Don't Stop Now

by Julie Halpern

  “If she’s truly faking her own kidnapping just so she can get away from her life, I’d have to label that one as passive-aggressive. It’s like the wussiest thing on earth to not have the balls to say, ‘Look, I’m leaving town. Don’t follow me, don’t try to stop me. I’ll call when I feel like it.’ But she”—he stutters, incredulous—“she can’t even leave a note? Instead, she puts you in the middle of some sort of elaborate kidnapping plot, just so she can get a little love, and she’s off roaming the country. How do we know the cops aren’t calling you because her parents tipped them off or something? Maybe they think you kidnapped her! And you’re holding her for ransom and won’t take less than an olive tree in exchange for her life,” Josh pontificates animatedly.

  I know he’s kidding, but it’s kind of weird that the police called me. Like, maybe they do think I know something? Because I do. But they don’t know that. Or do they?

  My cell phone rings again, and I jump. Thank god it’s my mom’s number that appears on the caller ID.

  “Hi, Ma,” I answer, relieved.

  “Hi, honey. Everything OK?” Mom sounds concerned but like she’s trying not to.

  “Sure. Yeah. Why?”

  “Um, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, sweetheart, but a policeman came by the house looking for information about your friend Penny. It seems, well, she may have been abducted.” My mom sounds devastated, like this is the worst news a mom could tell her daughter. I want to give it up, right now, to end this ridiculous plot of Penny’s, but something stops me. A big, disgusting, faux-military vehicle in shiny suburban silver (reminiscent of Penny’s mom’s baby, I mean, Hummer), complete with skinny mom in baseball cap, pulls up next to us at the Cheese Castle. The woman gets out, two kids barely visible in the backseat above the auto armor, and says to them, “I’ll be right back.” Then she closes and locks the door—beep beep—leaving the kids in the car. You don’t do that. That’s Mom 101. I saw this episode of Oprah about a mom who left her kid in the car because he was sleeping and she didn’t want to wake him, and he died. Dead. Suffocated by hot air. My mom would never do that. But Penny’s, I’m not so sure.

  “Ma, I don’t want you to worry. Don’t ask how I know, but I’m pretty sure Penny’s all right. Call it friend’s intuition. You have to trust me on that.”

  “It’s good to think so positively, Lil.”

  “No, Ma, I mean, I know, like, for sure that she’s fine.” I wish she could see my face to read the certainty in my eyes.

  “Lillian, is there something you’re not telling me?” I’m relieved to hear a bit of the suspicious mom in her voice, like she’s starting to believe me.

  “Maybe.” I laugh a little, trying to reassure her. And myself. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding between her and her family, and I don’t want you to worry about it.”

  “Are you sure? Because that policeman…”

  “I’ll call him and straighten things out, Ma. You don’t have to get involved at all. No worries. Done,” I convince her. And just like that I get an idea in my head of how I’m going to deal with this. “I love you, Mom. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Love you, too. Be good.” And she hangs up.

  Josh watches me, one eyebrow raised. “So you’re turning Penny in, just like that? Game over?”

  “Not exactly,” I say guiltily. “I told my mom that so she wouldn’t worry.” I look over at the Hummer. “Good moms worry,” I say.

  At that moment, a police car pulls into the Cheese Castle lot. I start a bit, wondering for a minute if they’re after me, but this is a Wisconsin state trooper, and I seriously doubt things have gotten this extreme that there’s an APB out on me. The cop probably just has to get his cheese on. A female police officer steps out of the car and slams the door. I look over at the Hummer again, windows hardly cracked. “Excuse me, officer.” I barely recognize my voice as I walk toward the cop. I catch Josh’s panicked expression, knowing he probably thinks what I’m going to do has something to do with Penny. Which it does, albeit indirectly.

  “May I help you?” she asks with a twinge of suspicion. I see her eyeing Josh, who’s now sitting on the hood of his car, shirtless in his dick shades, dropping cheese curds delicately into his mouth.

  “I just wanted to let you know that a woman left some kids in that Hummer over there. And it’s kind of hot out, you know?” I want to add that real moms don’t leave their kids locked up in environmentally destructive tanks while gallivanting about inside cheese meccas. A real mom would bring her kids in and buy them cheese in the shape of mystical beasts. Or cows.

