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  “We’re not gonna discuss it. Let’s see if it has gas,” Gabe suggested and turned the key in the ignition. It was half full, which was the only good news about it. He snorted some nasal spray, sneezed, coughed, and pasted a Breathe-Rite on his nose. Now all was well in his world.

  “Let’s go,” said Jesse.

  He tried putting his suitcase behind the back seat, but it didn’t fit. We ended up putting Gabe’s little bag there and stacking everything else, including my guitar, in the back seat next to me. Jesse got into the shotgun seat, and Gabe got behind the wheel. He whipped out a huge box of tissues for Jesse to hold so he could be fed a constant supply.

  “We’re off to see the Willard,” Jesse began singing. It was something that I might have done. I actually smiled, but I was glad that nobody saw it.

  chapter eleven

  We gassed up, picked up lots of snacks, and headed for the interstate. I pulled out my pad to go over the driving schedule again. “So, to recap, Gabe drives and Jesse navigates until we get to empty. Then we fill up, I drive, and Gabe copilots. Then . . .”

  Jesse cut in. “Jesse drives until blah, blah, blah. You’ve gone over it three times, KT. Could you be a touch controlling?”

  “Some people don’t look like they’re really listening,” I countered. Truth was, I didn’t think he’d ever remember it, and I admit to being something of a control freak.

  By this time we were caught in traffic and creeping up the ramp to the interstate. Jesse was turning in his seat to face me so we could get into it for real, when something caught his eye.

  “Hey,” he said, “check out that guy. Maybe we could pick him up. He could help drive and pay for gas.”

  “He looks cool,” Gabe agreed.

  I looked out of the window, and there, holding up a sign that read SEDONA, ARIZONA, OR CLOSE was Dylan. He looked so cute and hopeful that I wanted to shoot him on the spot. I held up my pad to hide my face and scrunched down in the seat.

  “There’s no room back here,” I snapped. “Besides, that’s a serial killer if I ever saw one.”

  The traffic opened up and we zoomed past him. I couldn’t believe that after everything I’d said to him, Dylan was following me to Arizona. I told myself that it was creepy, but somewhere, way deep inside, I felt guilty for thinking that, because it was really kind of sweet. I knew he wanted to look out for me (not that I needed it).

  We’d been on the highway for a few hours, and Gabe was going under the speed limit when a cop car in the next lane stayed even with us. We could see that they were checking us out.

  “We better get off at the next exit,” Gabe said. “I only have an intermediate license.”

  “Me, too,” Jesse said. “So what?”

  “Read the fine print,” Gabe answered. “’You may not operate a motor vehicle with more than three passengers who are under nineteen years old and who are not members of your immediate family.’”

  “We are family. Unfortunately,” I said.

  “The cops will never believe that one,” Jesse scoffed. “We all have different last names on our IDs.”

  “Yeah, get off as soon as you can,” I told Gabe. “We don’t even have registration for this heap.”

  “She’s right for once,” Jesse chimed in. “We gotta take the back roads.”

  “I know how to get to Route 66,” Gabe said, heading for the off-ramp. “My folks and I took it to visit my uncle in Tulsa last year.”

  “Did you have the best time ever?” I asked in a slightly snarky tone.

  “Yeah,” Gabe replied. “My uncle taught me some new magic tricks, and I have two cousins I really like.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why are you even going on this trip? I need a dad. Jesse needs a home. Why do you even care about Willard?”

  “I told you, KT. Sometimes you’re the one who doesn’t really listen. I’m looking for the same reason you are. I want to know all of me. My dad is okay with it, too. He said that when they got back from their cruise, we’d talk about finding my biological father. But I didn’t want to wait. I thought I’d rather go with you ’cause with all I’ve got at home, I don’t have any brothers or sisters. It’s just easier doing it with you guys because we’re all looking for the same thing, really. We all want to feel like we’re more than the result of some petri dish experiment, like we really belong in the world, just like everyone else. That’s why I care, KT.”

