Don't Stop Now

by Julie Halpern

  “What the…?” Josh leans forward to look up out the windshield at the statue. A message painted underneath the several-story-high statue (and I’m only guesstimating on the height, of course) reads, welcome to the valley, blue earth, mn. We park and walk around the giant for a few minutes. “You think they make the vegetables here?” Josh asks.

  I laugh. “Make the vegetables?”

  “You know what I mean. Grow them?”

  “Doubtful in Minnesota, with the winters and all. Can them maybe? Or perhaps this is the Jolly Green Giant’s hometown.”

  Josh goes with it. “I wonder what it was like for him, growing up in Blue Earth. Must have been tough to find a winter coat.”

  “Or shoes,” I interject.

  “Was he always green? Always jolly? And did they really have to give him such a prominent junk lump?” We ponder these and other important questions until my cell phone rings and dances inside my pocket. I fish it out, and read the caller ID: a number I don’t recognize from our home area code.

  “Who is it?” Josh watches me as I stare at the phone.

  “No clue. But it couldn’t be Penny, could it? It’s someone from home. And she’s not home anymore. What if it’s her dad calling from work or something? Or what if it’s Gavin? Hell no, do I want to talk to him.”

  “But what if it’s a clue! A lead! Answer it!” he commands. I don’t want to. I think the Jolly Green Giant is trying to tell me through his ginormous leafy codpiece that I shouldn’t answer. I let it go to voicemail.

  “I’ll just wait for the message,” I tell him.

  “Do what you gotta do. Even if it’s not in the best interest of the mystery.” I stick my tongue out at him like a pouty five-year-old. Josh ignores me. “We should hit the road,” he says, and starts to make his way toward the Eurosport. “That Jolly Green groin is giving me the willies. Ha! The willies, get it?” I give a weak sympathy chuckle. On the way back to the car, I feel the buzz of voicemail and hesitantly push the button to listen. The giant’s crotch had it right. This wasn’t Penny.

  “This message is for Lillian Erlich. This is Mike Lobel, FBI. We have reason to believe you may have some information on the whereabouts of Penny Nelson. Please call me at…”

  I don’t bother to write the phone number down. “Holy turd stick,” I say, and flip my phone closed with one hand. “That was the effin’ FBI. They think I know something about Penny.”

  “Well, you do,” Josh says all too matter-of-factly.

  “How do they know that?” I’m bordering on hysterical.

  “They’re the FBI. The Man. Don’t give it up to The Man, Lil.”

  “Give it up to The Man? What decade are you living in? And what do you care? You don’t have to worry about them kicking you out of college before you even start and putting a big red A for Accessory on your record.”

  “Lil, we’re out of high school. There’s no more record.”

  “There’s a police record! Which I may very well already have thanks to this dumbass runaway kidnapping faker. Damn.” I’m so torn now just to tell them what I know. The FBI? That’s kind of huge, right? But if they are the FBI, I mean, shouldn’t they be able to figure things out for themselves? And, technically, I don’t actually know where she is. I just know that at one point she told me she was maybe going to see some guy she knows in Portland. Or maybe I heard her wrong. After that, all she said was she did it, which really could have referred to anything that we had talked about after she may have mentioned a fake kidnapping plot. Maybe she bought that pair of Vans we had discussed. Or pierced her nose? She mentioned that once. How am I supposed to know what she did or didn’t do? I’m not in the FBI. I’m just a recent high school graduate, out on the road with my best friend before I have to hunker down and go to college and study film or possibly creative writing. I don’t even know what I’m going to major in, so how could I possibly know where my idiot friend is better than the FBI does? There it is. I don’t know where Penny is, and therefore, I am not actually about to lie to the FBI.

  “I’m calling the FBI guy back. Don’t talk. Turn off Elvis.” Josh clicks the radio and flashes me a stay-strong fist. I grab the cheese hat for support.

  The phone only has to ring once before I hear, “Mike Lobel speaking.” So serious.

  “Uh, hi. This is Lillian Erlich? You called me?” Toughen up, Lil, you know nothing.

  “Yes, Ms. Erlich. Recent developments have led us to believe that Ms. Nelson has not been kidnapped but has run away.”

