“Why? He’s not here; it’s not like he’ll know.”
“Yeah, but I will, and then I’ll have to dislike you,” I say.
He looks at me as if he’s thinking of saying something. But he holds back. He goes back to his vocabulary book and highlighter pen. “These little seat-back tables are the perfect height; have you noticed?”
We sit there and I work on doctoring a postcard while he studies words. His highlighting is annoying. “Are you going for spelling champ or something?” I ask.
“Whatever they’ll give me.” He hunches over the book, screening me out. And over the CD soundtrack to Oklahoma!, which Lenny and Jenny love to play, I just hear the screech, screech of a smelly orange highlighter.
“If you ever finish any of those pages, like, don’t need them? Can I have them?”
He flips through the book and rips out a page. “Here. I’m done with the As.”
I look at the page.
aromatic
asymptomatic
axiomatic
“Thanks.” Then I rip off the one I can define and paste it onto a postcard. “You know what’s weird about postcards? When you’re used to texts, postcards are long, slow, and totally unsatisfying. You get, like, no response.”
“I’d write back to you,” Andre says. “Immediately. Instantaneously. At once.”
“You would?”
“I would.”
“How?”
He thinks it over for a second. “Carrier pigeon?” he suggests. “The thing is . . . Ariel. Um, I already have a girlfriend,” he says. “A skirt. Arm candy. You know.”
I stare at him in horror. “You don’t actually talk like that, do you?”
“What?”
“Calling her arm candy. That’s disgusting,” I say.
He laughs. “Yeah. Maybe that’s why she moved to Denver.”
“No wonder.”
“We’re still friends, though. So if we don’t hit California, maybe we’ll hit Denver, and I can call her. We could probably stay with her awhile.”
“Sure,” I say, wondering when I became part of his escape plan. Apparently I’m not the only one on the bus with a big fantasy life. “But if I go anywhere, it’ll be to Wyoming.” And then the bus suddenly makes this loud bang and lurches to the side of the road.
The tiny chipmunk is easy prey for a red-tailed hawk in the early-morning light.
Dear Gloves,
I ran into a friend of yours today. Okay, not a “friend.” A “meal,” once. Or did you just toy with it until it escaped? I can’t remember.
Remember when Zena used to say “chickmunk” instead of “chipmunk”?
She has a gift for making up words, like the rest of our clan.
She’s twelcreative.
Miss u.
P.S. Why do photographers just take pictures of these killings, and not stop them? Hello? ASPCA?
Find snacks, hot meals, showers, and more at Big J.J.’s Truck Stop! Locations throughout the great U.S.A. Don’t go for a ride without Big J.J. by your side.
Sarah,
Met this guy on the bus.
I won’t say much else about him because he’ll read it over my shoulder.
In fact he’s probably doing that now.
He actually referred to his ex as “arm candy.” Is that disgusting or what?
Yes, you, Andre. You’re disgusting.
Hope you’re meeting better guys at your summer job.
At least you have more than one to choose from.
Xo
A
Chapter Ten
Jenny manages to steer the bus onto an exit ramp, but from there things don’t look promising. Whenever she tries to restart the engine, it kicks on for a minute, then dies again, so we just pathetically coast until we’re in the parking lot of a place called the Wild Wilde West. Complete with wooden fence surrounding the Wild Wilde West Museum, the Wild Wilde West Gift Shoppe, and the Wild Wilde West Sculpture Garden.
Lenny gets to his feet, turns, and faces us, while Jenny scrambles out the door frantically.
“Well, this wasn’t on the itinerary, now, was it?” Lenny smiles at all of us and coughs nervously. “And, uh, it’s little gems like this place that you’ll remember about the trip. Not the big stuff, mates.” Lenny winks at us. “The small stuff.”
“Like the bus maintenance record,” my grandfather mutters, standing behind me in the aisle.
“We won’t remember Mount Rushmore, but we’ll remember this?” I turn around and ask him.
“In the way that bad memories often outlive good ones,” he says, and we both smile—dejected smiles, but still.
