BSC in the USA

  “We just filled up, Dad,” I reminded him.

  A mile or so down the road was a billboard for the Buzzard Gulch Motel and Time-Share Condos.

  Soon after, we saw one for Ol’ Junius’s Gen’ral Store.

  And the Ghost of a Chance Saloon and Family Restaurant.

  And the Wild West Souvenir Shoppe/Fax Centre.

  “I think the track has been beaten,” Stacey remarked.

  Finally we came to a parking lot. At the other end of it was a big wooden gate decorated with fake cobwebs and a sign with jagged letters that read GO BACK BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE! A man wearing a Hawaiian shirt was standing next to it, grinning, while his wife took a photo.

  Beyond the gate was a long dirt street, lined with ruined old shacks.

  Very sturdy-looking ruined old shacks. Like a movie set.

  “BOOOO-AHHH-HA-HA-HA-HA!” blared a voice from a speaker in the trees.

  “Puh-leeze,” Stacey remarked.

  This was not what I was expecting. Not at all. I wanted real abandoned buildings. Not a theme park. Not Buzzard Gulch Tourist Trap.

  Everyone was staring at me.

  Tears welled up in my eyes. This trip was jinxed. I felt humiliated. I wanted to run back to the RV. We could still go to the soybean-products factory. Anything would be better than this.

  “Let’s go-o-o-o-o!” Jeff cried, racing toward the gate.

  Dad ran after him, camera poised.

  “Wait!” I cried out.

  Too late.

  I couldn’t look my friends in the eye. “Sorry, guys,” I said. “I thought?—”

  Claudia was already on her way. “Come on!”

  “Good choice, Dawn,” Mary Anne said, following behind her.

  Stacey giggled. “Ethan will die when I tell him about this.”

  Huh?

  They were being kind. That had to be it.

  I slumped along behind them.

  We all walked toward the entrance. We bought tickets at a booth marked ADMISSION FOR PROSPECTIN’. The ticket taker was dressed in a nineteenth-century costume. “Proceed at your own risk,” she said.

  Right.

  “Stop, thief!” a shout rang out.

  POW! POW!

  Two men with handlebar mustaches were running down the unpaved street toward us. The first one was wearing raggedy clothes and carrying a big burlap sack. He was being chased by a man wearing a fringed leather vest and brandishing a silver revolver.

  “Catch that varmint!” the second man shouted.

  The crowd of tourists stood and watched. The first man eyed us all, then ran straight toward me. “‘Scuse me, ma’am. Hold this while I search for some refreshment.”

  He gave the bag to me. Then he ran through the crowd and into a building marked TAVERN.

  My friends were cracking up. Jeff, across the street with Dad, was doubled over with laughter.

  The bag was huge but really light. It must have been stuffed with Styrofoam. Now the man with the revolver ran to me, glowering.

  “Ma’am, gimme back my fertilizer!” he growled.

  The crowd roared.

  I threw the bag back to him. I was so embarrassed.

  Well, you can imagine what the rest of the visit was like. A square-dance band appeared in the middle of the street and some old guy with a potbelly started dancing with Claudia.

  Another guy with blacked-out teeth ran down the street with a sifter full of fake gold, shouting, “I’m rich! I’m rich!” only to fall on his face and send the trinkets flying into the crowd.

  Inside the “Phelps family ghost house” was a holograph of the Phelps family at dinner, each of the members glaring at us as if we had intruded on their privacy.

  Next was the film Story of Buzzard Gulch in the Burlesque Theater. It explained that Buzzard Gulch was an actual place, but the ruins were “carefully developed for today’s entertainment needs by the country’s leading theme park engineers.”

  “This is s-o-o-o-o-o corny,” Stacey whispered to me at one point.

  I agreed. But you know what? As we all descended into the pitch-blackness of the Underground Gold Mine Log Flume, I realized something.

  I was having a great time.

  The soybean products could wait.

  “But what are we going to do when we’re there?” asked David Michael.

  “I am going to put my left foot in Arizona,” I began, “and my right foot in New Mexico. Then I am going to lean down. I will put my left hand in Utah and my right hand in Colorado. I will be in four states at the same time. And I will look northeast. That’s where Stoneybrook is. Then I?—”

  “But you won’t see Stoneybrook,” David Michael interrupted. “It’s too far away.”

