Surprised?

by Nick Day

  “Sure, no problem,” Pete said, taking out his phone. “Destination: Dallas.”

  A warm June day bloomed all around us as we sped south through Illinois. Outside of Chicago, the land flattened and spread straight out to the horizon line. Without the tall buildings in the way, we could see to what looked like the ends of the earth, with only the occasional silo or suburban strip mall to block the view. The sun, free of clouds, shone down on the car, and into my eyes behind the wheel.

  For the first three hours of our trip, Pete snoozed openmouthed against the window. So much for keeping me entertained, I mused.

  But I didn’t hate having the time to reflect. I’ve never really left home, I realized. Sure, I’d traveled on trips with my mom, and with my high school choir, but that was kid stuff. And even Northwestern was practically in my backyard. My hour-long drive home was nothing compared to my friend Jae, who flew home to South Korea on holiday breaks. This was a whole new thing.

  Pete roused me from my meditation. “Whoa, what’s happening?” he stammered, still half asleep.

  “Wakey-wakey,” I said, smiling. “Welcome to southern Illinois.”

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” he said, blinking in the sunlight.

  “Exactly. Pretty cool, right?”

  He looked out at the landscape. “We got any more doughnuts?”

  I shook my head. “You only have yourself to blame for that one, dude.”

  I was waiting for Pete to say something sassy back, but instead he sat straight up and looked out his window, like a dog after a mail truck. “Wow, I woke up just in time!” he shouted.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, on edge.

  “Look!” He pointed to a shape in the distance. I squinted, unsure of what I was looking at . . . but then it dawned on me. We were closing in on the border of Missouri, which meant we were closing in on St. Louis, which meant we were closing in on the giant Gateway Arch! That was what we were looking at! It towered in the distance, a portal to the smack-dab middle of the country.

  “Whoa,” I whispered. It was even more majestic than in all the photos I’d seen. It looked like a huge chrome horseshoe, thrown down from space and stuck straight in the earth.

  “Want to take a break and go get some pictures?” Pete asked. The last time I’d seen him this happy was when the Northwestern football team almost beat Michigan State. (“Still, such an achievement!”)

  His enthusiasm worked on me. “I could use a break anyway,” I said.

  After fighting traffic in the city and searching desperately for parking, Pete and I finally found ourselves in front of the Gateway Arch—or, really, underneath it. We both stared upwards, craning our necks to get the full effect.

  “It looks like it just sort of disappears, doesn’t it?” Pete said, his eyes searching the sky. He was right. It was so tall that from where we stood, it looked like it never ended.

  I looked over at him. “Thanks for being here with me,” I said. Pete and I usually made jokes and teased each other, but that moment—standing in a place I’d never been, looking at a monument the whole world can recognize—softened me. It felt weird, being so . . . sentimental.

  “Stop saying that!” Pete laughed. “It’s not like I’m here just putting in community service hours or something.”

  I took out my phone and opened up Instagram. “Pics or it didn’t happen, right?” I joked. I held out the phone and Pete bent down close to me for a selfie. He put his arm around my waist as he ducked for the photo—his hand was warm from the sun, and I felt it through my thin cotton T-shirt. I shuddered as goosebumps raised on my skin, frigid from the car’s AC. I leaned into his hand, just a little bit.

  I snapped the photo. “We have to nail the hashtag,” Pete said. He was right.

  “We’ll workshop it in the car,” I said. We had a long way to go.

  By seven o’clock that night, we were about fifty miles from Springfield, Missouri, not far from the Oklahoma border. Both Pete and I were weary after a full day on the road. Empty McDonald’s bags were scattered around the front seat. Pete had taken over driving a few hours before, and from the way his skinny fingers gripped the steering wheel, he looked like he was fighting the urge to sleep.

  “I hate to be that guy,” Pete said, “but how much farther are we going today?”

  “We should stop in Springfield,” I said. “I wanted to get to Oklahoma, but that’s okay.”

  “Haha, ‘OK,’” Pete said, “get it?” I looked at him blankly. “Like, the initials of the state? . . . Yeah, I know, not my best.”

