Page 55 of Road Trip to Forever
“Another reason I keep you around. So you can eat them for me.”
“Get your party pants ready, Jones. The best trip of your life is about to begin.”
Patrick walks away and the room grows stagnant. I hear my suitcase rolling across the floor, the rustle of bags and the hum of a tune. Frank Sinatra, if I had to guess. One of his favorites.
I’ve never told him this, but I don’t hate raisins.
I eat them all the time when he’s not around.
Back in fifth grade, he asked if I was going to finish the raisins in my plastic bag at lunch and I shook my head no. I handed him the snack and told him he could have the rest. Patrick grinned with delight and popped them in his mouth one by one, happy as a clam. I kept bringing the snack in my lunchbox, and from then on, I gave him all of my raisins, because I liked seeing him light up more than I liked anything else.
* * *
Traffic startsten minutes into our trip.
Bumper to bumper, with brake lights and car horns, we inch our way down the highway at a snail’s pace. Patrick is unbothered, one hand dangling out the window in the summer air, the other tapping the steering wheel. He’s wearing his sunglasses, the Aviators covering his eyes and making him look like an old movie star with his plain white shirt and hair blowing in the wind. I pull out my phone and snap a picture of him, wanting to capture every detail of our journey for memory’s sake.
“I would have smiled,” Patrick says.
“I like it better when it’s candid.” I pull my legs to my chest, the leather of the seat warm from the sun under my soles of my feet.
“You can try to get all the embarrassing photos of me you want, but nothing beats my album of you falling asleep on different modes of transportation. Trains. Cars. When we took the bus from Boston to New York and back the same day because you wanted to see the Rockefeller Tree.”
I groan. “I’ve never been so car sick in my life.”
I wish I didn’t remember the brown bag Patrick held open for me, the cold paper towel he pressed to my forehead while he whispered soothing words. The saltine crackers he snagged from another passenger, force feeding me the snack as my face turned green. A ginger ale I swear he produced from thin air, complete with a straw to help me sip. Nothing relieved my aching stomach.
When we finally parked at South Station after hours on the road, I sprinted off the bus and locked myself in the bathroom for forty-five minutes.
Puking your brains out in a public restroom is a humbling—and horrifying—experience.
“The tree was worth it though,” he says. “Vomit aside.”
“Yeah.” I smile. “It was.”
I remember the twinkling lights and the snowflakes sticking to his beanie. The hot chocolate we shared to get warm. Huddling together to sing “Jingle Bells” with the rest of the group of tourists, considered ridiculously obnoxious by the locals. We didn’t care. It felt like we were in a snow globe, a magical world full of holiday cheer at the best time of year.
“Your surprise is in D.C., by the way,” I add, the heat pulling me back to the summer, not winters past.
Patrick glances over at me, curious. “Is it?”
“Yeah. The online forums also say the hotel we’re staying in is haunted.”
“Wow. Our first night and we’re diving right into paranormal activity. Outstanding. Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No.” The cars in front of us speed up and we finally gain momentum, the city skyline fading to small specks in the side mirror. “Yes. Maybe. I think it’s one of those unexplainable things, like aliens or whatever kind of higher power is out there.”
“Aliens are one hundred percent real,” Patrick says with conviction.
“What’s your proof?”
He shrugs and adjusts the bill of the Red Sox hat he got at a game last summer after complaining endlessly about the sun and heat. “You said it’s an unexplainable thing. I think it’s on par with love. You can’t see it, but you can feel it.”
I gape at him. “Did you just quoteA Walk to Remember?”
“C’mon, Lo. You know it’s my favorite early 2000s movie.” He grins, and his dimple on his right cheek pops. “Look, all I’m saying is I’d rather be on the believing-in-aliens end. That way, if they turn out to be real and come to take over Earth, I’m already on their good side.”
“E.T.scared you as a kid. Now you’re an alien sympathizer?”