  “Did you see where the woman went?” the officer asks.

  “Inside the Cheese Castle.” I almost laugh at how absurd that sounds. “She’s wearing a powder blue baseball cap,” I add.

  “Thank you.” She nods her head and walks with purpose into the Castle.

  “Josh,” I say, turning toward the shirtless wonder on the hood. “I don’t want to go home.”

  “Yeah, sure, we can go somewhere else. We got nowhere to be.” He plucks a curd out of the cheese water and plops it into his mouth. “Just melt on your tongue, don’t they?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I mean I don’t want to go home today. I think I need to get away, too,” I proclaim.

  Josh sits up, sparked by the idea. “Where do you want to go?” he asks, mischief glinting off his mirror shades.

  “To find Penny,” I answer.

  I can’t believe it. Lillian talked to me at a party. I wonder if she caught me staring at her. She never talked to me before. I mean, she never really ignored me, but I just figured she was so tall, she looked right over me. People do it all the time, tall or not. But she talked to me. She gave me some food. She smiled at me. Beautiful teeth. Is that weird I think she has beautiful teeth? She does. And hands. Long fingers. Mine are stumpy.

  So she smiled at me and gave me a chip and some dip, and now I think that means I can say hi to her at school. Maybe we’ll sit by each other in class. Maybe I can hang with her and Josh and laugh when our car breaks down. Maybe that’s what her smile and the chip and the dip mean. Maybe it’s the start of a beautiful friendship.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I’m in,” Josh declares.

  “Wait—I’m supposed to convince you with all sorts of important and meaningful reasons about why I must do this. A quest unfulfilled, and all that.”

  “Whatever. You don’t have to sell me. The open road. A far-off destination. I’m there.”

  Maybe it’s good that was so easy. If Josh wasn’t so enthusiastic, I might have caved and gone straight to Penny’s parents’ house to confess.

  “But riddle me this: Why are we going to see Penny? Isn’t she, like, the root of all stupidity at this point?”

  “No, well, not really. She’s just lost. And if we find her, then I’ve fulfilled my promise to her and myself that I won’t tell anyone where she is. Then I’m going to make her turn herself in, tell her to grow a set, and finally rid my psyche of this hold she’s had on me for the last year.”

  “Fair enough. So do we go home and pack? Or should we rough it?” Josh asks.

  I’d hate to go back home and find the cops waiting outside my house. Or worse, run into my mom and have to lie or be guilted into confessing something. “Let’s just go. We can buy some stuff along the way.” Which really means Josh can use his dad’s credit card and we can buy whatever we want. I never was one to take advantage of that as much as other people, although I rarely said no to a free meal. That would be rude, right? But this is the perfect—even noble—excuse to mooch. “But along the way where? Do we just head west and hope to find her standing on the side of the road?”

  “West sounds best,” Josh amuses himself. “Nobody ever found adventure by driving east. Or at least not in the movies.”

  “Which is practically real life anyways,” I concur. “Our ultimate goal can be Portland because that’s probably—maybe, anyways—where she might
be. It’s the biggest lead we have. And it certainly is west. About as far west as we can go, really. West to Portland!” I raise my pointer finger into the air in a declaration. Then Josh gets this boing! idea look on his face. “What’s going on in that wacky head of yours?” I ask.

  “Best idea ever,” Josh declares. “Hiding Out.”

  “Oh, no. No. No?” Hiding Out is this absurd movie from the eighties that always seems to be on the local crap channel at two in the morning. It stars Jon Cryer, the dad from Two and a Half Men, as someone who has to go into hiding for witnessing a murder or something, so he stops at a gas station, takes an ugly T-shirt off a rack, grabs a razor, bleach, and some shaving cream, heads to the bathroom and proceeds to shave off his beard and bleach his hair into the ugliest skunk do. Then he enrolls in high school. “Which part of Hiding Out are we talking exactly?” I’m leery. “Because I’m not going back to high school. Or shaving my beard.”

  “Let’s buy ourselves wardrobes from Mars’ Cheese Castle! And dye our hair in the bathroom!” Josh is hyper-enthused, almost more than the time he found a copy of the ancient Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy computer game on eBay. A little scary, really. But also kind of funny, too. I shrug an OK, and we head inside. At least it’s the beginning of a plan.

