“Five fifteen.”
It’s a quarter to noon.
“Do you want to stop? Get something to eat?”
“No,” he says. And nothing more.
“It’s a long time to wait,” I say when the silence starts to get to me.
“I just want to go.” He heaves a disgusted sigh.
I feel wrong. Dirty. Less than. Angry. “How is staying at that house so different from stealing your dad’s credit card?”
“I didn’t steal it!” he yells. “He gave it to me. He’s my dad. You broke into someone’s house. You made me a thief and I didn’t even know it.”
“We didn’t take anything,” I say. “We just used—”
“Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.”
I follow the signs to the airport. The things I want to explain are thin and wispy. Too delicate for words. His life is so simple and mine is full of knots. He’ll fly home and forget me. Pretend this didn’t happen. Maybe pull it out as a drinking story when he wants someone to think he has a wild side. One time he took a trip without a plan. One time he broke into a house with a crazy girl. But I don’t think he’ll let himself believe it was the time he followed his heart. He won’t let me matter that much.
I stop at the curb for departing flights.
“Bye,” he mumbles, getting out of the car without looking at me.
The door slams. I drive. I cry. There’s no end in sight. No gigs to get to in time. No one waiting for me. Nobody missing me. Nothing. I could disappear completely and no one would even notice.
* * *
It gets harder and harder to follow the road. My ribs ache from fighting sobs. My eyes can’t stand the sun.
I stop at a pay phone and dump all the change from the bottom of my bag into the slot. It’s been way too long since I called. A year. Maybe more. I probably have no business calling at all.
Four rings, and I’m about to hang up when I hear: “Margo’s Diner! The special today is beef goulash,” but it’s some girl. A voice I don’t recognize. I choke tears away and ask for Margo. When the girl puts down the phone to get her, I can hear the faint chatter and clink clank of dishes, The Weather Channel too loud on the TV above the receiver. I can hear my old life going on without me and it’s horrible. By the time Margo comes to the phone and says, “This is Margo,” the recorded voice is already telling me I need to add money. I only have pennies. I sob harder.
“Why don’t I matter to anyone?” I’m not even sure my words sound like words, but she knows it’s me. I hear her say, “Oh, girlie,” before the phone goes dead, and I imagine she says, You matter to me. Because I have to. I have to matter to someone.
* * *
I don’t go back to the house. It’s far and there’s no point. I’m done with wanting what can’t be mine. I drive until I can’t stay awake and sleep in my car at a truck stop, parked next to one of the parking lot lights to feel just a little bit safer.
— Chapter 42 —
I wake up when the truck engines start, hours before sunrise. Before I leave, I buy a postcard and a stamp at the rest stop store. It’s a picture of two beach chairs at the edge of a lake, sharing the shade from one big umbrella.
This one I send. I don’t write anything but her address. I drop it in the blue mailbox outside and pretend Carly is right where I left her and will understand everything when she gets the card. I pretend that I meant as much to her as she did to me. That when she looks at those two chairs, she’ll picture us sitting together, me with my guitar, her with a blue pack of American Spirits balanced on the arm of her chair. She’ll blow smoke out to the water while she tells me all the things I’ve missed.
I pump five bucks’ worth of gas into my car and hit the road.
Right before sunrise, when the sky changes to brighter blue, I see a sign for Asheville, North Carolina, and decide to go, because everyone says Asheville is like Ithaca but bigger. Because of all the places I’ve been, Ithaca is my favorite and I can’t go back.
* * *
I get to Asheville on fumes and busk in a tiny park in the middle of the city. It’s sunny and breezy and the people who stop are friendly. I keep my guitar case open and start it off with the ten from Cory’s mom. I decide it will bring me luck, and it does. There’s a steady stream of foot traffic. Children step up to my case with quarters from their parents, staring cautiously as they chuck them in, like I might stop playing to reach out and grab their arm. College kids throw pennies and pocket lint. Older people, professors and the like, hover with folded ones in their fingers, waiting for me to make eye contact before they drop them in. I play for three hours and make thirty-three bucks and a bunch of change I don’t bother to count.