Girl Out of Water(68)

“What are we doing?” I ask.

“Making sure you don’t abandon the cousins you are definitely not abandoning. Now follow me.”

I have no idea what Lincoln is planning, but given his past surprises, I figure he deserves the benefit of the doubt, so I open my car door and follow him into the humid parking lot. A small gas station and convenience store sits next to the diner where we just ate. I follow Lincoln inside. We weave through the aisles of the store, passing pork rinds and ibuprofen and playing cards.

“Here we go.” Lincoln stops in front of a wire rack of postcards. He picks through the variety with agile fingers and then holds up two cards. “Pick one.”

The words LINCOLN, NEBRASKA scrawl over both cards in heavy font, but one shows a map of the city and the other shows the capitol building. I pick the one with the map. Lincoln puts the other card back and then walks to the register.

“Excuse me,” he asks the cashier, a small and balding man with more wrinkles than my shirts when I do the laundry. “Do you have a pen we can borrow?”

The man eyes Lincoln with suspicion but then hands over a blue ballpoint. Lincoln thanks him and turns to me. “Okay, turn around,” he commands.

“Umm, what?”

“And bend over.”

“Excuse me!”

Lincoln sighs. “Just a little. I’m going to lean on your back to write.”

To be fair, various displays of candy and knickknacks cover any foreseeable counter space in the store.

“Fine.” I turn and bend a bit at the waist.

“Wonderful.” Lincoln presses the card against my back. “Now what would you like to tell your cousins about our trip so far?”

“Oh,” I say, finally getting why Lincoln got a postcard. “Tell them…tell them that I miss them already and that I hope Parker is feeling better and that diner food really does taste better when you’re on the road.”

Then I think of the postcards my mom sends me and why I hate them so much.

“And then write my address and tell them they can write or text me whenever they want. Make sure to include that, okay?”

As I feed him that information, the slight pressure of Lincoln’s writing tickles my back.

“Mhmm, okay. Yeah. Got it.”

A few seconds later, the pressure relieves, and I straighten up.

Lincoln takes the card back to the front counter. “I’d like to purchase this and one stamp and…” He grabs a giant bag of beef jerky. “…and this.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Dude, you literally just ate, like, twelve thousand calories.”

The cashier rings up Lincoln and even says he’ll send the postcard for us when the mailman comes. We thank him and head back to the car.

“Better?” Lincoln asks.

The air is still humid as hell, and I’m still miles from home—any home—but my entire body feels lighter. “Much better.”

? ? ?

When you spend twelve hours in a car with someone, you find out a lot about them. Here’s what I’ve discovered about Lincoln:

1. When he was a kid he had a recurring nightmare of going to his mom and dad for help in the middle of the night and lifting the covers on their bed to find snakes.

2. He really was serious about making me listen to all eighteen Bruce Springsteen albums.

3. From ages five to seven his family got so tired of constantly packing up and moving into new houses that they decided to live in a really nice trailer for two years.

4. He knows Latin—but only for plant names.

It’s almost eleven o’clock by the time we pull off the highway for Wendy’s house. I guess the good thing about moving around a million times when you’re a kid is that you have friends all over the country. What I don’t understand is how he stays in touch with all of them. If I’ve started to lose contact with my friends after a couple months, wouldn’t a couple years completely evaporate a relationship?

I’m a little uncomfortable about staying at a stranger’s house. Okay, I’m a lot uncomfortable. I barely adjusted to Aunt Jackie’s house. I know humans used to be nomads, but there must be a reason we evolved past that.

“You’re going to love Wendy,” Lincoln tells me for the tenth time. I’d be jealous if he hadn’t spent the day kissing me every time we stopped for gas or food. “She’s one of the coolest people I’ve ever met.”

“Can’t wait,” I say, trying not to sound nervous. Maybe I’ll love Wendy, but will Wendy love me? Over the summer, Lincoln’s friends welcomed me, but I always felt a bit like a tagalong, accepted because Lincoln was accepted. I shouldn’t worry. I’ll know this person for less than twenty-four hours. It doesn’t matter what she thinks of me.

Wendy lives in a suburban neighborhood that looks uncannily similar to Aunt Jackie’s. For a second, I’m convinced we spent the last twelve hours driving in a circle on the highway, rather than heading directly west.

We pull up to one of the older-looking houses on the block. It’s a one-story home with a flat yard of short, dry grass. The house is pitch-black except for a single light over the small front porch. Maybe we’re at the wrong place, or maybe they forgot we were coming, or maybe Lincoln doesn’t really have a friend in Utah and this has been one summer-length con to abduct and kill me.