Today I put on my nicest vintage summer frock (the green one with the daisies) and went to Arlington National Cemetery and left some flowers on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s grave (because she is one of my all-time top style icons). Then I had a manicure and pedicure (for the bargain price of twenty-five dollars!) and now I’m sipping an iced mochachino and reading your latest email.
Dylan’s fine. He’s doing the art boy thing today and I’m sure he’s secretly relieved that I’m not with him making stupid comments like, ‘Picasso was a bit rubbish at drawing hands wasn’t he?’
I wish Poppy would stop being mad at me. Maybe she’ll start getting over it soon. But don’t take any crap from her. You’re a great guitarist, you just need to practise more. So go practise!
Missing you
Edie xxx
I admired my newly red-tipped toes as I aimlessly wandered back to the hotel. The weird thing was that spending the day apart from Dylan made me realise how much I noticed when he wasn’t there. I was really looking forward to seeing him. And instead of making polite conversation about where we were going to have lunch, I had proper news to tell him, even if it was about putting a bunch of mixed blooms on some dead president’s dead wife’s grave.
As I walked down the long veranda to our room, I saw Dylan waiting for me. He waved and started walking towards me. He was the most welcoming, exciting thing in this strange place; I couldn’t help it. I broke into a run and launched myself at him.
Dylan laughed as he picked me up and swung me round.
‘Hey you,’ he said teasingly.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face into his shoulder. He smelt hot and lemony. He smelt like Dylan.
‘I missed you,’ I said throatily.
Dylan was making no move to put me on my feet and I clung on tighter. He backed me up against the wall and took my mouth in a hot, hungry kiss.
‘I. Missed. You,’ he breathed in between kisses. He was holding me up with his body and there didn’t seem to be a millimetre of him that wasn’t pressed against me.
I twined my fingers in his hair as Dylan explored my neck, tracing the pulse that pounded there with the tip of his tongue. It was when I shifted restlessly and wound my legs around him that Dylan gave a groan, and still carrying me, staggered to the open door of our room.
He managed to make it to the bed before letting go of me and then jumped on top of me, making me giggle as he planted slurpy kisses on my shoulders and pushed the straps of my dress out of the way.
‘One more minute and we’d have got arrested,’ he said.
I rolled over and pinned him down. ‘Shut up and kiss me,’ I growled.
I think we’d better fade out to black now.
Chicago
1st August
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
DISCLAIMER: THIS EMAIL IS GOING TO DOUBLE UP AS MY DIARY SO IGNORE ANY OF THE BITS THAT GET TOO INTROSPECTIVE OR BANG ON ABOUT ‘FEELINGS’.
Hey you. Sorry I haven’t written in ages. You really haven’t seen America until you’ve seen it from the passenger window of a 1993 Chrysler with rust patches that match the bronze paint job and tan leather interior trim.
We’ve been on the road for a fortnight now. We’re into this strange Zen-like rhythm where our entire world is contained inside a car. I was a bit worried about D having to do so much driving but he loves it. He’s getting to fulfil all his Jack Kerouac fantasies, although one night we were way behind schedule (the schedule is God!) and he nearly fell asleep at the wheel. We had to pull over and Dylan had a nap on the back seat while I stayed wide awake and tried to forget about all those stupid urban myths about crazed serial killers with hooks for hands roaming the highways looking for nice, ripe girls and then removing the entrails from their bodies.
So maybe you want to know about the places we’ve been. I’ll try not to make it seem like a boring travelogue.
Gettysburg: Lots of mind-numbing Civil War stuff.
Niagara Falls: Very big waterfall.
Toronto: yup, Toronto, Canada! Good shops and friendly people – with very nasal accents.
Detroit: Or Detroit Rock City, as Dylan insisted on calling it. Lots of car museums.
Chicago: Where we are right now.
In between the big cities we’ve stopped at little towns just off the freeway. They’re all pretty much the same actually. You can’t really walk anywhere, because there’s just one big main strip, usually with a drive thru Maccy D’s, a car showroom and a Pentecostal church. We have discovered Denny’s, a fantastic diner chain that’s very Fifties looking. It’s like Little Chef meets the diner in Happy Days. Dylan eats one of their Lumberjack Slam breakfasts every day and they do this Root Beer Float which completely proves, once and for all, that God really does exist! I have to force-feed Dylan fruit while we’re in the car otherwise he’d get rickets.
Dylan and I are getting on fine. I didn’t really say much before but we were so unfine the first week we were here. Lots of heavy-duty fighting and in-car sniping so I was beginning to wonder if we’d made a big mistake. Twenty-four hours a day in each other’s company is a whole new deal. I think we’re over the worst of it. Now we feel comfortable again and we can take an hour off in between sentences and it doesn’t seem awkward. Or we can spend far too much time pretending to be Iris and Hank, a retired couple from Buttcheek, Illinois who are on their way to a new life in a retirement community just north of Florida. Dylan would kill me if he knew I’d told you that!
