Wrong Way Summer

by Heidi Lang

  Patrick shook his head. “He has no idea.”

  “He really doesn’t,” their dad agreed. “Poor fool. You can’t make crepes if it’s not Sunday. Not unless you want to be cursed.”

  “I think you’re just lazy,” Claire said, helping her dad slide the first hammock into place. “You just don’t like making pancakes more than once a week.”

  “How dare you. Do I need to remind you of what happened to your aunt Jan?”

  “She made pancakes on a Saturday?” Claire guessed.

  “Oh, it’s much worse than that.” He helped her put up the second hammock. “It was a Tuesday. And everyone knows Tuesdays are . . . what, Patrick?”

  “Tuesdays are not to be trifled with,” Patrick recited immediately.

  It was another of their dad’s mottos: All the worst things that can happen to a person happen on a Tuesday. His theory was that you’d prepare for a Monday, and then Tuesday would sneak right in and sucker punch you in the gut.

  Their mother had left on a Tuesday.

  Claire finished setting up her bed, then tugged Ronnie’s postcards from her backpack. She ran her finger over the smooth blank surface of one of them and imagined the feeling of a pencil scraping across it, picturing what she’d draw, if she still drew. Maybe the shores of Lake Erie, Patrick’s pile of beach glass, the ghostly outline of an old ship . . .

  “What’s that?” Patrick asked.

  “Nothing.” Claire shoved the stack of blank postcards back into her backpack, thrusting the ideas away with it. She caught Patrick staring. “And you’d better not go poking around my stuff.”

  “You don’t have a door to shut on me anymore.” He stuck his tongue out.

  “Dad!”

  “Claire!”

  Claire sighed. Her dad would be no help, as usual. “Whatever. I’m going to bed.” She’d claimed the hammock closest to the back doors, which meant she had to clamber over Patrick’s hammock first and then leapfrog across to her own. As she settled into it, the fabric hugged her body, and with her blankets pillowed at her feet, it wasn’t actually that bad. Almost comfortable, even.

  She closed her eyes and listened to her dad shutting the doors and setting the fan in the ceiling to bring in fresh air, and she imagined that blank postcard, still trying to decide if she should fill it in. Outside, the insects chirped and the breeze tapped chilly fingers against the side of their van, gently rocking her to sleep.

  CHAPTER 12

  Claire woke abruptly to the sounds of something large shuffling around underneath her bed. Her heart squeezed, her body frozen as the darkness pressed in on all sides. And where was she? This wasn’t her room. It wasn’t her bed!

  And then she remembered: Van. Driveway. Hammock. Hashtag vanlife. And that shuffling noise was just her dad, doing some kind of reorganizing below her, the curtains still drawn tight. “What time is it?” she croaked.

  “Four thirty,” her dad whispered.

  “In the morning?”

  “Shh,” he hissed.

  “What’s going on?” Patrick asked sleepily, and Claire felt him sit up in the hammock next to hers.

  “We’re going into stealth mode,” their dad said. “Are you both in?”

  “Absolutely,” Patrick said immediately.

  “What’s stealth mode?” Claire asked suspiciously.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Patrick said. “It sounds awesome. Like we’re a spaceship.”

  “Exactly so,” their dad said. “We’re going to keep the hammocks up, keep the curtains drawn, and sneak out of this driveway like a black dog in the night. Secret. Silent. Unseen.”

  “So . . . basically you really don’t want to make breakfast,” Claire said.

  “You say tomato. I say stealth mode.”

  “Dad, that doesn’t even make sense.”

  “I call copilot!” Patrick was already hopping out of his hammock, and Claire reluctantly climbed down from her hammock, too, and took her seat on the cooler. This was so silly.

  “Ready, crew?” their dad whispered.

  “Ready, captain,” Patrick said.

  “Claire-bear?”

  So, so silly. Claire sighed loudly.

  “I can’t fly into potentially dangerous enemy territory until I know I have the support of my full crew,” her dad said.

  “Ready,” Claire muttered. “But I’m not calling you captain. Especially not after you woke me up at four in the morning.”

