Page 9 of Road Trip

Asshole.

The chill indie sounds of Hyukoh and Sunset Rollercoaster carried us the rest of the way out of Norfolk.

Afew hours out of Norfolk, somewhere on US 58 on the west side of Emporia, we pulled into a gas station to grab coffee and more snacks and take a leak. The gas station looked the same as every single other one we’d passed: oil-stained ground, sun-bleached signs, and not much else going on at all. There was a flaking decal on the front doors to the store that told us we were at Goose Run Gas, but if there was a town nearby, we either hadn’t quite reached it yet or it was hidden by the curtain of trees that flanked the highway.

“Goose Run Gas,” Matt said, walking backward through the rattling automatic doors like he was checking I was coming with him. “Makes it sound like the manager is a goose.”

“Place’d maybe be better if he was,” said a guy shoving bags of chips in the rack by the door, and Matt yelped and jumped about three feet in the air.

“Holyshit,” he said, clutching his heart.

The guy was about our age, maybe a couple years older. He had a friendly, crooked grin and was wearing a flannel overshirt and a trucker cap. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to take you by surprise.”

Matt laughed and ducked his head. “Nah, it’s cool.”

“I’m getting drinks,” I said and headed for the wall of refrigerator doors at the back of the place. We might have only been driving for three hours, but I’d been tense for way too much of it, so it felt good to get out of the car and stretch my muscles a little. I detoured to the bathroom first and then took my time choosing sodas, even though I knew exactly what to get—a Coke for me and a Mountain Dew for Matt. When you’d been best friends forever, you didn’t have to ask.

There was a counter at the back too, with a display case of sad-looking cookies underneath it and a big coffee machine on top of it. Behind the counter there was a guy sitting on a stool. He glanced up from his phone as I got near him and then glanced down again.

“The machine’s broken,” he said.

“I was looking at the cookies.”

“You can get them cheaper at Food Lion.” He cracked his gum. “They’re the same ones.”

I guessed I wasn’t getting the cookies then.

I grabbed a water each along with our sodas, then worked my way back through the aisles of junk food to the front counter.

“California,” Matt was saying to the first guy, the friendly one. “We’re in our road trip era.”

They weren’t standing by the chips anymore. They were in the candy aisle and Matt was picking out a few things. He wasn’t really looking at the guy, but the guy was looking at him. Then theguy’s gaze cut to me, and I looked away and pretended I was checking out the gross gas station hot dogs. I didn’t know why I’d looked away. I wanted the guy to notice me; I had shit to pay for.

I stared at those hot dogs like they held all the secrets to the universe, and Matt laughed at something the guy said. It didn’t sound like his usual laugh. It was lighter somehow. This wasn’t the sharp-edged laughter of my sarcastic asshole best friend. This was afriendlylaugh. Something about it landed wrong, but the gas station guy didn’t seem to notice because he said something else to Matt in a voice too low for me to hear. I looked over at them again, suddenly paranoid they were talking about me or something, and this time Matt was looking at the guy and smiling and the guy was handing him a pack of Twizzlers and smiling back.

“Hey,” I called, and the word came out louder than I thought it would. “Can I pay for these drinks here?”

The guy exchanged a look with Matt and then shrugged as he wandered over to the counter. “No problem.”

Except there was a fucking problem; I just couldn’t figure out exactly what it was, apart from Matt acting weird with this guy.

I paid for the drinks and went back outside, leaning on the car and waiting for Matt to join me.

“Dude,” he said, a Twizzler hanging out of his mouth when he finally came back outside, “why are you being so weird?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. “You’re the one being weird.”

“Whatever.” He opened his door and grabbed his sketchbook off the seat. Peeling the thick rubber band off, he opened it. Then he took something out of his back pocket and slid it between the pages.

“What’s that?”

“A postcard,” he said, closing the book and snapping the rubber band back on.

“What the hell did you get a postcard of this dump for?”

“Uh…I’m chronicling our road trip, obviously,” he said and tucked the book into the compartment on the inside of the door. “Want a Twizzler?”

I shook my head and went around to my side of the car. By the time I got there, Matt was in his seat, pulling his belt across and clipping it closed. I held out his Mountain Dew. “I don’t know how you can drink this crap.”

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