“Wow,” she says. “I think I love you too.” It’s a whisper. I almost don’t hear it, but I can’t ask her to repeat it. My heart is beating so hard in my chest. I reach over to take her hand; it’s the only part of her I can reach from where I’m sitting. But she curls her fingers up so I’m wrapping my fingers around her fist instead. I’m so happy, I feel like my heart might explode against my ribs. When I close my eyes I imagine the two of us traveling the world together, backpacking in Europe, hiking mountains in Alaska, or lying on a deserted beach on some warm tropical island.
Emily clears her throat to say something else, and I give her what I imagine is an impassioned look. I’m ready for whatever other declarations she has to make. “We should head back,” she says. “I know Jesse wants to leave before it gets dark.”
It’s not quite what I imagined she would say, and she only meets my smile with a little half-grin, but it doesn’t matter. I was here and I heard her say it. She loves me. That’s not something you just throw out there and then take back a minute later. I wonder if this makes her my girlfriend. I at least know Emily well enough not to ask. I hold her hand tightly even though her fingers don’t quite return the pressure, and I give her big dopey grins all the way back through the fields.
While packing up to leave the farm, I look fondly at the grass that’s been rolled flat in a perfect rectangle where the tent just stood. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for this field, I think as I roll up the Boy Scout tent.
Tim leans over my shoulder to see what I’m staring at. “I’m just glad I won’t have to listen to Emily moaning and grunting anymore,” he says, as though reading my mind. My face turns bright red. Tim claps a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, man, I’m all in favor of getting some nooky, but you two are loud. And I mean loud!”
It never occurred to me that everyone could hear us, but how could they not with the tents spaced just a few feet apart?
Nostalgia aside, I will be glad to head towards a bit of civilization. I owe Mom a phone call; there’s no way around it. And she’s going to rip me a new one for being out of touch for almost a week. It’s almost finals time back at St. Mary’s, and then it will be Christmas break. Even if I went back today, there’s no way I’d pass the quarter. I hope she’s been reading her book about the strong-willed teenager. Maybe she’ll be a little less crazy when I finally talk to her.
I haul my tent and my backpack over to the edge of the field where G and Jesse are packing the van. G is stacking everything on top of the back and middle seats, leaving the way back next to the door free of stuff. “Why are you doing it like that?” I ask.
“The Geminids are tonight,” she says.
“Geminids?”
“Yeah, it’s a meteor shower. We’re going to be on the road, and I don’t want to miss it. I figured if I sit back here, I’ll catch less light from oncoming traffic, and I might have a shot at actually seeing something.”
“Cool. Can I fit too? I’ve never seen a meteor shower before.”
G shrugs. “Fine with me, if you think it’s okay with everyone else.”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be? Never mind, actually. Don’t answer that,” I add quickly before she can say anything.
Our good-byes with Skye and Jeremiah are prolonged and kind of sweet. Skye gives us a big bag of granola that’s still warm from the pan she baked it in. They both seem interested in Burdock and talk loosely about going next year. Lindsay barely looks up from her book. “Good luck, hippies,” she calls from the sofa. We all wave back awkwardly. Despite her apparent indifference to our leaving, I imagine her life is about to get quieter and more boring once we’re gone.
We pile into Shirley. Jesse has to shut me and G into the back. It’s tight quarters, but it’s also kind of cozy wedged between the trunk door and the piles of bags and tents. We can hear everyone else but we can’t see them. “Holler if you gotta pee,” Jesse says from the driver’s seat. If Emily is annoyed by my seat choice, she doesn’t say anything, so I figure I’m in the clear. It’s already getting dusky by the time we finish our goodbyes, and Shirley bumps back down the long, grassy driveway.
Being out of the van for a week has been nicer than I realized. After the first hour my back is cramped and my butt feels like I’m sitting on golf balls. There’s not much room to shift positions in the little cave we’ve created for ourselves. I stare at the sky, waiting for it to erupt in the silver confetti that G has described.
