I like the feel of the road under me. The solid thump-thumpthumpthump-thump drum cadence of those big tires. Gonzo’s out cold next to me, that big head of his resting on my shoulder. He mumbles in his sleep, and I wonder what dreams he has.
“Peekaboo.” Dulcie’s face peers over the seat in front of me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, looking around.
“There’s some welcome.”
“Look, it’s just …” I lower my voice. “I don’t want people to think I’m opening up a six-pack of crazy here on the bus. I’ll get kicked off.”
“Looks like everybody’s sleeping.”
“Can anybody else see you besides me?” I ask.
“I suppose they could if they wanted to, but maybe what they see isn’t what you see,” Dulcie answers in her typically cryptic fashion. “Hey, check it out.” She unfurls her wings slightly. Cameron rock, they read.
“Shouldn’t there be an ‘s’ at the end? Cameron rocks?”
“Yeah. I ran out of spray paint. But the sentiment is one hundred percent there.” She rests her chin on the seat top and grips the sides with her hands. It makes her look like she’s been beheaded. “You seem a little tired, cowboy.”
“Weird dreams,” I say.
“Want to tell me about it? The doctor is in.”
“Just stuff about my mom. She was talking about how she used to take me to the library when I was a kid, and I didn’t remember that at all. But just as I woke up, I did remember it. Crystal clear I could see myself sitting in my mom’s lap over near the water fountain, and she was reading some rhyming book about monsters to me. She had on sandals and she smelled good, like shampoo. And I was happy. How did I manage to forget that?”
“That’s a nice memory,” Dulcie says.
We listen to the road thumpity-thumping beneath us, and for a few minutes it feels like we’re the only two beings in the entire universe.
“Do you have some nice memories?” I ask, offering her some Cheesy Puff Fingers from our open bag. “You know, from before you were …” I gesture to her wings in a completely ineffectual way. “You know.”
Dulcie gets a funny little smile. “I’m making a nice memory right now.”
“Now?”
“Here. With you.” She downs two Cheesy Puff Fingers.
“But what were you before you were an angel?” I press.
She takes a sip of my warm soda, makes a face. “Does it matter?”
“Yeah. I think it does.”
“Okay, then,” she says, taking another drink from the can. “I was somebody else.”
“What does that mean?” I say, getting pissed off. “Did you have parents? A dog? A parakeet? A Social Security number? Can you remember? How do you feel? Is there a God? What happens when we die? Will I be like you, spray-painting my wings with misspelled messages and guiding people on stupid, insane missions?”
“It’s not stupid, Cameron,” she says softly.
“I’m out here on the road looking for some renegade miracle man, totally sticking my neck out for you, and you can’t even answer one single fucking question!”
The guy across the aisle opens one eye for half a second, then turns over, and I lower my voice. “I think you owe me that.”
Dulcie wipes her mouth, but some of the Day-Glo cheese powder clings to her lip. “All right. I’ll answer one of your questions.”
“Thank you.”
“I feel like I swallowed a Magritte.”
“What?”
Dulcie reaches in for another Cheesy Puff Finger. “You asked me how I feel. And my answer is: I feel like I swallowed a Magritte. Like on the inside, I’m made of clouds and floating eyes, green apples, and slowly rising men in bowler hats.”
“You are officially the most annoying unreal creature ever.”
“Meet a lot of us, do you?”
“Lately it’s gotten very weird.”
“Cameron.” She puts her hand on my arm. “The point is, you’re alive right now. Look around.” She widens her arms to include the sleeping passengers. “Half the people I see aren’t really aware. They aren’t in the game at all. They never notice how fabulous stuff here is.”
“Like what?”
“Like …” She thinks for a few seconds. “Microwave popcorn.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Think about it. You put this flat bag of kernels in the hopper, wait four minutes …” She opens her mouth and taps her fingers against her taut cheeks, making a popping sound. “And voila! You’ve got a steaming bag of buttery goodness right there.”
“This is your miracle of human existence?”
“No. But it doesn’t suck. It’s a simple pleasure, okay? You got any of those?”
