Chapter 413.
<strong>Chapter 413. We Encounter a Strange Spaced-out Girl Stranded on the Highway. (6/10)</strong>
<span style="font-weight:400">“If I kick it… do you think it’ll work?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“It’s not an old television orputer. You’d just break something else and jack the price up even further. Plus, if you take it in, it’s almost guaranteed they’re going to try and upsell you and im they found even more problems with your vehicle that need to be fixed. They might even try to hold your vehicle hostage iming they can’t let you operate it on the road due to safety concerns with the condition it’s in. There are some really sketchy repair shops out there that do those sorts of things. I’ve seen a lot of horror stories online when ites to these sorts of things where what should have been a pretty simple repair was jacked up to five or ten times the price.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Please stop. I’ve heard enough. My luck today has already been awful… I really don’t want to think about it.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Well, suit yourself.”
<span style="font-weight:400">...
<span style="font-weight:400">About twenty minutester, I told Dawn, “Try starting it again now.”
<span style="font-weight:400">She nodded seriously as though her fate would be decided by the next sound that came from the engine. She turned the key in the ignition and…
<span style="font-weight:400">Vrvrvrvrvr.
<span style="font-weight:400">Vrvrvrvrvrvr.
<span style="font-weight:400">Vrvrvrvrvrvrvr.
<span style="font-weight:400">Vrvrvrvrvrvrvrvrvr.
<span style="font-weight:400">Vrvrvrvrvrvrvrvrvrvrvr.
<span style="font-weight:400">I had to grab her hand and stop her from desperately turning the key in hopes of there being a different result.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Dawn…”
<span style="font-weight:400">“What?”
<span style="font-weight:400">I shook my head and said, “It’s dead. You need to be strong and move on.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“It’s not dead. It’s just sleeping. If I try a bit more I’m sure it’ll wake up.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You’ll only make things worse if you do so.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? How?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Well, whenever you try to start the car, a bit of gasoline is injected into the engine. If you repeatedly try to start it like this, you could flood the engine with gas. Doing so can result in the spark plugs being soaked in gasoline. If the spark plugs are wet they won’t be able to generate a spark to ignite the gas in the engine. If it’s just a little bit of gas that gets on them, it may not be a big deal. With a bit of time, it could evaporate naturally on its own. However, if it’s soaked for a prolonged period of time, you could damage them and need to rece the spark plugs altogether.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Oh no… do you think that’s why it won’t start now?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? What do you mean?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I tried starting the car quite a few times before you showed up.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Uh… that… could be a problem. But, I’m leaning more toward the battery being the problem at the moment.”
<span style="font-weight:400">She calmly closed her serene eyes, took in a deep breath, and slumped back in her seat.
<span style="font-weight:400">“What are you doing?”
<span style="font-weight:400">With her eyes shut, she responded, “I’m going to take a short nap and hope when I open my eyes it will turn out the truck not starting was just a bad dream.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Escapism isn’t going to change reality. At least call for a tow truck before you fall asleep.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaaah. A tow truck could take hours, a day, or even longer toe all the way out here. I guess you’re right. Might as well just call my dad at this point and ask him to pick me up then schedule a tow truck since my phone’s charged now.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Does he have a spare car batteryying around? If he does, he could just bring it along and easily swap the battery out here if he knows how and has the tools on hand.”
<span style="font-weight:400">She reopened her eyes and pondered, “Ah. Hmm... he really might have a spare car battery lying around the farm somewhere. But… as for changing it… I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do that before. I’ll call and ask.”
<span style="font-weight:400">She picked up her phone only to groan, “Ugh, I forgot it was a dead zone… and this useless thing had no reception out here. I’d walked for quite a distance trying to get even a single bar to make a call but it died and I was forced to return to my truck.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Wait, Dawn, now that I think about it, didn’t you send Rosa a text earlier to confirm you inputted her number correctly?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah… now that you mention it… I did.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? You sent me a text?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“What?” Dawn seemed just as confused as I was.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Rosa, if I saw correctly, didn’t you smile when you received a text on your phone earlier? I thought that was the text you received from Dawn.” I hadn’t actually seen it directly, but her phone had definitely vibrated at that moment while she was looking at it so I’d naturally assumed it was Dawn’s text.
<span style="font-weight:400">“I did receive a text, but it was from Alicia, not Dawn.”
<span style="font-weight:400">What are the odds of that timing?
<span style="font-weight:400">“Ah… no way, it really didn’t send sessfully.” Dawn muttered to herself when she checked the text message she sent to Rosa before she followed up with a question, “Wait, but Rosa, how’d you receive a text from someone when it’s a dead zone?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hmm? A dead zone? It’s not a dead zone for me though, I have two bars right now.” Rosa spoke up.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? You have… reception?” Dawn rified in a skeptical fashion.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. Look, see? Two bars in the top right.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Oh, no wonder, yuh have a different provider. I should really change providers.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Here, you can try calling your dad using my phone.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Thanks.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Dawn keyed in her dad’s number and started the call. It connected and rang.
<span style="font-weight:400">And rang some more.
<span style="font-weight:400">Until… it finally connected…
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hello, sorry if I missed your call, if you leave your name and number I’ll give ya a call back as soon as possible.” What sounded like a recorded message in her father’s voice yed.
<span style="font-weight:400">“The recipient''s mailbox is full and can no longer hold any new voice messages.” Immediately after her father’s recording stopped it was followed by a robotic voice.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Stupid dad, answer your phone and clear your voice messages!”
<span style="font-weight:400">She hung up and tried calling again only to be met with the same pair of messages.
<span style="font-weight:400">After the third failed attempt, she leaned forward until her forehead tapped down on the steering wheel inside the truck.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Ugh, now that I think about it, he’s probably working out in the field right now. Either he doesn’t have his phone on him right now, he doesn’t hear or feel it, or it’s just dead. My streak of bad luck just doesn’t end today. This is the worst.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Well, you could send him a text for the time being.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah... I’ll do that.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hey, Ran, why not just head over to her farm right now with her on your bike and pick up the battery from her ce?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“But if we do that you’d have to stay back here on your own, right? We’d have to leave our stuff here too since we’d need to carry around the battery on the back. There’s also no guarantee the spare car battery they may or may not have will bepatible anyway. Plus, it’s not exactly safe to be out here in the middle of nowhere all alone either.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“It’s not a big deal, it’s not like I need to stay with the truck. I can just set up camp with our stuff in the thicket of trees over there while waiting for you two to get back.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“What if an aggressive wild feral hog shows up and attacks you? Going off the few we saw in the fields today while driving, I’m pretty sure they’re a lot more prominent around here.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“He’s right, wild feral hogs have been a big problem around these parts in the past. Though it’s not anywhere near as bad as it used to be as we’ve been hunting them down, yuh do stille across them. I often help my dad by huntin them.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You hunt them?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“When you say you help him… you mean you just tag along, right?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“No, I do it alone using a hunting rifle with a scope from a safe distance away.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Wow, how reliable. I definitely didn’t expect that of you at all.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Is it that surprising?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“With how you were spacing out earlier, I expected you’d be more of the type to be killed by one in the middle of your daydreams rather than being the one killing them. Honestly, you struck me more as being the sort of girl who’d be bad at farming, clumsily messing everything farming-rted up despite being a farmer’s daughter.”
<span style="font-weight:400">She groaned and a small crack finally formed in that serene expression of hers. Her face was a shade redder. Not from anger, but rather... embarrassment.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Did I perhaps hit the nail on the head there?”
<span style="font-weight:400">She took a few seconds and let her embarrassment subside before she shook her head and calmly responded, “I’m… not that bad at farming.”