by Jeff Zentner
I’m reverberating with so many different emotions; they echo inside me like sound in a cavern, blurring into each other until I can’t distinguish them. Fear. Hope. Love. Anxiety. Sadness. Anticipation. Some I can’t name. Maybe there’s a great German word for them.
You don’t always know at the time when you’re experiencing one of those random memories you’ll carry all your life. When nothing momentous happened other than driving a little too fast in the direction of Florida, at dusk, with your best friend by your side and, at your back, a guy who’s really good at kissing you. Still, you remember it until the day you die.
But this time I know.
Hour Three
The volume of the music has inched slowly downward as conversation has overtaken it.
“Okay, so would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or fifty duck-sized horses?” Lawson asks, sticking his head between our seats.
“You got that question from the internet,” I say.
“So? It’s still a valid question.”
“I could sense you mining the deepest reaches of your mind for something weird enough for us to be interested in talking about,” Josie says.
“I’m trying to keep up here.”
Josie pulls his head onto her shoulder and nuzzles it. “Awww.”
It’s sweet how hard he tries. I’m fine with people who love uninteresting stuff as long as they go in for interesting stuff too. Plus, he and Josie are good at not making me feel like a third wheel.
“So?” Lawson says.
“Obviously the fifty duck-sized horses,” Josie says.
“Same,” I say.
“Why?” Lawson asks.
“Well, a goose is a goose-sized duck, so—” Josie starts.
“No, it isn’t,” Lawson says. “A goose is a goose, and a duck is a duck.”
“They’re both birds that make honk noises and live in the water. They’re both ducks. Geese are just big ducks.”
“Is this like how basset hounds are grown-up beagles?” Lawson asks.
“No, that’s stupid and weird.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, geese are goose-sized ducks and they’re really mean and scary, so a horse-sized duck would be terrifying.”
“You know what a horse-sized duck is?” I say. “A dinosaur. That’s what. I’m not fighting a dinosaur.”
“Duck-sized horses are basically squirrels,” Josie says.
Lawson shakes his head. “What?! No. Chihuahuas, at least.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I’ll fight fifty Chihuahuas. What do you pick?”
“Horse-sized duck.”
“Come on,” I say.
“For real. I could use my striking skills to keep it at a distance and wear it down. But those skills aren’t as useful against fifty opponents. Plus, I’m not scared of a duck bite. It’s not like they have huge teeth.”
“I’d say the winner of this debate is the God of Death, who’s now several minutes closer to claiming all of us,” I say.
Hour Four
Lawson’s taken over driving. I’m in the back seat. Beyoncé sing-along, as promised. Lawson is a good sport as he sings (badly) along (a bit behind us). Gas station nachos, as promised. We pass Chattanooga. None of us have ever been to Rock City. But we all think it sounds fun. Josie and I watch makeup tutorial videos on Dollywould on our phones until Josie gets carsick.
Hour Five
We’ve just gotten done talking about which celebrities we would eat and why, if we were shipwrecked with them. Josie and I watch a YouTube video of a girl listening to “All Star” by Smash Mouth and taking a bite of onion every time the song says “star.” Then we watch a video of a dude singing “All Star” but one beat behind the rhythm.
Josie takes a sip of the drink she bought at our last gas stop because it had a hilarious name—Dr. Fizz. “This honestly tastes like at the factory where they make garbage generic sodas. At the end of each day, when they clean out the pipes or whatever, it all goes into the Dr. Fizz vat.”
“I can only imagine. Even Dr Pepper tastes like everything. Like literally every flavor known to man,” I say.
“I am not enjoying this,” Josie says. “And yet I can’t stop drinking it.”
“Sometimes you have to see a generic soda through to the end,” I say.
Josie takes another sip and winces. “What’s weird to think about is how there’s probably someone in this world who’s rich because of Dr. Fizz.”
“Oh, I know! Like how there’s someone who probably drives a Lexus because they own a candy-corn company,” I say.
“A candy-corn magnate!”
“A monocle-wearing candy-corn magnate!”
Josie hands me her bottle for a sip. “You gotta. So you don’t die never having tried Dr. Fizz.”
“Shouldn’t one of you be sleeping so you can drive next?” Lawson asks, still behind the wheel.
We laugh and repeat back ‘Shouldn’t one of you be sleeping so you can drive next?’ in mocking, high-pitched voices.
Lawson grins and shakes his head but bears our torment with stoicism. This ability, more than anything else, gives me faith in his future with Josie.
Hour Six
“No, but listen,” Josie says.
“Uh-oh. When Josie says ‘No, but listen,’ that’s always trouble,” I say.
“I’m just saying, it’s sweet how humans are animals too, but we wear clothes and drive cars. We’re like dogs in sweaters and chimps in tuxedos.”
Josie seems nervous about something. When she is, she talks a lot about nothing. I probably seem jittery too. I am.
But the thing with a best friend is that you’re never talking about nothing. Even when you’re talking about nothing, it’s something. The times when you think you’re talking about nothing, you’re actually talking about how you have someone with whom you can talk about nothing, and it’s fine.
