He Started It(16)

Nope. No one my age lives authentically, and if they say they do they’re lying.

Just today, I’ve told so many lies I can’t count them, starting this morning when I said “I’m fine” to anyone that asked how I was doing. That was a lie.

After eating one piece of toast and nothing else for breakfast, I said I was full. That was a lie. I was starving because I’m always starving but no way am I gaining weight on this trip.

When I said I was excited about seeing the Three Corners, it was a half lie. I don’t care about standing in three states at the same time, but I am sick of Bonnie and Clyde crap. Especially when Grandpa starts going on and on about how much he loved Grandma. It’s all I can do to keep from throwing up all over him. Instead, I just nodded and lied and nodded and lied.

As much as I hated it, that time lying was easier because you’ve got to pick your battles. That’s a Risk thing. You can’t fight everyone all the time, you’ll just lose your whole army.

Now that I think about it, maybe I am living pretty authentically. It’s just the Risk version.





MISSOURI


State Motto: The welfare of the people is the highest law

We’re back on the road now, headed toward the Three Corners. Everyone is looking out the windows, searching for that truck.

“If you see it again, call the police,” Felix says.

It’s strange how adamant they are about that truck following us. I swear I haven’t seen it. This makes me wonder if there’s anything else I’m missing.

And I’m not the only one. Eddie hasn’t seen the truck, either. Of all the things he and I don’t agree on, this is the one thing we do.

I catch Eddie’s attention in the rearview mirror. Raise my eyebrow. He rolls his eyes.

Eddie and I have to communicate silently, just as we did on the first trip. There were times we couldn’t talk out loud then, either.



* * *



–––––

That very first night, we stopped in North Alabama and stayed at a roadside motel that looked a lot like the Stardust. Grandpa got one room with two beds, and he let us kids have them. He slept on a foldout cot he had brought with him.

“No sense in getting two rooms,” he said. “I’m not going to leave you guys alone in a motel.”

“We’re old enough,” I said. But really, I didn’t want to be alone in one of those rooms.

“Too bad,” Grandpa said.

On our second night, he called our parents from a pay phone. “No cell phones for me,” he said, although they weren’t too common back then. “Too invasive.”

I’m not sure I knew what that word meant, but I knew it was bad.

We stood outside the motel, at a bank of pay phones, and as far away as possible from the other man using one of the phones. He may or may not have been staying at the motel, just as he may or may not have been up to no good.

One by one, Grandpa passed the phone to us.

“Hi, baby,” Mom said. Her voice was tight, the way it was when she tried not to yell. She and Dad had to be fighting again. “How are you? Everything okay?” she said.

“Yeah, everything’s fine.”

“Where are you now?”

“Ummm . . . Louisiana? Yeah, we’re in—”

Grandpa took the receiver out of my hand. “Let your brother talk now.”

A few more days passed until I started figuring out what was going on.

We were in Texas. Grandpa had driven north of it and then back down because he said, “That damn state is so big, it’ll swallow us if we try to go through it.” For the most part we went up and around it, then crossed into the Texas panhandle, near Amarillo. Grandpa wanted to see the row of Cadillacs half buried in the ground.

Right after we crossed the border, we stopped for gas. Grandpa got out of the van and I was sitting right behind the driver’s seat. Something fell out of his pocket and slipped down a crack between the seat and center console. I reached for it and found a cell phone.

I showed it to Eddie, and we opened the flip phone to see a long list of missed calls. They all came from our home number.

Hundreds of them.

They started the day we left on the trip.



* * *



–––––

Portia is with us tonight, although she has gone out for some air. I can’t blame her, because it’s a little weird having all of us cooped up in a single space. Sure, we could start pre-spending our inheritance on an additional room at a crappy motel, but there’s no guarantee we’re going to get that money. We haven’t made it to the end yet.

Felix and I are in the room alone. He sits at the table next to the window, pretending to work, but he’s really keeping an eye out for the pickup.

I sit on one of the beds and turn on the TV. The reception is sketchy and the channels are limited, forcing me to choose a sitcom episode I’ve already seen. It wasn’t good the first time.

Felix manages to stay quiet for 1.2 seconds.

“Did you see the truck?” he says.

“Personally, no. I haven’t seen it.”

“I guess you and Eddie weren’t looking,” he says, turning back to the window. “The rest of us saw it.”