  “I get it,” I mumbled and then changed the subject by pointing to a sign. “Hey, look, if we weren’t in such a hurry, we could visit the culture capitol of Missouri, The Riverside Reptile Ranch.”

  “I’ve been there,” said Jesse. “Some of my friends think it’s a cool first-date place ’cause girls get all clingy around reptiles.”

  “I’m gonna remember that in case I ever have a date,” Gabe piped in.

  “It’s so messed up that we’re related. What kind of male chauvinist crap are you teaching him, Swimmy? You’re dealing with an impressionable mind,” I grumbled.

  “I didn’t say that I thought so,” Jesse snapped. “I just said some of my friends did.”

  “If you’re different, then why are you friends with them?” I wanted to know.

  “Sometimes people are friends with other people because it just works out that way. Everybody needs people to hang out with in school.”

  “Yeah,” said Gabe, “I hang out with the nerds because they’re the only ones who want me.”

  “Do nerds know that people think they’re nerds?” I asked.

  “Everyone knows who people think they are, but sometimes that’s not all they are,” Gabe answered.

  “No shit,” Jesse said.

  He and Gabe locked eyes for a “got ya” minute, and I got it, too, but I decided to refrain from comment on this whole male bonding moment.

  We stopped at the next gas station, filled up the tank, and peed. When I came back to the car, Gabe was demonstrating his “Up in Smoke” trick to a bunch of wide-eyed kids. He seemed to be controlling the smoke element better because no one was choking or coughing. When Jesse finally appeared and took in what was going on, we looked at each other and rolled our eyes. The trick was so feeble it was embarrassing.

  “Could you make yourself go up in smoke, bro?” Jesse asked him. “That’s a Copperfield trick I’ve never tried,” Gabe answered. “Give it a shot sometime,” suggested Jesse.

  “Show’s over, folks,” I announced, and the kids scattered as we piled into the Jeep.

  I got behind the wheel and motioned for Gabe to sit next to me. Jesse scrunched into the back seat and curled up with his varsity jacket over his head.

  “Wake me up when it’s my turn to drive,” he said.

  I gunned the engine, leaned on the accelerator, and we zoomed out of the gas station. Within minutes Jesse was snoring. Then he began to fart and kept it up until we had to stop and zip out the windows. If I had smell-o-vision on my phone, I would have made a video.

  chapter twelve

  We barreled through Oklahoma. I had my foot as close to the floor as I could get it, while Gabe kept an eye out for patrol cars. Then he asked me in a kind of shy voice, “Can I ask you some questions?”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About girls. Like what do they like to talk about?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” I told him, and then I paused and thought it wouldn’t hurt to be more sisterly. “I’m not exactly your guru on girls.”

  “I don’t expect you to be a guru, but you are a girl,” Gabe said patiently. “So what do you like? Glasses or contacts, for example. I’m looking for an overview. Just tell me what you like.”

  “I honestly don’t know. At this moment I would say nothing. The way I see it is, relationships suck. They’re like roadside bombs. Sooner or later they blow up and somebody always gets hurt.”

  “Has anyone told you that you can sound kind of bitter?” Gabe asked gently.

  “Oh Gabe, my innocent brother. Some people mi
ght say that, but I would say I actually sound like a realist.”

  He didn’t ask any more questions after that and I was glad. Whenever I went over sixty, the Jeep made weird, scary noises so I wanted to concentrate on driving. I didn’t care what it did, though, as long as it didn’t break down. I just wanted to get to my dad as soon as possible, and that thought was like a magnet pulling me toward Sedona.

  I had to slow down through OK City, but we made great time. About midnight I pulled over at a rest stop just west of the city. We decided not to tell Jesse about the farting (which everyone does at one time or another) unless he asked why the windows were gone, which he didn’t.

  Gabe and I bought some vending machine sandwiches, and Jesse remembered he had a BLT in his bag and whipped it out.

  “Mmm, Jesse. Dead pig slabs with wilted lettuce and warm mayo. How yum!”

  “Thanks for that, sis,” he answered as he began chomping in the most revolting way possible.