“Sure,” I say.
She folds her arms over her armored chest. “Such as?”
“Masturbation.”
“Yeah? What else?”
I think about it for a good, long minute. “Eubie’s.”
Dulcie sits, waiting. “And?”
“Can’t think of anything else.”
“Well, how about pizza—in-restaurant, not delivery. Water fountains. That chill on your arms when you go from an air-conditioned movie theater into the heat. The smell of Laundromats. Snow. CDs …”
“No, not CDs, records. Gotta be vinyl.”
“Vinyl, then. What else?”
“You know I hate that you’ve drawn me into this, don’t you?” The morning light’s falling on Dulcie in a way that makes her glow, and I have the impulse to say, This. Right here. Right now.
I shrug. “That’s all I got.”
She shakes her head. “We’ve got work to do, Bucko.”
The bus driver’s got his signal on. We’re exiting.
Dulcie gets up. “That’s my cue.”
“So, like … when will I see you again?”
“Soon,” she says, ducking into the john. “Get out there and make some memories, cowboy. Oh, and don’t forget to save the universe.”
Five minutes later, the bus pulls into a rest-stop area. The sign welcomes us to the fine state of Mississippi. A bunch of eighteen-wheelers are parked near the gas pumps. The bus comes to a stop and the driver opens the doors. “Y’all wanna stretch your legs, get some air, go ’head. Just be back on this bus in ten minutes. I got a schedule to keep.”
Gonzo and I pile out with the rest of the road-weary passengers and head for the big green MegaMart across the parking lot.
“Awww, dude! They’ve got the Mega XL Death Captain Carnage!” He runs for the bank of video games beside the tiny ATM machine. “This is just the most awesome game ever! If you get to level three, you get a special battleax that lets you slice-and-dice your way through nursery rhyme characters. Sweet! Hey, you got a buck?”
I give Gonz the dollar and in another minute I hear him killing beloved storybook characters with glee. There’s an explosion, and the dish yells, “Run away, Spoon! Save yourself!” I use the ATM. Buy a few more snacks. Get some change.
“Gonzo—” I start to ask if I can use his phone, but I know he’s terrified of using up his minutes. “Listen, I gotta make a call. Keep an eye on the bus, okay?”
“Sure,” he says, eyes glazed.
Around the back is a pay phone. I drop in my coins and punch in the digits I know best. On the fourth ring, Jenna’s sleepy voice answers.
“Hello?”
“Jenna?”
“Cameron? Oh my God, is that you? Where are you?”
“Shhh, don’t wake up Mom and Dad.”
“Okay,” she says. And I know how hard it is for her to break the good-girl code for me. The line buzzes with static and the occasional click. “How are you?”
“I’m okay. How is everybody there?”
“Mom and Dad are completely freaked. They put posters up all over town. And people have these brown and white ribbons on their trees that they say they’re not taking down till you come home again.”
“Brown and whit
e?”
“Like a cow.” She sucks in her breath. “The cops are looking for you, Cameron. They traced your credit card to New Orleans. Cameron, why don’t you just come home? Please?”
“I can’t do that, Jenna. Not until I find the guy who can cure me.”
“What are you talking about? What guy?” She sounds like she’s about to cry.
“It’s … complicated. But I promise I’m okay. Listen, Jenna, I need you to do me a favor.”
There’s a pause. The line is really bad. “Okay.”
“Just let Mom and Dad know I’m okay. I’ll call back as soon as I can. I promise. I …”
Another phone picks up.
“Cameron? Cameron! Is that you? Where are you?” It’s Dad’s voice. In the background, I hear Mom telling him to let her talk. “Cameron, just tell us where you are and we’ll come pick you up. We love you. We—”
More clicks. A finger comes down on the clicker. “They’re tracing the call.” Dulcie’s standing there. Something serious in her eyes makes me obey. Slowly, I put the receiver back into its cradle.
“You have to let them go, Cam. You have to move forward. You’ve got a mission.”
“I know that, okay?” I explode. “Just leave me alone, would you?”