  “Really? What developments?” I’m going for concerned friend, but I know I sound shifty.

  “Several hundred dollars were withdrawn from Ms. Nelson’s bank account two days prior to her disappearance. She was still residing at her family home when this occurred. We believe she used this money for a plane ticket. Since you are the last person she contacted before her disappearance, we are asking you to cooperate and give us any information you have about her whereabouts.”

  He is insinuating that I’m lying. I don’t owe him any information. If he could do his job right, if he could figure out that her parents don’t give a crap where she goes or what she does as long as she’s there for them when they need her services, maybe that’d give him some clues. Plus, isn’t that what he gets paid for? “I’m sorry,” I say, ever the concerned friend, “but I don’t know where she is. Maybe you can ask her parents. Or her boyfriend, Gavin James. Check with him. I’m sure he’ll have lots to tell you.” That’s right. Ask the guilty parties, not me. I didn’t ask to be a part of this, and I didn’t do anything wrong. Plain and simple.

  “We are looking into connections with Gavin, but we think her communication with you is the key. We’d like to hear the voicemail she left you…”

  “Yeeeeahhh, sorry. I deleted it. It was just late-night mumbling anyway, you know?”

  “Well, we’ll see if we can somehow retrieve it. Every clue helps.”

  “I’m sure it does,” I say, with undetectable sarcasm.

  “We’ll be in touch.” And Lobel hangs up.

  “Turds ahoy. Can they check my erased voicemails?” I quickly call my voicemail and delete the Penny message.

  “Not that I’m the authority on FBI technology, but I’m guessing yes. But don’t worry about it, Lil. She didn’t tell you anything really anyway, right?”

  “True.” I have convinced myself of this. “She didn’t.”

  I almost went to the movie with Lillian and Josh and their friends. Our friends? I don’t know if I can call them that. But that’s OK. They were going to see a movie, a funny movie, one that made me laugh just by watching the commercial. Gavin elbowed me when I laughed at the commercial. What are you, retarded? he asked. That wasn’t funny, he said. But it was. And he said he was busy tonight, so when Lillian called and asked, I said I could go. But I kept my phone with me just in case. In case he called. I didn’t want it to ring, prayed it wouldn’t, while I was in the theater. Because he would be mad. Other people might be, too, but it’s him that matters. Luckily it rang before the movie started. I was buying popcorn, no extra butter, when the call came. He told me to come over. I almost told him I was busy. He asked where I was. I said I was at Target, buying some tampons for my mom. He said, She hasn’t gone through menopause yet? Why would he want to know that? I said I’d be over as soon as possible. He said to be over even sooner. He can be romantic like that. Passionate. So of course I had to go. I told Lillian that I had really bad cramps and needed to go home. That’s my standard excuse because who can argue against that? Or so I thought. Lillian was like, “Double-dose some Aleve and buy an extra-large bag of Sno-Caps. Mix them with the popcorn. That’s the cramp cure-all!” I really did want to stay. That actually sounded tasty. And like I said, I wanted to see that movie. But Gavin was waiting. So I said, “Wish I could, but I always get diarrhea when I have my period.” And then Josh was, like, “Thank you for that delightful splattering of information.” He always says the right thing. The funny thing
. Gavin wasn’t in a funny mood when I picked him up. I almost told him the thing that Josh said about the diarrhea, but then I’d have to explain. Gavin and I spent the night hanging out in the car, sometimes driving, sometimes in the backseat, sometimes just sitting, me wondering what he was thinking. I kind of wish I could have seen the movie. Maybe I can rent it when it comes out on DVD. I’ll just have to hide the box.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Elvis tape autoflips from side 1 to side 2 to side 1 again, and it fits the mood of our drive so nicely that we don’t bother to switch tapes. I particularly love the song that starts all slick and slow: “She looks like an angel. Walks like an angel. Talks like an angel. But I got wise…” Pause pause. “You’re the devil in disguise!” And it goes all jangly and out of control. I dub it my Penny song. devil in disguise indeed. So what does that make me? A minion of some sort? I’m not crazy. I know I’ve been lying to myself. To everyone, really. Even as little as I listened to Penny that night before graduation, I heard her. And I remember. We were sitting at a booth at Copper Brothers Pancake House, one of those booths that’s so big you can fit ten people in it but only two people can get out without crawling through the sticky mess underneath the table. I was trapped dead center, sandwiched in between Penny and Josh. Josh was in some heated discussion about the best brand of guitar strings with Nissa Bolger (or something along those same boring lines—lines I have heard one too many times that cause my eyes to glaze and my mind to wander), and whoever was on Penny’s left, well, they made it clear that they were too enchanted with the other table half’s conversation to turn their body toward Penny. So it was just us, alone at a giant tableful of people. Penny was talking ad nauseum about Gavin, her mom, her nonexistent fat issues…. I’d heard it all before, so I didn’t try to hear it again. For a while I counted the number of distinct stained-glass lamps overhead, but I tired of that. So I interrupted her to ask about Ethan. I had been curious about him ever since she had come back a shade darker and a ginormous leap happier from her family’s spring break trip to Disney World. Who was this guy who could do that to her? And why couldn’t she remember that person instead of obsessing over Gavin, who made her face turn gray the instant he entered a room or called her on the phone? I asked her what Ethan was up to. Does she talk to him? Do they email? Is she going to see him again? And like I said before, she shushed me. All I could do after that was play with my fork and pray my apple pancakes arrived sooner rather than endless awkward minutes later. That’s when she whispered, too quietly for a silent room, let alone a packed pancake restaurant table. The words I picked up—Don’t tell. Ethan. Portland. Leave. I asked her to repeat. “You’re going to visit Ethan in Portland and you don’t want me to tell anyone?” I whispered it, I know, as quiet as a mouse, but there was the shush again. The suspiciously guilty glances around the room. Then, in her quiet manner, sheeeked out, “I’m going to pretend I was kidnapped.” And then the food came. The rush of the increased table volume. The shift of the conversations as the table shared food, summer plans. It all washed away her sentence. It’s not as though she hasn’t said weird things before. How many times has she threatened to run away or kill herself in some desperate grasp for attention? I was used to it. How was this different?