  “I know that. It’s just for fun. You see, when I am in all four states, I will look toward Stoneybrook and wave to my friends back home.”

  “Then you won’t be in four states anymore!” David Michael exclaimed.

  “Why?”

  “Because one hand will be waving.”

  David Michael was laughing. He was right. But I did not think he was funny at all.

  I looked at the mesas outside.

  I thought of our stop with the Zuni people. That was gigundoly fun. We had dinner with the elementary school principal and his wife. She’s a teacher. She could not eat everything we ate because she has diabetes. She said many Zuni people have that. I told Mrs. Woodward about Stacey. When the Woodwards visit Stoneybrook, I will introduce them.

  As soon as we left the Zuni reservation, Daddy and Elizabeth began arguing. I could not hear what they were saying, but they both looked at their watches a lot.

  “Karen, sweetheart,” Daddy finally said, “we are running late. Our trip to Zuni took a long time. We had not planned on that. We still have to go to the Grand Canyon, the San Diego Zoo, and Palo City. They are all due west. If we drive straight to the Grand Canyon, we will be there before nightfall.”

  I had followed our whole trip on a map. I knew the Four Corners was not due west. It was north. “But the Four Corners was where I wanted to go,” I said.

  “We know, Karen,” Elizabeth replied. “We wondered if you’d prefer the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. Those are west, too.”

  “Yeeaaaa!” David Michael said. “I want to see them!”

  “How did the desert get painted?” asked my brother, Andrew.

  “With sagebrushes!” David Michael answered. He started cracking up.

  I was not listening. I was thinking about what Elizabeth said. Those things sounded pretty good.

  But they were not the Four Corners. That is the only place in the whole country where four states touch. If we did not go, I might never see it again.

  A tear fell into my lap. I did not even know I was crying.

  Jessi did. “You really don’t want to do that, huh?” she said.

  “We could skip the Grand Canyon,” Abby suggested, “and go straight from the Four Corners to San Diego.”

  Abby did not want to go to the Grand Canyon. I could tell.

  Elizabeth turned around. I tried to wipe away my tears, but she saw me.

  She made a sad face and gave me a tissue. Then she whispered something to Daddy.

  Daddy nodded and took a deep breath. “We can do both,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  I knew he would say that. My daddy is great.

  * * *

  Guess what? We did see something gigundoly fantastic on the way to Four Corners. It’s called Ship Rock Pinnacle. The Navajo word for it is tse be dahi. That means “rock with wings.” You can see it from a hundred miles away, and it looks like the skyline of a whole city.

  Guess what else? I, Karen Brewer, stood in four states and waved to Stoneybrook!

  The place where the states meet is marked. A monument is near it. Lots of tourists were doing just what I wanted to do. Boy, was David Michael surprised. He thought we would never find the exact spot.

  Guess what else else? David Michael wanted t
o step in all four states even more than I did!

  All of us did it. Foot, foot, hand, hand. Just the way I described.

  Then I thought of a better way. I stood right on the spot. I let parts of my feet be in each state.

  That was how I could wave.

  David Michael said that was cheating, but he is wrong.

  “Grand Canyon, ho!” Daddy said when we were finished.

  We drove west. And you would not believe the place we passed through.

  It is called Monument Valley. The rock formations were gigundo gigundo! Kind of scary, too. We stopped to look, and no one could speak for a long time.

  I read that the Native Americans called Monument Valley a sacred place. I am not surprised.

  We could not stay long. It was almost dark, and we had to go.

  Do you know what time we arrived at the Grand Canyon? I don’t. I was asleep. Daddy only said it was “the wee hours of the morning.”

  He woke me up, but just to say good night and tuck me in.

  “I am sorry I made you drive so far,” I said.

  Daddy smiled. “I wouldn’t have missed it.”

  I knew he would say that.

  I was having such a great time.

  “I see a Regrade Park,” Kristy said, her face buried in a map, “a Steinbrueck Park, a Freeway Park, a Westlake Park, a Boren-Pike-Pine Park, a Pioneer Square Park, a City Hall Park, a Kobe Terrace Park, a Hing Hay Park…. Which one is it?”

