Two from the Heart(19)

I waved and said cheerfully, “Great day for a walk!”

“Whatever,” one of the teenagers muttered; the other ignored me completely.

I smiled sympathetically at the mother, thinking, Good luck with those grouchy children of yours. But she didn’t smile, either, and in fact looked at me quite angrily.

I took a picture of their backs as they walked away. Even their posture seemed affronted. I wanted to call after them, Hey, if you don’t like it, don’t do it!

But it wasn’t any of my business, so I kept on walking.

Toward the summit of the mountain I stopped and took in the grand rugged isolation; somewhere out there, in those brown, craggy peaks, was the Continental Divide. I took pictures of the vista, but only because it seemed like I should. It was the pictures of people I cared about.

In a way, I felt like I was carrying everyone with me as I traveled. But they weren’t baggage; they were more like buoys, lifting me up and nudging me along.

I thought again about what my dad had said—Wherever you go, there you are—and I realized that I had to disagree with that. A journey could change a person, and not just by atrophying all her leg muscles.

As I stood above the wild desolation of central Colorado, I could finally admit that I was going to California. And that I was going to call up the first boy I’d ever loved.

And then? I’d just have to see what happened next.





Chapter 21


UTAH PASSED by in an eighty-mile-per-hour blur, and, after a night in a musty Budget Inn, I crossed into Nevada.

The land stretched out flat and dusty on either side of the highway, and on the horizon I could see only barren hills. I’d heard people call Route 50 in Nevada the Loneliest Road in America, but to me, it felt more like the loneliest road on Mars.

After singing every Beatles song I knew, followed by every Bruce Springsteen and then every Rihanna, my throat hurt, my ears rang, and the sound of my own voice was aural torture to me.

This might have been the time I started wishing for something—anything—to break up the monotony. And pretty soon something did.

I heard a boom, and right after that the car began to shake and careen to the right. I slammed on the brakes and skidded off onto the gravel shoulder, adrenaline coursing through my veins.

I waited for a few minutes until my panicked heart slowed. I was fairly certain I knew what had happened, and a look at the right front tire confirmed it: something had punctured the rubber, and it was totally flat.

As I looked in the back for the spare I knew I’d never be able to put on the van, I tried to cheer myself up by thinking about how this would be a good story to tell someday: about how I was stranded for hours on a deserted highway until I got rescued by a long-haul trucker who wasn’t at all perverted. Everyone would laugh when I got to the moral: Be careful what you wish for.

Then a horn sounded, and a white van pulled up right behind me. An older man with mirrored sunglasses climbed out of the driver’s seat and called, “Gas?”

I couldn’t believe my luck. I hadn’t seen a car for what seemed like two hundred miles, but here was help, just when it was desperately required. “Flat, actually,” I said.

He walked over, and as he did, more people got out of the van—eight in total, men and women of varying ages, wearing matching T-shirts that said I WANT TO BELIEVE.

Suddenly I wondered if I was about to be kidnapped by a cult. That would also make a great story, assuming I could overcome my indoctrination and somehow escape. I readied myself to run.

“You got Triple A?” the old man asked. He took off his baseball cap, which said THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, and ran his hands through a shock of white hair.

I shook my head no. You’d think a woman driving across the country would’ve signed up for it, but that was just more advice I hadn’t taken.

But he didn’t bat an eyelash. He just walked around to the back of my van and removed the donut tire. “I think this’ll do you until the next service station,” he said. “We’ll get Jordan to put it on.”

A guy who I presumed was Jordan nodded and got to work with the jack and lug wrench.

As we stood there in the windy desolation, I said, “I really, really appreciate this.” I tried to think of a polite way to ask if they now expected me to join them, maybe to become one of Jordan’s wives. I settled on, “Where are you all headed?”

“South toward Area 51,” the old man said. “Did you ever wonder if we weren’t alone in the universe? If so—or hell, if not—you’re welcome to come along. It’s just a little detour.”

I hoped my face didn’t betray my surprise and delight. These people weren’t cultists; they were UFO hunters on a field trip.

Jordan looked up from my tire. “The last time I went, I saw something shoot across the sky—it must have been going six hundred miles an hour, not too far from me, and it didn’t make a sound.”

The old man nodded. “Jordan’s seen wilder things than most.”

I squinted my eyes against the sun’s glare and thought about how much this trip had taught me about strangers—and how, after only a few minutes, they weren’t strangers anymore.

Driving south with a vanload of alien-hunters? That would be a story.

I glanced at my van, and then over at theirs. Nobody looked insane. I was lonely, and I was supposed to be on an adventure.