Andrew

THAT NIGHT, AFTER WE SET UP CAMP, I start worrying about Jamie. It’s not the first time I’ve thought about him—it’s actually the twelfth, but who’s counting other than me, so let’s round down to ten so it’s less depressing. I don’t know if he’s alive. Or if Fort Caroline immediately detained him and tortured him for information about where I am, no matter how many times he said he’s the one who killed Danny Rosewood’s son, not me.

Maybe they’d use him as an example and execute him.

Amy has just gotten Henri-Two down and turned in for the night. Next to me, the Kid lets out a big yawn. I’m not strict with his bedtime because I know he usually passes out when he needs to. Right after dinner, which we finished a couple of minutes ago.

Across from me, Taylor pokes the fire with a stick. She’s been quiet all day. Probably missing Jamar.

“You want us to go back?” I ask. We haven’t gotten that far away from Faraway yet, so it would be okay if she did. But she looks up at me and shakes her head.

Cara looks over at her. “We could try to find a car. See if there’s one in a garage nearby that the owner isn’t using anymore.”

Great euphemism, Cara.

“Oh, can we do that anyway?” Rocky Horror asks, rubbing at his feet. “I got way too used to being carted around by the Nomads.”

“I’m fine,” Taylor says. “Except yes about the car.”

“Yes, tomorrow we’ll get off the highway and find a car.”

Cara opens her mouth but stops. She looks over my shoulder, her eyes squinting. Then they go wide. “Who’s there?” Her voice is low and anxious.

I spin around and peer into the dark. There’s a noise, but it’s so quiet I can’t tell if it’s my imagination. But then I see movement.

I grab the rifle, holding it up to whoever or whatever is there in the darkness. My mind immediately goes to alligators.

And then, for just a second, I hope it’s Jamie.

“Wait! Don’t shoot, it’s just me!”

But that’s not Jamie’s voice.

Taylor is at my side. “Jamar?”

“Yeah.” He comes a few steps closer. I lower the gun as Taylor runs over to him. She stops short and it almost becomes a replay of (what I assume was) their first kiss. But they both seem to be too nervous to do that again, so instead she knocks the wind out of him with a hug.

“Jesus, don’t sneak up on us like that,” Rocky Horror says.

“What’s going on?” Amy asks, sounding groggy.

“Jamar followed us from Faraway,” I say. Amy grunts and goes back to sleep.

“What about your sister?” Taylor asks.

Jamar winces. “I left her a note. When she gets back with Jamie, he’ll have someone to leave with him.”

Rocky Horror gives me an anxious look that I pass along to Cara. Niki is going to be pissed. And she’s definitely following him. If they come back. But I have to stop thinking like that.

Whenthey come back.

Thirteen times.

Rounded down to ten.

Jamar sits by the fire, very close to Taylor, and eats while we ask him why he left. Obviously he did it for Taylor, but I’m curious to know if he rationalized it to explain to Niki.

“You know she’s going to be pissed, right?” I ask him.

Jamar nods. “For a while. But when she catches up, she’ll realize why I did it.” He holds out his hand to Taylor, who takes it eagerly. “We don’t have our grandma anymore. It’s just me and Niki, and we never really found a place we belonged after Grandma died, no matter where we went to. Then we met you.” He looks at Taylor when he says this. “I know Niki feels the same, but she’s just worried about me and not about herself. This is right for us. And she’ll realize that, too.”

I love his optimism. I want the optimism of a thirteen-year-old in love for the first time.

Fourteen rounded down to ten.

“Hey, guys,” Taylor says. She points at a shopping center to our right. It’s the next morning and we’ve gotten off the road to look for a neighborhood with a car we can borrow. I saw the shop signs from a ways down the road, though judging by the names listed, I’d assumed we wouldn’t find food there. But Taylor isn’t pointing at a food store. “Mind if we stop in here for a sec?”

It’s a Books-A-Million.

“I’ve been meaning to look for an atlas,” Cara says. “Ours is still in Jamie’s pack.” Then she gives me a nervous glance, realizing she just said the J-word.

“Yeah, we should probably stop and get one.”

We head over to the store. Like most, the front glass has been smashed in. But where hardware, clothing, and grocery stores all look like they experienced a full-on siege, the bookstore looks like one lonely individual threw a brick through the front doors and walked in.

In fact, when we pass through the second set of doors, there’s a brick on the floor.

The Kid runs off in the direction of the toys and children’s books. Rocky Horror looks at Cara and me for backup, but I shake my head. “We’re getting the road atlas.”

