Now, don’t start thinking that I just sashayed out the door and confidently announced my decision to Gran, okay? It took me almost five full minutes to get the words out. Five minutes of stammering and stuttering worse than I did in eleventh-grade speech class, when I had to deliver a presentation on the role of education in society, and Blake was watching me from the front row.
And of course I didn’t tell Gran about the letter or the meteorite or my questions or the strange gravity feeling I’d had. I just told her about the road trip. That I’d been asked to go, and I thought I might want to.
First, she was quiet for a few moments, waiting behind the same noncommittal face she wore at bridge club. Probably, I think now, because she’d been flung into shock. But after she recovered, she asked me a lot of questions about sticky things like money and responsibility and accountability. I had answers for about ten percent of them. By the time she finished, she’d unerringly shot so many holes in the plan that I wondered how even I had believed it could ever float.
But right at the end, she asked me a question I could finally answer: “Jenna, do you really want to do this?”
I was staring at the snipped-off hedge shoots under my feet, the whole idea hanging as limp as a deflated balloon. “Well, I mean—”
“Jenna Marie, I need you to look at me.”
I knew what it meant to hear my middle name. I forced my eyes up to meet hers. “Yes, ma’am. I really want to do this.”
She opened and closed the hedge trimmers a couple of times. Then she got this sort of thoughtful, listening look. Then she sighed and pressed her lips together with the same kind of weary expression she’d worn when she’d been asked to organize last summer’s church fundraiser. “What is the name of the girl who invited you to go?”
“Jaz—I mean, Jasmina Jones.”
“Is she a friend of yours?”
No room for hesitation under her probing gaze. I nodded. I mean, what else could I say?
“Very well.” Gran deliberately removed her gardening gloves and extracted her ancient flip phone from her pocket. “Tell me her number.”
And like that, the already-dying idea gave its last gasp. No way would Jaz walk between Gran’s lines. I cringed, envisioning the collision. “Um—” I saw that middle-name look in Gran’s eyes again and reached for my own phone. “Here’s her number.”
“Thank you.” Gran dialed the number with a definite air of duty and waited. A few seconds, and she cleared her throat. “Jasmina Jones? Hello…This is Mrs. Monroe. Yes, Jenna Monroe’s grandmother.” She frowned slightly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you very well. There’s some sort of—music?—in the background.”
It made me feel as helpless as watching two freight trains barreling toward each other at high speed. I scurried back inside the house and clutched the meteorite while I stared at the clock on the wall and counted the seconds. Any minute, Gran would return and not only veto the trip but also lecture me on my choice of friends.
But after six minutes and forty-three seconds (of course I was counting), Gran knocked on my bedroom door. And when she came in, she told me three things.
First, I needed to put the cap and gown away and hang up my dress from the ceremony.
Second, Jaz seemed like—and I’m quoting—“a nice girl.” (I really wanted to know what Jaz had said, but I didn’t ask.)
Third, if I wanted to go on the trip, I had her permission.
I know. I didn’t expect that either.
At any rate, everything else was so easy it was almost scary. I was added to a group text thread dominated by Blake’s instructions for preparations and flippant GIF responses from Jaz. Gran began planning a trip to visit her friend in Arkansas, saying she’d wanted to do it for years and would coincide it with what she’d begun referring to as my adventure. (Non-figurative, for once.) And two Saturdays later, I ended up driving through weekend traffic in Columbus—you better believe my hands were at ten and two—to help choose an RV at the TravelTime RV Rental Agency. Or at least that was the name Blake had sent to the group text. Jaz had responded with three emojis: an RV, a clock, and a laughing face.
The place was nothing too impressive. A long, shiny-glass building like a car dealership. Lots of white RVs slanted in a parking lot, each one smeared with the TravelTime logo and some photorealistic landscape scene. Some were the pull-behind kind—I’d later learn they were called fifth wheels—but some were the longer kind, like a bus with the front end of a truck stuck on.
As soon as I stepped out of my car, I could feel the stifling glare of the mid-morning sun. The agency must have just had some special event, because a pair of balloon streamers were still wilting along the front fence, and the unevenly spaced letters on the marquis read SU MMER S PECIA L.
