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I can’t sleep at all Friday night, so Saturday morning I pack a few things—my boxful of cash, which now totals five hundred and sixty dollars, my computer, and my maps—and catch the first bus to Yakima. I arrive at nine thirty and plant myself at a depressing coffee shop near the bus station, spreading my maps in front of me. It’s a straight thousand-mile shot from here to Laughlin, cutting a triangle through Oregon and another through Idaho, before shooting down the eastern spine of Nevada.
The waitress keeps refilling my coffee cup and I keep drinking, even though the burnt swill is doing awful things to the acid in my stomach, not to mention my frayed nerves. For the past twenty-four hours, I’ve done nothing but second-guess the decision to call Ben.
The door to the diner rings. I look up absentmindedly and am surprised to see it’s him. It’s only ten thirty; he’s not due for another hour and a half, and it’s a two-to three-hour drive from Seattle, so he must’ve left at the crack of dawn, or sped like the devil, or both.
My first impulse is to hunch down in my seat, buy myself more time. But I’m about to spend two days cramped in a car with him, so I man up. I clear my throat and say, “Hey, Ben.”
His face goes blank for a second, and then his eyes skitter around until he sees me in my booth, the maps splayed out. He looks both nervous and relieved, and once again his face is like a mirror, reflecting my feelings, because that’s exactly what’s going on with me.
He sits down across from me. “You’re early,” he says.
“So are you.” I slide my coffee over to him. “You want some? She just refilled it. So it’s fresh, or fresh to my cup, anyhow.”
His fingers curl around the cup of coffee, which is black, no sugar, the same as he likes it, I now remember. I take him in. His eyes are violet this morning, almost bruised; they match the purplish skin under them. “I couldn’t sleep,” he says.
“Seems to be going around,” I say.
He nods. “So what’s the plan?”
“Drive to Boise today. We can stay with Stoner Richard—I mean, Richard Zeller. You remember Meg’s roommate?”
“I remember.”
“He said we could crash at his place. It’s his parents’. Unless you want to stay somewhere else.” He probably has plenty of places to stop, plenty of rock-and-roll crash pads.
“I’ll go where you go.”
A simple statement that feels like a blanket.
“You going to tell me what it is we’re doing?” he asks.
When I called Ben, I told him I’d found a person linked to Meg’s death and needed someone to come with me while I talked to him. I hadn’t told him anything else. I figured he didn’t need, nor would he want, to know what had happened in these past few weeks when we’d been absent from each other’s lives. But now that he’s asking, I’m scared to tell. Harry sent me a few cautioning emails, with links to articles about girls meeting guys they’d met online and gruesome things happening. I appreciated his concern but wasn’t sure it was applicable. Those were girls with romantic hopes, guys with depraved intentions. That isn’t me and Bradford.
But what if Ben doesn’t see it that way? What if I tell him and he chickens out? What if he refuses to take me?
When I don’t answer right away, Ben asks, “Am I on a need-to-know basis, or something?”
“No. I just . . .” I shake my head. “It’s a long drive.”
“What does that mean?”
“There’s time. I’ll tell you. Later. I promise.” I pause. “How are the kids?” I ask.
“I brought pictures,” he says. And I expect him to show me on his phone, but he pulls out one of those envelopes you get from a photo developer, and slides it across the maps to me. I open it up, and inside are a few snapshots: Pete and Repeat chasing a piece of string, washing each other’s faces, curled up sleeping together at the foot of Ben’s bed.
“They’re so much bigger!”
Ben nods. “Teenagers. Pete brought home a dead mouse. I’m sure it’s a gateway thing. It’s only a matter of time before they’re bringing home all sorts of animals.”
“Birds. Rats.”
“Then it’s possums, then small ponies. I wouldn’t put it past those two.”
I laugh. It feels like the first time in ages. I hand the photos back.
Ben shakes his head. “They’re for you.”
“Oh. Thanks. Do you want something to eat? Before we go?”
Ben shakes his head. “I came to kill time while I was waiting for you.”
“And here I am.”
“Here you are.”
The awkward silence that follows doesn’t bode well for the next two days.
“Should we get going?” I ask.
“Okay. I should warn you, the cigarette lighter outlet for the iPod is acting up, so the music situation is precarious.”
“I’ll deal.”
“Also, less important to me but maybe not you: the AC’s kind of on the blink, which is going to make Nevada desert driving in July rather interesting.”
“We’ll just stop at gas stations and douse ourselves with water and leave the windows open. It’s what Meg and I used to do.” And then I stop myself. Everything spools back to Meg. Every piece of my history, it seems.
“Sounds like a plan,” Ben says.
We head outside. He unlocks his car. It’s remarkably clean compared to the last time I was in it.
“Do you want me to drive first?” I ask. “Or don’t you let girls drive your car?”
“I don’t make a habit of letting anyone drive my car.” He looks sidelong at me. “But you’re not a girl anyway.”
“Oh, right. Have you categorized my species yet?”
“Not quite.” He tosses me the keys. “But you can drive.”