  “The master of the Dad Joke, Pete Carlson,” I said. He bowed his head.

  “Do you want me to take over driving?” I asked. He looked at me like a pathetic puppy dog. “Okay,” I said, winking.

  As I drove, I couldn’t help but feel a little distracted. My mind wandered back to Maria’s texts earlier in the day. Sara you can be friends and something ELSE ya know. My stomach tightened up in a tiny knot. That’s not what was going on between us. Right? The fun, easy banter Pete and I had in the car was the same we always had. The kinds of jokes best friends share. I was determined to keep my guard up. If anything changed between us—a weird look, a hug that went on too long—I’d call him on it. I was sure of it.

  Eventually SPRINGFIELD: NEXT EXIT appeared on a road sign, and I prepared to turn off the highway. “Hey, Mr. Sulu, want to find us a place to crash?”

  Pete had been zoning out, staring out the window, and my words startled him. “Sorry,” he said, “I was getting pretty close to finding Jesus out there.” He chuckled, and pulled out his phone. Seconds later, he had a place picked out—the Welcome Inn, whose website promised Affordable Rates and Flexible Dates, In One of America’s Greatest States!

  “I appreciate their modesty,” Pete said. “‘One of the greatest states.’ It’s hard to argue with that. I’d say Missouri might be in the top . . . twenty-five?”

  We pulled into the parking lot, which was populated by just a few cars. The motel was not large. It was just one story with maybe twelve rooms, which at the moment were all dark. “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” Pete said under his breath.

  Inside the shabby, fluorescent-lit lobby, we were greeted by a middle-aged woman wearing a worn-out T-shirt featuring a wolf howling at a big yellow moon. She seemed positively thrilled to see us. “Why, hi there!” she boomed.

  “Hey,” Pete and I said simultaneously.

  “Y’all been drivin’?” she asked, eager to start a conversation. I could only imagine how many hours she’d been sitting in here alone.

  “Yep, all day. We started today in Chicago,” I said.

  “Well I’ll be gol-danged—sorry, pardon my French—but my, that’s quite a long way! Y’all deserve a beauty rest then.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir,” Pete said, trying his hand at a down-home saying. The woman looked back at him somewhat blankly, and then asked a question I was not at all prepared to answer.

  “Single room, then?”

  I looked over at Pete, Maria’s texts rising in the back of my mind. I squelched them. Best friends could share a bedroom, no problem. This would be a breeze. “If you’re cool, I’m cool,” I said.

  Pete shrugged, not a note of tension or awkwardness in his face. “Totes.”

  Half an hour later, when Pete and I laid down next to each other in the king bed, I realized the only time I’d ever shared a bed with anyone had been with my mom, on our road trip to California a few years ago.

  But even though I was technically getting into bed with a boy, the situation didn’t feel entirely too different. I wished I could text Maria and fully describe how wrong she was about this situation, but I thought better of risking Pete looking at my phone. We got as comfortable as possible on the cheap, scratchy sheets. We settled into our far sides of the mattress, leaving a wide gulf between us.

  After scrolling through my phone for a while, perusing the various photos of Maria and her a cappella
group in California, I muttered, “My literal entire newsfeed is pictures of the Undertones.”

  Pete snickered on the other side of the bed. He put on an annoying hyper-girly voice and said, “Hashtag tones-tour!”

  Eventually my eyelids drooped and I turned off the light on my side of the bed. “Good night,” I said, smiling at Pete and pulling the covers up around my chin. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  He flashed his little gap-toothed smile. “Me too,” he said, switching off his light.

  “Night,” I said. I closed my eyes, and even though I felt dead tired, sleep did not come easily. Sights and sounds of my dad, and of my parents together, exploded around my mind. Each one flashed by too quickly for me to grab onto.

  Finally, one image of my dad settled and I lived inside of it. There he was, looking down at me, smiling, against a clear blue sky. His salt-and-pepper hair parted from left to right, his scruffy tan face spreading outward in his big goofy grin. “Good try, Sara,” he said in his deep baritone. “You left it all on the field. That’s the mark of a great athlete.” He tousled my hair, his big tough hands warm on my head.