“Hey, Jenna!”
My heart jolted. I turned just in time to see him strolling up. “Hey, Blake.”
“Ready to pick out an RV?” He leaned against my hood. Comfortable and casual enough to prove that he didn’t care.
“Yeah.”
Why is it that you can be a straight-A student and still sound totally dumb around a guy? And the cuter the guy, the dumber I sound.
Blake tipped his wrist and glanced at his watch. Some nice model with a real leather band. “The others should be here soon.”
“Yes.” Yes? Like I’d known that?
See what I mean about sounding dumb?
The heat was rising off the asphalt. Maybe off the gorgeous man in front of me too. I took a deep breath, ready to reach for something I could never quite grasp but was desperate for anyway. “Um, so, Blake, how—”
“Well, hi there, Jenna.” Brooklyn swept around the corner of the car.
Every possibility I’d been swirling around died and fell in shatters all over the pavement around me. “Hi, Brooklyn.” Honestly, I was shocked she knew my name. Or could even see me, given that she’d always acted as if I were invisible in school.
I turned my focus back to the dealership building. One of those gyrating blow-up figures was a deflated puddle by the front door. Honestly, I kind of knew how he felt.
“Good to see you today.” Her voice was chipper. Annoyingly so.
“Yeah. You too.”
You’ve probably known a girl like Brooklyn, because girls like Brooklyn are everywhere. They’re the ones that hold the center of gravity. The ones that everyone else, like it or not, is drawn to, orbits around.
The ones who can have a guy like Blake Ellis with a toss of their impossibly silky hair and a snap of their manicured fingernails.
“So, you happy to be done with graduation?”
I ducked behind the smile everyone who asked that question expected. “Yes. How about you?”
“Oh, for sure.” She brushed her hands down her skirt—yes, seriously, a skirt. To go RV shopping. “I’ve already been accepted to Penn State, though, so not much of a break for me.”
Of course she already had plans. Probably her plans had plans. Probably she had a whole path laid out for every freaking decade of her life. All ready-made and ready for her to walk in those little patent-leather heels. (Yeah. She was wearing heels. Honestly, who wears heels when they don’t have to?)
“It’s so hot today.” Brooklyn wrinkled her delicate nose and glanced up at the hazy sky.
“Yeah.” I could feel the sweat collecting at my hairline. Trickling down my spine. Why is it that girls like Brooklyn don’t sweat? I mean, they literally don’t. Here we were, standing on asphalt that could have easily fried the proverbial egg, and not one glittery speck of her makeup was out of place.
“Blake says you’re going with us.” Her tone didn’t change, but her eyes did. She rested a hand on his arm in a casually possessive move.
And for just a moment, I thought about getting back in my car and leaving. Going home and crawling into my room and becoming a hermit under my bed. Anything to not have her watch her be all cozy with him.
They want to know where they came from. So they know where to go next.
There was more at stake than I could afford to lose. So I straightened and nodded. “Yes. I am.”
“Nice.” She gave the kind of slow nod that people give when something is not actually very nice at all. “What do your parents think about it?”
Parents. Rocks ground together in my gut. “I, uh—actually—”
A sky-blue Toyota came zipping into the parking lot and wheeled into the space next to us. Jaz was exploding from the door almost before the ignition was off. “Hey, guys! Sorry I’m late!” She squeezed an arm around my shoulders and then reached for Brooklyn.
The other girl drew away. “Have you been—running?”
Jaz paused, halfway to a hug, and stepped back. But instead of looking hurt, she just laughed. “I sure have.” Her skin was glistening, her braids coming unraveled. “I came straight here from track practice.”
How had I not known that Jaz ran track? Come to think of it, she had the focused build of a runner. And she was at least a couple of inches taller than me.
Brooklyn’s face warped into an expression just next door to a sneer. “I wouldn’t ever go run in this heat.”
“And luckily, no one is asking you to.” Jaz shot her a disarming smile. “All right, we here to see an RV, or what?”
