Nothing At All

1.1

"This sucks ass," I grumbled.

"Language, young lady," Mom snapped back, without even glancing at me. Her gaze was focused intently on the jack in front of her as she struggled to pump the handle.

I groaned and sat down on the hard, barely-paved road. The boulder I was leaning against dug into my back, but I didn't have any other option. I picked at the frayed threads on the inseam of my jeans.

Alex looked over her shoulder up the road. "This will all be worth it once we get to the top of the mountain and can see the entire night sky. Just think of this as a very minor inconvenience." She tapped her foot and looked back towards Mom.

"Quit moving the light!" Mom barked.

Alex steadied the two phones in her hands. "Sorry. Just try to hurry up."

I leaned back and squinted up at the night sky. "I can hardly see any stars. Seriously, you guys picked the absolute worst night to be doing this. There's literally a storm on the way." As if to prove my point, a bolt of lightning in the distance illuminated the forested mountainside. An unusually cold gust of wind sent shivers down my spine.

They ignored me and continued to stare at the tire like it was about to tell them all the secrets of life.

"Please just call somebody." I tied my hair back with the spare ponytail in my pocket and pulled out my phone. I had a solid three bars, plenty to call a cab.

Alex looked over her shoulder at me and snapped, "We don't need anybody! This is easy to fix."

Mom pushed the hair out of her eyes and gave the jack a final pump. Picking up the wrench, she started struggling with the lugnuts of the flat tire. Considering that tire looked like it had been on there since the Reagan administration, I had a feeling it was going to take a while.

It seemed that my bad luck had finally caught up with us. The past week had been way too fun and worry-free to last forever. Now, we were stranded in the Romanian mountains in the middle of the night with a storm coming. I shouldn't have let them talk me into going 'stargazing'; we could have already been cozied up inside a nice hotel room.

"Get over here, Iulia!" Mom called.

I went to her side and helped her shimmy off the old tire. It dropped onto the road next to me, narrowly missing my foot, and I watched as it spun for a few seconds before coming to a rest. Next, we put the just-as-old spare tire on.

Mom was much quicker when it came to tightening the lugnuts and soon enough we were back in the car. Alex, always vigilant, made sure to claim shotgun, leaving me stuck in the backseat with all the excess luggage.

As we pulled out back onto the empty road, I noticed the car shaking more than normal. "Hey," I piped up, "I think we should just call it a night. This road is shit and I doubt the spare is going to hold us all the way to the top."

"We're fine." Alex glanced back at me and flashed a grin. I knew her well enough to notice that the corners of her lips didn't reach her ears like normal. Her fingers tapped against the middle console faster than a piano player's, something they only did when she was nervous.

Mom was a little better about hiding her anxiety. She focused mainly on the road, but every few minutes I caught her eyes flicking to the sideview mirror. The only times she was ever this quiet was when she was either mad or anxious. If it hadn't have been for Alex's odd behavior putting me on high alert, I wouldn't have even noticed.

Something was definitely wrong; I just couldn't put my finger on what.

We hadn't been driving for very long when I noticed the car. After we passed a pullout along one of the curves, a sleek black sedan pulled out. The headlights blocked me from seeing a driver, but I didn't need to see them to know that they had been waiting for us. My stomach dropped.