LIKE, RIGHT NOW?
We stop for gas on the border of Washington and Montana, right past Spokane, in a suburb called Liberty Lake. I take Dez’s debit card and fill up the SUV while everyone else goes inside to perform the traditional we’re-stopped-but-we-don’t-necessarily-have-to-go-to-the-bathroom look around the convenience store. I call my dad to tell him where we are and that none of us have spontaneously combusted.
A minute or so later, Elliot comes out with a bag of Bugles and two bottles of Gatorade. I leave him with the pump and run inside because I actually have to pee.
We pull away from the gas station with Trey as the driver and me in the passenger’s seat. He sits in the driver’s seat like an old woman, back completely rigid. Both hands latched onto the steering wheel like it’s about to fall out the window. For an optimist, and for someone who’s been driving three years longer than I have, he’s very distrusting of other drivers. Every time someone changes lanes by/near him, he rides the opposite edge of the lane and curses. Addy starts calling him Abuela (grandmother), which everyone else adopts pretty quick.
Dez passes me a bag of Sour Patch Kids. I pick through them, looking for the yellow ones.
“Who on earth picks out yellow ones?” she asks.
“That is pretty weird, brother,” Elliot says.
“It’s because I always used to eat everything but the yellow ones,” Addy says. “I conditioned him to like the reject flavors. You’re all welcome.”
I lift up the Sour Patch Kids into Trey’s peripheral and his talons slowly release the steering wheel so he can give me an open palm.
“Have you ever considered just using ‘bro,’ Elliot?” Trey asks.
Elliot puffs a condescending burst of air through his nostrils. “Have you ever considered not being optimistic?”
“That’s not even the same thing,” Trey says, looking over his shoulder again, and again, and again before getting into the travel lane.
“Please watch as the Abuela attempts to change lanes,” Addy says. “View his persistence in checking his blind spot.”
“Hey,” Trey says, “I care about the lives in this car so much that I check multiple times. Adam doesn’t even use a turn signal. You can thank me when we arrive safely.”
“Awww,” Addy says, “Guys, look at how much he cares. Everyone give him a hug. Come on.”
Addy leans forward and so does Dez.
Trey doesn’t look at them. “Not while I’m driving. Stop it, not while—girls, stop. Stop! Not while I’m driving.”
“Mastermind Dez, go over our plan again?” I ask.
“Okay,” Dez says excitedly, as though she’s been waiting for someone to ask this question. “I thought we’d start by checking the police station that handled the crime scene. If that comes up short, we can head over to where the Abbey Road US studio used to be. There’s a new recording studio in there, so they might have an idea of how we could find it.”
“What if neither place has it?” Elliot asks.
“Then we do some sleuthing. I brought a bunch of Mr. Cratcher’s lyrics and journals, and a letter he wrote to Leonard Cohen where he calls himself both Colin Cratcher and The Chaos Writer. Mr. Cratcher’s been writing and co-writing songs since the seventies. I’m sure there’s someone in Nashville who knows about him who can help us.”
“Wait … where’s our hotel?” I ask.
Dez rolls her eyes. “It’s not a hotel.”
“What does that mean?” Trey asks.
“Mom rented us a mansion in Brentwood.”
Dez might be pissed that her family is rich, and she might want to have nothing to do with them—I can totally understand why—but the rest of us are definitely not upset with their money. I’d never tell her that, of course. Also, in hindsight, I’d take back the sweet-goodness-we-have-a-mansion-to-sleep-in look that I gave Addy, Trey, and Elliot a second ago and use it when Dez wasn’t staring directly at me.
“To hell with all of you and your consumerism,” she snaps. “I’m going to sleep in the backyard and only step inside to track dirt onto the sparkling Italian marble floor.”
Addy rolls her eyes.
“Why don’t you just rent your own hotel room?” Trey asks.
“Shut up, Abuela,” she says.
