The Road to You

by Piper Lennox

  In my room, there was a pile of things to pawn: vintage records, commemorative plates, and other knickknacks I hadn’t price-checked yet.

  I put them all in the attic. Selling that stuff felt way too sleazy, now: I’d assumed none of it mattered much to Tillie. And maybe it didn’t, since they’d been left in moldy, crushed boxes in the basement.

  But it did matter to someone. The locket, at least, was important to Lila, even if neither of us knew that until it was too late. That was enough to stop me.

  At night, I thought about her. Usually, the quiet darkness of the house put me to sleep in seconds. But as soon as my head hit the pillow, I’d remember her calling me cute, the weight of her head on my shoulder, and couldn’t sleep for hours.

  And now here she is, standing on my porch, shaking her car keys as I blink the blurriness from my eyes.

  “What?”

  “You’re coming with me,” she repeats. “On the off chance I’m wrong about the listing, I might need to sleuth around a little—”

  “Sleuth?”

  “—and,” she finishes, “I don’t know enough about her to do that. But you lived with her.”

  “I don’t know that much about her.”

  “You know more than me.”

  I sigh and reach for the door behind me, ready to shut it on her. “I know you’re going through a lot and all, but this plan of yours, it’s....”

  Lila pushes her sunglasses up into her hair. “What? Crazy?”

  “Yes, actually. I mean, what if your lead is wrong? Not just the listing, but the entire Texas idea. What if it just takes you to a dead end?”

  She swings her keys on her finger, popping her gum. “What if it doesn’t?”

  I shake my head.

  “You know,” she says, “as fun as it is having a veritable bum judge my life choices, I’ve got about seventeen hours of driving to get started on. So are you in or out?”

  “Out,” I say, stepping up into the doorframe. “Sorry.”

  “Fine.” She flips her sunglasses back onto her nose, turns, and heads down the porch steps. “Just thought you’d like a free start to that trip you were talking about. No faster way out of town than this.” She shrugs. “But if you want to keep pawning my mom’s shit and living in a teardown without light bulbs and decent heat, you know, whatever.”

  She’s all the way at her car now. I feel a weird tension in my chest, watching her pull open the door and get inside.

  Crazy, I repeat to myself. Besides: the last time I blindly followed some girl I just met, things didn’t end well.

  I step all the way inside and start to close the door. Then I hear Lila’s car sputter, grind, and stop.

  Close the door, Shepherd. This is not your problem.

  She tries to start it again. This time, I hear a pop. When I peek through the gap in the door, she’s waving smoke away from her face as it billows around the hood.

  Shit.

  “Hold on,” I call out to her, already heading for the garage. “I’ll get a flashlight.”

  Lila

  Shepherd spends just two minutes looking under the station wagon’s hood. “Can you fix it?” I ask, as he slams it shut.

  “I’m not a mechanic,” he says, “so no. But even if I was, you probably wouldn’t want to bother.”

  I cringe. “That bad?”

  He runs his hand through his hair, still stuck up in weird places from sleep. “Your coolant tank has a crack in it, your head gasket blew, and…” His shoulders droop. “…a cylinder’s warped.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means this car is done for.” He kicks the tire. “As much as it would cost you to fix it, you could just buy a better car. What year is this, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. It’s older than me.” I exhale and sink to the curb with my head in my hands. “It’s been running weird, lately, but I just figured...you know, that’s what old cars do.”

  He laughs. “Smoke and pops are not normal.”

  “That,” I protest, “never happened before today. It overheated a couple times, I put in more coolant, and everything seemed fine.” My head feels like it’s in a vice, suddenly. “I guess...that’s the end of it, then.”

  “Yeah. Might as well sell it for parts, honestly.”

  “Not the car—this trip. You were right. It’s crazy.”

  He sits beside me on the curb and stares at the wagon. I expect him to nod and tell me, yet again, why my idea was stupid.

