Just Like a Musical by Milena Veen

throat clearing. I don’t know what caused it, or if anything caused it. As far as I know, tics don’t wait for a particular reason to occur, they just come and go as they like. It goes like this – a guy clears his throat, a little girl screams, a mother stomps on the brake, a big girl’s heart jumps under her striped mod dress.
    “What was that?” Debbie shouted, looking at Joshua like she was going to chop off his head.
    “I’m sorry, very sorry,” he said. “But that’s what I warned you about.”
    “Oh, but you didn’t warn me about it, young man. This is much worse than what I expected,” she said. “You scared my little girl.”
    So what happened to your friend with Tourette’s, Mrs. Debbie? You killed him while he was twitching his nose?
    Debbie’s threatening finger was standing stiff between hers and Joshua’s seats. Then she turned to the back seat. I was trying to calm Dolores by holding her hand and whispering funny things in her ear.
    “Don’t squeeze her like that,” her mother groaned. “What do you want – to make her bruise?”
    “I was just trying to calm her,” I said, knowing that nothing I said was going to soothe her anger.
    “One more mistake and you’re out of here,” she said, pausing between words.
    I was fighting with the strong urge to just open the door and take us out of that ridiculous situation, but the sight of the melting desert was stronger. Debbie pressed the accelerator pedal and our gloomy journey continued. No one was talking, even little Lo was sitting silent beside me, looking through the window until she nodded off again. I was counting minutes, miles, and white clouds. We just entered New Mexico, when it happened again – Joshua cleared his throat, and even louder than the first time. Dolores screamed again, and I was sure that little brat did it deliberately.
    “That’s it,” Debbie said, stomping on the brake again.
    “I’m sorry,” Joshua said. I saw his fist clenching and his knuckles getting red.
    “Get out!” Debbie screamed at the top of her voice.
    “But we are in the middle of the desert,” I tried to sound calm. “You can’t leave us here.”
    “Oh, I can’t I?” she turned to me with sarcastic laughter. “Well, just watch me, miss!”
    For a moment everyone was silent. Then she screamed again, opening the door and pushing us outside.
    And there we were – stranded in the desert. He should have called her a moron at least. I should have called her a moron.
    “Moron!” I screamed, but they were already too far to hear me.
    To burst out laughing or to burst out crying – that was the question. We did the first one, but it only lasted for a couple of seconds, until the dust behind the orange Plymouth settled down. There was nothing but rocks and desert plants around us and the sun was still burning madly. There certainly wasn’t anything to laugh about. I sighed and covered my face with my hands.
    “What are we going to do?” I said. “We’re trapped here.”
    Joshua looked behind.
    “I guess there’s nothing much we can do but to wait for another car to pick us up.”
    We started walking. My mother called and I lied to her. I said we were in a hotel in Albuquerque. It’s not that I was afraid of her reaction; I just didn’t feel like listening to her high-pitched soprano. She said she visited Mrs. Wheeler that afternoon, but she didn’t have any good news for me. Mrs. Wheeler’s state was even worse than when I visited her a couple of days before.
    Not even one car slowed down. We were jumping and waving like lunatics every time we saw one approaching us, but the drivers would just act as if we were invisible. We were about fifteen miles from Gallup. I suggested that we go back and find some place to sleep there; I really didn’t want to spend the night in the desert no matter how much in love I was, but Joshua reminded me that we had only three days left before Monday, when he needed to get back to work. He said