Drive Me Crazy (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four
Cassie

E
ager as Nono is to drag me thousands of miles away from everything important, it’s only about an hour into the drive before she asks Howie to look ahead to Sacramento and see if there are any good bookstores.

“We can grab some audiobooks if they have them,” she says. “Or take turns reading out loud to each other. That might even be more fun.”

I’m not reading a page of anything aloud, because I’m never speaking to Nono again. Lana and Howie are both totally on board, though, of course, and before long we’re navigating to a small store called Time Tested Books. While everyone gets out, I stay put.

“I’m not interested,” I tell Lana. She looks to Howie for help.

“Come on, Cassie.” He leans in to give me a pat on the knee, but I move my legs away. “You’ll be glad for the stretch a few hours from now.”

“Let her do what she wants,” Nono says, dismissing me and heading to the shop.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” Lana asks, lingering behind. Admittedly I’m curious if they have this series Cheyenne Taylor and Neftali Manji are obsessed with, but who cares, since they’ll probably never talk to me again. Plus, if Nono isn’t concerned whether or not I come inside, then I
really
don’t want to go. Even though Lana’s trying to be nice, I don’t feel like being cheered up. I don’t know if I’ll ever be cheered up again.

“I have magazines in my bag. Those’ll be fine,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.

She’s disappointed, I can tell. As she walks away, I realize it might be fun to teach her Fiona’s bookstore game of making up our own story or poem from titles on the shelves, but I don’t want to be having fun right now. Especially not where Nono can see.

After what feels like forever, they come back to the car.

“Could’ve used you for a tiebreaker,” Howie says,
handing me the bag of books. I look inside.

“
Little Women
was your Nono’s suggestion, and Lana picked out
The Graveyard Book
.
Peter Pan
’s mine. That other one the bookseller recommended when she saw I had
Peter Pan
. We’ll let you decide which one to read first.”

“Definitely not
Little Women
,” I say. I take the last one,
Tiger Lily
, from the bag and check out the description on the back. The story of a fierce warrior princess seems good, until I read she’s part of a doomed romance. Far too close to my own misery right now.

Nono pretends I’m not ignoring her by ignoring me right back, and starts up the car. What she doesn’t know is that I’ve had months of training from Kendra Mack. I can play this game much longer than she can.

Even with the book to distract us (
Peter Pan
is funny, and Howie does a good job of making it dramatic, though I don’t admit I’m listening), the rugged mountain scenery, short yoga stretches every few hours, and a mini stop at some reservoir park in Nevada, it is still a long, long,
long
drive to Salt Lake City. We don’t get to the hotel until almost ten thirty at night, and by the time we’re checked in, we all want to go straight to bed.

I’ve had hours to brood on my plan to get us turned around in the morning, though, and this is the first chance
Lana and I have had to talk.

“A major illness won’t work,” I say before she’s even put her duffel down.

“What?” she says, looking shocked.

“One of us faking sick. Too sick to keep going on this trip. It wouldn’t work because we already tried that,” I explain.

“Oh,” she says. “Hang on and let me tell my parents we’re here, okay?” She takes her time with it, the furrow between her brows getting deeper as she types. Obviously she’s not rubbing it in my face that she has her phone and I don’t, but it still feels that way, a little.

When she finishes, she plops down in the armchair by our window. “Well, we can’t mess with the car. That would be dangerous, and also too hard to pull off.”

I hadn’t thought about doing anything to the car. That’s brilliant.

“I read pouring sugar into the gas tank works,” I say.

Lana frowns. “I’m pretty sure that would destroy it.”

“So?” Nono’s destroyed my life; I think her engine is a fair trade.

“So, wouldn’t it be obvious who did it? And then wouldn’t you be so grounded that even if we did go back home—which might be hard, with a broken car—there’s no way your mom would let you go to any party?”

This is true. But I still like the car idea. If it means we’re stranded here forever, at least Nono will miss out on that stupid Magic Moment, just like I’m missing out on Kendra Mack’s.

“Isn’t there, like, some doohickey under the car? A plug that holds in all the oil? We could crawl under there at one of our stops, unscrew it, and then the oil would pour out and the car wouldn’t be able to go. Right? It’d be easy to fix, but I know my mom would think twice about letting me keep riding in a car that was so unpredictable.”

