They bought a new car radio with a tape player and no CD tray the next morning in an unmanned hardware store in Winter River, Connecticut. The next day they had the oil replaced in a gas station near Brahams, West Virginia. They had a flat tire that afternoon, so on the morrow they bought a new spare at a retail shop outside Dark Falls, Illinois. On the fourth evening, the front brake cylinder broke in the middle of the interstate, almost causing them to sodomize a VW Camper, and Andy had to persuade a gang of road racers to take the Chevy into their garage for new hydraulics twenty miles north of Raccoon City. By that time, the question of whether the car that would eventually reach Oregon would be the same that left the East Coast was beginning to acquire philosophical relevance.
—
On the fifth morning, Kerri emerged from a motel room late in the morning, about 9:30, to find Andy in stained overalls and a breathing mask, removing strips of two-inch vinyl tape from the car. Two fresh racing stripes in metallic black flowed down the hood of the fish-eyed Chevrolet Vega, glittering under the blazing morning sun like diamond dust.
“The racers let me borrow their paint gun,” Andy explained, removing her mask. “Like it?”
“Yeah. I mean…I think it likes it,” she replied.
“You said it would look more like a sports car.”
“I know. I was kinda joking, but…whatever. It looks good.”
The two-door station wagon sat like any other twelve-year-old while two of grandma’s lady friends complimented his haircut.
The restaurant door banged shut behind Nate and Tim walking out into the dusty parking lot. Tim hurried to kiss Kerri good morning while Nate offered a tray of coffee cups to Andy first.
“Buy you lunch if you drive my turn.” A hand fended the front-charging sunlight off his reddened eyes.
“Okay,” Andy agreed.
Nate distributed breakfast and crawled onto the backseat.
“You had a rough night again?” Kerri asked him, but he had slammed the door behind him already. Tim studied the fresh, sweetly intoxicating paint on the hood.
“Do you think he’s gonna be all right?”
“He’s rationing the drugs he bought in Lexington. They ought to last him for a couple weeks,” Andy guessed. She then read Kerri. “What about you, did you sleep well?”
“Not bad,” she said, thinking of it for the first time. She was wearing yesterday’s shirt under her violet T-shirt from two days ago, Andy recalled. “Pretty well, actually. I don’t know. Maybe it’s helping. Not being alone.”
Andy nodded, began putting away the paint gun.
“How about you?” Kerri followed up. “You never talk about how you coped. Don’t you have nightmares? Did you used to think of us at nights?”
Andy tossed a can of spray paint into the box and paused to examine the question. Kerri stood by, gold-haloed.
“Yeah. Quite often,” Andy answered.
—
During that day they crossed another three state lines: Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho. By late evening, Tim was riding shotgun, leaning out the window and panting at the wind, his head about to be turned completely inside out. Every now and then he popped in to spit the dead insects and then stuck his head back out for another five minutes. Kerri and Nate were playing Scattergories in the backseat. The radio blasted “Funky Cold Medina,” the remixed version. Andy was driving and nodding to the beat.
Her Coca-Cola watch on the dashboard beep-beeped.
ANDY: Time’s up.
KERRI: (Lightspeed scribbling.) Waitwaitwaitwait done! Okay, people you’ve been compared to: Vanessa Paradis.
NATE: Poe. Because of the gloom.
KERRI: Cartoons you like: Pink Panther, double score!
NATE: Pole Position, double score too.
KERRI: Fuck. Places you’ve been to: prison.
NATE: Uh, Portland? As in, where we used to live?
KERRI: Okay, should’ve thought of that. Places you dream about going: Port-au-Prince.
NATE: Pluto. Port-au-Prince, not Paris?
KERRI: Port-au-Prince scores double, loser. Things you’re very good at: psychology.
NATE: Prince of Persia, double score.
KERRI: Damn. Things in this car: a penguin!
NATE: Nothing.
PETER: (Offended.) Thanks a fucking bunch.
Kerri raised her arms in the greatest V sign the car roof allowed. “I win!”
“I’m cold; close the window, will you?” Nate asked.
Kerri scurried to the front seat, pulled the dog inside, and cranked the window up. Tim snorted smugly and moved on to explore the carpet for leftover Cheetos.
Andy groaned at the third full motel they drove by.
“Can’t find a place for the night.”
“I heard it’s ‘teen detectives going back to confront their ghosts’ season,” Kerri said.
“I’ll take their ghosts over ours any day of the week,” Nate added.
Kerri checked the map. “We’ve driven a lot today; we could be there in another…eight hours? We’d get to Blyton Hills by three a.m.”
“I’d rather stop and continue in the morning,” Andy said. “I want us to see Blyton Hills in the light of day.”
Kerri lingered on that answer for a moment, then chuckled. “You want us? Why?”
“So we all realize there’s nothing to be scared of. I don’t know. It’ll change our perspective.”
“Okay.” She polled the backseat. “Nate?”
“Okay by me. Tim?”
Tim coughed up Kerri’s winning Scattergories sheet and tail-nodded.
—
They stopped for a late dinner, then continued driving into the dusk past another three neon NO VACANCY signs.
Night closed in on them. For a while they stayed on I-84, flowing along with other blurry sets of white and red lights, carrying other silent wraithlike people in their tiny warm sepia-lit cubicles pretending to have their own places to go and lives to live, and Andy gazed at them while Kerri drove and silently challenged them to have a better story to tell.
Later on, even these extras became sparse. At that point Kerri left the interstate for a state route, then moved onto an empty single-lane road, and finally swerved into the first dirt track, rolled a few yards off-road, and pulled over. They would sleep in the car. Nate had long ago called dibs on the backseat. Tim lay curled up in the minimal footspace there. Kerri keyed off the engine and dialed mute the radio.
“Last night on the road,” she said, pushing her seat back. “We should do this again in better circumstances, huh?”
Something about the beige upholstery inside the car made it look like a very small and cozy hobbit living room. Kerri shifted over to face Andy, smiled good night, and closed her eyes.