“Leave you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Totally alone?”
“Yes! God.”
She bites her bottom lip. “Okay. See you around, cowboy.”
“Yeah. See you.”
I run across the parking lot to the bathroom island and push my way into the filthy hole of a men’s room. The E-ticket scratches against my arm. Frontierland’s gone even lighter, the lettering getting hard to read. How much time do I have left? In the cracked mirror, I look like Grade-D crap—pale and stubbly.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask my fractured reflection. Tears sting at my eyes. A big guy in cowboy boots comes in and I splash water on my face.
Out in the parking lot, two trucks gas up at the pumps. A family eats their fast-food meals in their station wagon with the windows rolled down. Two guys stand by a stack of tires, away from the pumps, smoking like a couple of idiots. And over where the bus was parked earlier, I see nothing but a big empty space.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
I push through the MegaMart doors so hard, the bell jangles like it’s caffeinated. Gonzo’s still at the Captain Carnage game.
“Gonzo!” I snarl.
“Dude, not now! The Teddy Vamps are on me.”
“I thought you were watching the bus!”
“The bus?” He doesn’t take his eyes off the game.
“Yeah. You know, that long, rectangular vehicle that gets our asses out of here and is nowhere to be seen?”
Gonzo finally looks up, wide-eyed.
“Yeah, exactly,” I say.
We race outside to the parking lot and stand in the empty space where there used to be a bus to Florida.
Gonzo swallows hard. “It’s …”
“… gone,” I finish. “Congratulations. We are officially fucked.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Wherein We Take a Van Ride with Possible Serial Killers
“I don’t understand. I looked outside, like, maybe two seconds before and it was there, dude. I swear.”
“Two seconds,” I repeat.
“I swear!”
“Let’s go to the replay. Hmmm, oh, looks like maybe Gonzo was so busy smoking Little Miss Muffet he forgot. To watch. For the damn. Bus!”
“I’m sorry,” he says, hanging his head like a little kid who just peed on your carpet by mistake.
“Just keep looking for signs of civilization.”
We’re on a dirt road in the middle of freakin’ nowhere. So far, we’ve passed a farm that stank to high heaven, some cotton fields, and four ancient husks of tractors getting their rust tans in the sun. It’s bright and the heat’s beating hard on the back of my neck.
“Try calling her again,” Gonzo says.
“I’ve tried. She’s not coming.” I started yelling for Dulcie the minute we realized the bus was truly gone and we were on our own. But I guess she’s taking that “leave me alone” edict seriously.
“Where are we, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I say, wiping the sweat from my forehead with my arm. “Somewhere in Mississippi. Fuck!” I kick at a stone in the road, sending it skittering away through a cloud of dust.
Gonzo starts coughing. “Dude, I can’t breathe right.”
“Don’t you dare panic on me,” I warn.
“I’m not,” Gonzo squeaks, holding back a cough that barrels out anyway. “Look, I’ll just call my mom,” he says, whipping out his cell.
“Yeah. Absolutely. Wouldn’t want to go another step without input from Mom.”
Gonzo ignores my snarkiness. “You said if there was an emergency, amigo. This counts as an emergency, right?” Before I can stop him, he pushes number one on his speed dial and in a second I hear him saying, “Mom? ¿Mamí? Sí. Es Gonzo. Jeez, don’t cry, Mom. I’m fine. I promise.”
“Yeah, Mom,” I say to the air. “We’re just stuck on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere with no idea where we are or how to get out of here. Everything’s great! Wish you were here!”
Gonzo peels away from me. “Listen, Mom, we need a little money. … I what? I sound sick? No. I feel fine. Sí.” He coughs. “It’s just dry. No, it’s not pneumonia, Mom. No, I … yeah, I’ve got my inhaler. The prescription’s not more than three months old. Do you think I should get it refilled?”
“We’re all gonna die! Die! Die!” For Gonzo’s benefit, I put my hands to my throat, stick out my tongue, and fall to the ground, spazzing.