Lana’s not fully listening. She’s gotten two chimes from her phone and is busy texting.

“What’s up with that? You and your parents?” It’s annoying how much she’s been on the phone with them, especially when
I
need her attention.

Lana looks stricken. “What do you mean?”

“Nono and Howie are talking to them too, you know. You don’t have to update them every ten seconds.”

“It doesn’t seem any different from you being on the phone with Kendra Mack all the time,” she says. Her quick, disapproving tone surprises me.

“You don’t have to get snitty about it. I’m just curious.”

Lana makes a one-shouldered shrug. “We’re close, is all. Don’t you miss your parents? Your brother?”

It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I’m actually glad to
be on a bit of a vacation from my family. Especially Tom and his unrelenting perfectness. It’s been nice to have a week when I don’t have to worry about being compared to him.

“Honestly? No,” I say.

Lana lifts her chin. “Well, I guess we’re just different, then.”

She seems just as annoyed with me as I was with her a second ago. Maybe it should make me madder, but I’m impressed she’s not being a pushover. Her not backing down also makes me notice how rude I just sounded. I wonder how Izzy Gathing would act if someone did the same thing to her.

“So, back to the car thing.” I change the subject.

“I don’t know.” Lana rolls her head against the back of the chair. “What if we broke down in the middle of the highway? That could be really dangerous. And when would we do it? It’s not like we’re getting that much time to ourselves.”

“Okay, what, then?” I sink down to the floor at her feet. “We have to think of something, and we have to do it fast, or we’ll have gone too far to get back in time.”

“We’re already pretty far.”

“I know! That’s why we have to think!”

Lana shakes her head. “What I think is we’re both tired.
It’s been a long day, and our brains are foggy. I think the main thing we need now is some sleep.”

“Okay, but Rule Number Eleven is We Will Definitely Talk About It in the Morning.”

Lana sticks out her hand to shake, but her phone beeps again. When she checks it, she looks relieved.

“Your parents again?” The tiniest scrap of an idea is glimmering in my mind.

“Just saying good night.”

“You miss them, don’t you?” I push. The idea glows brighter.

“I told you I did,” she says.

I suck in a breath to calm how excited I suddenly feel. “Miss them so bad it’d be terrible to be away from them for another week, right? And we might be gone even longer.”

The expression on her face is one I can’t decipher. “Well, not if—”

“So, tomorrow at breakfast, we go down and explain to Howie and Nono that after sleeping on it for a night, you’ve decided you’re just too homesick to keep going. They know how close you are to your parents. They’ll totally understand.”

“Cassie, there’s a reason—”

I kneel in front of her, clasping my hands together. “Lana, please. I’m begging you. You know how important
it is, and this plan is the only one that will work. Howie adores you, and so does Nono. They’ll do anything you ask them. Please, Lana, you have to. We can go to Maine with them any other summer. Just not right now. Please? Please say you’ll do this for me.”

“Well—” She chews on her lip and looks down at the phone still in her hand. “It would be good to be back with them.”

I wrap my arms around her knees and squeeze them tight. “Thank you. From the bottom of my heart a million times, thank you. I will make this up to you one day, I swear. We should make a rule about it.”

She nudges me away with her foot and stands up. “We don’t have to do that.”

We brush our teeth and get into our pajamas. When Lana turns out the light between our beds, I lie there awhile seeing visions in the dark: Nono’s car doing a complete U-turn. Arriving back in my own driveway. Getting out my outfit for Kendra Mack’s party. And best of all, walking out to her patio, straight over to say hi to Cory Baxter.

Chapter Twenty-Five
Lana

I
was so distracted by Cassie’s idea last night that I forgot to set my alarm. Forgot, too, that Cassie doesn’t have her phone, so the only thing that wakes us is Grandma Tess calling to say it’s almost time to leave.

“I’ll shower quick, I promise!” Cassie says as she bounces out of bed.

“Yeah, right.”

She makes a face and tosses a pillow at me, but at least she’s in a better mood. The cloud of yuckiness she was in yesterday would be hard to take for another eleven-hour drive, though maybe today it’ll be my turn to be in a funk. I promised Cassie I’d help her, but I need to get to Maine to make that wish.

While Cassie’s in the shower, I call Mom to see if she’s feeling better like she was last night. When she doesn’t pick up, I leave a quick “good morning” message and try Dad. Maybe Mom’s still sleeping if she’s not feeling well, but I know Dad will be up, since morning temperatures are better for working outside.

