100 Days (2 page)

Chapter One

Day Zero: Maine

Aiden Calloway stands outside the RV, a black and gold 2008 Dynamax Grand Sport Ultra the size of a bus, swinging the keys back and forth in his right hand. The sky is turning from periwinkle to cobalt, and the stars haven’t yet made their appearance; Aiden doubts that they’ll be visible through the thin layer of cirrostratus that has contained the humidity since midmorning.

The entire summer has led to this point. All the hours logged on Google Maps and Wikipedia; all the grease lodged beneath his stubby fingernails as they fixed up the RV outside his cousin’s auto shop. All of it done in the name of a bond that they can trace back sixteen years, to a day not dissimilar to this one.

Aiden’s bright green bike draws level with the boy’s blue one, and they ride to the end of the street with shy smiles before coming to a stop near the bright yellow fire hydrant.

“I’m Aiden,” he says, stuttering and holding out his hand as he’s seen the grown-ups do.

The boy looks down at his hand and back up, giggling.
“
Your name is ‘Hey, Dan?’”

Aiden shakes his head and enunciates, “Ay-den. But I guess you can call me Dan if you want to.”

“Cool! I’m Jake,” the boy replies, and grabs Aiden’s hand to shake it firmly. “Let’s be friends! Race you to my house!”

Everything is mostly the same in Brunswick. A little rougher, a little faded and fuzzy around the edges, but the same. It’s the reason Aiden has reached this itchy plateau of completion: He has done all he can here. He had hoped, in the cold hours of winter nights in London, that he would be able to stick it out upon his return, but even a week after getting back and spending every waking minute with Jake he knew that it wasn’t enough. There are places he needs to be, though he’s not sure where. All he knows for sure is that he needs to get the hell out of Maine.

“Yes, Charlotte, I’m sure we have everything!”

Aiden grins at the irritation in Jake’s voice, and turns to see him walking out of his cozy little house, the house Aiden has always felt more at home in than his own. Jake’s stride is still long and his shoulders are still square, but although Aiden has been back in Brunswick all summer, he still isn’t quite used to seeing his best friend in person again. He always knew that Jake was tall, with sandy blond hair, fair skin and deep, expressive green eyes, but it never seemed to mean anything.

Jake’s sister Charlie is right behind him, wearing her standard uni­form: plain block color T-shirt and ripped jeans, long blonde hair tied up in a messy pony­tail with strands escaping from beneath her Portland Sea Dogs cap. Her ex­pression is pinched, and seeing her like this never fails to make Aiden feel sorry for her. She and Jake lost their mother, Daisy, only a few years after Aiden’s family moved to Brunswick, so he doesn’t remember much of that time. He does, however, remem­ber Charlie—and Jake, for that matter—as so much happier before the freak storm that claimed the life of their fisherman father, William, seven years ago.

He remembers seeing the same expression the day that he and Jake left for Bowdoin. Her own college years had been cut short, leaving her to get a job at Living Ink, the local tattoo parlor. She’s worked her way up since, becoming a partner in the business, but she always looks laden with what might have been.

Jake catches sight of Aiden and beckons him over, and Charlie offers him a thin smile.

“Watch out for each other, okay?” she says quietly, with a halfhearted punch to his shoulder. “I want you both home in one piece.”

“Yes ma’am,” Aiden replies.

“Kid, how many times? I’m twenty-nine, for fuck’s sake.”

“Old habits die hard,” Aiden says, and the ease of the familiar words rolling from his tongue brings the point into startling focus: He’s truly doing this. Getting out. And he’s going to
miss
this woman, this house, this dysfunctional little family he’s been an extended part of for so long.

“Okay,” Charlie says, sharp inhale and all business. “Get lost.”

Jake crooks his fingers and salutes as Aiden hasn’t seen him do since the Unmentionable Flannel Phase, and Charlie lets out an uncharacteristic chuckle, stands on tiptoe and winds her arms around Jake’s neck. Aiden can hear her whisper something to him but can’t discern the words, and when Jake steps back, his face is noticeably flushed. Aiden has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smirking, and his thoughts meander back to a sixteen-year-old version of Jake practically battering down his front door, red-faced and clutching a book about the intricacies of gay sex that Charlie got for him.

