I go home tomorrow. My mom promised that she’d have balloons waiting for me. I believe her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Josh and I use the entire allotted credit card week to get home. I charge my phone, text my mom, and then we turn it off to make this a true road trip. Our drive takes us through more towns with names like Walla Walla and Garryowen, which remind us of the multiple-named girls of Pendleton. “How many years ago was that?” Josh jokes, but I agree that time, along with Elvis, has left the building.
devils Tower, Hells Canyon, Flaming Gorge—sometimes it sounds like we’re headed to the ends of the earth. That’s working just fine for us.
We spend a night at an EconoLodge and stay up way too late watching episodes of The Golden Girls, and spend a day gawking with the tourists at Mount Rushmore, which we both decide looks like a movie set. “Isn’t that Nicolas Cage up there?” Josh squints, and we waste a good twenty minutes staring at a spot on top of Roosevelt’s head. Passersbys join us, without asking what we’re looking at.
Next we head to Crazy Horse, a Native American monument being blown into the side of a mountain, in the vein of Mount Rushmore, but with a real founding father. So far, all that’s really completed is Crazy Horse’s face and the top of his arm, but it already looks impressive. “I wonder if they’ll ever finish,” I say.
“The guy who started it refused money from the government,” Josh reads from a pamphlet. “He never expected it to be finished in his lifetime.”
“Nor in mine,” I say.
“Come on. This guy had a vision. And he wasn’t deterred by the restraints of time or money,” Josh philosophizes. I know he’s thinking about his own time and money constraints, his own vision, but I don’t want him to get stuck in those thoughts.
“I’m having a vision now, too,” I say with mystical eyes. “Of a bacon double cheeseburger.” So we head to the concession stand without any more thought of what’s to come.
Our last stop before the inevitable reality road home is in Austin, Minnesota, at the Spam Museum. Yes, the canned meat Spam. Surprisingly, it’s not a tin can display, but a state-of-the-art pop show of snacks, and we gorge ourselves on their endless supplies of free samples. Even though we have more than enough T-shirts to last us through another week of road trip, we both pick up Spam shirts. “For you to wear at college, so you don’t forget me,” Josh says, and a little more reality sneaks its way in.
That night, in a king-size bed at a Comfort Inn hotel, Josh and I extend the night recounting our favorites: favorite doughnut, favorite gas station attendant, favorite rest-stop bathroom. “Your breath smells like Spam,” I tell Josh.
“Yours smells like roses. Roses watered with Spam juice,” he tells me.
I dream of Nicolas Cage eating processed meat, as I’m enveloped in Josh’s arms.
We arrive back in Suburbia around two in the afternoon. I half expect the town to look completely different, transformed into the Town of the Future. Or crumbling from years of neglect. But the only thing that looks different is that the bright green grass of early summer has browned into the dry, trampled grass of midsummer. In a few weeks, I’ll start packing my belongings for the drive to Winthorp with Mom. In a few weeks, Josh will have to start looking for a job. Or get famous so he doesn’t have to.
The Eurosport pulls into my driveway. I called my mom yesterday to let her know I’d be home. She had to work today, so I’ll see her later tonight. We planned a welcome-home pizza dinner, Chicago style, of course.
Josh shuts off the engine. “So,” he says.
“So,” I agree, and I remember our “Hi,” “Hi” conversation. We sit in the car, the past, present, and future waiting for us outside the protective Eurosport doors. Runaway saved. Monuments admired. Thousands of miles covered. It’s all too much. Tears uncontrollably stream down my cheeks.
“Hey, hey.” Josh slides into me and pulls my head onto his shoulder, stroking my hair, the red now faded from the sun. “It’s OK. Everything’s great, right?” He kisses the top of my head.
“I don’t want to get out of the car,” I sniff. “When I do, it’s all going to change.”
“No, it won’t,” Josh says, and he kisses away a tear. “You’ll still exist, and I’ll still exist, and this summer, no matter how over it gets, will always exist. It’s of history, right?” I bob my head in agreement. “You know what else we’ll always have?” he asks.
A list runs through my head. A kiss? Our love? The cell phone charger?
“A T-shirt that says, ‘Cheese makes it taste better,’” he answers.
That we will. I can wear it as I walk around campus at school. While I’m writing stories for class. When I meet Ethan for coffee?
“Yeah.” I smile. “We’ll always have cheese shirts.”
“They should put that on a T-shirt,” he declares.
“I’d buy it,” I say.
We’re quiet for a few minutes.
“I wonder who spray painted the rocks,” I say. It hadn’t crossed my mind before.
“Someone very wise, I reckon.”
“You reckon, huh?” I laugh.
“That I do.”
I inhale Josh’s dirty T-shirt smell and burn it into my scent memory. I trace his lip with my finger to memorize the touch. I look at his eyes, and find the one fleck of gold in the brown. I close my eyes to save it all.
“Josh?” I finally say, my eyes changing focus from Josh’s face to the bug smush on the windshield.
“Yes, Lil?”
I take a deep breath, and slowly let my eyes adjust to the world beyond the bugs. “It’s time to open the doors.”
At the same time, Josh and I break open the seal of our summer and step out into our future.
A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK
An Imprint of Macmillan
DON’T STOP NOW. Copyright © 2011 by Julie Halpern. All rights reserved.
For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Halpern, Julie,
Don’t stop now / Julie Halpern.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Recent high school graduates Lil and Josh leave Illinois for Oregon seeking Lil’s sort-of friend Penny, who faked her own kidnapping to escape problems at home and an abusive boyfriend, but Lil also wants to find out if she and Josh are meant to be more than friends.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-6594-1
[1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Runaways—Fiction. 4. Automobile travel—Fiction. 5. Abused women—Fiction. 6. Family problems—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Do not stop now.
PZ7.H1666 Don 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010048406
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