Just Like a Musical (7 page)

“I’m off to Oklahoma. Will be back by Monday.”

That was the note that I left for my mother to find on the kitchen table when she came back from work. Cruel? Maybe. Indispensable? More than strawberry jam in my Greek yogurt. It was Wednesday, nine hours after we had decided to hit the road and knock on Sarah’s door, hoping to melt her heart. Joshua was waiting for me at the end of my street. I stepped toward him to kiss him but suddenly stopped in my tracks. He did the same. We stood in silence for five seconds. Then we shook hands. Awkward – I know.

“I got three days off,” he said. “Having a recently deceased sister can be useful sometimes. People get compassionate.”

“That’s an awful thing to say!”

“Awful but true,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get the car, my father really needs it.”

We had exactly 318 dollars (36 my contribution) and 1425 miles to go. Our plan was to hitchhike and spend money on food and cheap motels only. It was late April, the air was pleasantly warm, and it smelled like fresh bread. I turned my head toward my street and pictured my mother unlocking the door, looking for me in my room and in the backyard, and finally taking the piece of folded paper from the kitchen table. She was shaking her head, an incomprehensible torrent of words flowing from her mouth, tears running down her face. But it was all so far from me. I was standing on the threshold of my life with my mind turned to the other side, the side of excitement and uncertainty.

Phoenix was our first stop. It was 8 a.m. when we raised our hitchhiking thumbs in the air. The plan was to get to Phoenix by 4 p.m., take a lunch break, and continue to Flagstaff, where we planned to sleep. We agreed before our journey started not to spend nights on the road.

It wasn’t long before a robin-egg-blue van slowed down, with a driver telling us to hop in. He introduced himself as Rodriguez. A bunch of dark hair was sticking out around his Hawaiian shirt collar. And what a lovely mustache he had!

Joshua brushed my elbow lightly as he sat beside me. I remembered when he brushed my elbow for the first time, that day at the cinema, the day when everything started.

“So where’re you kids going?” Rodriguez said, taking the toothpick out of his mouth.

When we told him that we were going to Phoenix, he said that we were lucky; he was going to drop us off in Yuma. It seemed like a slick start. And it was, until Joshua cleared his throat about five minutes later. And you know how his throat clearing sounds – it’s more like a roar of a lion than a sound made by a human being.

“You have a microphone in your throat?” Rodriguez said, frowning in the rearview mirror.

Joshua said that he was sorry and we carried on with casual conversation, which I am far from good at, as I already said. But that day, with Rodriguez in his Hawaiian shirt and Joshua by my side, I was unstoppable. About twenty miles went by before Joshua cleared his throat again. Rodriguez’s feet smashed the brake.

“What was that again?” he shouted.

“I’m very sorry, sir, my friend has this condition…” I tried to explain.

“One more time and you’re out,” he snarled, looking back at us.

Of course it happened again. I tried to explain him about Joshua’s little problem, but he wasn’t inclined to believe my excuse.

“A problem! What problem? I don’t think he has a problem,” Rodriguez said through gritted teeth. “I think this little louse here is trying to make a moron out of me, winking and coughing like that.”

I knew it wasn’t going to end well. I saw a portentous hitch of Joshua’s upper lip before he opened his mouth and uttered, “Moron! Moron!”

Rodriguez opened the front door, jumped out, grabbed the side door and howled, “Get out, both of you! You lousy jackanapes!” He slammed the door behind us. I swear I could see the steam coming out of his ears.

And there we were – two drifters on Interstate 8, just like characters from some beat generation novel. Joshua was apologizing and explaining how his symptoms sometimes got worse when he was excited, and I only let him do that because I wanted to enjoy the dark-chocolate-coated sound of his voice. But I wasn’t blaming him. I didn’t regret my decision to take this trip for one second. I wasn’t scared or even worried. The only thing that was making me sad was the image of Mrs. Wheeler’s closed eyes and paper-like skin, but the thought that she might be proud of me for finally breaking free from my mother’s arms soothed my pain. I looked at Joshua’s face. I knew that I wouldn’t be there if it hadn’t been for him. He gave the breath of life to
my cravings and strength to my decisions. It had been less than a month since I met him, but I felt that he knew me better than anyone else in the world.