More importantly, how are things hanging with you in sunny Manchester? I’m not fooled by your nonchalant talk of Jack, I know you’re a seething mass of girl hormones really, so spill! How’s Poppy? She must be showing some signs of softening by now. And how many boys have Atsuko and Darby snogged?
I’ve got to go now. I promised my mum I’d have my photo taken outside the hospital where they used to film ER. You think I’m joking? Oh, how I wish I wasn’t!
Much love
Edie xxx
I’d just sent Grace’s email when my in-box beeped to show there was an incoming message. It was from Grace. Emails that cross in the ether have to be one of my all-time least favourite things. I glanced over at Dylan who was looking up roadmaps on the internet, even though we had about fifty billion guidebooks and decided I had time to read and reply.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Hey Edie
I hope you’re all right and haven’t fallen off the edge of the map. I haven’t heard from you in ages. We’ve just got back from playing a one-off gig in Reading. We had to sleep in the van overnight, which I did not enjoy. Jack is a pig. I hate him! He’s got this stupid new haircut; it’s all tufty in the front. It looks ridiculous. And he’s bought a pair of skinny jeans and some Adidas Superstars and when we played the gig, girls were looking at him. I don’t know why. Probably they were thinking that he looked like an utter dork.
Jesse has a pet name for me, ‘Dis-Grace’, he says it’s because that’s what I sound like on guitar. And Poppy just laughed and said that my bedroom should be called Dis-Gracelands. Her and Jesse are moving in together over the café. Mum thinks that he’s going to have your old room but I think they’re sleeping together. If Poppy picks on me any more I will tell Mum and that’ll wipe the smile off Poppy’s face.
Atsuko and Darby are nice to me but they spend all their time chasing boys. Were they always like that? They have scorecards and everything.
I’m sort of dreading going away on tour now. I don’t think I’m going to learn the songs in time – especially having trouble with the linky bit in ‘Fang Boys Suck’, could you draw the chords for me and post ’em?
Am going to have a wallowfest with some R Patz DVDs now. Sorry for banging on about all me, me, me but you’re the only person who could possibly understand.
Write soon
Grace xxx
PS: Alm
ost forgot. When I woke up from my very uncomfortable sleeping position by the wheel arch, Jack was staring at me really intently. I think I had bed hair. Or van hair. Or something. Creep!
I smirked at the PS. When I was sixteen, I’d spent all my time angsting about my monster-sized crush on Dylan and the vain hope that one day he’d declare his undying love. I looked over at him. He was still mesmerised by his ’puter screen and was now looking at his in-box, even though I was the only one who ever sent him emails. I knew one way of getting his attention.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
I can’t help but wonder if you’re the skinny boy with scruffy hair who’s sitting near me in a Chicago coffee shop. Wld u Ik prv chat?
Beep me baby (one more time!)
From your secret admirer xxx
I grinned as his computer beeped and started to compose my reply to Grace.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Gosh! Could you sound a little more crabby? I guess spending a night hugging a wheel arch will do that to a girl.
So Jack’s got a fin and some Superstars? Sounds cool to me. Also sounds as if he’s trying to impress a certain girl we both know (er, that’d be you!). You have to be more relaxed about boys or Jack to be more specific. And, Lordy, don’t let him know that he’s getting to you, just assume a slightly aloof air when he’s getting on your nerves and smile mysteriously. Not that I’ve ever managed to pull that off but I reckon it would work wonders.
Tell Jesse that he has a stupid girl’s name next time he calls you Dis-Grace and, yeah, of course he and Poppy are sleeping together. I mean, obvs! But don’t tell her that I told you.
Have to go now. Really have to go.
I will draw the chords for you and post ’em but it might take a week for you to get them.
Love Edie
PS: Darby and Atsuko have been like that forever!
My wifi time was almost up. Dylan was paying for our coffee as I clicked on the message he’d just sent me.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Dear Secret Admirer
Don’t get me wrong, I am flattered but I’m already in a loving, committed relationship with a girl who would never ever write anything so lame as ‘beep me baby one more time’ in an email.
Yours sincerely
Dylan Kowalski (Mr)
We spent most of the day wandering around and going into air-conditioned cafés when the heat got too much. The rest of the time we asked people where Chicago County Hospital was while they looked at us as if we’d asked them if they wanted to accompany us to The Mothership. The things I do for that woman!
2nd August
Last night Dylan didn’t sleep at all. His tossing and turning kept waking me up. I thought it was the cold air coming from the ventilator shafts that was stopping him from sleeping. I rolled over so he wouldn’t keep disturbing me and went back to this strange dream where I was appearing on the Norwegian version of Deal or No Deal.