  “What if I promise to steer us somewhere with chocolate chip pancakes?”

  Claire loved chocolate chip pancakes, and normally her dad didn’t let her get them, because he believed breakfast and dessert should be two separate things. “Fine,” she decided.

  “Fine . . . what?”

  “I’m ready, captain.”

  He chuckled as he turned on the van, the diesel engine rumbling to life. And for a second, Claire could almost imagine they were in a spaceship soaring through the night, so silent the people below wouldn’t notice them. Just another star in the sky, heading for parts unknown.

  “So, Dad,” Claire said, setting her fork down on her now-empty plate and staring at him across the table. They were in one of those twenty-four-hour, breakfast-served-all-day diners, the kind with plastic benches that clung to your skin and tables that always felt sticky.

  “So, daughter.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows.

  Claire resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and instead asked, “Were you planning on telling us where we’re going?”

  “Wherever we want. That’s the beauty of hashtag vanlife.”

  “Okay. I get that you think that. But where are we going?” she repeated.

  “Hmm . . . I guess we should decide on our next destination.”

  “East!” Patrick howled. “East!”

  “Stop it, Patrick,” Claire said. “You’re being disruptive.”

  “We’re the only customers,” he pointed out.

  “Fine,” Claire conceded. “But, a direction is not a plan.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  She frowned. “It’s not a good enough plan.”

  “Let’s see Castle Garden!” Patrick clapped his hands excitedly. “We can see where Wrong Way first came here, and then trace his route.”

  “That’s an idea,” their dad said slowly. “We can certainly go there, if that’s what you both want . . . but you might be disappointed in Castle Garden.”

  “Is it still open?” Claire asked.

  “Well, technically . . . yes. But I think it’s just a place where vendors sell overpriced hot dogs and T-shirts. And there are bathrooms.”

  Claire wanted to see it, but if the hot dogs and T-shirts were overpriced, everything else would be, too. She glanced down at her empty plate, then over at the even emptier spot on the table in front of her dad where there was no plate, just coffee. The glimmer of a realization oozed inside her, stickier than any diner table. Next to her Patrick chanted, “Castle—Garden—Castle—Garden—” Oblivious. Happy.

  The chocolate chip pancakes in Claire’s stomach lurched and twisted, congealing into a lump of guilt. “I don’t know, Patrick,” she said, forcing the words out. “Sounds like an awfully long way to go for a bathroom.” She met her dad’s gaze just in time to see him flinch. It made her think of that day they couldn’t afford her next round of X-rays, how he hadn’t said a word, but afterward had called up their old neighbor Meredith. When he finally agreed to work under the table in Meredith’s auto shop, he’d made that same pained expression.

  Her brother stopped chanting, his forehead creasing. “Hmm,” he said, considering.

  “Maybe . . .” Their dad cleared his throat. “Maybe it’s just not grand enough for our Grand Adventure. After all, if Patrick wants to go east—”

  “East!” Patrick bellowed. The waiter in the corner turned and glared at them. “East,” he repeated, a little softer.

  “Then by all means, we must go east.” Their dad beamed, looking again like his normal, eager, ir
ritating self. “So maybe we should go all the way to the easternmost state. Which is . . . Patrick?”

  “Maine!”

  “Exactly so, my boy, my clever protégé. We shall head to Maine.”

  “What’s Maine like?” Patrick asked.

  “Cold,” Claire said.

  “It’s practically July,” her dad said. “I doubt it’ll be cold right now. And we can take Route 20 there. And you know what’s special about that road?”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell us,” Claire muttered.

  “It stretches all the way from the Pacific Northwest to New En gland! To Boston, Massachusetts, if I’m not mistaken, making it the longest road in the US.” He got up, Claire and Patrick following him as he paid their bill at the cash register, then headed out to the parking lot.

  The sun was just brushing past the horizon, the day brightening all blue and cheerful. A couple of cars had pulled into the parking lot. Claire could feel the people in the car next to them watching as she pulled open the side door of the van.

  A sock tumbled out, then a book and an empty water bottle.

