‘But that’s weird, right?’ she says.
‘Weird that Eddie lied to protect us? No.’
‘Not that,’ she says, grabbing a few waters from the refrigerated shelves. ‘Isn’t it weird that you’re the only one who hasn’t seen the truck?’
When she puts it that way, yes. It’s a little weird, but I haven’t seen it.
Maybe because I’m too busy looking for someone else.
‘I’ve probably been sleeping at the wrong times,’ I say to her. ‘That’s why I’ve missed it.’
‘Maybe.’
As soon as I have a chance, I send Eddie a text.
How well do you know your wife?
Is that mean? Maybe a little.
That’s the thing about siblings. There’s always a payback for something they did, no matter how old it may be. And Eddie has done a few things.
We get back on the road and Eddie glares at me in the rearview mirror. I ignore him. If he lied to me, he deserved that text. If his wife lied, he needs that text. Either way, I’m right.
He knows I was right last time, too. I was right about Grandpa.
It came to me all at once, like lightning had struck my brain. Not long after we saw Grandpa’s cell phone and all those missed calls from our parents, I turned to Eddie and said, ‘We aren’t supposed to be here.’
It was late at night. We were all crammed into another motel room and everyone was asleep except Eddie and me.
‘We aren’t supposed to be where?’ Eddie said.
‘On this trip. With Grandpa.’
‘Why wouldn’t we be?’
I leaned in close and whispered faster. ‘Why else is he lying about having a phone? Why are Mom and Dad calling so much?’
‘Because they worry about everything.’
‘And,’ I said, ‘he never leaves us alone. Never.’ I pointed to Grandpa’s cot. He always set it up in front of the door.
‘That’s so no one can get in,’ he said.
‘Or out.’
‘You’re crazy. You sound just like –’
‘Haven’t you heard the way Mom sounds like she’s about to scream every time we talk to her?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I guess.’
I didn’t convince Eddie that night. It took a while for him to even consider that our grandfather had just taken us. To be honest, I never would’ve considered it if it hadn’t been for Grandma.
She died about six months before the trip. Ever since then, we saw Grandpa all the time. Sometimes he was at our house when we got home from school. He stayed late into the night, to the point where Mom and Dad started whispering about who would tell him to leave. Once in a while he slept in the attic room above mine. I’d hear him scream in the middle of the night, but they weren’t scary screams. It didn’t sound like he was screaming at someone; it sounded like he was having nightmares. A couple of times I heard him yell our Grandma’s name. He wasn’t taking her death well.
Every time I think about that, I have to force myself to stop. So I pick up my phone, open Instagram, and check up on him. He keeps me focused on what I really want, and why I’m really here. The rest is just noise. It always has been.
Kansas
State Motto: To the stars through adversity
Kansas is big and flat, or at least it feels that way. The hills are few and far between, so are the towns and the people, and it feels like we’re driving in a loop.
‘Did you know Dodge City is called the Queen of Cowtowns?’ Felix says, reading from his phone.
‘I did not,’ Eddie says.
‘Why would I know that?’ Krista says.
‘This says it’s the quintessential Old West town,’ Felix says.
In the back seat, Portia is turned away from us. She’s staring out the back window, phone in hand, waiting to catch that truck. ‘The only thing I remember is the museum,’ she says.
That’s where we’re headed. The museum.
‘The Boot Hill Museum?’ Felix says, still reading off the site.
Not that one.
I tap Felix on the arm, nodding to his phone. ‘Don’t. Just don’t.’
He doesn’t look happy as he puts it away.
‘Krista,’ I say.
She turns, her face half-covered by one of Eddie’s baseball caps. The sun is strong in Kansas. ‘Yeah?’
‘I just realized you’re the newest one to the family and we haven’t played the Twelve with you.’
‘Oh my God, I forgot about that,’ Portia says. She’s still facing backward, watching the road.
Eddie says, ‘Oh shit, Beth’s right. Everyone has to play.’
