David A. Poulsen's Young Adult Fiction 3-Book Bundle. David A. Poulsen
while. Then a sign: Minneapolis 439 kilometres. I did a calculation. Four hours. Maybe a little more. And then what? That was the biggest question of all.
I discovered there’s an upside to country music. Or maybe it was just the driving and the total boredom. Anyway, something put me to sleep. I’m betting it was Garth and Clint and Reba and all their friends. I woke up from one of those dreams you want to keep going. Jen Wertz and I were at this lake. She was lying on a rubber raft, and I was in the water pushing it along. Every little while she’d lean her head over the edge and kiss me.
Except some of the time she wasn’t Jen anymore. Sometimes she was a different girl, who was totally hot too, except that I couldn’t remember her face after I woke up. I could only remember that she was gorgeous and hot. And weird. The non-Jen girl kept singing all the songs from The Lion King. Yeah, a lot of hot babes do that. But then she was Jen again and had just finished telling me she could kiss me a lot better if I’d get up on the rubber raft with her. That’s when I woke up.
I looked over at the old man. He wasn’t tapping or bopping or singing along. He was just driving. “Do we ever make bathroom stops on this trip?”
He smiled. “Town coming up. Last town before the border. We’d best pee, get rid of all the drugs in the car, and dig out our passports. We need fuel anyway.”
I was having trouble figuring out when he was trying to be funny. His face didn’t change much when he said stuff, so it was hard to tell. But I figured the drugs-in-the-car thing must have been a joke.
Or a warning. Like if I had something stashed that I shouldn’t have, last opportunity to get rid of it. I’d never been in the States in my life, so I didn’t know what to expect at the border. Although right then I didn’t care. I was at the point where a pee stop was all I was thinking about.
That and Jen Wertz. On a rubber raft.
We pulled into the pumps at a Gas Rite service station, and getting to the can I practically ran over a lady holding a totally ugly dog — one of those squished-face ones that looks like an alien with fur. I yelled “sorry” over my shoulder, but I didn’t slow down. The emergency was now a stage-four crisis.
When I came out of the can, the old man was checking out the chips display. “You wash your hands?”
I looked at him. Who asks you that? I didn’t bother to answer.
“Lots of guys don’t. Think it’s manly, maybe.”
“Guess I’m not manly. I washed.”
“Cool. Want something?”
I reached over and took a bag of Crunchits and headed for the counter.
“Just put it there with that other stuff. I’ll pay for it.”
“I’ve got money.”
“I know you have. You can pay next time.” He started in the direction of the bathroom.
“Make sure you wash,” I called.
He waved over his shoulder without looking back, but I could tell he was laughing.
I threw the Crunchits on the counter with some other stuff he’d put there — a couple of bananas, some little cartons of yogurt, and a Cherry Blossom chocolate bar. And some baseball magazine. Then I went outside.
The lady had put the dog on a leash, and it was sniffing around some pretty much dead flowers along the front of the service station. I watched the dog for a few seconds then looked up at the old lady. She was glaring at me. Another drug-crazed teenage pervert purse snatcher.
“What kind of dog is that?” I asked her.
She told me it was a cross between two words I’d never heard before.
“They all look like that?”
“What do you mean?”
“That is one very unattractive dog.”
She picked up the dog and kind of held it to the side to keep it away from me. Like I was an animal killer. I thought about telling her I wasn’t, but if I ever became one, I’d start with her dog. I didn’t, though, and the door of the place opened, and the old man came out with a bag full of the stuff he’d bought.
He flicked the fingers of one hand and a few drops of water hit me.
“Good for you,” I said.
He nodded and we climbed into the truck. As he put it in gear and we pulled away, I looked back at the lady and the dog. She was talking to it. Probably telling it, “Don’t worry, Pookey, I’ll protect you from that acne-covered little bastard.”
“What’s so funny?” The old man was looking at me and grinning.
“People,” I said. “People are what’s funny.”
He nodded. “No argument there. You got your passport handy?”
“It’s right on top of my backpack.”
“Better fish it out.”
I did and handed it to him. He put it beside him with his own passport and an envelope with Mom’s writing on the front. All it said was permission letter.
“Mom said you played professional baseball.”
He looked like he was going to turn up the radio but changed his mind. “Yeah, a little.”
“What were you?”
“You mean what position did I play?”
I nodded.
“Mostly third base. But I wasn’t good enough, so I was a utility player. That means I played all the infield positions. Only got in the game if someone was hurt or we were blowing someone out or getting blown out ourselves.”
“So you were a crappy fielder.”
“No, I was a pretty good fielder. I was a crappy hitter. Couldn’t handle the curve ball.”
“Mom said you got hurt. Had to quit.”
“Tore up a knee. But I wasn’t going to make it to the big leagues anyway. So it didn’t matter. I just quit a little sooner than if I’d stayed healthy, that’s all.”
“Then what?”
“Then what … what?”
“What did you do after you quit baseball?”
“Got a job.”
“What kind of job?”
This time he did reach over and turn the sound up on the radio. I muttered “rude” under my breath, but if he heard me he didn’t say anything. And then it was all about Alan Jackson telling us how great it was “way down yonder in Chattahoochee.”
5
The next part of the drive was almost as boring as the part that had gone before. When I pointed that out to the old man, he said, “That’s your favourite word, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Boring.”
I didn’t bother to answer.
The old man was nervous about crossing the border, I could tell — he was doing this thing with his hair, kind of curling the part by his ear with his index finger. He hadn’t done that until we were about a half-hour away from the border. Now he was doing it all the time.
I figured, Sweet, the old man’s a convicted drug dealer in the States, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life in some prison with bad food and black and white TV.
But actually getting through the border wasn’t that bad. The big thing was me. Like, had the old man kidnapped me at some mall and was sneaking me across the border with a fake letter from a fake mom in some fake town?
They told us to park and come inside, and they put us