Hour Seventeen

I sleep.

Hour Eighteen

I sleep.

Hour Nineteen

When I wake up, Radar and Ben are loudly debating the name of the car. Ben would like to name it Muhammad Ali, because, just like Muhammad Ali, the minivan takes a punch and keeps going. Radar says you can’t name a car after a historical figure. He thinks the car ought to be called Lurlene, because it sounds right.

“You want to name it Lurlene?” Ben asks, his voice rising with the horror of it all. “Hasn’t this poor vehicle been through enough?!”

I unbuckle one seat belt and sit up. Lacey turns around to me. “Good morning,” she says. “Welcome to the great state of New York.”

“What time is it?”

“Nine forty-two.” Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, but the shorter strands have strayed. “How’s it going?” she asks.

I tell her. “I’m scared.”

Lacey smiles at me and nods. “Yeah, me, too. It’s like there’s too many things that could happen to prepare for all of them.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“I hope you and me stay friends this summer,” she says. And that helps, for some reason. You can never tell what is going to help.

Radar is now saying that the car should be called the Gray Goose. I lean forward a little so everyone can hear me and say, “The Dreidel. The harder you spin it, the better it performs.”

Ben nods. Radar turns around. “I think you should be the official stuff-namer.”

Hour Twenty

I’m sitting in the first bedroom with Lacey. Ben drives. Radar’s navigating. I was asleep when they last stopped, but they picked up a map of New York. Agloe isn’t marked, but there are only five or six intersections north of Roscoe. I always thought of New York as being a sprawling and endless metropolis, but here it is just lush rolling hills that the minivan heroically strains its way up. When there’s a lull in the conversation and Ben reaches for the radio knob, I say, “Metaphysical I Spy!”

Ben starts. “I Spy with my little eye something I really like.”

“Oh, I know,” Radar says. “It’s the taste of balls.”

“No.”

“Is it the taste of penises?” I guess.

“No, dumbass,” Ben says.

“Hmm,” says Radar. “Is it the smell of balls?”

“The texture of balls?” I guess.

“Come on, asshats, it has nothing to do with genitalia. Lace?”

“Um, is it the feeling of knowing you just saved three lives?”

“No. And I think you guys are out of guesses.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“Lacey,” he says, and I can see him looking at her through the rearview.

“Dumbass,” I say, “it’s supposed to be meta physical I Spy. It has to be things that can’t be seen.”

“And it is,” he says. “That’s what I really like — Lacey but not the visible Lacey.”

“Oh, hurl,” Radar says, but Lacey unbuckles her seat belt and leans forward over the kitchen to whisper something in his ear. Ben blushes in response.

“Okay, I promise not to be a cheese ball,” Radar says. “I Spy with my little eye something we’re all feeling.”

I guess, “Extraordinary fatigue?”

“No, although excellent guess.”

Lacey says, “Is it that weird feeling you get from so much caffeine that, like, your heart isn’t beating so much as your whole body is beating?”

“No. Ben?”

“Um, are we feeling the need to pee, or is that just me?”

“That is, as usual, just you. More guesses?” We are silent. “The correct answer is that we are all feeling like we will be happier after an a cappella rendition of ‘Blister in the Sun.’”

And so it is. Tone deaf as I may be, I sing as loud as anybody. And when we finish, I say, “I Spy with my little eye a great story.”

No one says anything for a while. There’s just the sound of the Dreidel devouring the blacktop as she speeds downhill. And then after a while Ben says, “It’s this, isn’t it?”

I nod.

“Yeah,” Radar says. “As long as we don’t die, this is gonna be one hell of a story.”

It will help if we can find her, I think, but I don’t say anything. Ben turns on the radio finally and finds a rock station with ballads we can sing along to.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31