But he doesn’t answer, either.

I leave another quick voice mail, trying not to listen to the alarm bells ringing in my head, and pace around the room, trying to remember every stop-worrying tip that Tamika’s ever told me, like “Stress only comes from resisting what is actually happening.” But that one doesn’t help in this case. It’s not like Mom or Dad to not pick up the phone when I call. Even when they’re meeting with clients, they answer to make sure there isn’t an emergency and tell me they’ll call back.

As backup, I text Mom
Hi and good morning from Utah
, and when Cassie comes out of the bathroom, I take my phone in with me. Cassie’s made fun of me for talking to my parents so much, but I have a terrible feeling she’ll finally understand why I do before too much longer. Telling her now is out of the question. I know she doesn’t believe in the Magic Moment, so if she knew what was wrong with Mom, she’d use it as even more of a reason to get us turned around, instead of hearing me out about
getting east. Maybe that wouldn’t be true, but I’m not sure I want to find out.

No messages come in while I’m brushing my teeth and pulling my hair into a quick ponytail. As I get dressed, one of Tamika’s favorite Eleanor Roosevelt quotes pops into my head:
You must do the thing you think you cannot do
. But I can’t make myself stop being scared.

Maybe Mom’s already dead. Maybe Dad’s so wrapped in his own devastation that he hasn’t figured out how to tell me yet. Maybe yesterday was the last time I will ever talk to her. Maybe she’ll never hear the voice mail I just left.

“Maybe during breakfast is when you should do it,” Cassie says as I step out of the bathroom.

A sound like
huh?
comes out of me.

Cassie makes big, exasperated eyes. “Talk to Howie. I can pull Nono away to apologize or something. Then you can ask him to go home. What do you think?”

“Oh.” What I think is I want to hear back from my parents. “I’m not sure that’s going to be the right moment. Maybe I should wait for him to have a full, happy stomach.”

There are three bright knocks on our door, and Grandma Tess calls out, “Morning, girls! Time to hit the road!”

Cassie looks at me in panic, but I can’t help feeling relieved.

“Coming!” I call through the door.

“When, then?” Cassie whispers, fierce. She’s turned mean in a too-familiar way.

“When the time is right,” I tell her, too worried and tired of this to sass back.

Grandma Tess wants to look at Great Salt Lake before we head out of town, but since we don’t have time to actually swim in it, it isn’t that fun. As soon as we get there, Cassie takes Grandma Tess’s hand and asks if they can walk along the shore a ways, lifting her eyebrows pointedly at me. For a second Grandpa Howe looks like he’s up for a stroll, but Grandma Tess shields her eyes with her hand, gazes across the flat water, and says, “I just wanted to see it. Now I have, and we should get going.”

I take a few pictures of the salt incrustations along the banks to send my dad. Tamika would be interested in the amazing facts Grandpa Howe reads to us about how the Native Americans collected salt here for curing meat. Dad, I hope, will just find them interesting and strange. And a reason to finally text back.

But he doesn’t. Through the rest of Utah and across the border into Wyoming, Cassie and I pass her notebook back and forth, playing Hangman. We’re both tense, but I make Cassie laugh a few times with the googly-eyed faces I draw.
The game takes my mind off my parents, but not much.

As we’re heading into the first city in Wyoming, Cassie writes in the margin of her notebook,
You need to talk to him at this stop
, and I think she’s right, I do—I need to tell Grandpa Howe that I haven’t heard from my parents all day and I’m worried. I need to tell him he has to fill me in on what’s really going on. But before I answer Cassie, Grandpa Howe’s phone starts ringing. He checks the screen and says, “It’s Peter,” to Grandma Tess. She probably doesn’t mean to, but I see her glance with concern in the rearview mirror back at me.

“Hi, son,” Grandpa Howe answers.

Cassie pushes the notebook into my lap, wanting me to write back or at least guess a letter, but suddenly I can’t see anything on the paper. Instead there are whirling pinwheels of pink-and-yellow panic around my eyes, and my heartbeat is thrumming in my ears.

But I hear Grandpa Howe perfectly when he asks, “How is she feeling now?”

Grandma Tess takes the very next exit and pulls over in the parking lot of a gas station.