‘Oh shit?’ Krista says.
‘It’s just a question game,’ Felix says.
I nod and smile. ‘So we can get to know you.’
Krista’s shoulders sink a little as she relaxes. ‘Oh. Okay.’
Felix opens his laptop and pulls up a Word document. Answers to the twelve questions are documented, preserved for all time, just in case they come back to bite you. That usually happens during the holidays.
The first five questions are easy. Where were you born? Brothers and sisters? Do you have any kids? Where did you go to school? What do you do for a living? Krista answers them without hesitation.
The next five aren’t as simple.
‘Three words to describe your personality,’ I say.
‘Outgoing,’ Krista says, stating the obvious. ‘Kindhearted aaaand … fun. I’m pretty fun.’
‘You are,’ Eddie says.
‘I’m gagging back here,’ Portia yells.
‘Next,’ I say. ‘Three words to describe your mother’s personality.’
Krista looks surprised. The question surprises everyone, and it’s a hundred times more revealing than the previous one.
‘Okay …’ she says. ‘My mom is sweet, complicated, and a deep thinker.’
‘Now your father.’
‘Funny, successful, a big softie.’
That tells us a lot.
‘Next, what job would you hate to have?’ I say.
‘Ummm … I’d hate to be a fisherman. I don’t want to smell like fish all the time.’
‘Good answer,’ Eddie says.
‘If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?’ I say.
‘I’d like to be more patient. I’m not very good at waiting.’
Eddie laughs and then shuts up quick. We aren’t supposed to comment on the answers because the Twelve is a serious game. Grandpa taught it to us.
We learned it before the road trip. Uncle Stephen, our father’s brother, got engaged to a woman named Ella and they both came to our house for dinner. Grandpa was there and we learned about the game.
Ella was very pretty. She had shiny red hair and wore a black velvet jacket that looked so soft I wanted to lie on top of it. One by one, she answered Grandpa’s questions. Ella didn’t get upset, didn’t look shocked. She kept her cool the whole time. That’s how it seemed to me, though perhaps I’m remembering it wrong. What I do remember is that Grandpa didn’t like her.
‘Won’t last,’ he said later.
He was wrong for five years, then he was right.
On the road trip, he made all of us play. We already knew the questions, even Portia, so none were a surprise. I still have the spiral notebook with all of our answers, though I haven’t looked at it in a long time.
As an adult, I learned Grandpa didn’t invent the game. One day I was doing something random on the Internet, and there it was. The same questions in the same order, with one difference: The real game was called the Ten. Grandpa had added the last two.
‘Question eleven,’ I say to Krista. ‘If you could kill one person, who would it be?’
She gasps. ‘Are you serious?’
‘It’s just a question.’
This one takes her longer to answer than the first ten combined.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘In high school, there was this guy. Jeff Skilling. A real ass
hole, like, the king of all the other assholes. He went out with this girl for a few months and when they broke up, he put these embarrassing pictures of her on the Internet. The worst kind of embarrassing. Sexual things.’ Krista pauses, then nods her head once. ‘Him. I’d kill Jeff Skilling.’
No one says anything. I would bet my entire inheritance that we’re all thinking the same thing: Krista has to be the girl in the story.
‘Last question,’ I say. ‘How would you kill him?’
‘I’d shoot him.’ No hesitation.
We all stare at her, a little stunned.
‘Well, that’s violent,’ Eddie says.
Krista smiles. ‘My dad taught me and I wouldn’t miss.’
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Those are the twelve questions.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Did I pass?’
Eddie smiles at her. ‘Of course.’
Felix closes the file called Krista: The Twelve. Honestly, it’s only necessary for the first ten questions. Everyone remembers the answers to the last two. I still remember ours.
Our first road trip was in August, and the heat was stifling inside and out – much hotter than it is now, in September. By the time we got to the questions, I was paranoid about my own grandfather, who still alternated between adventurous and angry. Portia had been cooped up too long and was driving everyone crazy. When Grandpa got to the question about who we would kill, Eddie answered first.
