Checkmate.
House wins.
Every. Single. Time.
Beck drives, navigating the treacherous roads of What If? while I search for the right words to a thing that has none. The wiper blades, the rain, the snoring—I’m still in this I-don’t-know-what . . . orchestra, I suppose. This cacophony of travel. And even though things are heavy right now, it occurs to me how happy I am just to be with my friends. Sure, I’d love to kiss-hug-marry-hold Beck, but for now, I’m happy just to be with him. Sometimes being with gets overlooked I think.
And there they are.
The right words.
“You showed up on her front doorstep, Beck.”
He starts crying. I turn my head and watch the wild rain with my good eye. “You showed up. And that’s really something.”
ASHLAND, OHIO
(61 Miles to Go)
33
Peach Gummies
September 4—evening
Dear Isabel,
I’ll be honest with you, Iz, there are times when I would give just about anything to be dumb. I’m not saying I’m a genius or anything, and I know it sounds weird, but sometimes I think of how wonderful it must be to be an idiot. I could sit around all day and eat cheesy snacks and get fat while watching soap operas or Japanese sporting events in the middle of the afternoon. God, that just sounds fantastic sometimes. The best part about being dumb, I would imagine, is that you just wouldn’t care. I could do all those things now, sure, but at the end of the day, I’d feel like a dog for not getting anything done.
(I suppose I’ve strayed from Reasons, haven’t I? Oh well. Sometimes you gotta go with a thing.)
I met my first Claire this morning, and as a general rule I’m officially warning you to stay away from the lot of them. Rotten, through and through. This particular Claire may not be overweight, but I’ll bet she can absolutely slay some cheese puffs.
I swear, the older I get, the more I value bad examples over good ones. It’s a good thing, too, because most people are egotistical, neurotic, self-absorbed peons, insistent on wearing near-sighted glasses in a far-sighted world. And it’s this exact sort of myopic ignorance that has led to my groundbreaking new theory. I call it Mim’s Theorem of Monkey See Monkey Don’t, and what it boils down to is this: it is my belief that there are some people whose sole purpose of existence is to show the rest of us how not to act.
Signing off,
Mary Iris Malone,
Aspiring Idiot
THIS GAS STATION is the worst. Beck is pumping diesel, but from the way that hussy is staring, you’d think he was stripping right in front of her.
“I like your stick figure book.”
“What?”
Walt points to my journal. “Your stick figure book. Coooool.”
The anemic stick figure, with its ridiculous flat feet, stares up at us from my lap. The journal itself hasn’t really held up too well, though it was pretty cheap to begin with. I suppose a Moleskine would have been too much to ask.
“Walt, how you feeling?”
“I’m not all wrong anymore, Mim. I’m all right.”
I’d wondered about this, his talk of being all wrong. Suddenly, it makes all the sense in the world. If someone isn’t all right, logically, it would follow that they’re all wrong. I make a mental note to tell Beck about this killer new Walt-ism.
“You up for a Mountain Dew?”
He drops his unfinished Rubik’s Cube onto the floor and smiles at me.
“Yeah, I figured. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
“Okay. I’ll wait here, you be right back. With Mountain Dews.”
I climb out of the truck and stare scimitars at the hoochie mama pumping gas in front of us. “Beck, you want anything? I’m getting dos Mountain Dews.”
“Make it tres,” he says, replacing the gas cap.
Once inside, I can’t help but think how much I hate greasy, smelly, damp, inexplicably dirty, undeniably horrible places, which is the same thing as saying I hate gas stations. I’ve never been inside a maximum-security prison, but I imagine it’s probably just one big gas station behind bars. God, I’m sick of gas stations.
A hefty cashier spits tobacco into a cup, which makes me wonder about Albert and Ahab, which makes me miss Arlene. (A true dame from the old school, may she rest in peace.) Three Mountain Dews and a pack of peach gummies later, I’m standing at the checkout. “This,” I say, plopping down the sodas and candy, “plus whatever we owe on the blue pickup.”
“You’re supposed to prepay. I could have you arrested.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time this week.”
Hefty Cashier chuckles, punches numbers into an antique register. “That’ll be eighty-three dollars and seventy-four cents.”
“What? Okay, how much without the gummies?”
Under the heavy weight of Hefty’s eyes, I pull out the last of Kathy’s cash. “See you ’round, Guy.”
“Not if I see you first, little lady.”
I turn around and give him a professional thumbs-up with my right hand, and a decent A-OK gesture with my left, which is pretty difficult what with me doing three Dews and a bag of peach gummies, but I manage. I’m almost out the door when I pass a newspaper stand that about makes my heart stop.
Strike that.
The newspaper stand surgically removes my heart from my body, then stomps on it like it’s an empty soup can.
“You okay, hon?” asks Hefty Cashier.
I nod, but no, I’m not. I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am not okay. I am shocked.