Retro Road Trip

by Caroline Kendall

  People never used to smile in old pictures. I know it took forever to take a picture in the old days, so people would just sit there stiffly, not even trying to smile.

  If they did selfies back then, or they just took casual pictures of their friends like we do now, we'd probably feel like we could relate more to them. If they were just acting like themselves, they'd seem more like real people, maybe even people we could be friends with.

  And most people didn't have a camera back then, so if they went to a photographer to get a family picture taken, they put on their best clothes and then sat in a studio on fancy chairs and tried to look formal and elegant. Just another piece of useless trivia that I pick up hanging around this old junk.

  Sometimes I felt guilty for complaining about being here. It's just a weird lifestyle. I think some of the antique dealers sleep in their trucks, like this one guy who only sells doorknobs. I think that would give me nightmares.

  The thing that drives me nuts when I’m here is seeing everyone from home posting pictures of themselves at the beach or the pool or at someone's house having a bonfire. I almost feel like deleting Instagram from my phone but I just don't want to miss anything important, like seeing how much fun I’m not having. My mom will probably make it even worse by finding some college to tour because she’s obsessed.

  She always makes me tour colleges if there are any near the antique fairs. Since we always go in the summer, the students are mostly gone, except for the tour guides, who all act really happy to go to school there, even though they are sweating through their presentations that they probably have to give three times a day to high school kids who just stand there looking at their phones while their parents ask embarrassing questions about how many quarters the washing machines in the dorms take. The answer is usually zero, because a lot of the washers and dryers in the dorms just take a swipe of your student ID card and you get a text when your wash is done. The older parents go nuts when they hear that.

  How are you supposed to figure out what you want to do and what college you should go to? You can’t really know what it’s going to be like.

  You can do all the research and all the campus visits you want, but the cute guy who gives you the tour and tells you how awesome everyone is not going to be your friend.

  He probably will have graduated by the time you get there. Yeah, maybe he loves it and plays pickup games of soccer and Frisbee on the quad, but he's not going to save a seat for you in the dining hall. Who knows what antisocial roommate you might get? The whole thing is a completely random crapshoot. It's the biggest decision of your life, if you think about it. You live there for four years, and you have to make all new friends. I guess it would be cool if your roommate became your best friend. Hopefully a better friend than the ones who let Olivia Jarrett walk home by herself.

  And then if you can't get a job after you graduate, it won't matter how cute you looked at football games wearing your school colors. You'll be selling your old spirit wear at flea markets, and that's a whole other world you probably don't want to be a part of. I could give a presentation about that.

  When we're at these colleges sometimes I notice how worn out a railing or door handle is, and I think about how many people touched it over the years. I can picture being a student there like in the 1940s or something. Then I end up humming some big band music to myself. I swear hanging around these antique fairs has turned me into a freak.

  Sometimes I dream about what it was like living a long time ago. Once I had a dream about being at a boarding school where all the girls wore sailor dresses. Another time I had a dream that I was taking classes at a cooking school where all the chefs were smoking.

  Usually during the school year, most of my dreams that I can remember are about school or whatever we're studying. Like when we had to read Romeo and Juliet, I had a dream that I was onstage acting out the play. During health class last year when we learned about the circulatory system, we watched a video about heart transplants. That night I had a dream that I was a doctor doing a heart transplant surgery, and I was holding a beating heart in my hands. Revolting. Savannah says she's going to be a doctor. She can already picture herself working in a hospital. Can you imagine doing surgery on someone's heart? That's way too much responsibility for me.

  Chapter 8

  After my mom and I packed everything up at the end of the day, we started driving to our hotel. Savannah texted me that this girl from our school named Olivia Jarrett was still missing. She's been gone for two days. Everyone's talking about it. Savannah said people are tying blue ribbons around the trees in our neighborhood until she comes back. I don't know how that helps, but when she gets home maybe it will make her feel good. Unless it just makes her feel awkward and uncomfortable.

  When I was in first grade we had third-graders who came in and helped us read. Olivia was my Reading Buddy.

  At the end of the year we did a little gift exchange and she gave me a pen that writes in four colors. It's funny, I just found that pen at home in the back of my desk drawer the other day. I stuck it in my bag before we left the house to come here to the antique fair.

  I see her at school once in a while because her locker is close to mine but I never talk to her. She thanked me once for holding the door open for her but I don't know if she remembers that she was my Reading Buddy.

  There's this unspoken code with people at school where you know someone and maybe you used to be on the same soccer team, and you would sit by each other in Brownie meetings, but now you pretend you don't even see each other. It's like you're right in front of them but you're invisible.

  Anyway, she left her friend's house the other night at ten o'clock and she was going to walk home, which was only four blocks away, but she never got there.

  I looked at my phone and saw the pictures of her that everyone was posting, trying to show how close they were to her. I thought about her friends. Where were they that night? If they had walked her home, maybe she never would have disappeared.

