Free Ordinary Beauty by Laura Wiess Page B

What’s your name?”
    “Sayre,” I say, surprised. “You eat there?”
    “Sometimes,” he says, closing his eyes again. “Sorry, but my knee is killing me.”
    “Is it broken?” I ask.
    “Feels like it,” he says. “Something’s all torn up in there.”
    “Do you want to try to stretch it out? You could lay it across my lap,” I say.
    He shakes his head, wincing at the movement.
    “All right,” I say, trying to think. What should I be doing to help him?
    I don’t know.
    But I need to know.
    Think, Sayre.
    The truck lights are on but the engine’s dead, so we have no heat.
    Harlow is two miles away and I could go back and get him but he has no phone and once we’re tucked up in the woods at his place, there’s even less chance of EMS finding us.
    We could sit here and blow the horn until it dies, and hope someone hears it.
    We could light the woods on fire and hope someone sees it and responds before it roasts us.
    I could go back up on the road and try the cell again. Or light a fire in the middle of it, if he has any matches. That would make someone stop. Of course all the wood is cold and wet, and even if I manage to get a little fire going the wind is still wicked . . .
    Or I could go throw wood in the road. Pieces big enough to make someone stop, and once they do, we can blow the horn and flash the lights and yell for help.
    That might actually work.
    “I have to go back outside,” I say, putting his cell phone in my coat pocket. “Do you want me to bring in some snow for your knee, to maybe numb it?”
    “Not yet,” he mumbles without opening his eyes. “I can deal as long as I don’t move.”
    “Okay.”
    Slithering out the slider window is easier than climbing in, and I’m back on the ground and zipped into my coat in a heartbeat, revved with a fierce determination to help him, to get back up that damn bank and block the whole road if I have to.
    I tug on my gloves. Fight my way to the top of the steep, slippery slope and crawl out onto the road, panting. Stagger to my feet.
    Wood. I need to find wood.
    But first, I try the phone.
    Still no service.
    “Cancel that contract,” I mutter, shoving it back in my pocket and crossing to the mountain side of the road where there’s a rotten log frozen to the ground. I push, pull, and kick at it, but it won’t budge. “Good, then stay there,” I mutter, sweating, and move on to a big branch farther up the bend. This one is just lying there so I grab the thick part and drag it back, leaving it right in the lane by the tire tracks, near my bag. Trudge up and down the edges of the road, checking the cell, shoving it back in my pocket and prying loose as many branches and limbs from downed trees as I can, feeling shots of blunted pain as my nails are bent backward and knowing that when my fingers finally thaw again they’re going to hurt bad, rolling rotted logs and dragging chunks of wood onto the pavement, laying it all out there in plain view where it can’t be missed, can’t be passed by, can’t be ignored.
    Ending up with a roadblock that nobody could fail to stop for.
    I plop down, chest heaving, thirsty, exhausted, and sweating, on the side of the road. Scoop up a clean handful of snow and eat it, then another.
    It’s got to be at least four o’clock by now.
    So much for Candy calling the ambulance.
    I wonder what she told my mother when she went back to the hospital without me.
    She would never tell her the truth, especially if it made her look bad. No, what she probably said was I found that little bitch of yours on the side of the road with Ben Greenwood’s boy, and she said she wouldn’t come without him, so I left her there.
    “Great,” I mutter, shaking my head and checking the cell coverage one last time.
    Nothing.
    Okay, then.
    The factory has already changed shifts and the bars are closed. Tractor trailers roll all night long to move factory product, but I have no idea if they’d take this steep, winding road in this