  Red-faced, Claire hurriedly picked them up and shoved them inside. After going into “stealth mode,” they hadn’t really organized, and already the inside of the van looked a little like Patrick’s bedroom. It made her irritable, everything all messy like that. “Don’t most people head west?” Claire demanded as she slammed the side door shut, then started folding blankets and shuffling clothing away. “Isn’t that, like, a thing?”

  “Yeah, but we’re related to Wrong Way Jacobus,” Patrick said. “So we have to go the wrong way!” He laughed.

  “Clever boy,” their dad said. “Claire, we can organize later. Let’s hit the road.”

  “Copilot!” Claire yelled, realizing her brother had forgotten to call it.

  “Aww, not fair,” Patrick whined.

  “Suck it up, buttercup.” Their dad turned on the engine. “We’ve got a lot of miles to cover on the way to Maine, so let’s roll.”

  “Fine,” Patrick grumbled, flopping onto the cooler seat. “But I won’t forget this betrayal.”

  Claire decided she was too mature to stick her tongue out at her brother, so instead she made a point of leaning back in the front seat, kicking off her shoes, and sighing contentedly.

  “Don’t get too comfortable there, copilot,” her dad said. “I might need you to help navigate.”

  “What? You didn’t make Patrick work when he was up here,” Claire grumbled.

  “Patrick didn’t make a big production of it and then settle in like a smug bug.”

  “Smug bug!” Patrick laughed.

  Claire shot her dad a look.

  “No?” He raised his eyebrows, grinning. “I thought it was pretty good, personally.”

  “Yeah, you would,” she muttered. “Where’s the stupid map?”

  “There’s no such thing as a stupid map. But the road atlas is wedged under my seat. I don’t need directions right now, so you can rest easy. Just be ready; I might call on you at any moment.”

  “Can’t wait,” Claire sighed, adding, half under her breath, “stupid map.” Her dad always insisted on lugging that atlas with them on road trips, forcing Claire to squint at the squiggly roads and figure out which direction to go if they got lost, instead of using GPS like a normal human. She’d been hoping that might change on this trip with the addition of her dad’s fancy new smartphone, but clearly it wasn’t going to.

  “You know,” her dad said slowly as he pulled out of the parking lot, “we’ll be driving right through Cleveland.”

  “And . . . that’s a good thing?” Claire asked.

  “Oh, it’s a very good thing. Because you know what’s in Cleveland?”

  “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!” Patrick said proudly.

  Their dad was actually speechless for a whole twenty seconds. Claire counted silently. “Well. That was . . . impressive,” he managed. “I didn’t realize you knew that. And yes, exactly so. But perhaps even more impressive is that Cleveland has a truly amazing natural history museum!”

  “Dad,” Patrick and Claire whined.

  “I’m pretty sure it has a whole dinosaur exhibit.”

  “Really?” Patrick tilted his head, thoughtful, Chomps cradled on his lap.

  “Don’t fall for it, Patrick,” Claire warned. “It’ll still be boring, and we’ll be there forever while dad talks to everyone. Trust me. I’ve seen it. I’ve done it. I don’t need a reminder, dinosaurs or no.”

  “They probably have a space exhibit, too,” her dad said. “Maybe a whole planetarium.”

  A planetarium. Back when Claire was six and into her space phase, she’d been obsessed with the idea of going to a planetarium. It was why her dad had bought those glow-in-the-dark stars for her ceiling, so she could have a planetarium in her room every night. Her ceiling, which she’d never see again. “I don’t care about that stuff anymore,” she said.

  “Really?” Her dad frowned.

  Claire shrugged, unwilling to take it back.

  After a moment, he sighed. “Fine then. Tell you kids what: I’ll just drive us on east, and if we feel like stopping at a museum or two? Well, so be it.”

  “We’re not going to feel like it,” Claire said.

  “And if our van just happens to stop at a museum,” he continued, “well, who can argue with Van-Helsing?”