  On our way in, we pass the cop and the baseball-hat bitch-mom coming out. The cop nods at me, and I wink at her.

  “Did you just wink at that cop?” Josh whispers.

  “Yep,” I answer. I just winked at a cop.

  The Castle is buzzing with tourists sifting through fridges and freezers of cheese fare. We make our way over to the racks of Wisconsinalia clothing. Josh pulls out a green shirt that proclaims, WISCONSIN: SMELL OUR DAIRY AIR. I laugh and find a tank top reading, WISCONSIN: SMELLS LIKE CHEESE.

  “Half of these are about smells,” I note.

  “And the other half are about cows.”

  “And the other half are about cheese and cows,” I add.

  We grab a selection of goofy shirts, some grotesque sport shorts, Packers boxers, bikini undies covered in cheese wedges for me, and a couple Badgers fleece blankets. In the grocery section we pack a Styrofoam cooler with pop, chips, CornNuts, beef jerky, bread and, of course, cheese. Josh adds a couple of cheese hats—giant yellow foam hats in the shape of cheese wedges—at the register. I give him a quizzical look. “In case we need a disguise,” he says. As if wearing wedges of yellow Swiss on our heads will make us incognito. The hair dye will have to come later, since that is one product that Mars’ Cheese Castle does not carry. If only it were cheese based.

  Whenever I imagined a no-holds-barred shopping spree, à la Pretty Woman, I thought it would be in a fancy department store, complete with doting salesgirls and an appropriate montage soundtrack. Never did it involve cheese products.

  We pack up the car and are about to drive away when I realize, “Wait. We don’t have any maps.”

  “Maps? We don’t need no stinkin’ maps,” Josh accents.

  “Right. We already barely have any idea where we’re going, but we’re going to try and get there without maps? I don’t think so.”

  “All we have to do is drive west, baby.” Josh has one hand on the steering wheel, one hand hanging next to me on my seat back.

  “Yeah, and end up fried to a crisp in Death Valley. I’ll be right back.”

  “You have a morbid imagination!” Josh yells after me as I walk into the Cheese Castle.

  I pick out a few maps in the Castle, add in a pack of Chuckles, and then we’re off.

  “So which way do we go?” Josh asks.

  I pull out the Wisconsin map and scan westward. Portland is a long way off, so we have a lot of possible terrain to cover before we either (a) find Penny or (b) give up and turn her in. As long as we’re on the road, we may as well stop and see some of our glorious country before I go off to school (or get thrown in jail for aiding a fraud) and Josh goes, well, somewhere. I trace my finger along the treasure of lines and spot something that jars a wonderful family (pre-divorce devastation) road-trip memory. “The House on the Rock!” I yell. “We have to go!” I’m so excited I’m bouncing in my seat.

  “What’s the House on the Rock?” Josh asks, intrigued.

  “Words do not describe, my dear. Just drive where I tell you.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  “I can’t hear you…,” I sing.

  “Aye aye, Captain!” Josh cries, and we drive off singing the SpongeBob theme song.

  About an hour into the two-hour drive to House on the Rock, I remember I told my mom that I’d call the police back. Basking in the state of Wisconsin masked but didn’t rub out the whole point of this impromptu journey: Penny the kidnapee.

  “I have to call the police.” I turn down the stereo and yell over the open windows, “To tell them I don’t know anything.”

  “Lying to the cops. Nice!” Josh enthuses. I doubt he’d be that way if he was the one doing the calling. Actually, he probably would.

  “I need to center myself. Get my lie face on.” I close my eyes and try to remember why I’m covering for Penny in the first place. Hummer. Babysitter. Olive tree. I feel a pluff on top of my head, and I look up to see that Josh has installed the cheese hat on me.

  “Your disguise,” he informs me.

  “Naturally,” I agree. “Roll up your window so I can hear.” Josh uses the hand crank on the aged Eurosport door to muffle the highway noise, and I clear my throat. I beep through my phone to find the cop’s number, then will myself to hit Send.

  “Sergeant Sundstrom.” His serious voice answers after one ring.

  “Yeah, hi, this is Lillian Erlich. You left me a message….”

  “Right, yes. We’re looking for Penny Nelson. We believe her to be missing. You were the last person she spoke to. Did she say anything about going out? Meeting up with someone? Leaving town?” His questions sound slightly accusatory, as if he knows I know something. Is there some heat reader that can sense my guilt through the phone? I grip the cheese hat for strength.

