In the end, San Francisco had lasted a couple of weeks less than Tahoe. Just after New Year’s, Dad had found a temp job at an office supply company in Oakland, where he mostly transferred calls and input numbers into endless spreadsheets. But when that ended a month later, there was nothing else, and before long, it was time to move on again. So they were en route to rainy Seattle, where Dad had a tenuous lead on an actual building job. But they’d decided to spend three days in Portland on the way, just in case something turned up there. Because the thought of making it all the way up to Seattle only to have the job fall through was almost too much to bear.
Dad had insisted they wait for Owen’s spring break. That way, they’d have a whole week to figure things out without him missing too much school. Owen didn’t have the heart to tell him that every district had a different week off, which meant the dates might not line up as well for the next school wherever they landed. But it didn’t matter, anyway. They both knew he would graduate easily enough. That wasn’t the point. It was more an issue of finding an actual graduation to attend.
“I don’t care about that,” Owen said. “The whole cap and gown thing, the diploma. It’s not like it means anything.”
“It’s symbolic,” Dad insisted. “It’s a moment.”
What he didn’t say, but what they both knew, was that his mother would have loved it: the cap and gown, the walk across the stage, the rolled baton of a diploma, all of it. Owen knew she would have been in the first row. She would have been clapping the loudest.
And he had no interest in attending a ceremony that didn’t include her.
That much, he knew. The rest was a bit harder to figure out right now. How could he know what the next year might hold when he didn’t even know about the next week? At some point, they’d find a town, and in that town, they’d find a place to live, and near that place, they’d find a school. There would be one more round of making new friends that wouldn’t last, and going to classes where he already knew the answers, and it would all end with a graduation ceremony that he had no interest in attending.
But after that? It was hard to tell. Weeks from now, he’d have six answers to the six questions he’d sent out into the world in the form of college applications. An e-mail would arrive with a link to discover the news, and at the same time, six different envelopes would start to arrive at the house in Pennsylvania, which still sat snow-covered and empty, the For Sale sign in the front yard probably beginning to rust. One of their neighbors had been forwarding the mail whenever they landed somewhere long enough to receive it, and hopefully by then, they’d have an address that was a bit more permanent. But at the moment, Owen wasn’t so sure it mattered, anyway. His future wouldn’t be determined by the click of a mouse or whether the envelopes that arrived were fat or thin. It would depend on when his father got a job, and where they finally settled down; it would be decided not by things like class size and dorm rooms and cafeteria food, but by how many days passed without his dad pulling the last cigarette from the box, measured by the moment when he could listen to a particular song on the radio without his eyes going misty and his fingers going tight on the wheel.
Next year, Owen might be in Portland or Seattle, San Francisco or San Diego. He might be with his dad in some broken-down apartment or still on the road or in a college classroom somewhere. Right here in this parking lot, the rain coming down in sheets all around him, it was impossible to know for sure.
What he did know was this: Tomorrow, they would get back into the red Honda. They’d take turns choosing a radio station and stop for burgers when they got hungry, leaving the greasy bags strewn across the floor, though they both knew it would have driven her nuts; they reveled in her invisible annoyance, as if it were a sign that she was still with them. They’d arrive in Seattle in need of a shower and some sleep, and then they’d start the same weary search for jobs and schools and houses, all the various pieces that somehow added up to a life.
But for now, Owen left the rain-soaked mountains and the cold pavement behind, moving back through the silent hallway to their room. As he tiptoed past his sleeping father—the thatch of light hair the only thing visible beneath a pile of covers—he wasn’t thinking about tomorrow. He wasn’t thinking about college acceptance letters or graduation or even Seattle. For once, as he kicked off his soggy sneakers and pulled the rough sheets back over him, he was just relieved to be here and now, in this bleak, colorless motel room, with only his dad and his turtle for company, a strange and slow-moving trio, a passing version of home.
21
In Rome, Lucy read.
It was unseasonably warm for late March, and the sun was hot on her shoulders. Her parents had gone shopping, leaving her on the Spanish Steps with her book (Julius Caesar, because when in Rome…), and promised to be back in an hour. But Lucy was in no rush; she could have sat there all day.
The Geography of You and Me
JENNIFER E. SMITH's books
- As the Pig Turns
- Before the Scarlet Dawn
- Between the Land and the Sea
- Breaking the Rules
- Escape Theory
- Fairy Godmothers, Inc
- Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism
- Follow the Money
- In the Air (The City Book 1)
- In the Shadow of Sadd
- In the Stillness
- Keeping the Castle
- Let the Devil Sleep
- My Brother's Keeper
- Over the Darkened Landscape
- Paris The Novel
- Sparks the Matchmaker
- Taking the Highway
- Taming the Wind
- Tethered (Novella)
- The Adjustment
- The Amish Midwife
- The Angel Esmeralda
- The Antagonist
- The Anti-Prom
- The Apple Orchard
- The Astrologer
- The Avery Shaw Experiment
- The Awakening Aidan
- The B Girls
- The Back Road
- The Ballad of Frankie Silver
- The Ballad of Tom Dooley
- The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel
- The Barbed Crown
- The Battered Heiress Blues
- The Beginning of After
- The Beloved Stranger
- The Betrayal of Maggie Blair
- The Better Mother
- The Big Bang
- The Bird House A Novel
- The Blessed
- The Blood That Bonds
- The Blossom Sisters
- The Body at the Tower
- The Body in the Gazebo
- The Body in the Piazza
- The Bone Bed
- The Book of Madness and Cures
- The Boy from Reactor 4
- The Boy in the Suitcase
- The Boyfriend Thief
- The Bull Slayer
- The Buzzard Table
- The Caregiver
- The Caspian Gates
- The Casual Vacancy
- The Cold Nowhere
- The Color of Hope
- The Crown A Novel
- The Dangerous Edge of Things
- The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets
- The Dante Conspiracy
- The Dark Road A Novel
- The Deposit Slip
- The Devil's Waters
- The Diamond Chariot
- The Duchess of Drury Lane
- The Emerald Key
- The Estian Alliance
- The Extinct
- The Falcons of Fire and Ice
- The Fall - By Chana Keefer
- The Fall - By Claire McGowan
- The Famous and the Dead
- The Fear Index
- The Flaming Motel
- The Folded Earth
- The Forrests
- The Exceptions
- The Gallows Curse
- The Game (Tom Wood)
- The Gap Year
- The Garden of Burning Sand
- The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)
- The Getaway
- The Gift of Illusion
- The Girl in the Blue Beret
- The Girl in the Steel Corset
- The Golden Egg
- The Good Life
- The Green Ticket
- The Healing
- The Heart's Frontier
- The Heiress of Winterwood
- The Heresy of Dr Dee
- The Heritage Paper
- The Hindenburg Murders
- The History of History