He covers the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand. “Dude, that shit is so not funny. Mom? What do you mean the tests were inconclusive?”
I can’t deal. I wander off the road into the cool grass and let the long, tall blades skim my fingertips. There are a few cows out grazing. They look up, chewing, but I’m not grass, so they ignore me. I inch closer to one. It’s got big wet nostrils that sniff the air around me. Its tail flicks at the flies. We’re nose to nose. She seems soft, and I reach out a hand to stroke her fur, which is warm from the sun. She lets me do it, just goes on munching grass while I smooth my hand across her wide back.
“How now, mad cow?” I say.
“Cameron!” Gonzo calls out.
“Catch you later, Bessie,” I say to the cow, who eats another mouthful of grass in response.
When I reach Gonzo, he’s pacing, and his face is sweaty. “I knew I shouldn’t have come on this trip,” he says, and he looks like he could cry. “My mom said they found this spot on my lung on the chest X-ray. It could just be a blip on the film or a cyst—or it could be something really bad, like cancer or a mutant virus or bacteria.”
“Or it could be your mom freaking out over nothing.”
I offer him my hand, but he crawls over to his backpack in the grass and fishes out his inhaler. He pulls deep on it, but he’s having a hard time calming down. He stands, trying to shake it off. “A spot! That doesn’t sound good. What do you think that could mean?”
I grab Gonzo’s shoulders a little too hard because he is annoying the crap out of me. “I have bad news, man. You’re going to live. Deal with it.”
He twists out of my grip. “I think we should go back, Cameron.”
“No way. I’m not going back.”
“I can’t go back by myself, dude. I could be dying.” He pulls deep on his inhaler again.
“You’re not the one who’s dying, Gonzo!” I’d like to kick his ass all the way to Florida. He gives me that wounded-puppy look, effectively killing my karate fantasy. “Doesn’t she do this to you all the time?”
“What do you mean?”
“Scare the bejesus out of you?”
“She’s looking out for me, okay? You don’t know her, Cameron. I shouldn’ta left like that. Like my dad.”
“You ever think there was a reason your dad left?”
He kicks at a pebble in the road. It skitters sideways into the long grass and disappears. “Me.”
“Maybe it wasn’t you.”
“She’s the best thing in my life. I know that.”
I should just shut up. But I’m so pissed off—about the bus, about the cows, about Gonzo’s crazy mom, about everything—that I just want to slice and dice. “Well, that’s pretty damn sad, then. You ever think that maybe the best thing in your life would be to get the hell away from her before she turns you into a complete emotional cripple?”
Gonzo’s left eye twitches. His mouth goes slack. And then he comes running at me full speed, swinging hard. “Just shut up, man, shut the hell up! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
He lands a solid punch to my stomach, and that sucker hurts. I’m doubled over, hoping my breath will have a return engagement with my lungs.
“Say you’re sorry, pendejo!”
“Sorry,” I squeak out.
He backs off, but he’s still way pissed. “My mom has given up a lot to raise me. She was supposed to be a singer.”
“Okay. I believe you.” When I’m able to stand, I hand him his backpack. He stuffs his arms angrily through the straps. “Did you ask her to do that?”
“Ask her to do what?” he says, giving a little hop to secure his pack.
“Give up her life for you.”
He looks confused for a second. “That’s not the point. Look, just drop it, dude.”
“It’s dropped.”
We start walking. In the field, I see the old lady, Mrs. Morae, from the hospital. She’s sitting in a chair, holding on to her IV pole, like she’s at a bus stop, waiting. Her face is grave. “Watch out,” she warns.
“I will,” I say.
She smiles at me. “In a house by the sea with the air scented of lilies.”
“Dude, who are you talking to?” Gonzo’s face is right in mine. I slide my eyes to the right, but the old lady is gone.
The pins-and-needles sensation burns in my legs. “No one,” I say. “Just keep your eyes peeled for a car or a bus. Something other than gravel and dust.”
We amble down the dirt road till we hit an old paved road that at least has a route sign. There’s nothing coming in either direction yet.