“I’ll go with you, RH,” Amy says, carrying Henri-Two over the glass, then following the Kid.

Rocky Horror cups his hands over his mouth and shouts, “Oi! Kid! Don’t touch any wild animals.”

Taylor and Jamar go off on their own as Cara and I search for the travel section. Most of the shelves are still full of books. I wonder why. Maybe if there’s a big reader nearby, they use it like a library, taking only what they want, then returning them when they’re done.

There’s a spiral-bound Rand McNally road atlas. Cara grabs it and we head back to the front of the store to get more light. While she skims the pages, I find a pack of expensive calligraphy pens by the counter. I rip open the box and hand a couple of pens to her, then head back to check on Rocky Horror and Amy.

“You have two stuffed animals already.” Rocky Horror is pointing at Bobo and the stuffed Pokémon. “Why don’t you pick out a couple of books?”

“I don’t know how to read,” the Kid says like it should be the most obvious thing in the world.

Rocky Horror sticks a thumb in my direction. “Neither does Andrew, and he’s doing great.”

“Which is why you should pick some books,” I say, taking the Kid’s hand and steering him away from the toys. Then I shoot a threatening glance back at Rocky Horror. “Maybe Rocky Horror will be nice and read them to us.”

“Guys, come here!” Taylor shouts.

“One sec!” I point the Kid to a section of picture books and tell him to pick out three with cool pictures. “Where are you?” I shout.

“Back here.”

I follow Taylor’s voice and turn the corner to see her and Jamar standing in the romance section. How appropriate. But they don’t look like they’ve been very romantic back here. Aside from Jamar holding Taylor’s hand.

She points at a shelf. “Look.”

I scan the books and come to a stop on two full shelves of paperbacks that make my heart break.

Daphne De Silva’s name is bigger than the titles.

Rocky Horror, Amy, and Cara join us.

“Holy shit.” Rocky Horror takes one of the paperbacks down and looks at the cover. “I knew she was a writer, but I didn’t realize she was prolific.”

“Oh yeah,” Amy says. “She was very popular. After a couple bottles of wine one night a few years back, she told me she also wrote horror under a pen name but wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

I grab another book; this one’s titled A Second Chance at Forever. The cover is illustrated and split diagonally down the middle by a crooked line. It shows two straight white couples, one younger, one older. I flip to the back and see a quote from a bestselling author about how “delightful” the book is. Below it are a couple of paragraphs about the people on the cover. It’s the same couple years later—high school sweethearts who are pulled apart after a tragic car accident during their senior year. Then a chance meeting fifteen years later draws them back together and they try to pick up where they left off, hoping to get a second chance at happily ever after.

I flip it open, and inside is a page that lists all the other books available from Daphne De Silva. There are over fifty-four novels listed, seven novellas, and two listed separately under the “Detective Farrah Wallace Series.”

Cara snorts and shows me another illustrated cover of a male rock star in a ripped shirt and jeans and a woman who looks like she’s walking the red carpet of a movie premiere. The title makes me laugh, too.

Starry-Eyed and Rock-Hard.

Taylor takes off her backpack and starts grabbing one of each book from the shelf.

“You planning to carry all of them?” I ask.

She looks determined. “I want to read her work. And, yes, I want to read all of them.”

Cara and I share a look. But it’s Rocky Horror who speaks, taking a copy of Pen and Paper Hearts down from the shelf. “I’ll carry a couple for you.”

“Me too,” I say.

By the time we’re finished, we have twenty paperbacks of Daphne De Silva’s life’s work divvied up among our bags.

That night, since it’s cold, we set up camp outside so we can have a fire. When the Kid is asleep, Taylor reaches into her bag and pulls out the books she got from the bookstore.

“What should I read for us?” she asks. She reads out each book title and the back blurb one by one. It’s unanimous. We want Love at First Swipe: the story of Lucy, a woman who swears off dating after a string of horrific boyfriends and finds a no-strings hookup on an app. But what’s supposed to be no-strings turns into something more when fate keeps putting the two together in hilariously awkward situations. It sounds like a Hallmark movie, and my heart aches remembering how much Jamie loved those.

Taylor starts reading it, and within minutes all of us are laughing, trying to stay quiet. When Lucy and charming, successful businessman Dan finally meet up for no-strings-attached sex, Rocky Horror gasps.

“Daphne, girl! You’re a freak!” He says it as though she’s still with us, and we all laugh.

Taylor shakes her head. “I am not comfortable reading this.”