  “I thought I wrote it down!” I said for about the fiftieth time, flipping through the pages of my journal. “But all I see is ‘near Third Avenue.’ That’s where he’s staying.”

  “Third Avenue runs the whole length of downtown Seattle,” Kristy said. “He didn’t mention a cross street?”

  “He didn’t know,” I replied. “He’s not a native, Kristy.”

  “Cities have lots of parks,” Claudia said. “It’s a good idea to ask for names.”

  Uh-huh. Not a word to me through seven states, and this is what Claudia breaks her silence with? What nerve.

  “Would you like to check?” I asked, holding out my journal. “You probably know it better than I do.”

  “Whaaaat?” Claudia said.

  “Stacey, please,” Mary Anne said gently.

  “Can’t we just skip the dumb coffee shop?” Jeff grumbled.

  “To our right,” Mr. Schafer said, “we are approaching beautiful Westlake Park.”

  I turned back to the window. Opposite the park was a mall, with tons of shops. Mr. Schafer was slowing down.

  “The Starthrower Coffee Bar?” Mary Anne asked.

  “No …” I was looking past the mall now, to the next block.

  On the corner was a small, old-fashioned shop with a sign hanging above its front door. The sign was angled toward us, so I couldn’t make out the words until we were closer …

  Yes. Yes!

  “The Corner Coffee Shop!” I shouted.

  Claudia looked shocked. Dismayed. I gave her a quick Look, but I had more important things to think about.

  My hair looked like a buzzard’s nest. I was barefoot. I felt tired and exhausted.

  Morph time.

  I slipped my feet into my Doc Martens. I reached for the brush lying on my bunk and furiously pulled it through my hair.

  As I straightened out my clothes, Mr. Schafer came to a stop by a parking meter.

  This was it. My heart was pounding.

  Ethan was in there. I could just picture him. Like a scene in a movie. He’s looking at his watch. At his menu. At the window. Wondering, worrying.

  Then … he sees a flash of blonde hair by the door. The café falls silent. His inner torment melts away. Two words are on his mind, words locked inside him, waiting to burst loose. She’s here. He rises as she floats toward him on a gust of pure joy….

  Oh, this was so romantic, I wanted to scream!

  “Stacey?” Kristy said. “You have a Chunky wrapper on your butt.”

  “Oh! Thanks!” I quickly brushed it off. “So. Um, I’ll meet you here after the game?”

  “I’ll go in with you,” Mr. Schafer suggested, “in case he’s not there.”

  “Let’s all go!” Jeff said.

  Yikes!

  A flash of blonde hair, a dad, four tired girls, and a ten-year-old? Not in the script.

  “No!” I blurted out. “I’ll, uh, just wave to you through the window when I see him.”

  “Fair enough,” Mr. Schafer replied.

  I pulled myself together and swept out of the RV, to a chorus of “Good luck”s. (No, there was no “good luck” from Claudia.)

  I walked across the street and into the coffee shop. Not too quickly. Not too eagerly. Always leave them wanting more. I don’t know who said that. Somebody famous.

  I stopped inside the door and tossed back my hair.

  No one seemed to notice.

  I gazed around the tables. A family of four. A couple in their twenties. Two nerdy-looking guys with laptops. A woman reading a newspaper and sipping coffee.

  I checked my watch. Eleven fifty-eight. Maybe I was too early.

  “May I help you?” a waiter asked.

  “I’m meeting someone,” I said. “A guy, black hair, about fifteen, earring in one ear?”

  The waiter shook his head. “Nope.”

  I left the shop and went back to the sidewalk. “Not here yet!” I called out.

  “I’ll wait,” Mr. Schafer shouted back.

  I was sort of hoping he wouldn’t say that. The RV was never beautiful to begin with. After one and a half weeks on the road, it looked as if it had been through a mud bath and a grime rinse. Very romantic.

  Oh, well, maybe Ethan wouldn’t notice the van.

  I took a seat at a table in the back. A waiter asked to take my order, but I said, “I’m expecting one more.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I was still expecting.