  Where did that dad go? How did that dad become the dad who turned his back on us, carrying those two suitcases out to his truck, never to return? Maybe he was that dad all along—selfish, angry, bitter—but he hid it. He hid it so well that I actually managed to trust him. To love him. How different my life would be if he had had the decency to leave when I was an infant, or before I was even born. Instead I had to live with that image of him walking away, that image that made my head ache, made my eyes hot and dewy.

  Suddenly Pete let out a forceful burst of a snore. He was already asleep? How?! But he rolled over and quieted down. He looked peaceful.

  I didn’t remember falling asleep that night, but I guess I did, because when my alarm went off at seven-thirty, I sat straight up. It took a few panicked seconds to remember where in the world I was. My Wildcats T-shirt clung to me, damp with sweat. At some point during the night the cheap AC unit in the room had turned off. Then I realized I was sitting in the middle of the bed. I had edged toward Pete during the night. We weren’t more than six inches apart now, as he slumbered on, deaf to the alarm. He hadn’t noticed how close we’d gotten, and neither had I.

  THE DAY WAS OVERCAST AND MUGGY, PRESENTING nothing like the inviting landscape that had greeted us the day before. Pete started out behind the wheel, and for the first hour of the day we sat quietly, eating our unhealthy breakfast of sludgy coffee and plastic bowls full of dry Frosted Flakes from a gas station outside Joplin.

  We approached the Oklahoma border around ten, and as we got closer Pete perked up in the driver’s seat. “I love seeing places for the first time,” he said earnestly. “Don’t you?” A big blue sign came into view on our right-hand side. Oklahoma! Discover the Excellence, it screamed.

  “Oh, we will!” Pete shouted, honking the horn as we blew past the sign.

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Where is it?” I giggled. “I’m trying to discover it!”

  “I don’t know, that busted-up farmhouse over there is pretty excellent,” Pete said dryly.

  “Something tells me there’s more where that came from,” I said.

  “We’re being a little hard on Oklahoma,” Pete said. “I’m sure it’s . . . ” He winked at me, letting me finish the joke.

  “‘OK,’” I said. We both threw our heads back and cackled, and Pete honked the horn again giddily.

  I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. “Sorry,” I said, flustered. I pulled it out and looked at the name on the screen. “I’m gonna have to take this,” I said to Pete, “it’s my mom.”

  “No prob,” Pete said.

  I swiped right and put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Oh, Sara!” came my mom’s whimpering voice on the other end. “You’re there!”

  “What do you mean I’m there? Of course I’m here!”

  “I’ve called, I don’t know, six or eight times! You can’t blame me for worrying.”

  “Oh,” I said, startled. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere, I must have been in and out of cell service. What’s up?”

  “Well I didn’t hear from you at all yesterday,” she said admonishingly. “I felt like I deserved a little update today at least!”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I said. “We were having too much fun.” Pete smiled at me warmly.

  Mom asked me seemingly endless questions—where we were, what we’d been eating, if I had enough money, if we’d seen any sketchy activity on the way. It was one of those conversations where she asked almost constant questions—and asked them so quickly that I knew she wasn’t listening to the answers.

  There was one topic, of course, I really hoped we could avoid. And as we got closer to the half-hour mark of the conversation, I was pretty sure I’d get off scot-free. But then she asked, “So, where did you stay last night, anyway?”

  My stomach lurched. I looked over at Pete frantically, forgetting he couldn’t hear the question. What? he mouthed.

  “We found a cheap motel.” I ended the sentence firmly, hoping there wouldn’t be any other questions. But that was foolish.

  “Oh, goodness. Well, I wish you had told me, I could have counseled you out of that—or done some research online to find one near you where you wouldn’t get hepatitis!”

  “Oh, come on,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Neither Pete nor I are showing signs of hepatitis.”

  Pete’s eyes bulged and he nearly lost control of the wheel. “What the—” he started.

