“Avery? Celeste? The car service is here,” Dad calls from downstairs.
I step out onto the landing.
“Mom’s in the bathroom,” I say. “Um, crying.”
Dad stares up at me from the foyer, the front door open before him. Even at this distance, I can see a muscle twitching in his jaw.
“I’ll come up and get your suitcase,” he says. “You go tell the driver I’ll be right out.”
I pick up the backpack I’m using as a carry-on and walk over to the bathroom door. I knock.
“Mom? Dad and I are leaving now,” I say.
There’s a muffled sound from behind that door that might have been a good-bye, or might have been just a sob. I back away from the door.
Down in the car Dad’s company sent for us, I slide onto leather seats. The driver holds the door for me and points out complimentary water bottles and mints. He’s so formal it’s almost funny. Mostly, Dad likes to drive himself to the airport, and he’s only ever taken Mom and me on shorter trips where that makes more sense. So this is my first experience with a car service.
Maybe someday I’ll be in the corporate world like Dad, and I’ll travel in style like this all the time, I tell myself.
The thought of Mom’s weird sobbing upstairs makes it so I can’t enjoy that fantasy.
Or . . . probably my friends and I will get a limo for proms and homecoming dances in high school, and the limo will be like this, I tell myself, seizing on something a little more immediate.
That’s if I still have friends, after I’m cut off from everyone this summer.
I hear the driver shutting the trunk behind us, and the sound makes me jump. A moment later, Dad climbs through the open door across from me.
“Is Mom okay?” I ask.
He raises an eyebrow.
“She said she flashed ahead in time, and the emotions caught her by surprise. . . . I mean, it’s only four years until you leave for college,” he says. “Probably your mother and I will both cry that hard, on that day.”
“Remind me to sneak out without telling anyone, then,” I mutter.
I want to make Dad laugh—I want to be able to laugh myself. But it’s like he doesn’t hear me once again. He’s staring so fixedly at the seat back in front of him that the driver has to say three times, “The airline you’re flying is United. Is that correct, sir? Sir? Sir?”
We’re not even out of our neighborhood when my phone pings with a text from Mom: Sorry about that!!! That wasn’t how I wanted to say good-bye. Have an incredible time in Spain!! This IS an amazing opportunity for you!!!!
I analyze the text like it’s a passage on a language arts test. The multiple exclamation points show Mom is trying way too hard. The “incredible” and “amazing”? Hyperbole.
And she still hasn’t said she’ll miss me.
Kayla: A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with . . .
“Excited?” Mom asks, glancing over at me from the driver’s seat of our ancient Chevy.
“Or are you nervous?” Grandma asks from behind me. “You shouldn’t be nervous. There’s nothing to worry about. You get a nervous stomach, it will just make you throw up.”
I should feel grateful that Grandma and Grandpa wanted to come to the airport with us, to see me off. But—and this is assuming I manage not to throw up, and embarrass myself that way—I kind of feel like we’re going to look like the Clampetts from The Beverly Hillbillies when we get there and all pile out of the car.
I remind myself that at least we don’t have a rocking chair strapped to the roof of our car.
Then I remind myself that I can’t make Beverly Hillbillies references around Avery. She doesn’t need to know that most of the people I normally hang out with remember watching shows like Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres when they were new. Not reruns.
“It’s more like none of this seems real,” I say. I watch the cornfields whip by outside the car window. The leaves sway like they’re waving good-bye. “It feels like a dream.”
“A good one, I hope,” Grandma says.
“Now, why is it,” Grandpa asks, “that there’s a special word for a bad dream—a nightmare—but there’s not any word for a really, really good dream?”
“Maybe there is in Spanish,” Grandma says.
Oh no, Spanish, I think. And despite Grandma’s warning about nerves, my stomach twists. Starting tomorrow, if I want anyone besides Avery and Mr. Armisted to understand me, I’ll have to speak Spanish. I’ve had two years of it at Crawfordsville High, but it’s not like my teachers ever expected any of us to really use it. Spanish is one of those classes they make easy on purpose. The tests are usually open notes.