Rocky Horror holds out his hands. “Well, shit, I am. Hand over the smut.”

He picks up where Taylor left off, and yes . . . even with Rocky Horror’s carefully placed euphemisms and censoring, it is pretty steamy. Again, I find myself aching for Jamie. Wishing he were here with us, experiencing this moment. Though maybe all the Daphne De Silva smut would be too much for us.

After their steamy sex scene, Rocky Horror dog-ears the page and closes the book, but Taylor holds her hand out for it. She asks Cara for one of the markers she isn’t using to mark the road atlas. Cara hands over a purple one and Taylor opens the cover and writes something in it.

“What are you writing?” I ask.

“I’ll show you later.” She even covers the page when Jamar tries to look.

We turn in for the night, but I’m still thinking about Jamie. And us together. Tears sting my eyes as I look up at the sky, so scared that I’ll never see him again. Or that something bad will happen. Or that I will see him again, but he might not be the same person.

I have to trust that we’ll have our own Second Chance at Forever. Pretend we’re in a Hallmark movie, or a Daphne De Silva romance novel, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re together again.

Thirty-one, rounded down to ten.

The next day it’s rainy and cold, but we’re back on the road, still skirting the highway and checking houses for food, so while Amy, Taylor, and Jamar look after the Kid and Henri-Two, we head to a neighborhood with pretty big McMansions.

The third one gives us a real win.

When we break in, I smell the rot before I see the body on the couch. There’s a blanket on top of them, but the flesh is pulled tight on the skull. Cara plucks the edge of the blanket and draws it up, over the head.

There are canned goods in the pantry and in the garage is a newish Volvo—probably one of the last couple of thousand cars sold before the flu. We pull the emergency cord on the garage door opener and lift the door up. The car is locked, but a quick search of the first floor turns up the keys. It’s been sitting, unused, for probably over a year, but Cara still turns the key in the ignition.

The car engine tries to turn over but doesn’t catch. She tries it again. This time, the engine comes to life. We all cheer.

“How much gas is in the tank?” I ask, peeking over her shoulder.

“Holy shit. Almost half-full!”

Rocky Horror throws his bag in the front seat and pulls open the glove box. “A lovely way to look at it. Let’s all thank . . . Mr. Doyle”—he spins an expired insurance card around for us to read the name Christopher Doyle on it—“for his excellent planning and gas conservation.” We thank Christopher Doyle and head back to Amy and the kids.

When we’re all squeezed into the Volvo, we get back on the highway. Cara and Rocky Horror switch off driving while Taylor continues reading from Love at First Swipe. The book is filled with innuendos—some Taylor doesn’t even realize as she’s reading them aloud, but Amy will snort or Cara and Rocky Horror glance back at me with wide eyes—and when she gets to a sex scene she dog-ears the page and says, “You can read that part later, Rocky Horror.”

When a dirty joke comes up that Taylor gets—or an inappropriate word—she either skips to the next sentence or comes up with some other word that has Cara, Rocky Horror, and me cackling.

We stop for the night in North Carolina. We should reach Bethesda tomorrow, and I can tell Amy is in high spirits. She might have been unsure about leaving the Keys, but she seems excited knowing how close we are to Henri now.

It’s Rocky Horror’s turn to read. We’re getting to the end of the book, so he spares Taylor and Jamar embarrassment and skips over the final sex scene—telling us he’ll read that to himself tomorrow morning at breakfast—and we listen, rapt, as Lucy and Dan confess their love to one another in a coffee shop after not realizing they’ve moved across the country to the same city.

The best part is, Dan ordered Lucy’s coffee order—a nonfat, no-water, double dirty chai—instead of his usual black coffee. So they both go to reach for it when the barista calls out the order. And they see the universe has brought them together again.

The next morning, after Rocky Horror has read the sex scene to himself while boiling water for the day, Taylor takes the book from him and writes in it. Then she hands it to me.

I smile and pass it to Cara, who hands it to Rocky Horror.

“I like that,” he says, then hands it back to her. Taylor places it on the ground, in the middle of the road. And we all stand in silence for a moment before packing up and getting back in the car. There’s less than a quarter tank of gas left, so who knows how far it will get us, but it’ll be close enough. We’re almost there.

As I pull the Volvo door shut, I look back down at the book on the road, remembering how Dan and Lucy were thrown together over and over, the universe conspiring to get them back into each other’s lives.

I just hope the universe does the same thing for me and Jamie one day.

Infinity rounded down to ten.