Page 82 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
“You girls on the Route?”
I looked over to see a man coming out from the back of a storeroom. He looked to be in his seventies, wearing a blue cap and a pair of overalls that appeared older than the gas station itself. He leaned against the counter and gave us both a nod, smiling beneath his white mustache.
“We are,” I said with a smile, heading over to pay for my items.
“You gotta do it at least once in your life,” he said, ringing me up.
I handed over the cash and received a brown paper bag.
“Are you ladies going to see a movie at the Route 66 Drive-In?” he asked, handing me a flyer. “It’s horror night tonight, and the last weekend before they shut for the season. It’s an experience.”
“Oh!” Liv said with a gleeful sound that, thankfully, the attendant couldn’t hear. “That sounds so cool!”
“No, we won’t be,” Ellis said politely. “It’s not on our itinerary.”
“What?” Liv snapped. “You better add it.”
“We’re headed to Red Oak II, and then we’re on to Tulsa,” Ellis added, placing a few of her own items on the counter—a colorful bracelet, a key ring, and a postcard.
“Ah,” the man said with a sigh. “You can’t miss the Drive-In. Whatever you do, don’t skip it. Add some time for it, you won’t be disappointed. That’s some real history right there.”
He rang up Ellis’s items, and she gave him a polite smile. “We’ll think about it,” she said.
Outside, the sun was high in the sky, and the green dinosaur cast a long shadow across the white gravel. Ellis began fishing through her bag, pulling out the Polaroid camera with an irritated expression.
“You ladies need help with a photo?” the man asked, having followed us out. “You could get one in front of the dinosaur there. It’s quite popular.”
“Sure,” I said before Ellis could open her mouth. “Thank you.”
Ellis sighed softly and handed the man her camera as he approached.
“Oh wow,” he said before she could speak. “I haven’t seen one of these in years, and in such good nick, too.”
Ellis blinked at him. “Yeah. It was my grandmother’s.”
“Just another piece of history,” he said with a grin. “Okay, stand together in front of the dinosaur.”
Liv stood behind us on the dinosaur’s back, posing as if the camera would pick her up.
Click.
Ellis rushed over as the Polaroid slowly began to spit out the photo and, once more, immediately tucked it away with all the others she’d been storing in her bag.
“Okay, we have to go,” Ellis said. “We’re behind. Thank you again, sir, for the photo. You have a cool store.”
“Safe travels, ladies,” he said with a wave.
The driveto Red Oak II was silent again, the music playing loudly from the stereo. Liv had told Ellis to put the roof down; Ellis had said no, in that moody way she did, and that had been that. I’d pulled out my postcard and started sketching on it, improving it, if you will.
I began with Ellis, cartoonishly hunched over the Mustang’s steering wheel. Then Liv, surfing on the roof with heart-shaped sunglasses, arms outstretched. I gave myself exaggerated space buns and had the car trailing glitter behind it. At some point, Liv leaned over my shoulder, offered a few artistic pointers, and insisted I add a speech bubble that said,“Jack, I’m flying.”
So, she liked Titanic as well.
I used the drive to think about how to approach Ellis about adjusting the schedule to make time for the Route 66 Drive-In tonight. If I couldn’t get her to come around gently, Liv would use force, which would blow the whole thing up again. And while things felt a little shaky today, they didn’t feel nearly as bad as they had at the start of the trip.
“Dove?” Liv asked suddenly. “Do you know how your grandmother wanted you to scatter her ashes using fireworks over the Pacific?”
I blinked and set the postcard down. “Yeah?”