  I couldn’t wait to crawl into the back seat and conk out. So when he finished his disgusting sandwich and took the wheel, that’s what I did. When I woke up and looked at my watch, it was 5:30 a.m., and I wondered why we weren’t moving. I checked the front seats. Gabe and Jesse were both gone so I got out to look for them. There they were, standing in the middle of what looked like a cow pasture, looking really small against the big gray and orange sky.

  Gabe was rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and the sun was rising over ten graffiti-covered Cadillacs, half-buried, nose-down in the ground. It looked like something out of a bizarre dream.

  “Where are we?” Gabe was saying as I tiptoed silently behind them to hear their conversation.

  “I dunno exactly,” Jesse answered. “Somewhere near Amarillo, Texas.”

  “You were driving, dude. I must have passed out,” Gabe yawned.

  “You were my navigator. What good is a sleeping navigator? I’ve got no sense of direction, bro. I already told you that. I saw this sign for Cadillac Ranch and thought it must be a Texas car dealer in civilization with gas and food. Instead it’s these cars stuck in the ground in the middle of nowhere,” Jesse said, sounding panicked. “She’ll freak when she wakes up, not being on the schedule and all. Damn, she’s the only girl I’ve ever been scared of.”

  “She’s the only girl I’ve ever not been scared of. This is very cool, and she’s weird. Maybe she’ll get it,” Gabe offered.

  “This place is too creepy even for her. Is this a Cadillac graveyard? It could be haunted by all the people who died in Cadillacs, and I promise you, she’s not gonna get anything when she finds out we’re kind of out of gas.”

  “Out of gas,” I echoed. They both jumped.

  Jesse gulped. “Hi,” he said.

  “Morning, KT,” Gabe chirped, trying to sound cheerful.

  “This isn’t a gas station,” Jesse observed guiltily.

  I looked around. “You’re right for once, Jess,” I said pleasantly. “Excuse me, please.”

  I disappeared behind one of the Cadillacs and started banging on it with my fists screaming, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” for a few minutes. When I had gotten it all out of my system, I walked out from behind the Caddy calmly, wearing a manic smile. “I think we should go back to the road and wait . . . perhaps for days . . . for a car to come along,” I said quietly.

  “That’s a plan. Good idea. Let’s do that,” they babbled nervously.

  We walked back to the road and nobody said a word. When the sun came up, it felt like we were human Hot Pockets being nuked inside a microwave. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and heat waves shimmered in the air.

  I got my guitar out of the backseat and sat down at the side of the dusty road. I started singing “Cadillac Ranch,” which is a really good song by Bruce Springsteen, another old-guy rock guitar player and singer. I couldn’t stop playing it, even though I knew I was driving the guys nuts. I didn’t really care, though, because I felt they deserved it.

  Gabe took out his box of magic stuff and practiced new lame tricks while Jesse lay down by the side of the road with his T-shirt over his face. It was like he thought if he couldn’t see us, we couldn’t see him.

  After a couple of hours, we were all doing absolutely nothing, just sitting there, blankly staring down the road, waiting for someone to show up. Then, suddenly, Gabe jumped up.

  “Look!” he yelled, pointing down the road.

  “It’s a mirage,” I croaked.

  Coming toward us, out of the sun, was a car. A beautiful, beautiful car. We all started cheering until it got close enough to see what it was. It was just what we had been trying to avoid: the cops. The Texas Highway Patrol, to be exact.

  We looked at each other in total panic, but there was no time to say anything before the car pulled up in a cloud of dust and a ginormous trooper got out.

  “Hey,” he said. “You kids okay?”

  “Absolutely, Officer, sir,” Jesse answered. “We just have a slight gas problem.”

  “Yeah,” Gabe added. “We’re out of it.”

  “No problem. No way,” grinned the big man. “I got me an extra few gallons on board for emergencies like this. You just pull out your driver’s license and registration, sonny, and we’ll have you on your way.”

  “Uh, it’s in the car,” Jesse stalled. And we all rushed over to the Jeep.

