Page 35 of Heart of the Sun

He grinned at me, but then took out his phone and raised it to the sky as had been his habit since the crash. He was like a man who’d been tossed into the ocean, reaching for an invisible lifeline.

“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “They’ll have a landline there. Or some other way to call for help.”

We were hurrying toward that beautiful piece of civilization that would offer a way to reach the outside world. And a toilet! I could pee in a toilet rather than squatting in the woods. “Never again!” I shouted to which Charlie glanced over at me in alarm. I laughed and squeezed his arm again.

A quarter mile felt like twenty as we limped toward our destination, turning onto the paved entryway to the lone gas station. With each step, however, my hope diminished. “It looks closed,” Charlie said.

Tuck was already walking slowly, and we caught up to him, all moving at the same pace now. “Maybe the power outage extends all the way here,” Tuck murmured. “There could still be people inside. The lights might just be off.”

There was a vehicle sitting in the middle of the road, and Tuck leaned over to look in the window and then stood straight, his head turning toward another car sitting to the side of the road.

“Why are they just sitting there?” I asked, as Charlie and I came to stand next to him, shading my eyes as I looked farther down the road where I could see another car seemingly abandoned near the center as well. It was like all the vehicles that had been traveling on this road had just…stopped. So where were the people? Why hadn’t they been towed? It was eerie.

“I don’t know,” Tuck muttered. “But it makes me think the station might not be open if these cars are just sitting here like this.”

“Wouldn’t a gas station have a generator though?” I asked. “I mean, usually businesses, especially crucial ones like gas stations, have generators, right?” Charlie looked at me and nodded hopefully. Honestly though? I had no idea who had generators or even how they worked. But it…sounded right.

“Let’s just stop guessing and wait and see,” Tuck said before he started walking again.

We all stepped into the lot and came to a stop as we looked around. There was an ice machine out front of the tiny store, and a lotto sign in the window that was obviously meant to be lit—but was as dark as the rest of the place.

Tuck started walking first, moving slowly and cautiously as he glanced around like we might be ambushed at any moment. We walked past the singular gas pump and came to stand in front of the store. The sound of the door of the ice machine opening broke the silence and made me startle.I looked over at Charlie, who smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. “The ice is gone and what’s left is mostly melted,” he said.

There was a handwritten sign on the door of the store that said, “Sold Out.”

“What do you think that means?” I asked but received no answer from either Charlie or Tuck. I cupped my hands against the glass and peered inside, my gaze roaming the small space. “There’s nothing in there,” I said. The refrigerators along the far wall were empty, as was the case that would have held sandwiches near the register. I wanted to cry.

Worse than that, there was no person manning the register who might have called for help.

“They must have cleared the food out so it wouldn’t go bad,” Charlie said.

“Or people bought it all,” Tuck said, gesturing to the sign again.

“It’s just…weird,” I said. And I was so disappointed and hungry that I felt like I was going to lose it.

“Let’s fill up our water bottles at least,” Tuck said as he took his empty bottle from his bag and dipped it into the ice machine that was now a water machine. I was sure the water would be less than clean now that it had been sitting in a metal freezer, but still safer than scooping water out of a stream, and I had finished the last of mine hours ago, so I did as he suggested, drank half the first bottle I scooped, and then refilled it again.

Tuck pointed off through the trees. “Look. I think I see a highway there. It looks like a portion of overpass. See that?”

I squinted in the direction he was pointing, but my eyeballs must have been as tired as the rest of me because I didn’t see it. “Come on,” he said. “A highway definitely leads somewhere. We’re back to civilization. We just have to find someone who can help us make a call now.”

My shoulders curled forward. I’d convinced myself this was the end of our trip out of hell,and I just couldn’t go on. I’d done my best. This station was out of fuel and so was I. I couldn’t take another step. Tears spilled from my eyes and tracked down my cheeks. Tuck looked at me, his expression blank. “I can’t walk anymore. I’m sorry. Just send someone for me. I’ll be here.”

“You’re not staying alone at an abandoned gas station in the middle of who knows where,” Tuck said.

My shoulders shook as I gave in to my exhaustion and misery. “I’ll wait. I can’t move.”

“The sun is starting to go down, Emily,” Charlie said.

“Yes!” I waved my arm around at the sky that was dimming by the moment. “And still no lights! Anywhere. Look!”

“We’ll be able to see better from the highway,” Charlie said. “I don’t want to walk more either, but it’s just ahead. See? There have to be restaurants and hotels and all sorts of businesses close by.”

“What if they’re all out of power?” I cried. “We’ve walked for days and the power’s out here. It probably is there too. Maybe it’s out everywhere. Maybe the whole world is dark.” I let out a high-pitched sob. “We were expected in New Yorkdaysago. You know how tight the schedule was! They’ve probably replaced me by now.”

“No one replaced you, babe,” Charlie said. “You’re irreplaceable. They know our plane went down. Lots of people will be worried about us. They’re probably having a candlelight vigil. Oh my God, we’ve gotta be front-page news…everywhere.” He looked briefly elated as his gaze zoned out somewhere behind me, probably picturing his fans sobbing uncontrollably in social media posts. The whole imagined scenario seemed to perk him up, but all it did was make me more miserable.

The world was dark, and my career was fading by the moment. No one waited around in the music business. Not even for tragedies. Not even for things that weren’t your fault. Charlie was established. They wouldn’t give up on Charlie. But me? Iwasreplaceable. Everything was crumbling.Everything.

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