“Let’s go,” Jake mutters and turns on his heel with an awkward wave.

“Will you be okay?” Aiden asks Charlie, squeezing her arm.

“Always am,” she answers shortly, looking past Aiden. “Do you think
he’ll
be okay?”

Aiden turns and watches Jake climb up into the passenger side of the RV and slump into his seat. “He’s been different since I got back,” he says, and shakes his head. “You think you know someone, right?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Charlie says, and gets up on tiptoe again to press a dry kiss to his cheek. “Just
see
him, okay?”

“What do you mean?” Aiden asks, but Charlie simply shakes her head and gives him a push in the direction of the RV.

“Time to go,” she says gently, and Aiden takes a step back. One last look at Jake’s house, one last nervous smile at Charlie, one last closing of the front gate behind him and his overwhelming excitement threatens to burst out of his skin. He pulls open the door to the cab of the RV, steps up and swings himself into the driver’s seat. After taking a moment to run his hands over the textured leather steering wheel cover, he pulls the door shut with a satisfying thud and fastens his seat belt.

“Stoke the fires,” Jake says wryly, rolling down his window and pulling out a brand new pack of American Spirits.

“Start the engines,” Aiden finishes, and turns the key in the ignition. As he pulls away from the curb and starts toward the end of the street, he says, “She should really have a name.”

“Let’s not think about it too hard,” Jake says, flicking his lighter and taking a long drag from his cigarette. He holds it for a few seconds and exhales around the words, “I’m sure something suitably fabulous will present itself.”

“Hey, do you maybe want to stop by the cemetery?” Aiden asks quietly, the goodbyes ringing in his ears prompting him to wonder about two more. Jake shakes his head vehemently as Aiden pulls the RV into a wide U-turn at the corner, and as they pass the house again they both wave to Charlie where she still stands beneath the porch light, arms wrapped around her middle against the slight chill that hangs in the air.
Will she start turning the porch light off at night, now that Jake’s gone?

“Okay, last time. Clothes, shoes, toothbrush, hair products, skin stuff,” Aiden lists, trying to shake off the lingering tension between them as he turns onto Minat Avenue.

“Check. Guitar, laptop, video camera, gas card and credit card even though I
still
don’t agree with accepting your dad’s guilt money. I mean, I still can’t believe how much this trip is costing him.”

“Check,” Aiden replies, jaw clenching as he pushes all thoughts of his father far into the dusty, forgotten corners of his mind. He doesn’t want his anger with his father to taint their first night on the road—Baltimore is going to be bad enough. “Halloween costumes.”

Jake laughs as he picks up Aiden’s phone and starts scrolling through his playlists. “Check and
check,”
he says in a low voice. His tone makes Aiden swivel his eyes just in time to catch Jake’s gaze raking over him, and he reaches over to bat at Jake’s shoulder until they’re both laughing.

“All right, Valentine. This is it. Last chance to turn back.”

“Are you kidding me? Do you realize how long it took me to teach Charlie how to track the GPS on my phone?”

“Just checking.”

When they merge onto I-205, joining the huge trucks that will take the catch of the day all over the country, Aiden resets the odometer and Jake, having waited until now in honor of their unspoken agreement, hits play.

“Yes!” Aiden exclaims as the scratchy guitar and pounding beat of U2’s “Vertigo” fill the cab. “Yes. Perfect choice.”

“I know,” Jake replies, with no hint of self-satisfaction. He’s just good with music. The fact that he never sings anymore, hasn’t since his mom died—which is, occasionally, still a bone of contention between them—has refined his talent for listening, and he supplies Aiden with a new playlist every month or so. Indie, New Age, show tunes, Top 40… there is a seeming endlessness to Jake’s hunger for music, and Aiden loves that about him. Aiden bounces in his seat, singing at the top of his voice, unable to keep a grin from lighting him up inside and out.
Is this what true freedom feels like? All asphalt, open sky and your favorite person by your side? Because,
he thinks,
it can’t get better than this.

