“With who?”
“Sean.”
“Sean who?”
I turn toward Sean. “Sean, what’s your last name?”
“You’re going to Nebraska with a guy whose last name you don’t even know?”
“Lerner,” Sean says.
“Lerner,” I say.
“Where does he go to school?”
“My friend Amanda wants to know where you go to school, Sean.”
“Beacon Prep,” Sean says. “Boarding school in Lake Forest for preppie rich kids.”
I turn toward Sean and raise my eyebrows.
“Beacon Prep,” I say into the phone. “Boarding school in Lake Forest for preppie rich kids.”
“I know that place,” Amanda says. “Mom’s friend Helen’s nephew goes there. Where do you know him from?”
“Sean, where do I know you from?”
“The future,” Sean says.
“What?” says Amanda. “I couldn’t hear you.”
“I met him at the Mothership,” I say into the phone.
“You met a guy there? You didn’t even tell me.” I think I hear the tiniest hint of jealousy in her voice, but I might be imagining it.
“I guess I forgot,” I say. And then neither of us says anything for a while.
“Alright,” Amanda says. “Weeell…I guess I’ll let you go then.” I can tell she’s pissed.
That makes two of us.
“Okay,” I say.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Ellie,” Amanda says. “Bye.”
“Bye,” I say. I lean back against my seat and watch the trees zip by.
“Well, that sounded fun,” Sean says.
“She didn’t seem to understand the concept of Nebraska.”
The sun is going down now, and we are both quiet. I feel Sean looking at the side of my face. I glance over and he looks away quickly, back at the road. Then he turns toward me and grins this crazy grin. His eyes are sparkling. He rolls down the window and sticks his head out. “FUCK YEAH, NEBRASKA!” He looks at me, “Try it,” he says.
I roll down the window and the wind rushes in, whipping my hair in my face.
“HOORAY, NEBRASKA!”
“GO, GO, NEBRASKA!”
“YAHOO, NEBRASKA!”
“WORD TO YOUR MOTHER, NEBRASKA!”
The mood in the car has shifted, just like that.
Thirteen
The rumble of the road beneath us becomes the soundtrack for a very long movie about cars on a long flat highway under a giant sky. I am lulled into a trance watching it.
Except for the road sounds, the car is silent, no music, no talking, but it’s the kind of comfortable silence that only occurs between two people who are secure in the fact that they have plenty to say to each other. Which is funny because Sean and I have barely spent two hours in each other’s presence.
Time passes strangely in the car, marked mainly by the changing color of the sky, from blue to deep blue and finally to black. And there is nothing but tiny car lights up ahead, and giant stretches of flat land on either side of us. Each time a car or a truck passes, I feel a little poke in my chest, like we are all part of some special club of people who are up late doing secret things, and I can’t help but feel like somehow all of them must be looking for my sister, too.
Around one o’clock in the morning, I spot a sign on the side of the highway showing a big slice of cherry pie with Sweetie’s Diner, All-American Roadside Favorite Open Round The Clock Since 1953. World’s Best Pancakes. Next Exit written below. I look at Sean and he looks at me and we both break into huge, giant, ridiculous grins. I cannot quite believe that we’ve really just done this.
Sean gets off at the exit and circles around and then there, in the dark Nebraska night, is an enormous pink and silver diner with sweetie’s written in orange neon lights at the top, the brightest thing for miles around. Sean pulls into the large parking lot, there are two other cars, three eighteen-wheelers with Interstate Heavy Hauling printed on the back, and one large bus with MidAmerican Busline written on the side and a big white 257 sign behind glass up above the windshield.
Sean parks. We get out.
The air feels cool and clear out here, and when I look up at the star filled sky I remind myself that those tiny pinpoints of light are larger than I can ever even imagine, and that all that menacing blackness is actually nothing at all.
We walk toward the door, and push through.
Sweetie’s Diner feels instantly familiar the way all good diners do: It’s all big giant booths and scratched chrome stools up at the counter and whirring fake-wood ceiling fans blowing the smoky scent of bacon, slightly burnt coffee, and warm pie all around the room. We stand there blinking under the bright lights like two people who have just been born.