As I watched, he pivoted the mower at a sharp 90-degree angle to get the corner of the lawn. “There’s really nothing to tell,” I said, turning my attention back to Julia.
“Yeah, right,” she said, and I could hear she was laughing too, which always made me happy, as Julia was usually a little too composed, always considering her words before she said them. “I need details, Amy.”
I could feel myself smile. I’d had a date—and a pretty epic make-out session—with Michael the night before. And Julia was always the first person I told about these things. Somehow, if I didn’t talk to her about it, it didn’t seem real. “It was good,” I said, and could hear her sigh loudly over the phone, all the way from Florida.
“Details!” she said again.
“My dad is out here,” I said into the phone, lowering my volume. “I can’t talk about this now.”
“Tell Julia I say hi,” my father called, as he pivoted the mower again.
“Put your back into it!” I called to him, and he smiled as he headed in the other direction, for an overgrown patch invisible to everyone but him.
“Come on,” Julia said. “Give me the scoop. Things are going well with you and the college boy?”
I looked over to check that my father was out of earshot. “Yes,” I said, settling back against the step, preparing for one of our marathon conversations. “Okay. So last night he picked me up at eight.”
“And what did you wear?” she prompted.
“Amy,” my mother said, in the doorway behind me. I lowered the phone and looked at her. She seemed stressed, and usually Saturday was the one day she took off from that.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Have you seen your brother?”
I could feel my pulse begin to race a little bit at that, as I tried in an instant to figure out what the right answer would be. Charlie hadn’t sent me an alibi text, so I was in the dark as to what he’d told Mom and Dad he was doing, and what he’d actually ended up doing. “No,” I said, finally.
“He’s not upstairs,” my mother said. She frowned, staring out at the cul-de-sac. “I’m going to check again,” she said, heading back inside.
“Sorry,” I said to Julia. “Charlie drama.”
“How is he?” Julia asked. Julia had had a huge crush on Charlie back in middle school, but it has faded out during high school, when he headed down a very different path than we did.
“About the same,” I said. This was to say, not very well. I knew Julia would understand what I meant. I looked back to the house and realized I should probably do some recon, to try and get in front of this before it got worse. “I should go.”
“Okay,” Julia said. “But call me later? Promise?”
“Of course,” I said. I hung up with her and pulled the door open, taking just a moment to look back at my father, in his element, puttering along behind the mower, whistling to himself.
A love-struck Romeo sings a streetsuss serenade.
—Dire Straits
I sat on the edge of the king-size bed, trying not to disturb the rose petals scattered on it, waiting for Roger to come out of the bathroom and trying to figure out how, exactly, this had happened. Again.
It had taken longer than we’d thought it would to reach Delta, the first town in Utah on Highway 50. By that point I was truly concerned about Roger, who had been driving for the better part of a day. Most of the motels we passed had the NO in their vacancy signs illuminated, and I had begun to worry what would happen if we couldn’t find somewhere to stay in Delta. On the map, it looked like the next town was probably another hour away, and I had a feeling Roger just wasn’t going to be up for that.
We’d finally pulled into the Beehive Inn to see what the situation was. As it looked a little nicer than the roadside motels, it wasn’t advertising its occupancy in neon on its sign. We’d gotten out of the car, and as I walked to the entrance, I felt the tightness in my leg muscles, and how much my butt was aching from sitting for that long. I could feel myself getting nervous as we stepped through the automatic glass doors and into the lobby, which seemed jarringly bright after the night’s drive. I’d never tried to check in by myself at a hotel before. Was I even allowed to? Did you have to be eighteen? Was that why my mother had made reservations for us—because I wouldn’t be able to do it alone?
My heart was pounding as I reached the front desk. The hotel itself seemed nice, if a little aggressively homey, with quilts covering every available surface. Before I could look around too much, though, we were greeted by a frazzled-looking desk clerk.
“Are you the Udells?” he asked, looking from me to Roger.
“What?” I asked, thrown, as this wasn’t a question I’d been expecting. And Roger, who was literally swaying on his feet at this point, didn’t seem in a state of mind to answer it.
“I’ve been saving our last room for you,” he said, frowning at me and typing on his computer. “Even though I got that message that you were canceling the reservation. I’ve been holding it open, since you booked in advance.”
“And that’s the last room available tonight?” I asked, looking over at Roger, whose eyes were drifting shut, then snapping open again.
“Yes,” the clerk said a little testily.
“Right,” I said, thinking fast. If these Udells had canceled, they most likely weren’t coming. And it was three thirty in the morning, and Roger clearly needed to crash as soon as possible. “That’s us,” I said smiling brightly. “The Udells.” That seemed to wake Roger up a little, and he blinked at me, surprised.
“Finally,” the clerk muttered. “All right. Names?” he asked, fingers poised over his keyboard.
“Oh,” I said, “Well. That’s … Edmund. And I’m Hillary.” Roger glanced over at me, a little more sharply, and I tried to shrug as subtly as possible.
I think the clerk began to doubt us when I wasn’t able to tell him the zip code of Salt Lake City, and when Roger, who’d joined in the conversation by this point, explained that we didn’t have a cell number to give, because those things were just fads. But I think at that point the clerk just wanted us to go. I paid in cash from my mother’s sock-drawer fund, so that the Udells, whoever they were, wouldn’t be charged. Then he’d handed us a key—not a key card, but a real old-fashioned brass key, with a small heart charm dangling from it.