  “No, sorry, she didn’t say anything. Is she going to be OK?” I fake distress, but it’s difficult when Josh grabs my knee and busts up. I shoot him a shut-up look, and he takes his hand off my knee to put a shush finger to his lips.

  “Well, what did she call you about at four thirty in the morning?” He clips as if calling someone at four thirty in the morning is something unheard of. Does he remember being eighteen? I argue with him in my head, convincing myself I’m completely in the right.

  “Just, you know, to talk. About her night. Her boyfriend.”

  “What can you tell me about her boyfriend?” Is this a trick question? Am I somehow going to drag Gavin into this? Should I? Wouldn’t be so bad for the cops to put a little scare into him. Why not.

  “Well, truthfully, officer, he’s kind of a dick. Pardon my French. Cheats on her. Says nasty things to her. Maybe worse. Hard to say. She doesn’t tell me everything.” There’s a pause, and I can hear him scribbling everything down. “Look, I kind of have to go because I’m driving and shouldn’t really be talking on the phone for safety reasons, but if you hear anything, please keep me posted. I’m really worried.”

  “Sure thing, miss. I’ll be sure to call you if I need to talk to you.” Again with the tone. We hang up.

  Josh claps admirably. “Well done, Cheesehead.” I pull the sponge hat off and toss it into the backseat. Josh and I roll our windows down, and the loud music resumes.

  That wasn’t so hard. Lying to the police. It almost helped suppress the guilt I’m sort of feeling about not telling Penny’s parents. Maybe I should wear a cheese hat more often.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We drive up the winding gravel road that leads to the House on the Rock around three in the afternoon.

  “What the hell is this place?” marvels Josh as we walk toward the building.

  You wouldn’t know it from the approach, but the House on the Rock is a glorious, never-ending co
llection of FREAK. I have only been here once before, when my extended family stopped during a fishing trip to Minnesota. Its grandiose grotesqueness awed me then, and I hope it doesn’t disappoint now that I’m older.

  The admission desk has a small line, and when we get up to the teller, a sallow teen with leftover acne, she drones, “Welcome to the House on the Rock.”

  “Tough day?” Josh kibitzes, and the charm oozes a smile right out of House on the Rock girl.

  “Oh, you know, tourists.” She rolls her eyes.

  “Yeah, tourists.” Josh chuckles as though we’re House on the Rock neighbors and we’re just stopping by on our way to Sam’s Club.

  “So, would you like Tour One, Tour Two, Tour Three, or the Ultimate Experience?” she asks Josh, me being invisible, and all.

  Josh turns to me and asks, “Do we want Tour One, Tour Two, Tour Three, or the Ultimate Experience?” in a mocking tone that’s only obvious to me.

  “I always want the ultimate experience, Josh,” I say in an overtly sexual way. The girl at the counter looks surprised to see me there, and then pretends to shuffle some papers. Well, she doesn’t pretend to shuffle, but I’m pretty certain those papers didn’t need to be shuffled.

  “We’ll take two for the Ultimate Experience,” Josh says and hands over the credit card.

  To truly appreciate the House on the Rock, one must experience the mishegoss for themselves. But I’ll try to do it justice.

  We enter the first part, the House, which is an ultimate experience in itself. The story goes that some guy, Alex Jordan, found a fancy rock formation and decided he’d like to build a house around it. But not just any house. The House on the Rock has a groovalicious midget feel to it. The entire place is coated in shag carpeting, including several walls, and the ceilings were not meant for humans of my or Josh’s stature. All of the weirdly winding nook-and-cranny rooms (complete with in-ground tiny round bed) lead up to the pinnacle and name inspiration for this place, a very long, narrow glass room—we’re talking twenty-five feet, maybe fifty (I didn’t bring my tape measure)—that juts out over the rocky nature below. The “room” ends in a tiny point, where you can look down through a small square window and see some trees. The fear factor is that the room bounces as you walk in it because it is so precariously out there. Josh makes it a point to freak out nearby small children for a good ten minutes by standing in the long room and saying things like, “Did you hear a crack? Is this thing sound?” and “I definitely felt us get lower. We should get out of here!”