Brooklyn studied her, as if wondering why the jab hadn’t gone home. To be honest, I didn’t know either. That was twice I’d seen Jaz step on a landmine and keep on going with evident oblivion. Could she not read sarcasm?
Blake was studying his phone. “Looks like Adam isn’t going to be able to come after all. He’s sick.” He glanced at Jaz. “What about your brother?”
“He’s at a dark-sky convention this weekend. He’s cool with whatever we pick out.”
Dark-sky convention? No one questioned, so I couldn’t either.
“All right.” Blake shrugged. “I guess it’s just us, then.”
He led the way toward the far end of the lot, and Jaz fell into step beside me. “How’ve you been, Jenna?”
“Okay.” My standard reply. “So, uh, you run track?”
“Yep, and I love it.” She rolled through her stride as she walked, as if she might begin dancing at any moment. Her tank top said NO LIMITS. Purple, like her running shorts. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Any sports? Hobbies?” She grinned. “Besides reading, of course.”
She’d remembered that? “Uh—well—I volunteer some at my grandmother’s church.”
The lamest answer I could have given, but Jaz’s eyes brightened. “That’s so cool! I help with the homeless ministry at my church. We go downtown, hand out meals, toothbrushes, bandages. And socks. You’d be amazed how many people really need socks. We just try to be like Jesus, you know?”
Her obvious enthusiasm pricked my conscience. I couldn’t exactly explain that my do-gooder activities were motivated by the fear of Gran, not the love of God. “Um—yeah.”
Fortunately, by that time, we’d reached the other end of the lot, and Blake was talking to a salesman guy, explaining what we were looking for. The salesman looked a little less than friendly. Probably because he was working outside on a Saturday hot enough to make all of us, except of course Brooklyn, sweat.
“All of you going, huh?” He scanned narrowed eyes across our group. His scalp was shiny under his thinning hair, his red TravelTime polo dark under the arms.
Jaz held up two fingers. “Plus two more.”
“You know our rental fee is charged based on number of passengers.”
Blake nodded. “We know.”
The guy shrugged. “Okay…in that case, you want a large RV.” His HOW MAY I HELP YOU? tag was hanging crooked. He jerked his head toward a collection of RVs parked off by themselves. “Let’s see if this is what you’re looking for.”
The model he led us to had a burnt-orange desert scene splashed across the side. ARCHES NATIONAL PARK, it said in smaller letters over the rear wheel. A decal on the door made it look as if a dog were peering out the little window. Weird.
The salesman opened the door, fake dog and all, and a weird smell floated out. Some mix of old furniture and stale food and fake air freshener. “This is one of our more popular models.”
More popular, as in more people, as in more smells, I guessed.
“This is nice.” Jaz’s voice was still upbeat. “Look, it’s like a little house!”
Nice was the sort of stretch only Jaz would make. The driver’s and passenger’s seats were up front, made out of that slick black fake leather that sticks to your legs if you’re sweaty. Behind them was a couch—same material—facing a little dinette. Two bench seats balancing a tiny square table with a Formica surface.
“It’s—” Brooklyn seemed to be holding herself back from the surroundings—“not quite what I expected.”
“So, this model has a Ford V-10 Chassis Engine. Automatic transmission, two-wheel drive, power brakes, power steering.” The guy swiped the sheen off his forehead. “Air conditioning too.”
Okay, well, that was a plus.
“Back here—” He took a few steps toward the back of the coach, feet tapping on the laminate floor. “Kitchen. LP gas cooktop, full-size refrigerator, microwave oven.”
Brooklyn glanced down into the sink, her expression pinching tighter. “Uh—you’re supposed to actually cook in here?”
The stainless steel handles on all the appliances were smudged, and the cooktop had some rusty-looking patches near the back. If Gran were here, she’d attack the kitchen with a bottle of Mr. Clean faster than you could say sanitary environment.
“And back here—” The guy’s voice plodded along in the same dull monotone, as if he were reeling off the multiplication tables. He squeezed into a narrow hallway and tapped a door on either side. “Bathroom here, shower here.”
