Don't Fail Me Now(44)

“Yeah, can you fold this monster?” I brush my hair out of my eyes self-consciously, realizing I must look like one of Lil Wayne’s mug shots by now. First order of the day will definitely be stopping somewhere to clean up.

“It’s a beautiful morning, huh?” He smiles up at me as he wrestles the poles into submission.

“Yeah, not bad.” I feel a little awkward talking to Tim after last night. It’s not like anything really happened, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to act. Are we friends now that we know each other’s secrets? Is it incredibly pathetic that holding his hand gave me more butterflies than kissing Ernest Hudson?

“I think it’s going to be a beautiful day,” he says, wrapping up the now-cylindrical tent in a Velcro strap. “In fact, I’ve got a wonderful feeling that everything’s going my way.” Tim shoots me a big, goofy grin. “Get it?” he laughs. “Oklahoma! The musical!”

“Nerd,” Leah says with a smile, walking up behind him, her arm draped around a still-damp Denny. I guess a night in the tent was all they needed to get past the Chocolate Frosting Incident.

“Is he like this all the time?” I laugh, and Leah nods.

“He serenaded me in the cafeteria on my birthday last year. It was soooo embarrassing.”

“It was not!” Tim says, feigning offense. “I was totally on-key!”

“That’s not what I meant,” she groans, following him to the car. “It was the dancing. The dancing! Why did you have to choreograph it?”

“I thought you loved Glee!” Tim says playfully. He lifts up the trunk door and starts moving stuff around to fit the tent poles in. Alongside our bags of clothes and food, there are piles of old magazines wrapped in twine and plastic shopping bags filled with stuff Mom stores in the car for unknown reasons. I’ve never looked in them because I’m too afraid I’ll find something illegal, so when Tim goes to open one, I freeze.

“What is this stuff?” he says, reaching in. Then he sees something, stops, and says, “Oh my God.”

“Just leave it!” I lunge over to grab the bag, but Tim’s faster than me and is already pulling out a silver cylinder attached to a long, clear tube. I snatch it from his hands and toss it onto the grass. “That’s none of your business!” I shout, and he and Leah look at me like I’m crazy.

“Michelle,” he says. “It’s a siphon pump.”

“What?”

“A siphon pump,” he says, breaking into a smile, grabbing my shoulders. “For gasoline. And I saw an empty can in there, too.”

“Oh!” I start laughing, I’m so relieved.

“What’s so funny?” Denny asks.

“We’re gonna make it,” I say, lifting him up and kissing him on the cheek. “We’re actually gonna make it to California.”

“We weren’t before?” Leah asks, stricken, and Tim and I exchange a guilty look. “Whatever, you guys are so weird,” she says, climbing into the backseat.

? ? ?

To work the siphon pump to our advantage, we have to stage a breakdown on the side of the road. Goldie’s jacked-up exterior is for once a plus; the only potential snag is that we’re a bunch of kids without a chaperone, and it’s a good half hour past when even the crunchiest hippie schools would start. This, I tell myself, is why four cars pass me without so much as slowing down, even though I’m doing my best down-on-my-luck half smile and Miss America wave (Devereaux rule #5: Work what you’ve got. As Mom likes to remind me, “You won’t be this cute forever.”)

“Maybe you should have Denny get out with you,” Cass calls through the open window.

“Nah,” I yell as a freight truck screams past, making me jump back even farther on the shoulder. “If anyone’s going to die trying to steal gas, it should be me. Besides”—I lean out tentatively, squinting at the flat, wheat-colored horizon shimmering like a desert oasis—“I’m sure somebody will stop.”

But five minutes and as many cars later, no one has. My cheeks hurt, and I can feel my hairline starting to sweat. Aren’t Midwesterners supposed to be really nice and trusting? Did I just pick the wrong spot, some stretch of state highway only traversed by dicks and the legally blind? I know there’s a third possibility, but I really don’t want to believe it’s that. So when Tim offers to take over, I say no, both out of stubborn pride and because I don’t want to see a car stop for him that wouldn’t have stopped for me.

“Let me stand with you, at least,” he says and steps out into the blinding sun before I can stop him. Before we left the campsite, he changed into one of Denny’s clean(ish) oversize T-shirts, a silkscreen of Obama’s face with BARACK THE VOTE! in big red block letters. With the khakis and the loafers, it makes him look like an overeager canvasser who doesn’t realize his guy already won.

“I’m really okay,” I say, shielding my eyes from the glare.

“I need some air,” he says. “And besides, I want to learn from the master. In case I ever need to do this someday.”

“Yeah, I can really picture you with a Tommy Hilfiger hobo bindle.”

“You know,” Tim says, bending slightly to whisper in my ear, “I’m not as clean-cut as you think I am.”