  But it was.

  Because she did it.

  And as much as I want to pretend that I don’t know where she is or how she got there, my subliminal pancake-loving mind didn’t forget. Somehow the FBI knows I know. Which sucks. But why do they have to rely on me? Why don’t her parents and her jagoff of a boyfriend know her well enough to know where she’s going? Or that she even has to go anywhere? And then there’s the whole road trip with Josh piece.

  Penny was the perfect excuse to get Josh alone. Really alone, away from friends and parents and reality. Penny and her mindless mind made it possible for Josh and me to go on this trip. Not that we couldn’t have without her as a destination, but neither of us have ever been motivated enough to plan something as huge as a cross-country road trip, no matter how unplanned it needed to be.

  That’s not exactly true.

  I have plenty of motivation, hence going away to college in a few months. Hence working summer jobs. Hence having real, attainable goals. But Josh…his biggest motivation in life seems to be avoiding the unavoidable. Which he’s really good at.

  So a road trip together, before I become a new, improved college version of me, is my last chance. To figure out if we really are as perfect for each other as other people seem to think we are. As I have thought. Or hoped. I have Penny to thank for that. And all the guilt that’s hiding inside of me—knowing how worried my mom would be if I ever pulled a stunt as mentally crap as Penny has pulled—is going to stay hidden until I get my perfect answer.

  As if my mom reads my guilty mind, my phone buzzes, signaling a text. I flip it open. “How sit gong?” My mom’s texting abilities are weak, but her message is crystal clear. I feel lucky she’s thinking about me. I text her back with a smiley.

  Josh and I do our best Elvis and sing along to the now overly familiar lyrics. I never realized how excellent Elvis’s music is, too blinded by the sheer overexposure of his iconic self to realize there is an actual musician underneath to cause the hysteria. Maybe next road trip we can swing by Graceland. Will there be another road trip? Will there be another time of just me and Josh? What if he really does manage to gather a band and write good songs and go on tour? Or what if I get a summer job and don’t have time for spontaneous travel? Or what if he gets a girlfriend? Or I actually find a guy I want to be with for more than a millisecond? So many what-ifs. This summer—this journey—is the only sure thing there is.

