Page 16 of Road Trip

“What are you doing? A bear could come in!”

He flapped the door of the tent, and the breeze was so good. “We’re surrounded by other campsites. Some of them have toddlers. Why would a bear eat us and not a tiny defenseless toddler?”

“Maybe they want more than a snack.”

“Yeah, but eating the toddler will slow them down and we’ll have time to run away.”

There were so many holes in that logic I didn't know where to start, but the breeze really was nice, so I let it go and lay back down, leaving my sleeping bag unzipped. A twig poked at my hip and in desperation I climbed out of the bag and lay on top of it. The extra half inch of padding made a real difference. “Hey,” I said, “if you lie on top of the sleeping bag, it sucks less.”

I heard Matt shuffle out of his bag. “Huh. It does.”

We lay there for a while, listening to the quiet thwap of the tent door flapping in the wind. Someone must have had aBluetooth speaker, and the sound of Elvis crooning about wise men and falling in love floated across the campground.

“Hey,” I said. “You know what we should do?”

“What?”

“We should go to Graceland.”

“Dude, did Kerouac go to Graceland?”

“I don’t know. Did he?”

“Well, it probably wasn’t around then. But the point is he wouldn’t have gone to it even if it was.”

“Did Kerouac actually have fun on his road trip, or was he too busy being too cool for school?”

“Have you even readOn The Road?” Matt asked me.

“No. Have you?”

He didn’t answer, which was a dead giveaway, so I laughed. He punched me in the arm.

I rolled over and something sharp poked at my kidney. I wished I’d thought to buy two yoga mats. Next time we passed a Walmart I’d stop and grab another one, but that wouldn’t help me tonight. I was just going to have to put up with a shitty night’s sleep, between the lack of padding and Matt being jammed up right next to me. We might as well have been sharing a bed.

It was as I closed my eyes that I had a flash of genius. I sat up and grabbed our flashlight, turning it on and pointing it at Matt. “Hey.”

The beam of light hit him full in the face. “What the fuck?” Matt squawked as he scrambled to sit up, somehow managing to glare while still squinting from the brightness. I quickly lowered the flashlight.

“Sorry.” I tugged at the edge of his yoga mat. “I have an idea. What if we stack the mats and put both sleeping bags on top? We might actually get some sleep.”

Matt stared at me silently for a second and then gestured the length of my body. “There won’t be room for both of us.”

“Yes, there will. You’re skinny as fuck and we’ll lie on our sides. Can we at least try?” I put on my best public serviceannouncement voice and intoned, “Driver fatigue is no joke,” but I was only half kidding.

Matt rolled his eyes and huffed out a sigh. “I mean, I guess. But if it sucks I want my own mat back.”

“Deal.”

CHAPTER

SIX

MATT

2121 miles to go

Fall Creek Falls, TN, to Memphis, TN

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