Route 262

~14~

Long before we arrive there, police sirens gleam off in the distance. 

A couple more minutes, and there's a police officer standing in the middle of the road, waving traffic on. I slow down as we pass it, and Sydney gasps. 

When the police officer said that it was totaled, he completely meant it. The front part of the car is completely smashed, the windshield shattered and completely open. Skid marks on the road show how the car lost control, how James wasn't able to take the turn. It's a messy accident, the kind that you're shown in drivers ed to scare you into driving well. 

There's a pit in my stomach, a gnawing that won't stop. What did I take Sydney to see?

But I keep driving down the road, eyes glued to the dashed yellow line, and now she's lowering her hands from her mouth, shaking a little bit. "Pull up ahead - pull over to the side of the road."

I park a couple hundred feet up ahead. There's no parking area; my hazard lights are on, and I'm on a snow-covered patch of grass, barely off the road. If it weren't 4AM, I'd worry about people hitting it as they passed by. 

Sydney jumps out of the car, hugging her red coat to herself. She bounces up and down on her toes, waiting for me to lock the car, looking at me; you can feel a jumble of emotions coming off of her. I breathe out; a cloud of condensation rises to the stars. 

She's taking my arm, she's pulling me. She looks both ways, and we cross the road.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"I - I thought I saw something," she says, visibly shaking. "Behind the scene of the accident. I don't know. Just - you have to trust me on this one."

And I'm confused, because I don't think I've ever heard Sydney stutter, I don't think I've ever heard her confidence doubt for a minute. 

We turn on the flashlights from our phones, walking straight into the woods on this side of the highway. It's a tangled mess in there, branches all over the ground, covered in snow; I almost slip and break my neck a couple of times. If it weren't for Sydney, if it weren't for the fact that I'm worried about the way she's acting right now, I'd tell her this entire thing is insane. 

But she keeps moving back, and now she's starting to move parallel to the highway, so that we're following the guardrail. And at last I see what her plan was all along. 

Because in about ten minutes, we're in the woods, right behind the accident scene, the police lights gleaming slightly through the dark. 

"What are we doing?" I say, in a husky whisper, because I'm severely confused at this point. I'm standing in pitch dark, I've scratched myself on tree branches multiple times now, and I think I'm freezing to death. 

She doesn't say anything, only pointing, her finger following the ground from the accident scene to here. Footprints.