“We probably won’t see anything until after midnight,” G says when she sees me looking up. “Wanna play cards?” We play an endless game of war that evolves into Spit, which evolves into rummy. I try to read for a while, but it’s too dark even with the lights on the highway. It’s all right, though. There are things about the book that are irking me in ways they never did before. McCandless was kind of an asexual guy—something his few close friends attest to in the book, and something I used to find kind of comforting. Not all cool guys get girls. But the closer I get to Emily, and all the Freegans, the more unnatural his celibacy seems to me. Not just his celibacy, but his complete lack of closeness to anybody except these people whose lives he passed through. It’s like he could only get close to people he knew he was going to leave.
Jesse gives a little hoot when we cross into Oklahoma and then again when we reach Texas. After that it’s pretty quiet until we stop for a bathroom break around Wichita Falls. Everyone stumbles in and out of the gas station, bathroom trying to go without fully waking up. Lyle offers to drive, but Jesse insists he’s fine and says he’d rather just keep going and try to make New Mexico by dawn. No one really argues. We’re all happy to crawl back into the van and pass out again.
The next time I wake up, the road is dark, but the sky is bright with starlight. G is awake, her face pressed against the side of the van, her dark eyes reflecting the tiny pinpricks of light. “What are you looking at?” I whisper.
“Cassiopeia.”
“Cassio wah?”
“Cassiopeia, right there, looks like a W.” She jabs at the window with her thumb towards a zigzag line of stars. “She was a queen who was really vain. She was jealous of her own daughter so she farmed her out to marry some sea monster. Then the head of all the gods put her in the sky upside down to punish her for her vanity.”
“She’s upside down?”
“Yeah, I guess so. It’s kind of hard to see.”
“I can never see what people are talking about when they point out those things.”
“Constellations?”
“Yeah.”
“It doesn’t matter,” G says. “You can make up your own. Like that one right there. See the four bright stars that kind of make a boot shape? I’m going to call that Andrew’s Boot. Now you have to tell me the story of how it got there.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Make it good.”
“Okay,” I pause and think for a minute. “Okay, once there was this kid named Andrew, and everyone thought they knew who he was. His teachers thought he was a good student who was just unmotivated. His parents thought he didn’t mind that they were divorced, and his mom thought it didn’t matter that he switched schools every three years. Most of the kids at his school thought he was gay or a goth or a snob, and he just went along with all of it. Then one day he cracked and went off on a road trip with a crew of total hippie freaks.” I stop for a moment and check that G is still smiling. She is. “And his mom got so mad after she didn’t hear from him for a week that she threw all of his stuff out onto the curb, and one of his shoes bounced really high into the sky and it stuck. The end.”
“Not bad,” G says.
“Not bad? Just not bad?”
“You really think your mom is still mad at this point?” she asks.
“I think she’s going to kill me.”
“Maybe,” G says. “Maybe she’s just really worried at this point, about where you are and when you’re coming home.”
“I thought this was my story
,” I said somewhat sulkily.
“Okay, well, I didn’t really like the ending. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Andrew. Like what happens when he finally goes back to his real life?”
It’s too late at night for this comment to annoy me. “Hmmm,” I say, “He’s going to be different.”
G leans forward. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Like how?”
“Like he’s going to know what he wants.”
“Wow,” G says, like I’ve said something really profound. “That’s a tall order.”
“Most of the time,” I amend it.
“That’s probably more like it,” she says.
“Thanks.” I flick one of the playing cards at her, and she bats it away with the back of her hand. I could say more. Like how surprised I am that it isn’t that hard. That I want Emily and apple crisp and somewhere warm to lie down at night. And out here those things are enough. Back home, I’m not so sure. “Okay, your turn.” I stare up into the sky, trying to think of a good one for G. “There. See those three stars right in a row?”
“You mean Orion’s Belt?”