“Hey, did he say jackanapes?” said Joshua when he was through with apologizing.

“Oh my God, he did – he said jackanapes!” I laughed. “Oh, I’m so glad we are here!” I said, spreading my arms like I wanted to embrace the whole world.

“Here, in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yes. The middle of nowhere is the best place on Earth,” I said, eagerly inhaling the warm air and wrapping my arms around his neck. “I’ve never felt so alive.”

I glanced at the Dodger blue sky and the endless road ahead. Not a soul in sight. Sand and scrub plants as far as the eye can see.

“I never imagined that it would be so easy to leave everything behind and just be free.”

“We are all born free,” Joshua said. “But most people decide to choke their freedom while they’re growing up and live life by the rules of the majority without even realizing it’s not their life. It’s easier that way.”

We were walking down the road for more than two hours before another car stopped, a yellow caravan that looked like a giant insect. The driver was a red-headed woman in her forties. A black cocker spaniel was sitting on the passenger seat. Joshua warned her about his Tourette’s as soon as we climbed inside so he could wink, clear his throat, pull his ears, and yell as much as he wanted. But he didn’t do any of the four, surprisingly. Our fellow travelers were quiet, which was rather delightful after all that mess with Rodriguez. We stopped at the gas station once to buy water and get some fresh air, and entered Yuma at half past two. The kind lady wished us a safe trip. She even invited us over for lunch at her sister’s restaurant, but the time was unrelenting. We had to continue our journey as soon as possible.

When we got out of the car, the heat crawled under my dress and stuck to my skin like duct tape.

“So this is where Ben Wade spent his life,” Joshua said, sliding his eyes over the unadorned landscape.

I had no idea who Ben Wade was.

“You know – the guy from
3:10 to Yuma
,” he said when I gave him a puzzled look.

How am I supposed to know things like that? If I was going to
choose a movie to watch, it would be Roman Holiday or The Sound of Music, not some western movie.

I
suddenly felt monstrously hungry. It was like carrying a bottomless pit inside my thin body. We sat on the edge of the sidewalk.

“What do you have?” Joshua asked, dipping his hand in his backpack.

I opened mine. We swapped our sandwiches. Tuna with dill sauce never tasted so good.

***

I was lying on my back in that musty motel room twelve miles from downtown Phoenix, listening to Joshua’s deep breathing. My old life, the one I left behind that morning, seemed unreal and distant. I knew my mother was somewhere out there sitting alone in an uneasy silence. I knew that Mrs. Wheeler was lying under the dim hospital lights, and the oaks were gently shaking their crowns in the air in the park where Joshua and I met. I knew that everything was unchanged in our sleepy little town, but all those pictures were lacking tangibility. Suddenly, the words that I was going to tell Sarah popped up in my mind, clear and convincing. I scribbled them down with an invisible pen and put them in the drawer of my brain marked “important”.

Getting to Phoenix had been harder than we imagined. We waited for more than three hours for someone to pick us up. We found out later from Dan, the truck driver who gave us a ride, that police officers in Arizona were notorious for hassling hitchhikers. Exhausted from the long walk in the sun, we both fell asleep as soon as we entered Dan’s truck, and he was so nice for not asking questions. So we didn’t make it to Flagstaff on our first day, but we weren’t worried; we still had plenty of time to get to Oklahoma and back home by Monday.

