Page 41 - My FlipBook

T R A I L O F C R U M B S

And we’ve been trying to avoid you for a while now. Greta
broke eye contact to look out the window, feeling guilty. Did
Ash feel it too? The back of his head gave away nothing more
than hunched misery.
“You’ll need to watch for the Highway 43 exit,” Ash
said, gesturing to the right. “After that we’ll eventually hit
Whitecourt.”
After a few more minutes they turned off Highway 16

onto 43, narrow and hilly. Greta watched the farmland and
fence posts, broken by patches of poplars, their spotted trunks
almost blending into the snow. Pickup trucks—and even the
odd blue-haired grandma—ripped past them on the highway.
Greta strained against her lap belt to check the speedometer.
Ninety kilometers per hour.
“I think you can go at least a hundred here, Nate. Maybe

even 110.”
Nate shook his head. “Rebus starts to shake over ninety.”
He accelerated, and the steering wheel vibrated in his hands
until he dropped back to ninety. Greta quashed the bubble of
impatience rising inside her. Was this better than the bus?
Nate talked—for a long time—about alternative bands
from the nineties and how hard it was to find stores that
carried the cassette tapes he needed for Rebus. Ash leaned
back against the headrest and closed his eyes; Greta could tell

he wasn’t really sleeping by the way his head didn’t roll with
the movement of the car.
They passed by some small towns. “Sangudo,” Nate said
at the latest one. “That one’s fun to say. Try it. San—goo—do.”

31