, this wasn’t what we dreamed. ..
    How the sassafras had Ambriel’s words, which he never at any point spoke aloud, found their way into Reuben’s tune!!
    I felt as if I was balanced on the edge of some huge mystery. Lola’s glimpse of a nightmare future, Ambriel’s last-ditch crusade to save the world, a Navajo girl under a curse; they were all connected, I could feel it -if I could only figure out how…
    I could hear some kind of disturbance in the hall, probably guests coming back late after a few beers, but Aunt Bonita was instantly on red alert.
    She glanced sharply