  Instead, he says, “You want another car?”

  “Stop teasing me, please. I feel bad enough as it is.”

  “I’m not teasing.” He turns his head. For some reason, his morning breath doesn’t bother me. “Tillie’s car. It’s in the garage.”

  “But you were going to use that to move out of town,” I remind him, refusing to get my hopes up yet. “If I take it, what are you going to drive when you leave?”

  “If anyone has the right to take her car, it’s you. Not me.” He takes a breath. “Besides...maybe I should go with you.”

  “Really?” I catch myself and try to sound like I don’t care, either way. “What changed your mind?”

  “Well,” he says, scratching the stubble on his face, “your utter lack of mechanical knowledge, for one.”

  “Ouch.”

  “And,” he adds, “you were right. This is as good a time as any to get out of town, like I wanted. I think I put it off because...well, because I was scared, to be honest.”

  “You, scared?”

  “You don’t know me,” he reminds me. “I’m a huge scaredy-cat.”

  Finally, I let myself smile.

  “Two cups of coffee?” He takes the paper cup I pass him while I sip mine, the very last things I transfer from Dad’s station wagon to the little coupe he coasted out of the garage. “You were pretty confident I’d come with you, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I admit, “but worst case scenario, I’d have extra caffeine to make the trip alone, if I had to.” I watch him put on his seatbelt and readjust the mirrors. “I’m glad I don’t have to, though.”

  “I really don’t know how much I’ll be able to help you,” he warns me. “Unless you just want some muscle to keep you safe.”

  He’s kidding, but this thought did occur to me while I planned the trip. Traveling alone across state lines wouldn’t be the wisest move.

  After I decided that yes, I was really doing this (as ridiculous as it sounded and, honestly, felt), I called work and told them I’d be using my vacation days at the end of my bereavement. Then I finished clearing out Dad’s things from the house that I wanted to keep: his letters to my mother, when they were dating; the light-up tie I gave him for Christmas when I was eight, purchased with my own money; and his collection of tin robots and their baggie of wind-up keys, jingling like change as I slipped it into my pocket.

  Other than those things and some photo albums, there wasn’t much else that I wanted. My folks’ packrat ways had transformed me into a minimalist long ago, so Aunt Betty and the lawyer would handle the rest while I was gone. She wasn’t happy about my leaving, but it wasn’t like she could stop me, either.

  “I’m not going alone,” I’d assured her last night. We were sitting on her porch drinking hot cider, shivering in our coats. Behind me, even with the window shut, I could hear Wayne watching the game show channel at top volume. “I’ve got a guy coming with me.” I didn’t add that I barely knew the guy, or that I’d yet to even ask him.

  “It’s not that boy you used to live with, is it? I never liked him.”

  “Donnie and I broke up months ago.” I sipped my cider, trying to look casual. “It’s this guy, Shepherd.”

  “Bit of an odd name,” she remarked. “Shepherd what?”

  Thank God, she didn’t catch the fact I hesitated. “Smith,” I lied.

  “Shepherd Smith,” she repeated, then shook her head. She and Wayne did that all the time: whenever they heard me talk about someone, they’d ask thei
r last name, repeat the whole thing, and try to place them in their mental network of Families In This Area. “There’s Ava and Reggie Smith, down near Lake Drive,” she said. “Any relation?”

  “Um...maybe.” Leave it to Aunt Betty to think she knew all the Smiths in town. “He’s nice. And it’s just a few days. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “I’m going to, anyway.” She reached out, putting her hand on mine. Her skin was silky but dry, like she’d covered it in talcum powder. “Since you feel like this is something you need to do, though...I’ll bite my tongue.”

  I took another sip from my mug, hiding my laughter. She definitely hadn’t bitten her tongue about it up until this point.

  “Just stay safe,” she said, after a long silence. I could hear the tears in her voice and stared at the pizza van across the street, afraid that I would cry, too, if I looked at her. “I promised your daddy I’d look out for you like my own. And blood or not, that’s what I’m going to do, best I can.”