We pass Atlanta. At this hour, the traffic is light. The air gets heavier and thicker as we travel south. More lush and tropical. The landscape changes. Dense forests of towering, ruler-straight pine trees line the highway like the world is raising thousands of index fingers with a good idea.
It makes me wonder how Dad got to Florida. Maybe he drove this route. Maybe he had a heaviness in his heart to match the weight of the air. Or maybe his heart skimmed the tops of the pines. I wonder if it felt like he was shedding something as the miles fell away beneath his feet. Like he was pulling off a jacket that never really fit him.
This is, as far as I know, the closest I’ve been to my dad in ten years. Every minute brings me closer.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do about that.
Hour Seven and a Half
We stop at a gas station outside Vienna, Georgia. Delia and I run in to pee. Lawson gases up my car. I beat Delia back out. Lawson has moved my car away from the pumps and is leaning against it. He smiles as I approach.
I stop short of him. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he says.
“I’m tired.”
“Me too.”
I close my eyes and pretend-snore, falling toward him, knowing he’ll catch me. He does, dipping me like we’re dancing. I give a quick yip of a laugh. It’s louder than I expect over the distant ocean-wave wash of cars on the highway behind us and the riot of crickets, cicadas, and frogs—the only sounds at the sleepy gas station.
I genuinely want to fall asleep in his arms, but even more than that, I want him to kiss me, and he does as he pulls me back upright.
Being alone with him for this brief moment feels like going to the freezer and eating only one spoonful of ice cream.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say.
&nbs
p; He kisses me. “Hey.”
“I like you,” I say.
“I like you.”
“I’m glad you came.”
“I’m glad you came.”
“Stop copying me,” I say, resting my head on his chest.
“Stop copying me.” He interlaces his fingers on my lower back.
“My name is Lawson Vargas, and I believe that changing your underwear gives you the flu.”
“My name is Lawson Vargas, and I believe that changing your underwear gives you the flu.”
“I have a hot, genius girlfriend,” I murmur.
“I have a hot, genius girlfriend,” he says. I can sense his face opening into a radiant, triumphant grin. “I love it when you call yourself my girlfriend.”
“You lose.”
“Do I? Oh no. I hate losing.” He puts two fingers under my chin and gently lifts my head, and we kiss for a couple of seconds.
I rest my head back on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It’s strong and a little faster than I would have expected. His T-shirt smells like dryer sheets. It’s a welcome, comfortable, and safe smell. For the last few hours, I’ve felt like my future is a tiny, hard planet deep in my chest, its gravity pulling every thought into its orbit.
Lawson reads my mind. “I really hope this trip is a success for you guys,” he murmurs into the crown of my head.
“Me too.” You have no idea how much I hope that, you beautiful new complication, you.
He rests his lips in my hair, and we listen to the summer night’s symphony until Delia finally returns.
Hour Eight
“Why did I not listen to Arliss?” I moan.
“How did drinking something called Cobra Venomm Energy Infuzion—spelled with two ms and a z—seem like a wise plan?” Josie asks.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. I can feel my hair. Like each individual hair, I can feel. This is meth in a little plastic bottle.” I drum my feet on the floorboards, pound on the steering wheel, and throw my head back and howl, “Wooooooooo!”
“We should pull over and get her a branch or something to chew on,” Lawson says.
“Let’s talk about something. Anything. My brain is going bananas,” I say.
“Uh,” Josie says.
“Uh,” Lawson says.
“Come on,” I say.
“It’s hard to think of something to talk about on the spot! And also, it’s like four a.m. and none of us have had more than an hour of sleep.”
“Let’s list words we hate!” My mind feels like it’s in a blender. “Puberty! Fungus! Gumption!”
Josie fumbles around. “Uh…squish, mucus, spork.”
“Go, Lawson!” I shout.
“Uh.”
“Okay, new game. I’m tired of this one,” I say. “What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done? Josie, go!”
“DeeDee, my brain is moving at like one-eighth the pace of yours right now. I gotta think. Come back to me.”
“Lawson! Go!”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” But it’s an I don’t know if I should say, not an I don’t know what to say.
“Come on, Lawson.”
“Do it,” Josie says.
“Maybe another time.”
“No time like the present!” I say. I start chanting, “Lawson, Lawson, Lawson.” Josie joins me.
“It’ll sound stupid.”
“No, it won’t,” Josie says.
Lawson doesn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, and then gives a rueful-sounding laugh. A surrender. “Y’all really wanna hear this?”
“Yes!” we shout in unison.
He turns down the music. “Um. Okay. I guess I was eight or nine. My mom had this, like, porcelain cat. She got it from her dad. I guess it had gotten passed down, like an heirloom or something. Anyway, I liked it because it was old and kinda cool and special. So I ask my mom if I can take it to show-and-tell at school. She doesn’t want to let me, but I beg and beg and finally she says okay. I take it to show-and-tell, and I’m super excited.
“School lets out and I’m walking home. I have the cat in my backpack, and I run into this group of sixth graders who loved to pick on me. I mean, they picked on everyone smaller than them, but I guess I was convenient. Anyway, they chase me and catch me and push me down and pull off my backpack and start kicking it like a soccer ball. I’m crying and screaming and telling them not to because they’ll break the cat. They don’t care. They open the backpack and sure enough, it’s busted up. They laugh and start meowing.