Given the state of the cooktop, I really didn’t want to inspect either the bathroom or shower.
“And then—” he unrolled a sliding door—“master bedroom. Queen-size bed, inset closet, enclosed for privacy.”
The bed sagged slightly in the middle, but at least the comforter and pillows looked nice. But was that the only bed in the place?
From the frown on Brooklyn’s face, she’d had the same thought. “How many other beds are there?”
The guy jerked his head back toward the front of the coach. “The couch becomes a bed that sleeps two, and the dinette benches fold over the table to sleep one. And then there’s a cab-over bunk. Total occupancy is six.”
My bad feeling was getting worse. This so-called large model was still tight. Just being temporarily bottlenecked in the narrow hallway between Jaz and the salesman was about to give me claustrophobia. Could we really all live in here for three weeks? Did it actually sleep six, even with the cab-over—what had he called it?
The smell was starting to give me a headache too. How much air freshener had they used in this thing?
“So?” The salesman stared expectantly at us as we backed out of the hallway.
Blake glanced around. “What do you guys think?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of—” the interior seemed to become more shabby under Brooklyn’s gaze—“basic.”
For once, I agreed with her.
Jaz’s eyebrows rose just a hair. “It’s functional and it fits. I say go for it.”
Blake glanced at me. “Jenna?”
Caught in the middle. Where I most hated to be. I shrugged. The only safe answer.
“All right.” Blake held out his hand to the salesman. “We’ll take it.”
#
June 11 was the day Blake had set for departure. A Tuesday, which was a little odd, but during summer break, all days are weekends. We were supposed to meet at TravelTime at nine o’clock in the morning. If you’re late, you’re left, Blake had warned in the group text. He dropped a laughing face after the words, but I think he was still serious.
Regardless, Gran and I were there at 8:47. The creases between her eyes had been visible for the whole drive, but they deepened when she pulled into the parking lot. “That’s the RV?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I squinted into the morning sunshine. Blake and Adam were already standing by the RV.
And Brooklyn. Yay. My favorite person.
“Hmm.” She pinched her lips together as if that realization tasted bad. “And you said that the young man who’s going to be driving—”
“Blake—”
“—you’re sure he has driven one before?”
“Definitely. Many times.” According to Blake, his parents had owned an RV for several years before they sold it last fall, and he’d driven it frequently enough to become good at it. Not that I’d ever seen him be less than good at anything he attempted.
“And you’re following the itinerary you sent me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All right.”
The car idled, and the conversation did too. We were both waiting for something. Something that neither one of us, in my nine years with Gran, had ever been able to quite take hold of.
I shook off the stuck feeling and swung out of the car, reaching into the backseat for my bags.
“Do you have everything?”
“Yes, ma’am.” One backpack with some of my books and my phone and my chapstick and my Cedar Wood baseball cap and the sugar-free gum I only chewed when I was stressed. One duffel bag with all my clothes and boring stuff like hairbrush, toothbrush, deodorant, soap. Blake had been insistently minimalistic about the packing. Only two bags per person.
I shut the car door and came around to stand by Gran’s open window. “Well—”
She cleared her throat and rubbed at a smudge on her rearview mirror. “You’ll call me if there’s a problem.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You have the address of Barbara’s house in Arkansas.”
“It’s in my phone.” Blake was looking my way. I shifted my bag to the other hand.
“And you’ll be careful.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She sighed and looked past me one more time at the RV. Then she met my eyes. “Very well.”
I leaned in the window to give her an awkward hug. “Bye, Gran.”
“Goodbye, dear.” She flipped her visor down, squinting as if the sun were hurting her eyes. “Be safe and do the right thing.”
Whatever we’d been waiting for was still between us. Some question, maybe, that we were both asking. But all I had was my broken-record response, the one I’d given her a hundred thousand times in the last nine years.
“Yes, ma’am.”
And then she was driving out of the lot, her floral perfume scent dissipating, her taillights losing themselves in the traffic on the main road, and suddenly the lostness hit me like a spotlight. Like I was all alone. Like I was nine years old again and opening the bathroom door to find Mom lying on the floor, and she was—
“Jenna, hey!” Jaz crushed an arm around my shoulders and jostled me excitedly. “Isn’t this amazing? Today’s the day!”