“Come on, girls. Let’s take a pit stop. I could use some more water, and I’m sure your grandfather thinks eleven thirty in the morning is the perfect time for a Snickers break.”

I don’t want to go even a foot farther away from news of my mom, but I need to prepare myself for whatever it is Dad’s telling Grandpa Howe. I follow Grandma Tess and Cassie into the gas station bathroom, lock my stall door, and sit straight down on the toilet. My mom is dying, I know it. Or she’s already dead. It was a panicky thought this morning, but now it really might be true. I try to say it in my head over and over, to get some tears out now, so that when I hear my dad or Grandpa Howe say the actual words to me maybe I won’t cry as hard, but all I feel is hollow and dry.

Grandma Tess knows something terrible is happening too, because when we’re all finished in the bathroom, she tells Cassie to come along instead of lingering in the chip aisle. I don’t even glance at the candy. I can see Grandpa Howe is still on the phone with Dad, but he’s out of the car and leaning against the hood. When I push open the door, I leave a sweaty palm print on the glass, even though my body’s gone cold.

“She’s here,” Grandpa Howe says when I get to him. He gives Grandma Tess a sad smile, puts a hand on my shoulder, and walks me away from the car before handing me the phone.

“Dad?” I watch Grandma Tess and Cassie head across the parking lot and off on a little walk, to give me some
privacy. So the news must really be awful.

“Hi, Lanalee. How are you doing?” Dad’s voice is sad and scared, and trying not to be either of those things. Hearing it kicks me into some kind of strong-girl gear I didn’t know I had.

“What’s wrong with Mom?” I say, wishing I’d been brave enough to ask it weeks ago.

“Straight shooter, that’s good,” Dad says. “You’re right. It’s how I should be, too.”

He tells me, calm as he can, that in the middle of the night Mom’s headache got so bad she was throwing up. That he wrapped her in a blanket, carried her to the car, and brought her to the hospital. While I listen, I picture how strong Dad needed to be to do that. I know I need to be that strong for him, no matter what else I’m feeling.

He goes on. “This morning when you called we were with the doctor, getting some scans. We’re still waiting for the results, but they’ve given Mom some good medicine to help with the pain.”

“When are they going to know anything?” I can’t believe how grown-up I sound, but it seems to help Dad not freak out, which helps me not freak out, either. At least, not as much.

“It may be any minute, may be another few hours. It’s hard to tell around here. I wanted to get as much
information as possible before I called. When I got your awesome pictures, though, it felt wrong to have you so far away and not knowing. Tell me what you’re thinking. What do you need?”

I stare across the road.
I need to get to the End of the Road,
is all I can think. I look up at Grandpa Howe, who’s been standing next to me with his arm draped across my back the whole time. Beyond him I can see the small, white-and-blue blobs that are Grandma Tess and Cassie heading back toward us on the shoulder of the road. This minute is when I could do what Cassie wants and ask to come home, and then I would be there to help my parents through whatever this turns out to be. But depending on what Mom’s scans say, catching the Magic Moment might be more important than ever.

“Can I think about it?” I ask both Grandpa Howe and Dad at the same time.

Grandpa Howe nods, once. Dad says, “Of course.”

We’re quiet a minute before Dad says, “I’ll call you as soon as we’ve talked to the doctors. We want you to try not to worry too much and keep having fun, but if you decide you want to turn around and come home, nobody has any trouble with that—we’ve already discussed it with your grandparents. But Mom and I will be glad for you if you decide to keep going and get to see the End of the Road.”

My throat trembles, thinking this whole time they’ve been talking about me, but not to me. So that my dad doesn’t have to hear me cry, on top of all the terrible he must already feel, I quickly tell him to kiss Mom for me and get a kiss back, and we hang up.

Grandpa Howe hands me his handkerchief, but I don’t need it. Yet. I keep watching Cassie and Grandma Tess getting closer and closer. I have no idea how to tell Cassie any of this, or whether I should.

Beside me, Grandpa Howe waits. Finally he says, “Is this something you want to discuss, all four of us together?”

I look up at him, wondering how my grandfather got to be so smart about what’s happening inside people’s minds. I shake my head, telling him no.

Once Cassie finds out any of this, she’ll know I could easily get us back home. But Grandpa Howe seems to feel as I do that the best place for me now is the End of the Road. We both know without saying that Mom could use a little magic.