“Not anymore. From now on that’s known as G’s Trapeze.” I wait for a moment. “You have to tell me the story of how it got there.”
“I’m thinking,” she says. “Okay, but this is kind of a long one.”
“Okay,” I say. “Let me check my calendar. Nope, nothing doing for the next few hours. Take your time.”
“Wiseass.” She pauses a moment longer. “Okay, G’s first trapeze was in her backyard at home. It was part of a swing set in her backyard. It had green and yellow wooden bars, and it was the nicest thing in their not-so-nice neighborhood. It was better than the one at the park that was missing rungs and only had one swing that hung uneven. Her dad bought it when he won at the track. He put it together one fall afternoon while she and her sisters ran circles around him, waiting for it to be finished. He drank cans of Miller Lite and when he finished one, he would crumple it up and throw it at the girls, who would squeal and run away.”
“Your dad threw beer cans at you?”
“Yeah, and that was when he was being nice. Anyway, it didn’t last long. That winter he lost a lot. He lost at the track and on the boxing matches. So he took it down so they could burn it in the fireplace because they couldn’t afford to pay for heat. That was before they burned the girls’ schoolbooks and made them lie about losing them to their teachers. And instead of throwing beer cans he threw the furniture and the lamps. But even then it wasn’t that bad, as long as she wasn’t drinking. Once she started, that’s when things got really ugly.
“G and her sisters basically took care of themselves. They started hiding the food so they would have something to bring to school for lunch. Nobody checked that to see that there wasn’t anything between the slices of bread. Their clothes were clean enough to escape the teacher’s notice. Who knows how long it could have lasted?
“It would have lasted except for the fire. She was the last one up. She was supposed to put the screen in front of the fire like she’d been told a hundred times. But she fell asleep. And when she woke up the carpet was sparkling with orange embers. She didn’t do anything, even when the embers curled into yellow flames. She didn’t do anything because for once it was warm in the living room. She just watched the flames devour the carpet, and as they moved hungrily toward the couch, that was when she realized that it might be getting out of hand. But it was too late.”
“Did they die?” I whisper in the darkness.
“No. Everyone made it out. But her older sister, not the oldest one, the middle one, her blanket caught on fire as they were crawling out of the house. She wouldn’t let it go and it burned her arm and her shoulder. I think the oldest knew what happened. She knew why the fire had started. She never said anything, but G never went back. Somehow, when the family moved from the shelter to the apartment found by their church, G didn’t go with them. She went to live with her Uncle Paul and her Aunt Ginger until she was too much for them to handle. And after that it was the state—foster home after foster home. No one ever came to visit, and she never asked if she could go home. It was like she died in the fire.”
I don’t say anything. I’m not an idiot. I can tell that this is a true story.
“So the next time she saw a trapeze it was many years later. She had always been fearless, but on the trapeze she was even more so. When she’s up on the ropes twisting in the air, she has nothing to lose and nothing to prove. But when she’s up there she always thinks of the first one, the one that burned. So that’s why it burns in the sky.” She’s quiet for a moment. “The end, I guess.”
“Wow,” I say after a few minutes of saying nothing. “I’m sorry.” As soon as I say it, I wish I hadn’t. It’s not what I meant. “I mean thank you.”
“Thank you for what?” G says suspiciously.
“Thank you for thinking enough of me to tell me that story.”
“It’s just a story,” she says, even though we both know it’s not. Suddenly a pinpoint of bright light flashes across the sky. It’s followed by several more that are smaller, more like white ash. “Did you see that?” G says excitedly.
“Yeah, was that it?”
“It’s starting.”