  Last night was almost perfect. Close as my life can get, I suppose. Gavin was waiting for me by my locker, which can be a big deal. But he was in such a good mood. He scored something excellent or whatever from some guy, so he was sort of buzzed but so sweet I didn’t mind. No one was home; Mom and Dad took Annabelle to a ballet on ice she wanted to see. Gavin and I watched TV on the big screen, the one we never get to use because my mom always bogarts it with her home shopping. Usually we only get to use the tiny one in my bedroom, which pisses Gavin off. It’s like watching TV on someone’s car DVD player through the back window of their minivan, he says. But not the huge, wall-covering flat screen. Would you believe my mom bought it on QVC? Yes. They even sell huge TVs. I guess so the fake gemstones look even bigger and more sparkly. How did they deliver it, though? Sorry I missed that.

  We watched whatever channels Gavin flipped to randomly. He doesn’t have the good cable at his house. I snuggled into him while he changed the channels and inhaled his after shave. He stopped on a cooking channel. The guy, who was from somewhere else, heavy with an accent, was making a shrimp pasta loaf thingy. It looked pretty gross. Shrimp are so ick, with their eyes and whiskers and tails. Gavin said to me, in between gulps of Code Red Mountain Dew, “Babe, I’m gonna make that for you someday.” I’d eat it if he did. Googly shrimp eyes and all.

  Then we kissed until my tongue fizzed with red pop.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Wind whips through the car as we drive in the right lane, the slow lane, on Interstate 90. Josh claims, “I’m just drivin’ and in no hurry to get nowhere.” I don’t complain because the longer the trip takes, the farther away our destination of Penny is.

  As soon as we enter South Dakota (insert New State Ritual here), we begin to see billboards for Wall Drug. Several read, WHERE THE HECK IS WALL DRUG? so I ask Josh, “What the heck is Wall Drug?”

  “It’s some sort of honkin’ huge drugstore, I think. Loads of souvenir crap. My dad went there once on a ‘business trip.’” Josh says this in air quotes with a wink. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I let it go. I don’t ever feel the need to hear about his dad’s rich bachelor lifestyle. “Supposed to be pretty wacky. We’ll have to follow the signs to Wall.”

  I check the map and estimate, “We can make it there by tomorrow a
fternoon. Tonight we’ll stay in Mitchell, home of the Mitchell Corn Palace.” I didn’t know what that was either, but if it’s anything like the Mars’ Cheese Castle, we’re in for a lot of corn. And I do mean corn. Funny how both cheese and corn mean, well, cheesy and corny. Ah, the poetry of the road.

  The car is too loud to really talk, so we pass the time with car games, like Slug Bug, I Spy, and counting vanity license plates. I decide to keep a record of the Wall Drug billboards, too, because they’re pretty funny. Maybe they’ll make their way into a story or film of mine someday. Some of the best:

  WALL DRUG: NEW BACKYARD!

  HAVE YOU DUG WALL DRUG?

  NEW T-REX: WALL DRUG?

  HOT COFFEE ONLY 5 CENTS!

  And about a million that declare, FREE ICE WATER.

  “Can’t you get free ice water pretty much anywhere?” Josh asks.

  “Maybe there’s something special about this water. Like, maybe it’s not water at all but some brainwashing concoction that convinces you to buy tons of useless crap.”

  “Or maybe,” Josh pontificates, “it’s saliva from the new T. rex.”

  “Possibly, possibly. Or maybe it’s actually pee from a garden gnome,” I suggest.

  “Pee from a garden gnome?”

  “Yeah. From their new backyard.”

  “Where do you come up with this stuff?”

  “I’m just brilliant, I guess.” I fluff underneath my hair for emphasis.

  “Beauty and brains.” Josh shakes his head.

  Don’t let it fool you, I tell myself. He says that kind of stuff to anyone. Waitresses. Traffic cops. Circus clowns.

  The exit for Mitchell appears right around dinnertime, and we follow the signs to head right to the Corn Palace. The air is sizzling; waving heat blurs mock our lack of air-conditioning.

  “I could use some of that free ice water,” Josh says as we find a parking space near the downtown.