  “I know,” I said softly. She always had.

  “Hey,” Shepherd says, breaking through my thoughts. I realize my eyes are stinging, and have to blink a few times before I can look at him. We’re already downtown, idling at a stop sign.

  “Sorry. Uh, I think you head south on Gates,” I tell him. I unfold the directions I printed out last night and read him the first exit number. “Then it’s two miles on that until—”

  “I know how to get out of Indiana,” he says. He lifts one finger off the wheel, pointing ahead. “I was going to ask why that guy over there’s staring at you and waving.”

  “What?” I look across the street, where someone is running towards us, a hat pulled low over his eyes. When he gets close enough, I roll down my window.

  “Do you even know him?” Shepherd hisses, rolling the window back up with his door controls.

  By now, even with his face hidden, I can tell it’s Donnie. There’s something about the way he slows down, his gait loping and easy. Like he couldn’t care less if I stop to talk to him or not, even though he’s the one who just sprinted across an intersection.

  “Yeah,” I sigh. I hit the window button again. “I know him.”

  Shepherd

  The guy leans down and stares at me, not Lila, when he asks, “Who’s that?”

  She tenses her jaw. “What do you want?”

  “I want to know who this is.” I hear his fist rap against her door, then the roof, as he gives the car the once-over.

  I lean on the console and crane my neck at him. “Would you mind not hitting my car? Thanks.”

  He ignores me and eyes the luggage in the backseat. “Going somewhere?”

  “Leave me alone, Donnie.” She elbows me. “Just drive.”

  The guy drapes his arms inside her door. I resist the urge to roll up the window on him.

  “Got yourself a new boyfriend,” he muses. “Taking a vacation together already. Cute. So I guess he should know you and I fucked, what, five days ago?”

  “Donnie,” she snaps, and reaches for the button. The window motor turns, but he holds the glass in place with his arms, laughing. He actually enjoys this, making her squirm, embarrassing her.

  “Lila and I are just friends.” I shift the car back into Drive and inch forward, enough to make him stumble. He glares at me. “You have nothing to get jealous over.”

  “Lila and I are friends, too,” he says, smirking as he reaches for a lock of her hair. He runs it between his fingers. “I know what she does with friends.”

  I watch her carefully the entire time. She closes her eyes. Her body tenses.

  I floor it.

  The guy jumps back, cursing, as my tires spin and the car speeds forward. Lila grips the handle over her door. The luggage in the back rattles.

  “Easy,” she breathes. I straighten out the wheel.

  “What an asshole.” I cut my eyes at her. She’s dabbing the lids of our drinks with a napkin from the glove box, soaking up the coffee that sloshed out. “You used to date him?”

  “Unfortunately.” She twists in her seat to see the cloud of exhaust I left behind. “You didn’t have to speed away like that, you know.”

  “Are you serious? He was touching your hair, like....” I shake my head. “It was just creepy, okay? I got a bad feeling from him.”

  “Donnie’s a jerk,” she admits, letting her hands fall in her lap.

  “That sounds like an understatement.”

  I feel her looking at me. “Why do you care what kind of person he is?”

  “Why do you care what I think of him?” I challenge. “Are you still with him, or something?”

  She starts to protest, then stops. “Or something.”

  For whatever reason, this bums me out. I hate the idea of her getting caught on the back burner of a guy like that.

  Not your problem, I remind myself. None of this is. Helping her find Tillie is one thing, but I’m not a relationship coach. How much do I really know about her? Maybe she likes that whole controlling asshole thing. Some people thrive on drama.

  “Don’t judge me,” she says, out of the blue, when we’ve been on the interstate for at least fifteen silent minutes.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Yes, you were. I can feel it.”

  “I’m not judging,” I insist. “I’m realizing—yet again—how little we actually know each other. Which is why going with you is probably the dumbest thing I’ve done in a long time.”

