Page 135 of Road Trip to Forever
We share a pizza,grease on our fingers and a pile of napkins at our feet. I folded the back seats down and took the roof off the Jeep so we could have an unobstructed view of both the screen and the stars in the sky. It’s cooled down, the heat from the day now tolerable as a light breeze billows through the air. Pillows and blankets surround us in the trunk, a pile of comfy and cozy as the credits forJurassic Parkstart to roll.
“It’s oddly unsettling to watch a dinosaur chase a Jeep when you’re sitting in a Jeep,” Lola says. “It’s kind of likeInception.” She props up on her elbow and looks at me from across the car.
“I don’t know how the girl whose first nightmare involved a T-Rex chasing her around a balcony ended up loving a film series centered around a T-Rex chasing people.”
“I think the love started withThe Land Before Time,” she says.
“A cinematic classic. Are you ready for our next stop?”
“There’s more?”
“Of course there’s more. You didn’t think I’d end our night here, did you?”
“No, but it’s getting late and you have school tomorrow.”
“It’s just paperwork,” I say, arranging the pillows into a neat stack and then folding the blankets. I brought the fuzzy purple one I keep on my couch that Lola loves. “It doesn’t require a lot of my brain power. Besides, it’s only ten.”
“Since when have you ever stayed out past ten bychoice?”she asks, jumping out of the back and onto the ground. She dusts off the front of her dress, leftover crumbs from the pizza scattering to the ground.
“I’d stay out until sunrise with you,” I say, shutting the trunk.
“You’re as cheesy as that pizza we just ate,” Lola says. “But I love it. Where to next?”
“Somewhere we haven’t been in a while. Somewhere I think we need to revisit.”
“What are you up to, Patrick Walker?”
“Wait and see, Lola Jones. Wait and see.”
I’m even more nervous as we head to stop number two, my hand drumming against the steering wheel and my left foot tapping on the floorboard.
The roads we pass are familiar, memories of our childhood embedded between the rows of homes and tall, tall trees. The corner to our left is where I fell off my skateboard and Lola dusted off my knee before helping me to my feet.
The curb on the right is where the two of us sat when her girlfriend broke up with her three weeks before we left for college, citing a desire to explore herself and not be tied down.
The yellow mailbox we drive by is the one we ran into when Lola stood on the back of my bike, her arms outstretched as I miscalculated the speed of the downhill and sent us tumbling to the grass. We took the mailbox out with us.
“We’re going to visit our parents?” Lola asks as I park the Jeep in the road outside her mom’s house.
“No. Well, we can if you want, but that’s not the planned stop.”
“You have my attention,” she says.
I jump out of the car and hustle to her side, opening the door and guiding her to the ground. If I look close enough, I think I can see the silly string still clinging to the tar under my tires from a prank war gone wrong all those years ago.
Me and Lola versus our older brothers. We owned them.
“I want to show you something. Something I’ve been working on for the week we’ve been back. It’s not totally done, but I think it’ll still get the point across,” I say.
We walk quietly toward the tree between our houses, making sure to duck low so we don’t turn on the motion-activated security light attached to the left side of my parents’ garage. When we get to the treehouse, Lola climbs up first. I give her backside a lift as she starts to ascend the ladder made of rope. I think my heart lurches out of my chest when she misses a step and I refuse to let her go the rest of the way.
She disappears inside and I follow behind, hoisting myself up over the ledge and onto the floor of the space we used to spend all of our childhood nights.
“Wow,” Lola whispers. She tilt her head back and looks at the fairy lights hanging from the ceiling. “What is all of this?”
“It’s my way of showing you I’m all in, Lola I’ve always been all in. Ever since that first day in July. Come here.”
I take her hand and lead her to the center of the room. We duck our heads and take a seat on the bean bag chairs I set up. They match the pair we had decades ago, larger now to accommodate our adult-sized bodies.