“I pick up the pieces and put them back in my bag and walk home. When I get there—”
Lawson pauses for a second. It’s silent in the car. He clears his throat and again laughs a little. Like he’s covering something. “When I get there, I pull the broken pieces of the cat out of my backpack and show my mom. All my brothers were there. Asking me why I didn’t fight back better or run faster. My mom tried to act like it was okay, but I could see it wasn’t. Her face. Anyway. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Telling my mom I’d let her down. In the exact way she was afraid of.”
You know how they say something is a buzzkill? This story was that in the most real sense. But it was exactly what I needed. “Wow.”
“Geez,” Josie murmurs.
“Yeah. Anyway,” Lawson says.
“You should look them up. See if they’re available for a rematch,” I say.
Lawson tries to sound cheery. “Hey! That’s an idea. I should do that.”
“Because now you’re really good at fighting,” I say.
“No, yeah, I got it.”
We drive on for a couple more moments.
“Your turn, JoJo,” I say.
“Oh, great.”
“You still don’t have yours?”
“No, I do.”
“Well, then.”
“It sucks compared to Lawson’s.”
“Not a contest.”
“All right. So this one time I had to go pee in a port-a-pot and I was wearing a one-piece romper.”
Hour Nine and a Half
Delia’s gone eerily quiet. I don’t know if it’s the Cobra Venomm wearing off, exhaustion, anticipation over meeting Divine, or something else entirely. She’s staring out the window almost purposefully. Like she’s looking for something. Or someone.
“You okay, DeeDeeBoo?” I ask softly.
It’s a moment before she answers. “I’m good. You good?”
“Yeah. My ass is crying out for mercy. Any time in our lives when we were not in this Kia Rio is but a distant memory.”
“We have always lived in this Kia Rio.”
Hour Ten
Dawn is breaking, and we can finally make out the Florida landscape. I thought it would look a lot more tropical and exotic. More palm trees and parrots. It looks disappointingly like west Tennessee. Endless miles of green foliage cut through with blacktop highway. Rows of pine trees. Lots of pickup trucks with Confederate flags.
I wonder if this disappointed my dad too, or if he accepted the reminder as some sort of penance.
Hour Twelve and Forty-Seven Minutes
We arrive at the Convention Center Days Inn. We check in, set an alarm for two hours, and fall on top of the beds without even taking our shoes off. I plummet into a dreamless sleep.
We buy our tickets and enter the convention center. It’s a buzzing hive of nerdery. Dude cosplayers as Freddy, Jason, Pinhead, Michael Myers, Heath Ledger’s Joker, the Babadook, Leatherface, White Walkers, Daryl Dixon, Beetlejuice, lots of generically creepy clowns, and zombies. Girl cosplayers as Samara from The Ring, Harley Quinn, SkeleTonya, Ripley, Wednesday and Morticia Addams, Lily Munster, Eleven and Barb from Stranger Things,
Lydia Deetz, Buffy, and creepy clowns and zombies.
There are also these guys and girls called sliders, who wear kneepads, metal caps on the toes of their shoes, and gloves with metal plates on the palms and fingers and take running starts and slide on their knees and bellies on the convention center floor. There don’t seem to be any standards as to what constitutes good or skilled sliding, so it’s sort of like watching kids sliding in their socks on a newly waxed floor. But they look like they’re having fun.
Booths sell masks; busts; DVDs; posters; comics; bobbleheads; Funko Pops; jewelry; homemade perfumes, soaps, and candles with labels in Papyrus font; intricately decorated replicas of human skulls; custom Ouija boards; makings for spells; knives and swords; corsets; animal bones; taxidermy; vintage toys, lunch boxes, and medical instruments; pulp paperbacks; and art prints.
Long, snaking lines of people await pictures and autographs from cast members of The Walking Dead, Buffy, Penny Dreadful, and American Horror Story. There’s a joyous, childlike, infectious air of good-natured goofiness all around. I’ve seen no fewer than three Jack Skellington tattoos.
Delia seems more in her element than I’ve ever seen her. She’s taking it all in with the broad smile and buoyant wonder of someone who suddenly feels a lot less alone, who sees new possibility in who she is. It makes me happy. She points out people who had bit parts in obscure grindhouse flicks, other horror hosts, directors, writers, and artists. I didn’t grasp the depth and breadth of her knowledge. She must spend close to every minute we’re apart acquiring more arcana.
The thing is, I don’t feel like I quite fit in. Even though lord knows I’ve seen my fair share of awful horror movies. Even though I’ve devoted hours of my life every week to horror hosting. Somehow I feel like I’m watching people through glass.
Delia and I are costumed and made up as Delilah and Rayne. I actually feel more comfortable dressed this way here than in my normal clothes. Lawson appears to have gone (hilariously and adorably) with his best notion of bodyguard chic: a black T-shirt, black jeans, and black Vans. All he’s missing is sunglasses and an earpiece. He’s taking his role very seriously—hovering behind us, silent, stoic, and on high alert for any threat.