Page 50 of Alonzo

Or neither?

Our second day on the road starts just outside Nashville. There’s a thick, foreboding fog in the air as we continue our journey south and I get this sudden overwhelming feeling that I’m at a crossroads. That the next few days might determine how things play out for the rest of my life.

This is how I felt before I testified against Diablo. I knew everything was going to change. I thought it would get better. It did get better, I guess. I got out of LA. Saw the Rocky Mountains. I got a new job. New look. New friends.

And even after I found out that Diablo got off, I was still holding firm to the belief that I was out. I got out. This was a good thing.

The FBI had me in their special protective custody, I had a new name, a genuine fake background that included a college degree in library science, a new apartment, a job, and eighteen hundred dollars a month for five years.

I clung to these things. They soothed my damaged soul like clear, cool water in the midday heat of the desert sun. I believed in the power and might of the FBI.

That’s the worst part, I think.

Diablo scares me. But he is literally the devil I know.

If Vann is right and the FBI in Fort Collins are dirty, then… I don’t know what to do about that. I can’t just get a new fake identity. Not one as legit as what I have now. So I have decided to leave the country. I’m going to confront Lonnie, show him what he fucked up, what he’ll be missing out on, and then I’m gone. I’m going somewhere so far away no one will ever find me again.

I zone out for almost a day as we make our way south. The weather clears up late in the afternoon, then we stop for the night in Orlando.

Everyone is quiet in the truck when we head out for the final day of our road trip.

If I said I wasn’t excited to finally have a chance to meet Lonnie face to face I’d be lying. But… what is the point? I cannot start my new life with a man who reminds me of the one I’m running away from. I will not do it.

And by that I not only mean a man with tattoos, and muscles, and a Spanish name—but a liar. I don’t know why Lonnie chose to lie to me. But unless it’s because he’s in the witness protection program, chances are it doesn’t matter.

A lie is a lie.

And if he’ll lie to me once, he’ll lie to me over and over again.

I cannot deal with liars.

And I get it. I’m a liar too. So that just makes it all worse because he probably hates liars as well. Everyone hates liars. No one has ever said, “Boy, I really wish you would lie to me a little more.”

So… what is the point of this again?

This defeatist attitude follows me all the way down into southern Florida. But then the temperature warms up, I can see the ocean again (first time in two years). The freeways are lined with flowering shrubs, and there are palm trees everywhere, and…

I relax. It’s not even conscious. It’s not like I said to myself, Calm down, Tara. Everything’s gonna be OK. But the closer we get to the Keys, the easier it becomes to forget why we’re here.

Vann and Belinda fight like they’re a couple. I know they’re not. She, like me, feels like Vann is too young. But it’s that good-natured jibing you see among siblings or best friends turned lovers.

And then we’re on the Overseas Highway and before I know it—the panic is back.

Because we are here.

And it’s all so beautiful. So clean, and sunny, and warm, and everything that life in wintery Colorado was not. It’s almost like I’m going back home to Long Beach.

Only better.

Because this isn’t Long Beach.

It’s nothing at all like Long Beach.

This place is paradise.

Vann and Belinda feel it too. Because Vann presses a button on the ceiling and the sunroof slides open. Belinda climbs in the back of the cab with me and stands up to poke her head out. “Hell yeah! I’m home, bitches!”

“What?” Vann and I both say this at the same time.