The first watery rays of sunlight were coming through the blinds when I realised Dylan wasn’t in bed. I sat up and stared blearily around the room. He was sitting in a chair in just his boxers, poring over one of the guidebooks.
‘Dylan, what are you doing?’ I asked sleepily. ‘Come back to bed, it’s (I peered at the travel clock) five in the morning.’
He turned round. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said quietly. ‘I just wanted to check something.’
I groaned to let him know he was being weird and snuggled back down. When I next woke up, it was nine and Dylan was asleep in the chair, the top half of him draped over the desk.
I climbed out of bed and ran a gentle hand down his back. I could feel all the individual vertebrae in his spine. Dylan didn’t stir.
I crouched down and stroked his hair. ‘D,’ I whispered in his ear. ‘You’re gonna have terrible backache when you wake up.’
Dylan muttered something and pushed his head against my hand like a dog does when it’s really getting into the whole petting experience. I nudged his shoulder a bit more firmly and Dylan opened his eyes and gingerly sat up.
‘Ow, ow, ow,’ he moaned as he straightened his spine.
‘You should have a shower and put it on sting-spray setting,’ I suggested helpfully. ‘Then I could give you a massage.’
‘Maybe,’ Dylan said blearily.
‘So what’s the deal with you getting up in the middle of the night to start checking the route?’ I teased. ‘Don’t you trust my fail-proof itinerary?’
‘Not now, Edie,’ snapped Dylan, walking into the bathroom and slamming the door behind him.
And at first I wasn’t too bothered. There was a difference to Dylan being ratty because he was sleep-deprived, and us not talking. But this morning he just pushed his Lumberjack Slam breakfast around his plate and gave monosyllabic replies to my bright enquiries about what he wanted to do today.
The only useful information I could get out of him was that he was bored with Chicago and he wanted to get on the road again.
‘I suppose we should head in the direction of North Dakota,’ I said as we started to drive out of Chicago. ‘I’ll just check what route we need to take.’
Dylan cleared his throat. ‘We have to talk about that.’
I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Is that what got you out of bed in the middle of the night? Did I make a mistake on the itinerary?’
Dylan’s hand shook slightly as he adjusted the rearview mirror. ‘I don’t want to go that way. I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Er, why?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
Dylan’s face was set in grim lines. ‘I want to head to Kentucky and then maybe Tennessee, we might have to go through Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and then LA.’
I stared at him. ‘What?’ I demanded incredulously.
‘I don’t want to go your way,’ he insisted grimly.
‘Pull over!’ I demanded furiously but Dylan ignored me. I didn’t know what he was thinking, which weirded me out almost as much as his sudden brain implosion. I can read Dylan pretty well but this… this was entirely out of my realm of experience. His whole body was tense, his knuckles white as they clutched the steering wheel.
I reached out and covered his hand with mine.
‘Dylan, what is going on with you?’ I said gently.
He knocked my hand away.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘Oh God!’ I half-screamed in frustration. ‘Pull over. NOW!’
Dylan yanked the wheel, cutting through two lanes of traffic to the accompaniment of car horns and pulled in to the side of the road.
‘You want to add weeks to our journey and you don’t want me to ask why?’ I started, but Dylan just crossed his arms and wouldn’t look at me.
‘I’m just asking you to do this one thing for me,’ he snarled. ‘I don’t see what the big deal is.’
I waved the notebook with the itinerary in his face angrily and started ranting at him. Which probably wasn’t the most beneficial way to handle Dylan’s sudden freaky mood shift but it made me feel a lot better.
‘You couldn’t tell me before we left Washington which would have saved us a week in the car?’ I berated him. ‘Was it so difficult to say, “Edie, I think your schedule sucks and I’ve spent two years telling you I want to go to Seattle but I’ve changed my mind and would like to spend weeks driving through the Deep South during the hottest part of the year”? You are such a jerk sometimes.’
That got through to him, he snatched the notebook out of my hand and tossed it out of the window, catching my arm on his watch-strap in the process and ripping the skin.
I sucked the damaged flesh into my mouth. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’
Dylan turned on me, his eyes flashing furiously. ‘If you loved me Edie, you’d trust me and you’d shut up for one
bloody minute!’
‘Dylan,’ I said deliberately, trying desperately to keep my temper. ‘We’re in this together, OK?’
‘You don’t have to talk to me like I’m mentally challenged,’ he interrupted.
That did it. ‘I prefer the term retarded,’ I sniped. ‘You just spring this on me and I have no comeback, because bottom line is you’re driving.’
‘That just about covers it,’ agreed Dylan. ‘Can we go now?’
Diary of a Crush: Sealed With a Kiss Page 13