You Are Here(16)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“Then I guess she was smarter than I am,” Peter said, his voice barely audible. The words emerged almost before he could think to stop them, and it was obvious by the way the door slammed that Dad had heard him loud and clear.

Later that morning, when Peter pulled the blue car out to the end of the driveway, his hands were shaking. He didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing, only that it felt like it was already too late to take it back. And as he drove deeper into the state of New York—moving so quickly along the well-known map routes that it almost felt like falling—his mouth was dry and chalky with the very real fear that at any moment a police car would flip on its lights and peel out after him.

He knew that if it weren’t for Emma, he probably wouldn’t have made it very far. It simply wasn’t in his nature, this tendency toward flight, this ability to break the rules without a second thought. No matter what he told himself, no matter how much he’d like to believe he’d have made it all the way to Gettysburg, in reality, he probably would have only stopped for pizza a few towns over, wandered to the farthest corners of the county, maybe waited until it was dark out before slinking back home to accept his punishment.

But then his phone had begun to ring, and the trip had suddenly changed from something meandering and lonely and spiteful into something more purposeful, an unlikely adventure with Emma, a journey filled with incredible possibilities. It was no longer just an afternoon jaunt. It was an expedition. It was a voyage.

It was unlike anything he’d ever done before.

All afternoon Peter tried not to imagine what Dad’s reaction would be when he found out. After the first fifty miles he stuck a Post-it note over the clock on the dashboard, because all he could think about was the rapidly approaching hour when his father would arrive home from work to discover an empty house and a missing car. And it wasn’t until five o’ clock came and went, and the sky fell a shade darker, and the rest stop grew closer, and the phone in his pocket failed to ring, that Peter was struck with a new worry. That perhaps his dad had noticed that he wasn’t there, and just didn’t care enough to do anything about it.

But for the moment, at least, he was on his way, and he distracted himself by thinking about all the landmarks he’d always wanted to visit, not just the battlefields—which stretched up and down the coast like a scar across the land—but all the other things too: the Appalachian Trail and the Washington Monument, the Liberty Bell and the Smithsonian. In Pennsylvania alone there was the Hershey Museum (with its unimaginable amounts of chocolate) and the National Aviary (with its unending varieties of birds) and the town of Punxsutawney (home to the world’s most famous groundhog). In Virginia he’d visit Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown; South Carolina had the world’s largest peach (an astounding one hundred and thirty-five feet tall and seventy-three feet wide), and Georgia had America’s Smallest Church (which held only thirteen people). There was Disney World and Cape Canaveral, the wetlands and the Outer Banks, South of the Border and the Kennedy Space Center, and that was all just the East Coast.

But when he pulled into the rest area, a solitary patch of ugly concrete in northern New Jersey, and saw Emma sitting there—hunched on a picnic table beside a large white dog, her legs pulled up so that her chin rested on her bare knees, somehow managing to look bored and worried and excited all at once—Peter realized that this was even better.

Chapter nine

Emma wasn’t exactly sure what she’d been expecting—something more Peter, perhaps a minivan or a Volvo, something blocky and safe, a low-slung, sensible car with good mileage. So when the blue convertible came lurching up alongside the curb, she couldn’t help laughing.

It was nearly the same as the other one—the one parked lifelessly across the lot—and Peter looked so comically out of place in it, his usually combed hair ruffled by the wind, his glasses speckled with bits of dirt, his arm slung over the passenger seat in a display of forced casualness.

“Hi,” she said, and he grinned back at her somewhat less certainly, then looked down in surprise when the car gave a little jerk forward.

“Uh, let me just go park,” he said, twisting his mouth in concentration as he fiddled with the gearshift. “I’ll be right back.”

Emma slid off the picnic table, and beside her the dog leaped to his feet too. They eyed each other until Peter reappeared a few moments later, clutching the keys and looking somewhat sheepish.

“I didn’t have much of a selection, and it seemed to run okay …,” he started to explain, throwing a hand in the general direction of the parking lot. The collar of his shirt was twisted and crumpled, and his shorts were too baggy for his skinny legs, and he was shifting from one foot to the other, clearly nervous about her or the car or the situation in general.

Emma attempted a reassuring smile. “It’s perfect,” she told him, because after nearly four hours here she would have been happy if he’d shown up driving a lawn mower. “Did you have any trouble getting it?”

“No,” Peter said a bit too quickly. “None.”

She nodded, and they stood for a moment in an uncomfortable silence, Emma only now really absorbing the idea of it: that she and Peter Finnegan were about to embark on a road trip together. She cleared her throat—to say what, she wasn’t exactly sure—but before she could think of something, the dog limped over and bumped at the back of her leg, causing her knee to buckle. She swung her head around as he backed up a few steps, looking pleased with himself.

“Whose dog?” Peter asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Nobody’s,” she said. “He’s been keeping me company.”

Peter accepted this information the same way he did most everything else, without comment or judgment, only a thoughtful and unreadable nod of his head.

“Can we grab some food before we get going?” he asked, glancing over toward the hulking lodge of a building, and though Emma would have been just as happy to never set foot there again, she nodded and led the way.

“So what are you gonna do about your brother’s car?” he asked, once they’d ordered and carried their trays back outside again. They were joined by the dog, who gazed expectantly at the food, following each fry like a spectator at a tennis match.

Emma took a sip of her milk shake. “Leave it here, I guess.”

“Won’t it get towed?”

“I doubt it,” she said, not really knowing at all. “We shouldn’t be gone much more than a week, and there are so many cars coming in and out of here.”