I thought that I would swoon away the second my body touched the bed, but the excitement of our first they on the road was keeping the dream away from me. The same couldn’t be said for Joshua. His face was slightly illuminated by the light that was seeping through the shutters. I wondered how he could sleep so peacefully while my mind was afflicted with everything that happened that day: a fiery scene with flammable Rodriguez, the black cocker spaniel’s lolling tongue in the yellow caravan, our late lunch on the outskirts of Yuma, my mother’s crying voice on my cell phone after she had found my note, the distant sight of Phoenix through the dirty truck windows.

I sat on the bed for a moment. The warm desert air was luring me outside. I stood up, put my jeans on, and headed toward the door. The plastic lamp reeled on the edge of the table as I tripped over its cord, and the sound of it hitting the ground made Joshua squirm in his bed.

“Where are you going?” he asked, slowly raising his head from the pillow.

“I’m just going to get some fresh air. I can’t sleep.”

“I’ll join you. I have trouble sleeping, too.”

“What?” I laughed. “You were sleeping like a bear!”

“Oh, was I?” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “I’ll go with you anyway.”

The night was warm and starry, and we were four hundred miles from home, joined in bravery and suspense. But did he kiss me? No. He talked about mixtapes instead. His words were pleasant to listen to, but my body was craving his touch. I was sure that he was aware of that longing; I felt it radiating from my skin and there was nothing I could do to hide it.

The sounds of the highway were so close and the darkness of the desert behind the motel so intimidating that a proper walk was impossible. We made a circle around the motel and across the parking lot, when C-3PO suddenly crossed our way holding a six-pack in his arms.

“Hey, guys, will you join us?” he said cheerfully.

We looked at each other with joyful disbelief.

“We’re having a little outdoor party. It’s Han Solo there
, sitting on the sidewalk, and you recognize Chewbacca, of course. We have princess Leia, too, she’ll join us in a couple of minutes.”

“I hope she’s female,” I said. I couldn’t help myself.

“So that’s some kind of a thematic party, obviously?” said Joshua.

“Yeah, there’s a
Star Wars
convention in Phoenix tomorrow, and we’re kind of getting a running start,” C-3PO explained. “We came all the way from Vegas. So come and join us if you want!”

“Thank you,” I said, “but we have to wake up early, so we should probably go to sleep soon. Have a nice time tomorrow.”

We turned around, looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. We walked in silence for a couple of minutes before I spotted a little bench under the cedar tree just behind the motel, facing the desert. We sat down, raising our heads to the black sky.

“Stars,” Joshua said. “Did you know that most of them are already dead?”

“I know that,” I said. “All we see are their shiny corpses. It’s magical and romantic.”

“It’s also deceitful,” Joshua said. I was surprised by the harshness in his voice.

He had something against the stars – that was clear. First he accused shooting stars of being liars, and now he was charging all of the others with deception. I thought about that
Star Wars
convention that slightly intoxicated C-3PO told us about and giggled. When Joshua’s eyes left the stairs and landed on my face, I saw a trace of sorrow in them.

“I’ve always thought that those
Star Wars
conventions are somehow dull,” I said. “I mean, a bunch of thirty- or forty-something guys in silly costumes. And all those languages. It’s all so… just dull.”

“My sister loved
Star Wars
,” Joshua said, wiping a tear that was sliding down his cheek.

Ruby, you’re a dumbass.

His eyes were sad like that twinkling of a faraway, long gone star.

“I’m such an idiot.”

“No, you’re not, and I agree with you about those conventions. It’s just that it reminded me of her,” he said. “My mother used to make her princess Leia braids, and she would run around the house in a long white dress.”

“I’m so sorry about what I said.” I took his hand.

“Don’t be. It was even good, in a way. It’s good to hear that people think something she liked was dull, even though I know you didn’t think about nine-year-old girls when you said that. I’m sick of people idealizing her and making an angel of her. As if she had never done stupid things. As if she never farted or cheated at Go Fish. I don’t understand. How can death make of us something that we had never been? And it’s not fair. We don’t get a chance to stand for ourselves and say, ‘Hey, leave me alone, I don’t want to be perfect, I don’t want to be good and kind and clever all the time.’”