Grandpa taps the back of Mom’s headrest.
“You gave Kayla the good-behavior run-down, right?” he asks. “Told her she’s not allowed to fall in love with any of those Spanish boys? Told her if they start talking to her in their fancy Spanish, all boo-wane-us dee-uss seen-your-rita, they’re just trying to—”
“Dad!” Mom says, at the same time that Grandma says, “Roy! Stop it!”
“What?” Grandpa says. “Isn’t anyone going to be impressed that I learned Spanish?”
He’s probably the only person on the face of the earth whose accent is worse than mine.
“I trust Kayla,” Mom says, and she shoots me a little glance that kind of apologizes for Grandpa.
When Mom was born, Grandma was forty and Grandpa was forty-five. They thought they’d never be able to have children, so even now they call her their “miracle baby.” That’s when they’re not just agreeing with the rest of Crawfordsville that Mom’s a saint for how she’s handled everything since Dad’s accident.
When I was born, Mom was only twenty. I guess to Grandma and Grandpa, twenty years is nothing. So sometimes they act like Mom and I are sisters, not mother and daughter.
We don’t look like sisters.
Mom is tiny and perky and constantly in motion, like a hummingbird. She has this cap of dark curls that she dyed orangey red once when she was in high school, so she could play Annie in her senior-year musical. She did that even before she got the role. I’ve seen her high school yearbooks—I think she was kind of the Stephanie Purley of her graduating class. The one who won everything. Only . . . nice. A future saint.
I look more like my dad. He was a linebacker back when, well, you know. Back when he could walk. Back when he was himself. Grandma says I’m just big-boned, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The Stephanie Purleys of the world say there is something wrong with that—they say I’m fat. (The word pairs so well with my last name. And its synonyms.)
Maybe I could get away with being one of those fat girls who at least has a pretty face, except that I don’t. I have dirt-colored hair that just kind of hangs there. My eyes are the color of sludge. My nose and my mouth and my ears are all too big.
One time when I was in middle school I burst into tears talking to Mrs. Carvis, one of my favorite old ladies at the nursing home. I told her it wasn’t fair that I was so ugly. She said, “Honey, you’re beautiful. Everyone young is beautiful. But I guess no one realizes that until they’re old.”
I pretended to cheer up, for Mrs. Carvis’s sake. But all I could think was, Great. That means I’ll be even uglier in the future.
Mrs. Carvis is dead now. When all your best friends are in a nursing home, you get used to losing people.
“That’s the next highway you want, right?” Grandma asks, pointing to a sign by the side of the road. “Two seventy?”
Mom squints off into the distance. I think she probably needs new glasses, but she says she doesn’t have time to go to the eye doctor.
I know it’s really that we don’t have the money.
“Yes, two seventy,” she says. “Then the next exit we take will be the one to the airport.”
She slows down and turns her blinker on, and the car behind her honks. Even I can tell she’s not driving right for the big city. I look around and wonder if
I missed seeing some sign that said, NO PICKUPS OR OLD CARS ALLOWED. All the cars I can see around us are new and shiny and expensive-looking, straight out of a TV commercial.
Behind me, Grandpa whistles.
“Kayla, look quick—is that a Maserati?” he asks. “Red car, two lanes over? Never thought I’d see one of those with my own two eyes.”
“Whose eyes were you going to see it with?” Grandma asks. “Roy, it’s just a car. Four tires, an engine, steering wheel . . . It’s not that different from any other car. Settle down.”
She gives him a playful punch on the arm, and they grin at each other, and that makes it so I don’t have to answer. I’m grateful. This is just Columbus, just an hour and a half from home, and already I’m overwhelmed. Why did I ever think I could fly in an actual airplane, cross an entire ocean, step onto a completely different continent? People like me don’t do that.
Is there some way to get out of this? I wonder. If I really did throw up, if I fainted, if . . .
The car gives a jerk and there’s a sound like gunfire.
“Mom!” I cry.