  I cut him off. “The motel was totally acceptable.” He understood what I was talking about and relaxed.

  “Separate rooms, I hope?” she asked. I could just hear her right eyebrow raise skeptically.

  “Duh,” I said, a little too quickly. There was a silence before she continued.

  “Well, good. Will you make it to your father’s by tonight, or should I be looking for a disease-free place for you?”

  “No, we’ll make it,” I said. “Anyway, Pete’s been driving awhile, I should take over—”

  “I understand,” she said. “I love you, Sara. And I am proud of you.”

  I smiled, a pit opening in my stomach. My heart broke for her. I pictured her sitting on that couch, the dogs at her feet, not thinking about anything other than me and my dad. “I love you too, Mom. Don’t worry too much about me, okay? I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “What was that about?” Pete asked as I ended the call. “She thinks we got hepatitis?”

  But before I could explain, my phone buzzed to life again. “Oh my God,” I said, ready to chuck my phone out the window. “What now?”

  It was Dad calling this time. It was that same Dallas area code that had started this whole thing off. I showed the phone to Pete.

  “Good luck,” he said sweetly. I knew he really meant it.

  I couldn’t believe my parents’ timing. Obviously, after all these years apart, they were still in sync in some ways. I took a deep breath and grew tense.

  “Hello?”

  “Sara, hi,” came my dad’s voice on the other end. His tone was brittle, like he had something he really needed to say.

  “Hey,” I said cautiously.

  “How far have you gotten? On your drive?”

  “We’re actually already into Oklahoma,” I said, smiling. “We’re making pretty good time!”

  “Ah,” he said darkly. “Well . . . ”

  “Well what?” I asked. Something was wrong.

  “The wedding’s off.”

  He said it quickly, just three words, in one breath, that totally knocked me sideways. I didn’t—couldn’t—say anything, for what felt like an eternity.

  “ . . . Hello?” Dad asked nervously. “You still there?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Um . . . ”

  “You can certainly still come if you want, honey, we’d love to have you. I’d love nothing more. Honestly.”

  “Uh, huh . . .
”

  “I really thought . . . ” he began, but he trickled off. Then there were just a few soft sniffles from the other end of the line. Oh great, I thought, now he’s crying.

  I glanced over at Pete and mouthed “wedding,” and sliced an invisible dagger across my neck. His eyes opened wide and he couldn’t stop himself from bellowing, “What?!”

  “Who was that?” Dad asked.

  “Oh, that’s Pete. My friend Pete. He’s the one driving with me.”

  “He’s your boyfr—”

  “No!” I shouted, blushing. “He’s just . . . we’re just friends.” Pete knew from my answer what my dad asked. He grinned, looking out at the open road. I wanted to die. What else could possibly go wrong?

  “Well,” I began. “I’m not sure what to say.”

  “I know. Me neither, honestly,” Dad said softly. I surprised myself then. I actually felt sad for him, somehow. I couldn’t bring myself to ask, but it seemed like he hadn’t been the one to call the wedding off.

  “I’m not mad,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Really. I just . . . Pete and I are gonna have to discuss, okay?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” Dad said. He sounded hopeful.

  “If we decide to keep driving, though,” I said, “we’ll be there by tonight. Is that too soon?”

  “Not at all,” he said warmly. “We’d love to have you guys anytime.”

  “Okay then,” I said. I didn’t have much else to say. How was I going to wrap this up? “Sorry . . . about your wedding.” Oof.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll talk to you soon, then.”

  “Okay.”

  I hung up, and dropped the phone into my lap. I didn’t need to tell Pete anything. He had practically heard the whole conversation. The same question I’d been asking myself for days came up again. What were we going to do?

  The waitress practically slammed the ceramic plates, piled high with pancakes, eggs, bacon, and biscuits, down onto the greasy tabletop. Pete and I had decided to reward ourselves with a long lunch at a roadside diner. I drowned the entire plate in syrup—something I’ve done since I can remember—and tore away at it with my knife and fork.