We watch the meteor shower in silence. It really is like a shower, like the sky is raining light. I remember the fireworks shows that I used to go to with my parents on the Fourth of July. I lie back in the van the way I used to lie back on our picnic blanket—my head in Mom’s lap, the salty smell of the corned beef sandwiches Dad would make in the warm summer air. I watch the silver confetti burst in the night sky. In the hum of Shirley’s engine I can hear music, but I guess it’s only in my head; the reeling twangs of a banjo and the sharp twangs of a fiddle. An echo following me down the highway from Hot Springs. It’s lonely music, traveling music, like something the Joads would have listened to around the fire at night. But it doesn’t make me feel lonely. Instead I feel like I could reach out and touch everyone everywhere. G squeezes my foot when there’s a really good eruption of light. I think about the story she just told, about the sparks of light in the carpet and trapeze in the sky. I think I know why she called me a douchebag back in Louisville. And I am sorry.
THE SMURTS
Just before dawn, we pull into a rest area outside of Amarillo, Texas, and we all stagger out to use the bathroom. I don’t remember the end of the meteor shower, or falling asleep, but both seem like they happened a while ago. Jesse needs to sleep and no one else feels like driving, so we pull out the sleeping bags and curl up in our various spots on the van floor. G and Lyle take the pop-up. Jesse and Tim have the front seats, which leaves me and Emily in the back.
Emily snuggles up to me, her back to my front. I think it’s called spooning. She pulls my arm around her, and I shake my head a little to avoid being suffocated by her dreadlocks. She still smells sweet, like Skye’s homemade orange and almond lotion. It’s moments like these that make me seriously rethink the offhand comments I make about going home.
It’s only a few hours before the warmth and brightness of the daylight make sleeping impossible. I walk unsteadily out of the van and splash some water on my face in the rest stop bathroom. Coming out of the bathroom I run into Jesse, who is heading for the convenience store to buy some milk for our granola. “I doubt they’ll have any soy milk, but Emily can eat it plain,” he says. I fall in beside him, ignoring the stares from the family with three small children piling out of the minivan parked next to Shirley.
I scrub a couple dollars from Jesse and leave a message on Mom’s machine when I know she’ll be at work. It’s a total chicken move, I know, but this way Mom will know I’m alive, and I won’t have to explain to her for the thousandth time why I’m not on a bus heading back to New York. The message I leave is long and rambling. I tell her stuff about the farm and killing chickens and digging up my food out of the dirt—stuff I didn’t even plan on tellin
g her. I don’t say anything about when I’ll be back. Better not to get her hopes up.
After I leave a message I feel a lot better. Skye’s granola is amazing, and once we’re back on the road I’m free to sit back and watch the rolling hills of Texas turn into the dry desert country of New Mexico. Jesse tells me the place we’re going is just north of Roswell on Route 70. I find it on the map and watch as the tiny desert towns flash by outside the van windows. Everything is beige and brown and dusty green. The buildings aren’t more than two stories, and down every side road it’s possible to see where civilization ends and the desert takes over.
We stop by the side of the road for lunch by a washed-out creek bed, but there isn’t much food left in our supplies. Emily makes some pasta, but all we have for sauce is some olive oil and garlic powder. It’s pretty gross, actually, but I manage to choke it down with a few more bites of the last of Skye’s granola for dessert. Jesse surveys our supplies. “We’ll have to stop in the next big town and do some serious scrounging,” he says. “We’ve got a little cash for groceries, but I’d rather save it for gas. And I don’t want to show up completely empty-handed.”
“Clovis looks like it might have something,” I say, poking at the slightly larger letters on the map. Jesse looks over my shoulder.
“Yeah, we’ll try there.”
In Clovis we find a local supermarket called Callahan’s with a bountiful dumpster. With the memory of pasta and garlic powder fresh in my mind—and on my breath—I have no qualms about jumping right in with everyone else and sorting through the bags. We score some slightly browning bananas, bags of precut lettuce, bags of carrot sticks, several containers of yoghurt, some individual-sized Jell-O pudding cups, and a whole bunch of Halloween-colored Oreo cookies. Tim tears into a package of these and stuffs several orange-and-black cookies in his mouth before anyone can say anything.
The Other Way Around Page 17