The memories mercifully scattered. I took a deep breath and touched the front of my shirt, the meteorite underneath. “Yes. For sure.”
“And we’re on time, even though Kason took so long loading his stuff that I was sure we were gonna be late.” Jaz rolled her eyes and turned toward the RV. “His telescope, you know.”
His what? I hurried to the RV after her.
I don’t know how I’d pictured Kason before that—probably a bit goofy and giddy like Jaz. But the guy standing by the RV looked much less personable. Serious expression. Spiky hair cut closer on the sides. Heavy-framed glasses.
And a giant tubular case in his hands.
Blake’s arms were crossed. “No way. I said two bags.”
“But this doesn’t count.” The guy—Kason—lifted the case like a peace offering. “It’s my telescope.”
“Okay, well, it’s still a bag.” Blake pointed at the two duffel bags at Kason’s feet. “That makes three items of luggage.”
“Wait a minute.” Jaz shouldered in. “Who says Kason can’t bring all three?”
“I do.” Exasperation was creeping into Blake’s voice. He gestured at the luggage. “You couldn’t fit all your clothes in one bag?”
“Only one bag is my clothes. The other bag is my books.”
“Your books?” Blake eyed the two burgeoning bags. “You need that many books?”
Kason used his shoulder to push his glasses higher up his nose. “I like to read.” His voice was still calm.
Jaz, however, looked ready to spit sparks. “Look, I don’t understand why—”
“Because there’s not enough room.” Blake spread his hands. “We only have the luggage area in the closet.” Some of the frustration drained from his face, leaving an apology behind. “Look, it’s the books or the telescope, okay? But one stays here.”
Jaz huffed and turned away with a very eloquent eye roll. Kason, however, just nodded. “Okay.”
He slung the case over his shoulder by its strap and then grabbed the handles of both bags, heading back toward the car they’d come in. A ripple of sympathy went through me. After all, I knew what it was to love books. But then again, even I hadn’t tried to bring an entire lending library with me on this trip. And certainly not an oversized telescope.
“All right.” Blake’s hair was ruffled today. As if he’d run his hand through it too many times. The smile he gave me was strained. “Jenna, hi! Just go on in and leave your stuff in the luggage area and grab a seat.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I ducked through the doorway, mumbling greetings to both Brooklyn, who’d staked her claim to the shotgun seat, and Adam, who was sprawled across the couch. The RV was much narrower today, the slide-outs compacted for travel. I squeezed through to the closet and examined the luggage pile.
Two nice black duffel bags—had to be Blake’s.
One dusty bag with video game stickers—Adam.
A fancy matching luggage set with stenciled pink flowers and little matching tags. I’ll give you three guesses whose that was. First two don’t count.
I balanced my bag of clothes on top of the pile but kept my backpack as I returned to the front and slid onto one of the little dinette benches. The cushion crackled slightly when I sat on it, but it wasn’t as uncomfortable as I’d expected.
“Gonna be a good day to travel.” Adam looked up from his phone and adjusted some box on the couch beside him. Like me, he must have wanted to have his essentials with him during the drive.
“Aren’t we almost ready?” Brooklyn sighed and flipped a hand under her hair. “I know Blake wanted to get an early start.”
I glanced out the cloudy window. Kason was ambling back toward the RV, telescope still slung around his shoulders but only one bag this time. Jaz was marching beside him, hands planted on hips. “I think we’re almost ready.”
The door opened, and Blake peered inside. He looked sweaty and harassed and just generally more off-kilter than I’d seen him. “Okay, I’m going to sign the papers, and I’ll be right back.”
“Fine.” Jaz swept past him without deigning to glance his direction and dropped onto the bench next to me, shrugging out of a purple backpack covered in national park patches. She yanked a bottle of some kind of colorful drink from the outside pocket and took a long drink. “Zest Crush. Electrolyte drink.”
Kason squeezed through to the bedroom and returned without his bag but still carrying his telescope. He slid onto the bench seat across from us and propped the case up.
