You Are Here(4)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

They’d fashioned a sort of invisible line inside the house, which seemed to work for them most of the time. Dad rarely appeared at Peter’s door or questioned where he’d been when he spent his summer afternoons wandering around town. And in return Peter was careful to tiptoe around the crumpled figure of his father in the evenings, occasionally throwing away an empty beer can or refilling the bowl of peanuts if he was feeling generous.

So just the other day when there was a knock on Peter’s door, he looked up from his maps in surprise. He’d been planning not a trek through the Himalayas or a walkabout in the Australian outback but just a short jaunt north to Canada, to Montreal or Quebec, where he might cross the border as confidently and casually as if he were a purveyor of maple syrup, or perhaps a hockey aficionado, who had been doing it his whole life.

“I thought you were gonna take out the garbage,” Dad said, staring at the array of flattened maps that tiled the floor. “What, did you get lost or something?”

He laughed as if the joke had only just occurred to him, though he tended to use it at least once or twice a week, and it had long stopped being even remotely funny to Peter, who simply chose to ignore him. After a moment Dad’s mouth snapped back into a straight line, and he put on his aviator glasses, despite the dimness of the room. “So, planning your big escape?”

Peter sat back on his heels. “I’m not trying to escape,” he said, knowing this wasn’t entirely true. “Though it might be nice to go somewhere.”

“You know, not everyone can afford to just pick up and go somewhere whenever they want,” Dad said, with a somewhat contemptuous look at the maps spread out like blueprints at his feet. “Not everyone has the means to just go traipsing around the globe.”

Peter braced himself for yet another lecture about the many vices of those with money, the students who clogged the town each fall, the professors who taught them, the very notion of stipends and trust funds and endowments. Dad believed in a hard day’s work and building character and home cooking (in theory, at least). He believed in responsibility and cleaning up your own mess and having a strong work ethic. He believed in being homegrown and salt of the earth. He hated high horses.

But for once the speech went no further. Instead he turned to Peter, gazed across that wide gulf between them, a body of water both dangerous and deep, home to man-eating fish and life-threatening creatures that made the idea of ever crossing seem far-fetched at best.

“You want to be careful about wandering,” he said, as if giving a presentation to a group of second graders about to embark on a nature walk. “It’s a good way to get yourself lost.”

Chapter three

It was nearly lunchtime when the car had begun to falter, a sound like someone dragging a metal trash can to the end of the driveway. There was a buckling feeling, like the whole vehicle was struggling to stay in motion, and Emma lifted her foot and listened to the engine heave, then counted to twenty with her eyes fixed on the dashboard. By the time she reached eighteen, the red emergency light had blinked on, and she felt her heart quicken as she merged into the slow lane and coasted toward the rest area, trying not to think of what Patrick might do to her if she ruined his car for good.

But just as soon as it had come on, the light went off again, and the car chugged up the incline with admirable determination. Emma maneuvered into a parking spot beside a camper van and breathed a sigh of relief as she switched off the ignition.

The trip, it seemed, wasn’t over just yet.

The rest stop consisted of five different fast-food places and a gift shop, with outdoor picnic tables and a set of bathrooms she could smell from the parking lot. Emma decided to let the car recuperate while she had lunch, and made her way up to the crowded building, an A-frame structure that looked as if the architects had hoped people might forget they were not at a ski lodge in Vermont but rather at a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike.

She waited in line at a burger stand amid the noisy thrum of people, bleary-eyed mothers and kids covered in ketchup and weary truck drivers who stretched their legs and yawned and seemed to be enjoying the diversion from the road. Emma ordered a burger and fries and then carried her tray past the orange plastic tables and arcade games to the glass door that led outside. There were six picnic tables on the side of the building farthest from the highway, and most were already occupied by families wearing shirts with the names of the various states they’d traveled through. Emma took a seat at the last open table, dabbing uselessly at a puddle of spilled soda with her napkin before unwrapping her burger.

This whole thing had started just yesterday morning, while Patrick was packing up his car to return to the city after spending a couple of days at home. Emma had been planning to go with him all along, ever since he’d shown up in the Mustang and the idea to steal it had first occurred to her, but she’d thought it better to spring it on everyone at the last minute. So when she showed up to say good-bye with a backpack slung over one shoulder, everyone stared at her. Emma smiled back at them brightly, then tossed her bag into the trunk.

“And where might you be going?” Patrick asked, raising one eyebrow.

“I thought I’d come stay with you for the weekend.”

He laughed, but not like it was funny. “I’ve got my summer research stuff to finish up this weekend,” he said. “And I’m teaching two classes on Monday that I still need to prepare for.”

“I’ll stay out of your way,” she said. “I promise. It’s just that there’s nothing to do around here, and I thought it might be fun.”

Dad looked equally unsure. “What about work?”

Emma’s job as a camp counselor had fallen through when not enough kids showed up on the first day, so he’d hired her as a research assistant to pass the time over the summer. This basically meant running back and forth between home and the library to fetch and return books. She was pretty sure he could survive without her.

“You’ll be busy finishing up your revisions anyhow,” Mom reminded him. “And I’ve got my article to write. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea. The house will be quieter this way.”

Emma thought to point out that as noisy teenagers go, she fell pretty low on the scale, but decided against it. New York was only the first step in her plan, and if she were to mess things up now, before even really having a chance to begin, she’d be stuck at home for the rest of the summer with nothing to do but wonder about things from afar.