  By 12:25, I wasn’t. I was in a blind panic.

  Was I wrong about the time? The day? What was going on here?

  Kristy, Claudia, Dawn, and Jeff were window-shopping at the mall. Mr. Schafer was standing outside the RV, trying to keep an eye on them while reading a newspaper.

  I ran outside again. “It’s been a half hour.”

  Mr. Schafer smiled wearily. “He’s an artist, right? Aren’t artists always late?”

  “Maybe it’s the wrong place!” I spotted a bank of pay phones at the corner. I had Ethan’s phone number in my pocket. “Be right back!”

  I sprinted to a phone and tapped out Ethan’s number.

  With each ring of the phone, I felt my insides jangle.

  “Hello, you’ve reached 555-2876. We can’t come to the phone, so please leave a message….”

  Booop!

  “This is Ethan … I mean, Stacey! At the Corner. I’m Stacey, and can Ethan call me? No, he can’t, what am I saying? McGill — Stacey McGill. Um … I’ll call later.”

  Click.

  Great. A message in Martian.

  I tapped out the information number and reached an operator. “Seattle, please. I’m supposed to meet someone at the Corner Coffee Shop? But maybe it’s not it? I mean, is there another place with the same name?”

  “Corner, or Kona?” the operator asked.

  Duh. “Kona?”

  “Yes. I have a Corner Coffee Shop, a Corner Coffee Hut, a Corner Coffee House, and a Kona Coffee Shop.”

  “All of them!” I blurted out. “Just the addresses, okay?”

  I fished around in my pockets for a pen. Nothing.

  Good old Mr. Schafer. He’d crossed the street, and now he was digging out a pen and a folded-up sheet of paper.

  I took down all the addresses. Politely, calmly, I thanked the operator.

  I didn’t scream until I hung up.

  “It’s too late now. We’ll never find him!”

  “Never say never!” Mr. Schafer said, then turned toward the others. “Come on, troops! We’re moving out!”

  Kristy sa
t in front with the map. I sat behind her with my sheet. We zipped through downtown Seattle.

  The Corner Coffee Hut was by the Amtrak station. No Ethan.

  The Corner Coffee House was near the aquarium. No luck there, either.

  The Kona Coffee Shop was in a cool neighborhood near the Space Needle. Lots of people closer to our age. I had high hopes for this one.

  Ethanless.

  In the RV, Kristy was tapping on her watch. “Pregame festivities begin in five minutes.”

  “Stacey, are you sure you didn’t write it down?” Mr. Schafer asked for the millionth time.

  “I’ll check again.” I reached up for my pack.

  No pack.

  I glared at Claudia. “Has anyone seen my journal? It was in my pack.”

  “Why are you looking at me?” Claudia asked.

  “Last time I saw your pack,” Mary Anne said, “you were wearing it in the Corner Coffee Shop.”

  I smacked my forehead. “Oh, no! I left it there!”

  Kristy turned pale. “Well, uh, maybe Mr. Schafer can drop us off at the Kingdome?—”

  “We’re in this together,” Mr. Schafer said, starting up the engine. “To the Corner Coffee … whatever.”

  I slumped into my seat as we sped away. I felt as if a drain cap had popped open in each of my toes. All at once, my life was seeping out.

  “Stacey, he’ll get your message,” Mary Anne said.

  “Sure,” I grunted. “If he can decode it. If he even wants to talk to me now. Maybe that wasn’t his number. The answering machine message didn’t give a name.”

  By the time we arrived at the Corner Coffee Shop, I felt like a puddle of split-pea soup. I oozed out the RV door and walked into the shop. My shoes were untied but I didn’t feel like doing anything about it. As I opened the front door, I saw my reflection in the glass and wondered who had drawn the gray sacks under my eyes. Lovely.

  I walked straight to the cashier. “Excuse me, but did you find a green backpack, with leather trim — ”

  “Stacey?”

  Gulp.

  I could not have heard that. Another Stacey was in the shop. Another guy whose voice sounded like Ethan’s.

  “Stacey! It’s Ethan! Behind you — by the window!”

  Yikes.

  No time to think. Lights, camera, action. The Meeting. Scene one, take two.