SSS 2 - Detour

Part of you wants to try it and just go slow. It can’t be that deep by now, can it? On the other hand, this is not your car. Getting stuck or damaging it would make tonight a failure on multiple levels. Anxiety high, you put the car in reverse. Out of habit, you turn around to look and find yourself taking in the scene in the backseat.

Taytum holds a blissful Bian, who has just gotten off. Bian basks while Taytum plays with her hair.

“Eyes on the road,” Taytum says with a yawn.

“That’s what I’m doing,” you retort, squinting as you reverse. “It might be flooded. I think we have to go around.”

That halfway sobers Taytum.

“Shit,” she mutters.

“Mm,” Bian contributes helpfully. The way Taytum holds her and pets her is like someone would treat a puppy. Bian loves it.

“Don’t worry, baby. I’ll take care of you later,” Taytum promises.

“Oh my god.” Can she not focus for five minutes? She must not have taken her meds today. It would explain a lot.

Scowling, you ignore the two of them and concentrate on your driving. You see a spot that looks just wide enough to risk turning around and do so. You head back to the turn, but your high beams don’t help at all. They just shine on the rain. You have no idea what’s back here in this swamp. But this road does appear to go more or less in the right direction, so it’s worth a try. You can’t be blamed for the weather, but you can potentially be blamed for giving up too easily. You have to push forward.

This is not what you imagined when you fantasized about CCL. You fantasized about meeting an American girl with brown hair and brown eyes who is very sweet and earthy, always smiles, and likes to fish and… horses or something. You can picture her so clearly. Your fantasies about kissing that girl on a park bench near the university or getting boba together are embarrassingly fully formed and familiar.

But that girl doesn’t exist. At least, not at CCL. Bian is the closest that you expect to get to her. That makes you glance in annoyance at the mirror, but it’s not Taytum that’s causing problems.

As you drive much too slowly, your uneasiness thickens. The road quickly becomes bumpy and visibility only gets worse. You begin to worry that this isn’t a real road, but in fact someone’s driveway.

“Oh jeez,” Bian says in the backseat. You glance back to see that she and Taytum have recovered and put on their seatbelts. Taytum’s scowling at her phone.

“No data,” she grumbles.

Great. You slow down even more. Blowing a tire would be bad if you can’t call for help. A glance at your phone tells you that your playlist, now drowned out by the rain, has switched to the tracks stored on your phone. Not good.

You feel a spark of hope when you see a faint light in the swamp, but you don’t like the look of the road going that way. It’s even worse than the road that you’re on. You keep going until you have to make a choice. Left or right. Right should be more the direction that you want to go, and at least you know that this isn’t a driveway now. A driveway wouldn’t be this complicated. Your sense of direction isn’t terrible. You have a feeling that this bad road will hit a paved one. Then you hope to be able to just take a right and follow that back to the highway that you’re supposed to be on. That expectation doesn’t seem crazy in your mind.

But ten minutes later, you roll to a halt. Your headlights pierce the rain and dark but show you nothing except more rain and dark. You saw a trailer not far back, but it was completely dark and frankly, terrifying. You are not about to ask for directions there.

But that light that you saw earlier seemed promising.

“Are we lost?” Taytum asks.

“Very,” you reply. You seem to be pointed in the right direction and the car’s compass confirms it, but this is a swamp. You can’t necessarily go places in a straight line. On the other hand, this road has to lead somewhere.

Keep going?

Or double back to that light and ask for directions?