“Everybody off, have a look around. This looks to be a fun spot. Right, then. We’ll fix the bus and be back on the road pronto. And then we’ll . . .” Lenny pauses.
“Hit Wall!” a few older tourists yell.
Lenny makes a clicking noise with his tongue. “Exactamundo.” Then he shuts off his microphone and opens the door for all of us.
When I step outside, it’s like walking into a wall of heat. “Wall” being the word of the day. “How did it get so hot? How is it possible?” I ask.
“Well, it’s like this,” Uncle Jeff says, and he starts to talk about weather, which I guess he knows a lot about, having to deliver the mail, no matter what.
“Mom, aren’t you so hot in that sweatshirt?” I ask.
“Thank you.” She takes a bow.
I look around for Andre, hoping for sympathy, but he’s busy arguing with his mom about who’s going to stay outside and watch Cuddles, because the dog’s not allowed inside. I walk around the end of the bus and there are Lenny and Jenny in the middle of an argument.
“You should let me drive for a while,” Lenny says.
“It’s not the driver, you moron,” Jenny says.
“Oh, isn’t it just,” Lenny replies. “And what did you call me?”
Maybe the heat is getting to them, I think. They have one of those relationships that you don’t necessarily want to spend much time around, if you can help it.
I wander into the Wilde Museum and find out I’m the last person in, as the entire bus population presses into the small lobby. It turns out we’re in time for the eleven a.m. tour of the Wild Wilde West, which is dedicated to the writer Oscar Wilde.
The tour consists of a bunch of stuff about Oscar Wilde, with hardly any connection to this place or to the West at all. Mom is laughing hysterically at all the Oscar Wilde puns and memorabilia, and the slightly-over-the-top-in-five-different-ways tour guide’s attempt to claim that “Oscar Wilde Slept Here.” If he did, does that really matter to us? And why would he? Did his tour bus break down, too?
“Poor Oscar Wilde,” my grandfather mutters to me as the museum guide rambles on excitedly.
“No doubt,” I agree. I don’t know much about him, but my friend Sarah was in the play The Importance of Being Earnest in summer theater, so I saw it four or five times.
There’s a wooden set piece here, a photo thing with a circle cut out for you to stick your head into, and you pose next to Oscar Wilde in chaps, and there’s some line about if you have your photo taken here—for $19.95—you will not age, just like Dorian Gray in The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I unfortunately read last summer when I was bored and found it on my mother’s bookshelf.
Andre comes up behind me, smuggling in Cuddles, who’s tucked under his arm. “He was gay, right, but does that mean he wore chaps?” he asks.
“He also wore fur.” I point at a photo of Oscar Wilde with a fur collar on his winter coat. “Does that make him Western?”
“No, but it makes him eligible to be hated by PETA,” he says.
“Are these rhetorical questions? And if so, can anyone join in?” my mom asks.
We sort of edge away from her, without answering, toward the exit at the back, which leads out to the so-called sculptures. “Does wearing a dead animal make you a Western hero?” I ask.
“Do you think he
actually slept here, or he just passed out here from the heat?” Andre says.
We stand in the doorway. There are five little cars sticking into the ground, their hoods buried in the sandy earth. Nose first, as if they fell from the sky.
Andre sets down Cuddles, who’s on the world’s smallest, shortest leash. Cuddles immediately runs over to one of the buried cars and pees on the tires.
“You’ve heard of Carhenge?” the museum guide asks us, stepping onto the back deck behind us.
“No,” Andre says.
The guide points to Cuddles. “Is that your dog?”
“No,” Andre says again.
“Totally cute,” the guide comments. “I have a teacup poodle. Anyway, Carhenge is in Nebraska. It’s made of vintage cars, and it’s a replica of Stonehenge. You know, the mysterious, ancient circle of stones.”
“We know what Stonehenge is,” Andre says with a bored sigh.
“Well, this is Mini Carhenge. Because it’s made of Mini Coopers. Get it?” He laughs.
We stand back and look at his miniature car circle. Only it’s a semicircle, if that, and they’re all the same height. “But that doesn’t look like Stonehenge at all,” Andre observes.
