The Remedy Read Online Free Page A

voice. “Look, I’ve been on this road before. My family used to take it on every vacation to Quebec.”
    Leigh scoffed. “Yeah, when you were a kid.”
    “Yeah. So what?”
    Marshall impressed Leigh by immediately realizing her point. He answered Rob’s question without hesitation. “Dude, that was back in the days before 9/11.”
    Even over the whistling wind and the blaring radio, Leigh heard Rob mutter, “Shit,” and saw his hands grip the wheel a little tighter. Despite her awareness that their shared problem was no laughing matter, she could do nothing to stop the smirk that automatically shaped her mouth when she noticed his frustration.
    Rob had now completely taken all of his attention off the road as he stared at her through the rearview mirror. Although she’d tried her best to hide her look of satisfaction behind her novel, Rob hadn’t been fooled.
    “What?” he said as the van began to drift. “I suppose you have a better idea. Let’s hear it!”
    Eliza suddenly gripped her boyfriend’s arm. “Rob…”
    “C’mon! She thinks she’s so fucking smart all the time.”
    “No, Rob! Look out!”
    “
Fuck
!”
    Rob slammed on the breaks. Everyone lurched forward as the van violently rocked, throwing its passengers into the seats in front of them. The van fishtailed, turning a complete 180 degrees before screeching to a stop.
    Though everyone else moaned as if stepping off a faulty carnival ride, Leigh could only hear her internal alarm system screaming in red alert. Her vision had gone blurry, a common result from severe head trauma. Had she hit her head and was in too much shock to feel it? Was she bleeding? She brought her fingers to her skull, praying they wouldn’t come back red.
    Relief replaced panic in an instant. This wasn’t a concussion or something even worse. Her glasses had simply fallen off.
    As she found her eyewear resting on the seat beside her, Leigh thanked herself for not voicing her initial concern out loud. She was also grateful for the seatbelt that had kept her securely in place. Her friends hadn’t been so lucky.
    Marshall ran his fingers through his mop of hair, gently massaging his scalp. “Damn,” he grumbled. “That sucked. You okay, babe?”
    Groaning, Alex gingerly rotated her neck. “Yeah, I’m all right.” Marshall brushed the tangled locks of blond hair from her eyes, but she pushed past him and punched Rob’s right bicep, hard.
    “What the
fuck
was that all about?!” she screamed.
    Rob ignored the blow and looked straight ahead. With his index finger pointing past the windshield, he said, “Why don’t you ask him?”
    Leigh’s eyes followed the direction of Rob’s finger.
    Fifteen feet ahead in the middle of the road, a stranger was walking slowly toward them.

Chapter 2
    Alex’s dainty hand reached for the handle of the van’s sliding door and pulled hard. The door slid open loudly, letting in a cloud of unsettled dirt still hanging in the air after the van’s screeching stop.
    The stranger appeared to be their age—his youth evident in his energetic eyes and attractive smile. He sauntered in a relaxed manner, hands resting on the belt loops of his worn-out jeans. An old army jacket covered his upper torso, the solid olive green kind one would expect to find in any vintage clothing store. It was complete with a sewn-in nametag above the right breast that read “TUCKER.” A battered backpack hung from one shoulder and dangled by his waist. Its color matched the old, faded blue Montreal Expos hat that concealed his brown hair, except for a few tufts that peeked out near his ears.
    “Hey,” the boy said casually.
    No one in the van seemed to know how to reply to his nonchalant greeting. Just moments before, he’d come perilously close to the same fate as the smashed raccoon they’d passed.
    After a rather long, awkward moment of silence, it was Alex who finally asked, “Hey, man. Are you all right?”
    The boy just shrugged. “No harm