He wanted to kill a friend of his who was rich and had all the new gadgets and bragged about it. Andy Fastow had everything and made fun of people who didn’t.
‘I’d shoot him,’ Eddie said.
Portia wanted to kill her teacher, who made her first-grade class do all sorts of boring things and they never got to have any fun.
‘I guess I’d shoot her, too. Like Eddie,’ she said.
When it was my turn, I said I’d kill the guy who shot up the school in the next county over. He was just a kid like me, but he deserved to die.
‘I’d give him a bunch of sleeping pills,’ I said. ‘He’d just die in his sleep, never knowing he wouldn’t wake up.’
I still think that’s the best way to kill someone. No sense in making a bloody mess.
MONDAY, NO IDEA WHAT THE DATE IS. DOESN’T MATTER.
What is your favorite memory?
Before Grandma got sick, we used to go out to lunch on her birthday. All the girls, Mom would say. We all got dressed up and wore big hats, like church hats, and even lacy gloves. I hated it at first, because all we did was sit around in the sun and eat tiny sandwiches while Grandma talked. It was her day, Mom used to say. After a few years, I started saying the same thing.
I don’t know when that changed. I just remember that her stories were actually pretty interesting so I stopped pretending they weren’t.
The last birthday we had was over a year ago, right before the doctor said she was sick. I wore this light green dress with a giant matching hat. It was a costume, just like Grandma wore. Now I know that. Back then I thought we were just dressing up. Grandma wasn’t. She was playing a part.
I didn’t know that. Not until I learned that all those great things Grandma used to say about Grandpa were lies. When the truth came out, she wasn’t all dressed up in a hat and fancy clothes.
She was lying in bed, too thin, too pale, and too sick to worry about what she was wearing or how she looked. Cancer was making her waste away, and it was like whatever energy she had left all went to telling the truth about Grandpa.
‘No way,’ Felix says.
Eddie smiles. ‘Way.’
We’re at the Gunfighters Wax Museum in Dodge City, which is conveniently located in the same building as the Kansas Teachers Hall of Fame. The building, the sign, everything about it screams the 1960s.
‘This is where your grandfather brought you?’ Felix says.
Krista is so annoyed. ‘What was wrong with him? Why would he do that?’
‘Same reason they’re here,’ I say, nodding to the people coming out of the museum. More than one family and lots of children are here today. ‘Everybody loves death.’ ‘And teachers,’ Eddie says.
Portia waves at us from the car. ‘I’ll stay out here and rest my ankle.’
That ankle has become an excuse for Portia to skip anything she doesn’t want to do. Either that or the damn thing is really broken. I don’t call her on it, though. Arguing about every little thing is what makes people hate you, especially when it comes to family. They’re the least forgiving of all.
Inside the museum, a helpful woman sells us two-for-one tickets to both museums, beginning with the Teachers Hall of Fame. Grandpa had skipped that. He said we could learn about school when we were in school, but not when we were on vacation.
‘School’s overrated anyway,’ he said.
‘Did you even graduate?’ I said. Rude? Sure, but I was a kid. This kind of brutal honesty is supposed to be funny.
Grandpa didn’t think so. He pounded his fist against the hood of the van. ‘How did you turn out to be such a little shit?’
I stepped back, away from his hands, and I shrugged. Probably would answer the same way today.
This time we walk through the teachers museum before heading upstairs to see the gunslingers. None of us have any kids, let alone any old enough to be in school, but we do it anyway.
Upstairs we find Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Calamity Jane – they’re all preserved here in Dodge City, staged in vignettes of the Old West. The old wax figures look more like mannequins than people. They scared the hell out of me when I was twelve.
So did the head of someone I’d never heard of. That’s the display: a severed head still bloody at the neck. Now it’s not scary at all.