  CHAPTER 13

  Claire leaned against the window and closed her eyes, the glass warm against her cheek. She dozed until her dad began wailing the lyrics to his new favorite song about some fool who got himself killed for love. It made her think of Edgar, and the beautiful girl he saw in New York.

  “Was that girl Evangeline Rose?” she asked, sitting up.

  Her dad stopped singing. “What’s up, pup?”

  Claire shook her head. “No. Just, no.”

  He grinned. “I thought I’d test it out. I’ll keep trying.”

  “Do you have to?” Claire sighed and rubbed her left temple. “The girl in the story. The one who you spent, like, an hour describing yesterday—”

  “Barely ten seconds, if that.”

  “Whatever. Is that our great-great-great-grandmother?”

  Her dad’s grin widened. “You’re interested in this story, aren’t you, Claire-bear?”

  Claire shrugged.

  “I haven’t seen you interested in one of my sagas since—” He stopped abruptly, and Claire knew he was thinking of that moment when he’d found her crouched over the divorce papers.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror at Patrick, who was asleep on the cooler seat. Then he shifted his gaze to Claire. Her heart thumped and rumbled like the diesel engine’s vibrations beneath her feet as she waited for him to finally say something about her mom. Something true.

  “Yes,” he said, and Claire caught her breath, before he continued, “the woman in the story is Evangeline Rose. But you’ll have to wait until your brother’s awake before I tell the rest.”

  Claire sagged against her seatbelt. What had she been thinking? Of course her dad wouldn’t tell her anything important. She scowled. “You know, Dad, sometimes it would be nice if you’d tell a true story for once.”

  “This is a true story,” he said, offended. “More or less.”

  “I meant a true story about you. About now. This.” Claire waved her hands to take in the van. “I mean, I don’t know where we’re going, or what we’re doing, or even where this van came from.”

  “We’re going to Maine.”

  “What about after Maine?”

  “I . . . haven’t figured that out yet. But that’s the beauty of vanning, Claire-bear. We don’t have to have a set destination, or plan. We can go where the road takes us, and just . . . see what happens.”

  “Whatever.” Claire closed her eyes and leaned her face against the window again. Her dad was never going to tell her the truth. It was like he wasn’t capable of talking about anything important. Anything real.

&nb
sp; If he noticed she was upset, he didn’t act like it. Nope, he just went right back to singing, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, having his stupid Grand Adventure.

  Claire blinked. It took her a second to realize they had stopped driving. She sat up, her cheek all hot and sweaty from where it had been mashed against the window for too long. “Where are we?”

  “Still in Ohio.” Her dad unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door. “Just making a brief stop, visiting another old friend.”

  “Like Julian?”

  He grimaced. “Hopefully not. But possibly . . . yes. Which is why I want the two of you to stay put, okay? I’ll just be a few minutes.” He closed the door. Claire craned her neck, watching her dad walk down the street and knock at the door of a brick house. A woman answered. A pretty woman with long dark hair, crimped and flowing down her back like a fairy princess. She stepped back, and Claire’s dad followed her, vanishing inside the house.

  “Did you see that?” Claire turned around.

  Patrick sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “See what?” he yawned.

  “Dad just met some woman.”

  “So?”

  “So . . . she was pretty. And he’s in her house. And he didn’t want us to meet her.” Claire felt too hot, her shirt sticking to her back. “Clearly something is going on.”

  “Like what?” Patrick asked.

  Claire brushed her sweaty bangs back from her face. She wasn’t sure what to say; her dad hadn’t dated anyone since her mom left. That you know of . . . Still. It was probably nothing. Unless it wasn’t. “Should we go spy?”

  Patrick shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “If even King Mossofras couldn’t sneak up on him, we really don’t have a chance.”

  “Stop being ridiculous. You know dad just made him up, right?” she snapped, before she could stop herself.

  Patrick looked away, not answering.

  Claire immediately felt terrible, like she’d just kicked a puppy. “Look,” she sighed, “it’s really hot in here. And I don’t know how to work Dad’s fan. Maybe we should just . . . step outside for a minute? To cool off?”

  Patrick tilted his head. “And if we happen to see that woman . . .”