Jaz raised her eyebrows. “You’re gonna be riding backwards. Will it make you carsick?”
“I don’t think so.” He kept his head down, fumbling with the case with the care of a parent settling a toddler into a carseat.
“By the way—” Jaz glanced at me. “Kason, this is my friend Jenna.”
Friend? Before I could blink, Kason lifted his head and pushed his glasses into place. His eyes were the same deep brown as Jaz’s, but the faint lines around them gave him a much more serious expression. “Hi, Jenna.”
“Hi.” Jaz was watching the two of us expectantly. I searched for something else to say. “Um—I saw your telescope.” How original. As if everyone hadn’t seen the telescope.
He nodded and glanced at the case with the kind of look people sometimes directed at their pets. A mixture of affection and pride. “She’s a Celestron Inspire 100AZ. Real carbonite lenses.”
All those straight A’s had sometimes fooled people into thinking that I was a nerd. Those people needed to meet Kason for comparison purposes.
“Okay. Cool.” I mean, what would you have said?
“Yeah, and on a clear night, it can magnify to the fifth power.”
“Wow.” Under the table, I laced my fingers together. I had too much anxiety and not enough nerdiness for this conversation.
The door flung open, and Blake burst in. “Okay, we ready?” He didn’t wait for a reply before dropping into the driver’s seat.
“Ready.” Brooklyn crossed her legs daintily in the passenger seat.
“Then let’s go!”
The RV sputtered and ground, and then the motor caught with a roar louder than I’d expected. I could feel the vibrations through the bench cushions. The liquid jiggled in Jaz’s bottle.
Adam leaned forward. “We’re still not moving!”
“I know!”
I couldn’t see Blake behind the dinette wall, but I could hear the frustration in his voice.
“We’re getting there.” Sounds of clicking and locking and levers sliding into place. “Okay…uh…”
The RV suddenly lurched forward, and then a jolt ricocheted through the cab. I slid into Jaz before I could catch myself, my backpack toppling against my leg. Across from me, Kason lunged for his slipping telescope.
“Whoa!” Jaz caught her bottle just as it tumbled off the edge of the table.
“Sorry!” Blake’s voice. The RV halted with another lurch only slightly smaller than the first. “Just caught that curb, there. No big deal.”
“No big deal?” Jaz rubbed the tattoo on her temple. “Should have felt the impact back here.”
In the passenger seat, Brooklyn quietly fastened her seatbelt. I didn’t blame her. And we weren’t even out of the parking lot.
“Okay, okay!”
I leaned out to see Blake. His hair was falling across his forehead. He shook it back with a jerk of his head and twisted to see the side mirror as he pulled up to the road. A stream of cars whizzed by. “I just misjudged the distance. It’s fine.”
The tense angles of his neck and arms, not to mention his white-knuckle grip on the wheel, didn’t echo fineto me.
Jaz raised her eyebrows. “Thought you said you’d driven one of these. Several times, you said.”
“Twice, okay?” A gap appeared in the traffic, and Blake edged forward, spinning the RV into traffic with an awkward turn that came threateningly close to the agency’s mailbox. “And this model is just a little different from what my parents had.”
Jaz wasn’t giving up. “Looks like you’re across the yellow line.”
I’d noticed the same thing, but I wasn’t brave enough to point it out.
“I’m not.” He kept his eyes on the road, but irritation was clearly building behind his words. “It always looked that way in my parents’ RV too. It’s just the optical illusion because we’re up so high.”
Jaz craned her neck, leaning over me and peering out the side window until she must have finally satisfied herself. “All right.”
“So—let’s go!” Blake was clearly trying to move past the rocky start. “Next stop, St. Louis!”
Jaz pumped a fist in the air with that sunrise smile. “Let the adventure begin!”
I leaned back against the slick cushions and watched the painted lines flick by—still seemingly too close. Albuquerque. That was all that mattered. I just had to put up with this until then. As long as Blake could get there without killing us all.
I fumbled about in my bag until I found that sugar-free gum. I needed a piece. Bad.