  “I’ll go get it with him, he can never find anything!” I yelled over my shoulder to the lawman. “What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?” I babbled to the boys, losing my cool completely. “When he sees Jesse’s license, he’ll take us straight to the slammer and call our parents. We’re totally screwed.”

  “Cool it, KT. I got an idea,” Gabe whispered as we pretended to rummage around in the Jeep. “When he brings out the gas, Jess, you keep him busy for a minute and then leave it to me. KT, you get in the car, behind the wheel, and wait.”

  “For what?” I wanted to know.

  “You’ll see,” Gabe said calmly. “Just be ready to jam it!”

  “Get a move on, kids. I want to make it home for breakfast,” the trooper called over to us, setting down a plastic container of gas next to our fill spout.

  “I can’t find my license. Could ya help me look for it? I must have dropped it when I was laying in the grass,” Jesse called back, heading for the side of the road.

  The cop followed him. “I’m a tellin’ you, sonny, you better find it, ’cause if you ain’t got proper license and registration, I gotta take you in, and I gotta take your car in. And what’s worse is, I gotta miss breakfast and my wife’s makin’ apple fritters.”

  As Jesse and the cop searched in the grass, Gabe quickly filled the tank with the gas in the container. I sat behind the wheel, wondering what was going to happen next.

  “I found it, Jesse!” yelled Gabe. “It was behind the seat.”

  Jesse looked bewildered, and the cop looked relieved as they headed back to where Gabe was standing now, between the Jeep and the patrol car. I could tell that Jesse was scared out of his head, and the cop was smelling the fritters and grinning.

  “I got his license,” Gabe said. “My sister’s looking for the registration. Wanna see a magic trick while we wait?”

  They moved closer to the cop car, and Gabe kept looking at Jesse as if they could telecommunicate.

  “Thanks, but no thanks. Hand over the license, boy, I gotta run it.”

  “You’ll love the trick, I promise,” Gabe said, moving closer to the cop.

  “Yur gettin’ me aggervated, son,” the cop drawled. “You’re missin’ a good chance to shut up.”

  “Okay,” Gabe agreed.

  And that was the last thing anyone said before he rubbed his hands together and more smoke than he’d ever made before billowed out of them. It enveloped the cop in a dark gray cloud, and he was coughing and waving his arms as Jesse grabbed the car keys from the police cruiser and flung them into the grass. Then he and Gabe jumped into our car and I gunned the engine. The Jeep screeched and s
huddered so much I thought it would fall apart. But we went screaming down the road and were out of there before the smoke even cleared.

  We turned down a side road after a few miles just in case the law was following us, and I pulled over onto the shoulder. Then Jesse and I started pumping our fists and slapping Gabe on the back, totally jazzed. I’d never seen the nerd look that happy. We kept reliving the whole crazy adventure as we hightailed it through the Texas sticks.

  For the next half hour, I almost forgot that it was Jesse’s brainlessness that got us into the whole mess in the first place. Then the Jeep started coughing and we rolled to a stop. The lawman had given us just enough gas to get to a station on the highway, but now we were nowhere near the highway. We were fugitives from the law, hiding out on a deserted back road, miles from nowhere, with the sun blazing, the tumbleweed tumbling, the temperatures soaring, and not a gas station in sight. My memory was suddenly restored. I remembered very clearly whose fault it was that we were here, and you can be sure I brought it to Jesse’s attention until he wished he were roadkill.

  chapter thirteen

  I kept reminding Swimmy that he was the one who had gotten us into this as we pushed the Jeep down the desolate winding road through the hot, dry swelter. I was guiding the wheel and pushing, so I probably was carrying the least weight, but my shoulder began to feel like it was about to fall off. There was only the dust, the sun, the damn tumbleweed, and us. I swear, it must have been a hundred and ten degrees, and it wasn’t even ten in the morning.

  It was possibly the most uncomfortable and annoying situation I have ever been in. Sweat kept rolling down my forehead into my eyes, my feet were blistering, and I could feel the cancer rays burning through my shorts and T-shirt. Maybe I was going nuts from the heat, but I kept wondering if it would be justifiable homicide if I murdered Jesse.