  “Sorry I didn’t share my complete dating history with you,” she says sarcastically, propping her feet on the dashboard. “Would you care to see my dental records, as well?”

  “Can you get your feet off that?” I ask. After a few defiant seconds, she does. “It isn’t my business what you do or who you do it with. I’m just...surprised, I guess, that you’d like someone who acts like that.” I punch the button to the radio and keep it low as I scan channels. “But, like I said, we don’t know each other, so maybe it isn’t my business to be surprised, either.”

  Lila picks up her coffee from the cup holder. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her trace the lid with her finger.

  “I don’t like Donnie. You’re right: he’s an asshole. But I guess I got used to him being in my life. Or I keep thinking he’ll change. I don’t know.” She pauses. “Haven’t you ever gotten caught up on someone, even though you knew they weren’t good for you?”

  Jess’s mug shot flashes in my head. “Yeah,” I admit, “but I’ve also been that person, and I can tell you this: if they do change, it takes a long, long time.”

  Lila reaches over to the radio and messes with the controls, even though I’ve finally found a station I like. I decide, just this once, to let it slide. “Hard to believe you’d be bad for anyone. I mean, other than being a bum, you seem pretty harmless.”

  “Given my past, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Your past.” She studies me a second, then goes back to the radio, settling on some headache-inducing pop song, all synthetic drumbeats and autotune. “Which means...?”

  I switch lanes and ignore her.

  “So you changed,” she says, after a minute. “How long did it take you?”

  In the rearview, I catch a glimpse of myself. On the outside, I look totally different than I did even a year ago. But I know better than anyone that appearances don’t tell the full story.

  “I’ll get back to you,” I say, finally, “whenever it’s done.”

  Seven

  Lila

  When we cross the state line, only a few hours into our trip, he starts complaining again.

  “It’s not too late to turn back,” I remind him. We’ve pulled over at a fast food place off the highway. I dip a cluster of fries into my barbecue sauce and point them at him. “I’d rather make the trip alone than hear you gripe the entire time.”

  “You have to admit, this situation is a little...weird. Two complete strangers on a road trip that was, for all intents and purposes, a whim. Who d
oes that?”

  I finish my fries, then steal some of his. “We’re two people who happen to be looking for the same person. It makes sense that we take the trip together.”

  “Technically, I’m not looking for Tillie.”

  “You’re looking to get out of town,” I point out. “Besides, aren’t you curious where she went, or if she’s even okay?” When I turn to him, he’s picking sesame seeds off his burger and won’t look up. “If you just vanished, wouldn’t you want people looking for you?”

  “No. When I disappear, it’ll be for good.”

  “When, not if?” I tilt my head. “Is that why you want to get out of town—you’re trying to disappear?”

  He takes a breath, but doesn’t say anything. I’m not sure why I expected him to answer: he hasn’t been very forthcoming about himself, so far.

  When we’re back on the road, him still stubbornly manning the wheel, I decide to try at least one more question. “What’s your last name?”

  His brow furrows. “Why?”

  “You said we’re complete strangers, and that’s apparently the biggest hang-up you have about this trip.” I put my feet on the dashboard. This time, he doesn’t make me move them. “So let’s fix that. Two days in the car is a lot of time to get to know each other.”

  Shepherd twists his mouth, half-smiling at my logic. “Jones. Happy?”

  “Yes, I am. Thank you for humoring me.” I look out the window and watch the trees, bare and jagged against the February sky.

  “‘Shepherd Jones,’” I repeat. In the reflection of the glass, I see him look my way. “It suits you.”

  “Thanks.” I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not. He turns down the radio. “But I gotta say, ‘Kathryn Davidson’ does not suit you.”

  “Really?”

  “‘Lila Ashbury’...I don’t know, it just sounds like your name. If I pictured a Lila, she’d look like you. Or at least act like you.”