I look over and she’s gripping the steering wheel like her life depends on it—like suddenly the car has a mind of its own and it wants to smash into every car around us. The car bucks and veers into the next lane. My head slams into the window. Mom jerks the wheel back and my neck wrenches the other way.
And then somehow we’re stopped by the side of the highway, the other cars whizzing past us at top speed.
For a moment we’re all totally silent. Just being able to breathe feels like a miracle. Then Grandma says, “Was that . . .”
“Tire blew out,” Grandpa says. “Right side on the front.”
Only then do I realize the whole car’s tilted in my direction.
Mom lets out a shaky breath.
“I knew that tire was bad,” she whispers. “I just thought it could wait. . . . I could have killed us all.”
“But you didn’t,” Grandma says firmly. “You saved us all, steering out of that. You and the good Lord watching over us.”
A semi passes by, seemingly just inches from Mom’s door. The whole car shakes.
“Kayla, remember how I keep promising to show you how to change a tire?” Grandpa says. “Guess you’ll get that lesson now.”
Mom glances at her watch.
“I’m going to miss my flight, aren’t I?” I ask. And it’s weird how I can’t decide: Would I be delighted or devastated? Would I be relieved or distraught if this one little tire blowout meant that I never get to go to Spain at all?
Before I can figure myself out, Mom says, “Of course not. You know we left way early. I just have to let Mr. Armisted know it will be . . . oh, what do you think? One thirty before we get there?”
Mom reaches into her purse for her phone, but she doesn’t flip it open to call right away. I see how she bites the inside of her lip and does her smile-frown-smile routine, the same way she does at the nursing home to steel herself for ordering some difficult resident to stay in his room all night or eat strained carrots or be ready for a sponge bath.
“Back in the day, I could change a tire in five minutes flat,” Grandpa brags. “Won a contest once at the trucking company, you know.”
“Roy, that was thirty years ago,” Grandma says. “Nowadays it takes you five minutes just to stand up.”
“Let’s prove her wrong, Kayla,” Grandpa says, winking at me.
We all pile out of the car through the passenger-side doors. Mom has to scramble over the emergency brake. I don’t time anyone, but it feels like it takes fifteen or twenty minutes for Grandma and Grandpa to maneuver their way out. Grandpa wobbles a little once he’s on his feet. He and Grandma both put on their church clothes to see me off, and her skirt and his thin cotton pants whip around in the stiff wind from the passing cars. Grandma’s beauty-parlor-perfect curls quake, and the extra-long clump of white hair Grandpa usually combs over his bald spot flaps around like a tattered flag. It kind of looks like the breeze might knock both my grandparents flat to the ground.
I wonder how long it’s been since Grandpa changed a tire.
“I’ll change the tire, after I call Mr. Armisted,” Mom says, as if it’s all decided. “Kayla, you help Grandma and Grandpa down into the ditch, where no one will get hit.”
I’m surprised Grandpa doesn’t argue. But it’s like stepping out of the car made him smaller and older. Defenseless. Carefully, I thread my arms through my grandparents’ elbows and lead them downhill. Mom follows us down into the ditch, the phone to her ear. I can hear what she says: She turns the whole scary blowout and veering into other lanes of traffic—and right now having our hair whipped practically off our heads with every car that passes—into “just a minor problem.”
She pauses. Then I hear, “No, no, you really don’t have to do that. I’m sure we—” Another pause. “Oh, okay.” Her voice has gone stiff and unnatural. “We certainly would not want to make you late.”
Mom snaps her phone shut. Somehow there’s a break in the traffic just now, and so that one sound seems unnaturally loud, as extreme as the tire blowing out.
“He insisted on sending a taxi to pick you up,” she says. “And someone to change the tire for us. Even though I said we were perfectly capable.”
“Well, that was nice,” Grandma says soothingly. “See, honey, this is proof that Kayla’s going to be with kind people all summer long. . . .”
She pats Mom’s back. Mom looks around dazedly, as if she’s just now noticed how deep this ditch is.