“I know. It’s totally cuter,” the guide says. “That’s the point. It’s a miniature version.”
“Interesting. We should see if Lenny and Jenny will take us to Carhenge,” Andre says. “I mean, we do have this loose itinerary and all.”
“Oh, you really should go. It’s magnificent,” the guide says. “Breathtaking.”
“Hm. Well, we’ll just have a look around, take some photos,” Andre tells him, and we step off.
“Don’t forget your Wilde souvenir shopping,” the guide says. “Plenty of mini mementos inside!”
“Right,” Andre says. And he makes that little clicking noise that Lenny has started to make, with little gun gestures. “Exactamundo.”
A tumbleweed blows across the half-dirt, half-grass surface, and Cuddles barks, charging at it in full-on Chihuahua attack mode.
Five minutes later Uncle Jeff comes outside and insists on taking our picture posing against the Mini cars, with Cuddles on top of one of them, except that the car is too hot and it slightly burns Cuddles’s tender feet.
“A mini dog on a mini car,” Uncle Jeff says. “Oh, this is fantasterrific. The guys back home will love this. And when I say guys, I don’t mean just guys; I mean people. Other letter carriers. We covered that in gender-sensitivity training.”
“I have to get out of here,” Andre says out of the side of his mouth as we pose for the tenth picture. “When do we mutiny, exactly?”
I look over my shoulder at him.
“Mutiny. A noun. Revolt. Coup,” Andre says robotically.
“I know what it means,” I say. Maybe he’s not studying for tests, but if I stick around him long enough, I should be ready for anything. “Do you just assume you have to define every word with synonyms for the rest of the world?”
“Not the rest of the world. Just you,” he says.
“Shut up.”
“Seriously,” he says.
“Yes. Seriously, shut up,” I say.
We finish our photo shoot and walk around the side of the building, where we discover Jenny and Lenny arguing about what’s wrong with the bus.
“We’re not going to make Wall,” Lenny is saying. “And this place, charming as it is, doesn’t have a snack bar. Unless you consider Cadbury bars a lunch option.”
“He said there’s a pizza place in town. We’ll have to get pizzas delivered,” Jenny says.
Lenny shakes his head. “Lee told us no extra expenses.”
“Lee? Why are you bringing up Lee? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Jenny asks. “The bus breaks down, that’s bad enough. Lee’s going to kill us.”
“Exactamundo,” Lenny says.
“Quit saying that already, or I’m going to kill you,” Jenny threatens. “This is a disaster.”
“Accidents happen, mate. We’ll be fine.”
“How can you be so relaxed? I hate that about you,” Jenny says.
“And how can you be so uptight all the time?” Lenny replies.
Andre and I look at each other. “Things are taking an interesting turn,” he comments. “Look at it this way. They fight some more, they turn against each other—they’re vulnerable. Divide and conquer. Then we can make our move.”
“What’s our move?” I ask.
He shrugs and picks up Cuddles, who’s whining a little bit. “Busjack? Is that even a word?”
To kill time while we wait, I go running. I’m already wearing clothes that’ll work for a short run, but I go over to the bus to grab my real running shoes because I don’t want to wreck my arches in my vintage suede Sauconys. As I tie the laces, I make sure Jenny sees me, so she’ll buy into my plan of needing to be somewhere on a specific date for a specific run.
Grandpa comes with me, and so does Uncle Jeff, and to my surprise Andre kicks into stride beside me. “What the hell?” he says. “What else am I going to do—buy and read an Oscar Wilde novel?” He starts breathing a little more heavily. “Wait a second. I think I will. See you.”
He drops off, just like that. When I glance back at him, I see that behind me a trail of power-walking seniors, half wearing sun visors, has formed. We’re going up and down the road as if we’re on leave from a psychiatric hospital.
About half a mile down the road I hear a squeal behind us and turn to see my uncle sprinting at top speed in our direction.
“Squirrel—” he manages to get out. And he’s moving so fast that I can’t quite believe it’s him running toward me.