‘Okay,’ Felix says, snapping a picture on his phone. ‘This is pretty cool.’
‘You mean, this is pretty creepy,’ Krista says. ‘Your grandfather was obsessed with violence, wasn’t he?’
Eddie and I exchange a look.
‘Maybe,’ he says.
I shrug. ‘Possibly.’
Definitely.
The most bizarre part of the museum is Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman, who appear without explanation. Twenty years ago, they made Portia cry. I can still see her running away, sobbing, and Grandpa chasing after her. Too bad we didn’t have camera phones then.
No one cries today. We only laugh at how crazy it all is, but I have to admit it’s entertaining.
When we’re finally done and go back outside, Portia is leaning against the back of our car, scrolling through her phone with one hand and holding a gigantic soda cup in the other.
‘Anything?’ Krista says.
‘Nope.’
Neither of them mentions the truck everyone is looking for but hasn’t seen. Not today.
Dinner is at a barbecue joint, because barbecue is the only appropriate food to eat when you’re in the Queen of Cowtowns. We go to a hokey place with a plastic cow hanging from the ceiling and faded gingham curtains. Our waitress wears a Betty Sue name tag and I’m 100 percent sure it’s fake.
‘I’ve gained weight,’ Portia says. ‘My shorts are getting tight, so we have to stop eating this crappy food.’
‘It’s been less than a week. You aren’t gaining weight, you’re retaining water,’ I say.
She ignores me. ‘Tomorrow I’ll find a place for us to eat salads with vegetables instead of fried meat.’
‘That sounds great,’ I say.
‘I’m serious,’ Portia says.
‘Oh, I know.’
Krista is the only one who doesn’t laugh. Her mood, which had started out pretty good today, has deteriorated ever since the museum. This is not the road trip of her dreams.
‘Just tell me,’ she says. ‘Are we going to stop at every creepy, violent attraction along the way?’
‘Not every one,’ Eddie says.
‘But there are more,’ she says, burying her head in her hands
. ‘This is the weirdest road trip ever.’
She’s right, it is, and that’s not even including Grandpa’s ashes.
‘You don’t have to be here,’ Eddie says to Krista. ‘You can fly home. Enjoy yourself while we finish this trip.’
She lifts her head, staring at Eddie like she forgot that part. Krista isn’t really a part of the trip. ‘That’s true,’ she says.
‘You should just go,’ I say. ‘Why force yourself to be miserable?’
Her eyes brighten a bit. ‘I mean, we’re probably halfway done anyway, right?’
‘Something like that,’ I say.
She wants to go. Eddie lives in a nice house on the beach. It’s the same one he lived in with Tracy and now with Krista. It’s modern, with clean lines and lots of windows facing the gulf. With a new wife and an expensive house like that, it’s no wonder Eddie needs this inheritance.
‘It probably wouldn’t be a big deal to drop me off at an airport, would it?’ Krista says.
‘Not at all,’ Eddie says. The idea is gaining traction for her, and for him. He’s starting to look relieved she might be gone soon. ‘It’s barely a detour.’
Lie.
I say nothing. It’s better if Krista gets home as quickly as possible. Whining never helped anything, and she’s been doing it a lot.
Eddie turns to Felix. ‘You could go, too. No reason for you to traipse around the country like this, either.’
‘Yeah,’ Felix says. ‘But I wouldn’t feel right about it, not with that truck following us. I’d probably just worry.’
Krista’s face changes. She’s remembered the pickup.
I could kick Eddie. And Felix.
‘I forgot about that,’ Krista says. ‘If I left, I’d just sit around wondering if you guys were okay.’ She turns to Eddie. ‘I’d probably be calling you all the time, driving you crazy.’
He sees his mistake. Swallows hard. ‘You wouldn’t have to do that. We’ll be fine.’
‘No, no. I’ll stay,’ Krista says, looking like she’d rather do the opposite. ‘I should stay.’
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