“But this is where we’ll have to say good-bye to Kayla,” she says. “The last place we’ll see her for the next eight weeks.”
Mom’s like me, I think. She’s kind of wishing we could cancel everything, and I could go back home. I could stay in Crawfordsville with Mom and Grandma and Grandpa for the rest of my life.
For a moment it feels like I have all the power. The words are on the tip of my tongue. I could say, You know what? Forget this. I don’t want to go to Europe. I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t need anything I don’t already have in Crawfordsville.
But that would be a lie.
The moment passes. In no time at all, a yellow car with the word TAXI on the side is pulling up behind our tilted, broken-down Chevy. And then Mom and Grandma and Grandpa are hugging me, and we’re all crying . . .
And then we’re all letting go.
And I’m leaving.
Avery at the Airport
“I told you this is a bad idea,” I say.
Dad ignores me. I have to stop myself from tugging on his arm like a little kid, to get him to really look at me. It seems like if he just looked into my eyes, he would understand that I don’t just mean it’s a bad idea to take Kayla Butts with us to Spain. It’s a bad idea for me to go to Spain. It’s probably even a bad idea for him to go to Spain.
Today, especially after that weird moment with Mom saying good-bye, everything feels like a bad idea.
Why doesn’t Dad understand that already?
Dad stabs his finger at his phone screen, lifts the phone to cradle it against his shoulder.
“Yes, I can hold,” he says into it.
We’re sitting on a bench right inside the doors for departures at the airport. The doors keep whooshing open and shut, and it’s annoying. People stare at us. It’s weird that the bench is even here; nobody else needs to sit down. You’re supposed to come in and go to the counter and check your luggage and then go to your gate right away. That’s what normal people do.
I’ve already had enough abnormal for the day. I can’t handle any more.
“We could go on through security,” I suggest. “Kayla can just meet us when she gets here.”
If she gets here, I think. Maybe she’ll totally miss the flight. That would be okay. And since Dad would have to reschedule her plane ticket, anyhow, maybe I could talk him into making it for one of my actual friends, instead.
Or maybe not.
D
ad’s shooting me one of those looks that makes me feel about three inches tall. It’s like he’s thinking, What’s wrong with you? Didn’t we raise you better than this?
Can’t he understand how much Mom’s crying threw me off?
“That would be cruel,” he says. “Kayla’s never flown before. She wouldn’t know what to do.”
“Right, because it makes so much sense that you’re taking me to a foreign country with someone who’s never even flown before, who doesn’t know what she’s doing. You’re even paying her to go with us, and she—”
Dad’s not listening. He’s saying into the phone, “I need you to send someone to change a flat tire. Look for a blue Chevrolet Aveo off on the shoulder. It’s on eastbound two seventy between thirty-three and the Sawmill Road exit. . . .”
Now he’s giving his credit card number.
“How do you know that tow truck will even show up?” I ask, as soon as he’s off the phone. “It’s not like you’re going to miss your flight to check on them. I bet they’ll just charge your credit card and not do anything.”
“You sound like your mother,” Dad snaps. “Stop it.”
“You sound like yourself,” I snap back at him. “That’s worse.”
And then Dad looks at me. I try to make my face into a hard mask, one that says, You know I’m right. And, You can’t hurt me. And, I don’t care what you say. I can do that at school, on the soccer field, anywhere I’m with my friends. There was that one nasty boy I stared down at Morgan Perez’s end-of-eighth-grade party when Shannon wanted him to leave her alone. I got him to go away just with a look. My friends thought I was practically a superhero after that.
But it’s like I can’t get Dad to see my mask. He’s staring into my eyes, and his eyes are so sad, so . . . old. For a minute it’s not like he’s David Armisted, successful business executive, so important his company wants him to fly to a totally different country to save the world for capitalism. He’s someone who can be hurt and disappointed and confused and scared.
He’s someone who can fail.
I want to say something to cheer him up. Like I do on the soccer field with a friend who’s lost her confidence: You can do it! Go for it!