“Jeff. Jeff, calm down. That was a prairie dog,” my grandfather tells him.
“Oh.” He’s panting and panting, sounding sort of like a dog. And as soon as he reaches us he stops running. So we do, too. Then my grandfather lifts his water bottle and squirts cold water in his face.
“Snap out of it,” he says. “A squirrel can’t hurt you. Neither can a prairie dog.”
“Well.” Uncle Jeff clears his throat. “You never know how animals will act when they’re threatened, and things of that nature.”
“Prairie dogs don’t bite,” my grandfather argues.
“Have you ever had a rabies shot?” my uncle shoots back.
“Come on, Uncle Jeff, let’s do a cool-down jog, so your muscles don’t get tight,” I say, and the three of us start moving again. “How are the, uh, shoes?”
“I think I’d better invest in some new ones,” he says, glancing down at the leather sandals wearing a welt into the top of his foot.
When I get back from running, Mom is standing there cursing at the bus. “Damnit, damnit.”
It’s completely understandable, so I don’t even know why I bother to ask, “What’s wrong? Besides the obvious.” I wipe my forehead with the bottom of my sleeveless T-shirt.
“I lost my ring, my wedding band,” she says.
“What? How?”
“I bought this lotion inside. It was a joke gift for Marta; it’s this Dorian Gray Forever Young Beauty Lotion, and I was trying it out, rubbing it on my hands, and it was so slick and greasy that my ring fell off and it rolled under the bus. Now I can’t see it anywhere.”
There’s an awkward pause, and then she swears again. “Damnit, damnit, damnit,” she keeps muttering, and then she starts crying.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find it,” I tell her. “And, Mom, I’m not saying this to be mean, but . . . you’re not married anymore,” I say. “So, do you honestly still need the ring?”
“I know. I know,” she says, anger in her voice. “But if you knew how many times I almost pawned that stupid thing when we were broke, and now it’s lost, and I’m upset, and I don’t want to be upset on my vacation.”
“So why don’t you let it go?” I ask. “That would be a realsimple way of looking at it. Leave it here.”
“No. I couldn’t leave it here—to get
flattened in a parking lot when this bus finally moves again?” She’s horrified by my suggestion.
“Why not? I mean, you’re all about closure, right? What could be better than an abandoned ring getting crushed by a—”
“Ariel. Honestly. I don’t want it to be ob-obliterated,” she stammers. “The ring is part of my history, my life, and it’s also about you guys. Your father and I made a commitment to be—to have—a family. We’re still a family.”
“Of course we’re still a family,” I say. As angry as she makes me sometimes, I don’t enjoy seeing her this upset. “Of course we are. Except that you keep trying to push Dad out of it, but—”
“He is out of it,” she argues. “And it’s entirely his fault that he is.”
“He made a mistake. A big mistake. But he’s . . . you know. Still the same guy. Still Dad.”
“Would you trust him again?” she asks me with a sob, and I have to really think about it, not like I haven’t thought about it before, but some days I say yes, and some days I say no. How do you balance someone’s entire life against a yearlong streak of disasters?
Before I can say anything, my grandmother, who’s just returned from a walk with Zena and Bethany, comes over to Mom and hugs her. “What’s wrong?” she asks.
“My ring,” she starts to explain.
I get on my belly and crawl partway underneath the bus looking for her stupid wedding ring. I run my hand over the pavement as far as it will go, but all I come up with is gravel. Suddenly there are purple sparkly flip-flops beside my head.
“Why were you yelling at Mom? Don’t do that,” Zena says.
“I wasn’t yelling at her,” I say, getting to my feet.
“You were,” Zena argues. “And she was crying.”
“You have no idea, okay?” I tell her. “You don’t know everything that’s going on.”
“I don’t? I think maybe you have no idea,” she replies.
“Zena, please. You’re twelve. You’re naive. There’s stuff you don’t understand.”
She looks at me as if I should crawl back under the bus and wait for it to drive off. “I understand everything. I’ve been there for Mom, while you’re always running or out with Dylan or Sarah or whoever.”
The Summer of Everything Page 25
