A tiny noise draws my attention back to the car. Callie has bumped the window, accidentally or on purpose I don’t know, because I stop caring which as soon as I see that she’s holding up a perfect grass crown, which is what she’s been weaving for the past couple of hours. I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and then I start to cry a little.
“I’m sorry,” Bobby says. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Don’t think about it like that, like this is some big, serious, apocalyptic, suicidal mission. Look, cops know how scary they are. If they didn’t want us to feel freaked out, the government wouldn’t have sent cops. They would have done something super shady that we wouldn’t have even seen.”
I consider this and am shocked at how much Bobby’s version of logic has cleared things away for me. “That’s true,” I say. “Only a moron wouldn’t be fazed by that checkpoint.”
“See? If anything, they’re being transparent, which is more than I can say for their methods over the last sixteen years.” Bobby takes a deep breath as he secures the gas nozzle to its home on the island and screws on his car’s fancy gas cap. “So. Can we agree to keep going, proceeding with level heads and lots of caution?”
“Yeah,” Stan says. “I think so.”
I turn to look at Callie, who’s placed the crown atop Ted’s head, adding some cheer to his stoic appearance. I smile and say, “Yes.”
“Okay then. Let’s hit the road. Greta, you ready, girl?” Bobby opens the driver’s side and hops in, then turns to us before closing the door. “See you at the next rest stop?”
We nod and wave and take our assigned seats in the car. Stan starts the engine, and we’re off again.
I want to say that everything’s different now, that our mission is at once more dangerous and foolhardy yet astonishingly more profound, but I don’t know that it is. Or that I feel any different. Maybe it’s always been this way, but we just never had the words to say so or the proof to see it. Which makes me think that what’s maybe even scarier than the world changing is realizing that the world has always been this way, you just managed to not see it. It’s that not-seeing that bugs me. Because what else am I missing? What else are we missing?
I turn to Stan and tell him this. About the not-seeing and how scary it is.
“Man,” he says. “I was just trying to not think about exactly that.”
“Oh. Sorry,” I say.
“No, no, don’t be. It’s actually a nicer thing to think about than the other thing on my mind.”
“Oh?” I say.
“Yeah. My dad hasn’t checked in with me,” he says. “Like, not once since I went over to your house. God, when was that? This morning? Yesterday morning? Whatever. Anyway, I guess not hearing from him isn’t that strange, but it also is. At least a little. What I mean is that if this were any other day I wouldn’t think about this at all. Dad not calling me wouldn’t register a tick on my scale, good or bad. But because today is today, it’s at least a little weird. Right? I guess this could mean all kinds of things, though none of them are very good, I don’t think. And the most obvious thing is that it’s proof that he really does work for or with whoever it is that’s after our Icelings. That or his phone died and he forgot how to charge it, and he forgot my number. Or he got hit on the head and it completely slipped his mind that he has two sons, one of whom is an Orphan who cannot speak. Or he met a real nice lady—or a real nice guy, who knows!—and learned how to be happy. Or he learned how to be happy just by himself, living all alone, and wants me and Ted to do the same thing.”
“Any of those things are possible,” I say.
“Yeah, and really unlikely. Anyway, like I said, I don’t want to think too much about that,” Stan says. “And I think you’re right. About the world and how nothing’s changed. Or that’s not true—something has changed, but it’s not the world. It’s us. Right? I’ve spent a good chunk of my life resenting Ted and my dad and just . . . all of this, because I blamed them for me not feeling like I have a life or a purpose. And I’ve always thought that in order to have those things—a life and a purpose—I had to be alone. But I don’t think I feel that way anymore. I don’t think that’s it. I mean, think about what we did back in Pennsylvania. We made this crazy decision, on our own, and now we’re on this crazy trip while everyone else we know is just back home watching movies edited for TV and eating bad pizza. And instead of me resenting Ted and thinking he’s the problem and I’m just his lame victim, I’m making the choice to help him in a way no one else can. And you’re doing the same for Callie, and it feels good and right. I’m not being stupid, I’m not talking about some big idea of Good and Right, like lit-up words hovering over us, but you know . . .”
“You feel like something in you is sliding into place,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Like you found a way of being in the world that makes it a little easier to be in the world.”
“Yeah.”