I know that the rest of us would be laughing if we wouldn’t be eaten by the tiger in the backseat, but laughing at Dez Coulter when she’s attempting to be as different from her family as possible is an honest-to-God Mr. Cratcher life and death decision.
—
Elliot stops on the side of the road around eleven. I’m the only other person awake, and it’s only because Dez is sleeping with her head in my lap and I don’t want to miss a second of being able to play with her hair while she sleeps.
“We should’ve stopped to get a hotel in Billings,” he says. “I didn’t know when that gas station guy said there wasn’t much past Billings, Montana, he literally meant nothing.”
“Well, we didn’t follow I-90 all the way. Google said it was quicker to take this middle-of-no where road than to dip into Wyoming.”
“Well, Google should warn people when they’re about to enter Middle-fucking-Earth.”
“Are you too tired to drive?”
“Yeah, I know I’ve only done four out of my five hours, but I’m going to fall asleep if I keep going.”
“I’m good to go,” Dez says, stirring below my hand. As soon as she sits up, I feel the bliss drain out of me. Now I could fall asleep in seconds.
Addy doesn’t lean up or open her eyes, but she says, “It’s my turn next, I should do it.”
Dez shakes her head. “Nah, Addy, I’ve got it.”
“You sure?” Addy asks.
“Yeah.” She arches her back in a stretch. I know it’s stalker-ish to watch her, but I do. She catches me watching, but smiles. “Did I have a blaze of light moment?”
“Sweet mercy, yes.”
She laughs. It sounds like daytime.
“Should we wake up Trey?” I ask. “Keep the rotation going?”
“Nah,” Elliot says. “The guy’s out cold. I accidentally spilled half my Coke on him about thirty minutes ago and he didn’t flinch.”
Elliot takes my seat and I get to do my time on the hump.
“Welcome back, Elliot,” Addy says.
I sigh in disappointment.
“What?” he asks me.
“You’re not as beautiful as Dez.”
“Better get used to it, brother. You get this face for the next five hours. Maybe you’ll get used to my attractiveness if you let me sleep in your lap.” He starts leaning toward my legs.
I push against him. “Get out of here.”
“Aw, you guys are adorable. Aren’t they adorable, Addy?” Dez says, putting the car in gear and pulling back onto the road.
—
I wake to the sound of a cry. At first I think I’m hearing things because the cry is so muffled it sounds like an extra whine from the car tires, but then Dez brings a hand up to her face. I sit up and check if anyone else is awake before saying anything.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
She wipes her nose on her sleeve. “No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I just want to be better and I want to never go home. I want to be here, in this moment, forever. As soon as we get home, the adventure’s over and I have to think about the chaos again.”
“A: We haven’t even got there yet, and B: We’ll have each other.”
“Only an addict would say B. We’ve been over this, Adam.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I meant, okay, so that is what I meant, but people say that kind of stuff all the time when they’re—when they like someone.”
“But we aren’t people.”
“But we’re us.”
“Exactly.” She isn’t crying anymore. Now she’s a tamer version of her indignant self.
“We don’t have to stay the same. We change. Both you and I know that. Doesn’t that mean we’re in a constant state of being different? If we’re always changing, doesn’t that mean we can never just be addicts? An object in motion stays in motion?”
“An addict in motion stays an addict.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say. “I can’t believe that.”
“I can. When all I feel is the push for another buzz, sometimes that’s all I believe.”
I lean back in my seat and press my head against the window. Am I just another buzz to her? Does she expect me to wear off like all the other buzzes? Will I?
“So what does that make us?”
She clenches her hands tight around the steering wheel. “That’s what I’ve been saying, Adam, like, that’s all I’ve been saying.”
How can we have a shelf life? Humans don’t have a “consume by” date.
Human ≠ milk.
Human = life.
There has to be a difference somewhere. I know there’s a difference somewhere, and I vow to find it before we expire.
On a completely different topic, ever notice how things you shouldn’t think about start as thumbnails and then turn into movies? Like porn? Like, right now?