  Olivia didn't seem to me like someone who would run away, but I guess you never know. Maybe some psycho kidnapped her or something, but hopefully he hasn't hurt her. I wonder if she could be out here on the road somewhere nearby. There's still a chance that she could be okay. It's like with Grandy's sister, we don't know what was she thinking before she disappeared.

  Then yesterday they found a security video of Olivia getting a bottle of water and chips at a gas station, but it didn't show who she was with. She could be anywhere by now.

  I looked out the window of the car and hoped she wasn't dead. I had a corazonada that she would be okay though.

  We pulled into the hotel parking lot and looked around for something to get for dinner. There was a Pizza Hut across the street so we got personal pizzas and ate them in the room and watched My Cousin Vinny for the millionth time. My mom fell asleep watching TV around ten. I stayed up flipping through channels till about midnight, then washed my face and brushed my teeth. I took my mom's glasses off her face and put them on the nightstand, turned off the lamp and went to bed.

  At home I have a regular twin bed, so it was kind of nice to be in a queen-sized bed at the hotel and be able to go all starfish and stretch out completely.

  When I was little it took me forever to fall asleep. I always used to imagine there was another girl from another planet who was watching over me. Sometimes I felt like she was sitting with me while I was drawing and coloring. She told me to look where the light was coming from so I’d know where to put the shadows.

  I guess that was my version of an imaginary friend. It made me feel like there was at least one person who completely understood everything about me. And when I used to lie there thinking about her, I thought she was thinking about me, too. And no, I did not give my imaginary friend a name because that would be nuts.

  Once when I was about four, I fell off the dock into the lake and went underwater. I thought I heard my imaginary friend tell me to look up toward the sun and k
eep kicking my legs and I'd be all right. Grandy finally saw that I had fallen in and he jumped in and got me. My head was above water by then. He held me for a long time on the dock. His clothes were soaked. I leaned my head against his chest and I remember feeling his heart beating fast through his plaid shirt. He could never move that fast now. I'd have to be the one who would be able to save him now, instead of him saving me, even though I'm not a lifeguard like Savannah.

  That night in the hotel I had a dream that I was walking down the hall at my school and I saw Olivia Jarrett put a book in her locker. Then she turned around and she was gone.

  Then suddenly in the dream I was walking around on a farm and there was a big barn on the property. I knew I was supposed to look for antiques in the barn to see if there was anything we could sell. I pulled open the big door and walked in and looked around. Even in the dream I could smell the hay and an animal smell like at the flea markets. Like horses had been there but weren't there anymore. I was looking around the barn and then I turned to the right, and I saw Olivia.

  She looked at me.

  "Everyone's looking for you," I said.

  She looked really calm and she sort of smiled and said, "I knew you'd find me."

  In the morning my mom woke me up to get ready. She was sitting at the desk in our hotel room drinking coffee and looking at her laptop. "Good news!" she said. "They found Olivia Jarrett and she's okay! Thank God. Her mom must be so relieved."

  "Oh, wow!" I sat up. "Where was she?"

  "Some guy she met online kidnapped her and then locked her in a barn out in the country and then just left her there. The owner went into his barn early this morning and found her. They already arrested the guy."

  "That's crazy," I said. "I had a dream last night that they found her in a barn and she was okay."

  To be totally honest, this wasn't even that much of a shock. It kind of felt like I knew all along that she would be fine.

  I rolled over and snuggled into the pillow. Now if only I could figure out what happened to Grandy’s sister,

  "Wait," my mom said. "Don't get too cozy there. You have to get up now."

  Chapter 9

  I was finishing a mini box of dry cereal that I had grabbed from the hotel. We were on our way back to the fairgrounds and my mom handed me her phone.

  "Can you call Grandy for me? I don't want to call while I'm driving," she said. "I'm sure he's up."

  I poured the last of the cereal into my mouth and dialed his number. I think all old people get up early. But when he answered he sounded sleepy.

  "Hi Grandy, it’s Robin. Did I wake you up?" I said.

  "No, no, I'm awake," he said. He was yawning.

  "I guess I’m not going to be able to come see you very soon after all,” I said.

  "I still miss you, Birdie," he said.

  "I miss you too," I said.

  I didn't know what to say next. I felt sick thinking about him getting older and not being the same as he’s always been. He sounded lonely. I wished there was something I could do for him.

  My mom pulled into a parking spot at the fairgrounds. The sun was blinding me. It was way too early to be up. Too bad I broke my sunglasses.

  I squinted over at my mom. She held out her hand for the phone.

  "Mom wants to say something, okay?" I said. "I'll talk to you later."

  "Okel dokel," he said. That's one of the weird Grandy things he always says. I handed my mom the phone and got out of the car. I stretched and looked around to see if I could find Dylan and Amie in the parking lot. I didn't see them.

  Two little boys walked by following their parents, who were wearing matching t-shirts and were arguing about who had left their money belt on their kitchen counter. One of the boys looked at me and rolled his eyes. Fellow prisoner. It was going to be a long day for all of us.

  My mom got out of the car. Before she hung up with Grandy, she reminded him to pick up his blood pressure medicine and she warned him about some storms predicted for the next few days in his area. She said goodbye and we started heading toward the gate for another day.

