Page 23 of Road Trip

“Yup. Like, I try to be all edgy and disaffected and full of existential angst, but it turns out there’s a lot of assigned reading. So I decided it’s easier to just be a dick instead.”

His grin grew. “Well, you’re doing it right.” He looked at the lady with the dog. “We should have brought a dog on this trip. We could have killed it on Insta.”

“We have very different ideas of what a road trip is for,” I said, although who was I kidding? I’d follow an Insta of Jacob and a puppy in a heartbeat.

“Yeah, and your way is depressing.” He knocked his shoulder against mine, his grin faltering for a moment as his words skirtedtoo close to the truth: that every hour brought us closer to California and to the end of our last summer together. And at the rate we were driving, it would be over far too soon.

Don’t get me wrong. I was excited for San Diego, and I couldn’t wait to see the look on my dad’s face when I turned up. He’d always said in the birthday cards he sent that it was a shame we lived so far apart. But starting a new chapter in my life meant closing the door on the old one, and I wasn't quite ready for that to happen yet. So I said, “Well, we have time. Maybe we can go and see some shit. Like, I dunno, the Grand Canyon?”

Jacob’s face lit up. “Yes! We can take an extra day there. It’ll be awesome!”

I grinned back at him and he slung an arm around my shoulders affectionately. I leaned into the touch like the sad, greedy little gremlin I was and quietly celebrated adding an extra day to our trip.

We made it to Amarillo, Texas, just after lunchtime. It was hot, dry, and, as far as I could tell, built mostly out of concrete, right angles, and exhaust fumes. If there were nicer parts, I-40 kept us away from them.

“Do you want to see the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame?” Jacob asked me as we passed a sign for it. He wasn’t stupid enough to ask twice. “There must be something we can do here.”

“We can do lunch.”

“Well, obviously. I meant apart from lunch.”

“How the fuck does a horse even have a hall of fame?” I asked.

Jacob drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “That seems like the sort of question we could answer if we actually went.”

“Do you…do you really want to stop at the horse hall of fame?” I asked.

He looked wistful for just long enough for me to worry that he really did want to go before he broke and laughed. “Fuck, no. But let’s find something to do.”

I pulled out my phone and looked up “things to do in Amarillo.”

“Hey! There’s a zoo!” I’d never been to a zoo. It was one of those things my dad had always promised we’d do, but in the end he’d never found the time.

Jacob gave me a serving of side-eye. “So, horses are a no go but a zoo is a yes?”

I rolled my eyes. “The horse place doesn’t have actual horses, dumbass.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “The zoo sounds fun. Let’s do that after lunch.”

We found a taco place that looked good and smelled even better and had our lunch. Then we pulled up directions to the zoo on the GPS and drove out there. We paid our admission, and when we went inside, it was honestly way cooler than I’d thought it would be. It was made better by Jacob keeping one hand on my hip and guiding me around the clusters of parents with strollers and the groups of little kids oohing and aahing over the animals. His palm was warm, pressing against the sliver of bare skin where my shirt had ridden up and making me shiver. I kept waiting for him to notice and pull his hand away, but he seemed completely absorbed by the map he was clutching in his other hand.

We checked out the birds first, then the amphibians—which didn’t take long since there were only two—with Jacob’s hand resting on my hip the whole time. When he finally did move his hand, it was a relief and a disappointment all at once.

The ghost of his touch had faded by the time we reached the bears, and as we watched them wandering around their enclosure, I said, “At least we’re not camping in bear country.”

Jacob’s brow furrowed. “I mean, I don’tthinkwe are.”

“Nah, there’d be signs.”

The furrow deepened. “Like, bear shit? What does that even look like?”

I bumped my shoulder against his. “No, but they haveactualsigns that say Watch Out for Bears. Right?”

“Dunno.” He grinned and bumped me back, and we went to find the spider monkeys.

We spent the rest of the afternoon looking at the animals, and I made sure to take plenty of photos. I even sent one to Mom, hoping it wouldn’t make her lose her shit all over again. I got that she was pissed I hadn’t told her I was leaving, but it had also taken her days to notice because she was so busy with work and now with Zeke. And I wasn’t being some pissy teenager who didn’t like Mom’s boyfriend. Zeke was fine, but his lease ran out soon and Mom had as good as said he was moving in. Not wanting to live together in an already cramped double-wide with very thin walls wasn’t the same as not liking the guy. Though if he could learn to have a conversation that wasn’t about his collection of nine guitars and his plans to start a band, that’d be great. The point was we’d all be much happier if I was in California with Dad.

Mom didn’t respond to my text, and I wondered if she was at work or if she was ignoring me.

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