  After we got the booth set up again, I picked up my sketchbook and went to check out a few tables to see if there was anything interesting that I hadn’t seen the day before.

  I stopped at one booth that had a lot of bottles and jars. Some of them were made of blue glass that looked kind of pretty in the sunlight. I picked up a little bottle that was about two inches tall.

  "That's an old ink bottle," the man said.

  It would have been perfect to use for painting. It was just big enough to dip a paintbrush into for watercolors. Then my mom for sure wouldn't accidentally drink out of it. It would even fit in my new art case. But it had a price tag of twenty dollars so I put it back on the table and went to look for Amie and Dylan.

  When I got to their booth I saw Amie sitting in a rocking chair with her feet up on an upside-down enamel bucket. Those are worth more than you would think. Dylan was looking at a guitar.

  "Hey, what's up?" Amie said.

  I looked around for something to sit on.

  “I don’t know,” I sighed.

  Amie frowned at me.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  "Well, I found out yesterday I can't go to my Grandy's like I thought I would,” I said.

  "What's Grandy's?" she asked.

  "Oh, that's my grandpa at the lake house. His name is Andy. So he's Grandy," I said.

  Amie smiled.

  "That's cool. We call our grandpa Doodad," she said.

  "Nice," I said. Fist bump.

  “But anyway, my cousin was going to take me there and now she can’t go at all, and I just found out Grandy has dementia, so I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I said. “He’s losing his memory and someday he might not even recognize me.”

  "That sucks," Amie said. "Maybe you can do something for him. He probably likes old stuff, right? I bet you could find him a little present or something here.”

  “Yeah, I thought about buying him something yesterday, but then I spent my money on the art case instead,” I said. “While we’re doing the scavenger hunt, maybe you can help me look for old license plates. Grandy cuts out the letters and makes signs out of them. Like “Home Sweet Home” signs.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you if I see any,” Amie said.

  Dylan didn't say anything. We decided to walk around and found three rocking chairs at a booth. We sat down and rocked. That lasted about a minute. We got up and found a big picnic table to sit at. I started drawing a rocking chair. Dylan sat at the end of the table looking at his phone.

  Amie stretched out on the picnic table and adjusted her hair so it was spread out on the table. She held her phone up to take a selfie.

  “Can you take my picture from up above?” she asked.

  “No,” Dylan said.

  “Sure,” I said, climbing up on the table to help. She handed me her phone to take the picture.

  “How does this look?” Amie said.

  “You actually look like a dead body. I could draw a chalk outline around you,” Dylan said. “Or maybe they just do that in old movies.”

  Amie and I ignored him and I took a bunch of pictures and showed them to her. She found one she liked.

  Amie sat up and I jumped down from the table.

  “Ow,” I said. That hurt my ankle. They were both looking at their phones.

  “So, speaking of dead bodies,” I said.

  That got their attention.

  "My mom told me that when Grandy was a little kid, his older sister Beverly died and it turns out she might have jumped off a cliff,” I said. “But for some reason I just don't believe it she did it on purpose. I just have..."

  "A gut feeling?" Amie said.

  "Yeah, exactly," I said. "I just wonder if something else was going on, you know?"

  "Do you know what happened?" Amie asked.

  "Her fiancé broke up with her, and right after that, she fell," I said. “Or m
aybe jumped.”

  "Wow. That’s awful. And super dramatic," Amie said, nodding as if she was impressed. “Because what if she was pushed? I’m just saying it’s possible. Too bad you can't find out what she was thinking,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “I bet Grandy wishes he could find out. I can’t believe he never talked about her to me. Maybe he just never wants to think about it. What if someday he doesn’t even remember his sister? Would that almost be a good thing if it’s too sad to think about?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Amie said.

  I’m not sure why I felt so comfortable opening up to Amie and Dylan when we just met. Some people are just easy to talk to. After a while we got up again and started looking at some junk at a booth by the picnic table. If I have to be stranded at the antique fairs, at least Amie and Dylan are willing to hang out with me. They understand what it's like to be surrounded by these weirdos.

  I saw a stack of old high school yearbooks next to a couple of typewriters. I picked one up and turned to the signatures from other classmates at the back of the book. I read one of the notes out loud to Amie: “To a swell girl, thanks for helping me in math class!”

  “Aww, it’s like old-fashioned Insta comments,” she said.

  I wondered if the person who wrote the note was still alive now, or if they could remember ever being in math class. Amie flipped through a bunch of old record albums.

  Just then we all three heard a bunch of voices getting louder. We looked all the way down the row and we saw three paramedics working on a man who was on the ground. They were giving him CPR or something. A bunch of people were standing nearby with their hands on their mouths, waiting.

  We were pretty far away, but suddenly we saw the people clapping and the paramedics were moving the man onto a stretcher. They started wheeling him toward the exit. The man lifted his hand and waved to the woman standing closest to him. I guess they got his heart started again or something.

  "Whoa, I think they just saved that guy's life," Amie said.