When they are about twenty miles from the campground and exiting onto Route 1, Aiden takes one hand off the steering wheel and reaches under his seat. Jake watches him with curiosity, stubs out his third cigarette in the ashtray and appears torn between dismay and anticipation when Aiden hands him two brightly wrapped packages. One is thin and soft, the other small and box-shaped.

“Happy birthday,” Aiden tells him sincerely, eyes flicking between Jake and the road ahead. “Open the big one first; you know what it is anyway.”

Carefully, Jake pushes his fingers beneath the edge of the paper and tears it open to reveal a bright red T-shirt emblazoned with stylized text that reads,
pale is the new tan.
Jake stares at it for a full ten seconds, muscles working in his jaw, before he bursts out laughing.

Aiden’s Awesome T-Shirt Tradition—or Aiden’s Terrible T-Shirt Tradi­tion, as Jake refers to it, insisting that the alliteration is both more mellifluous and more accurate—began six years ago, on Jake’s seventeenth birthday. Aiden had just gotten his first paycheck from Little Caesars, and he agonized for weeks over what to buy. Both music and movies were out since Jake just downloaded everything. He thought about clothes, but Jake’s taste was infuriatingly unpre­dict­able. And then one day, during his fourth fruitless trip to the Plaza, he came across a street vendor selling some truly awful slogan shirts. As soon as he saw the black shirt hanging proudly on display, sporting a green loading bar beneath the legend,
sarcastic comment loading,
he pulled out his wallet.

It was perfect, and despite the look of utter disdain that contorted Jake’s face upon opening it, he wore it to sleep that night when Aiden stayed over.

“One day, I’m going to make a quilt from all of these terrible shirts,” Jake says, refolding the shirt in his lap with the slogan facing up. “I’ll give it to my kids as proof of what a dork their Uncle Aiden is.”

“You’ve kept them all?”

“Of course I have, silly.”

Aiden smiles, eyes back on the road as he nods toward the other gift. “Differ­ence is that I got you something good this year, too.”

As slow and careful as before, Jake unwraps the box. Aiden chews his lip and actively works to keep his gaze trained ahead. He’s never been so nervous about a gift before, not even when he presented his mom with the portrait of her that he painted in high school for a project on Cubism. She loved it; it still hangs on her bedroom wall.

In his peripheral vision, he sees Jake open the slim, square box and remove the tissue paper, letting out a small gasp. “Aiden…”

“You don’t have to wear it,” Aiden rushes, his words tripping over them­selves. “It’s just that, you know, he’s the patron saint of travelers. And I know you’re not religious or anything, it wasn’t about that, I just—”

“Shut up,” Jake cuts in and reaches over to squeeze his knee. The silver Saint Christopher pendant catches the headlights of passing semis where its chain is already tangled between Jake’s fingers. “Thank you.”

“You really like it?”

“I really like it,” Jake says, letting the pendant drop and swing for a moment before putting it on, settling the small disc beneath his shirt and palming it through the fabric. “It’s perfect. Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome.”

Before long, they pull into the visitor parking lot at Hemlock Grove Camp­ground in Arundel. Already Aiden is starting to feel like Sam in
The Lord of the Rings,
standing in the Shire and telling Frodo that if he takes one more step, it will be the farthest from home he’s ever been. It isn’t exactly accurate, of course—Aiden routinely visits his brother in Los Angeles, and spent his entire last year of college interning in London—but he can recognize the sentiment. This is it—this is what he’s been hungering for since he was fifteen, and while he can return to Maine one day if he wants to, it will never be the same.

“I think you were right,” Aiden says as they make their way toward the site office at a comfortable, ambling pace. He revels in the cool, beautifully fresh woodsy air of the grounds. “This is much better than just camping out in the backyard for our first night. I know driving an hour just to get here was kind of dumb, but… this feels more like a real
start,
doesn’t it?”

Jake doesn’t respond, and it isn’t until Aiden pauses at the top of the steps up to the office porch that he realizes Jake isn’t by his side. He looks down to see Jake standing at the bottom of the steps, his hand resting just below his collar and toying absently with his Saint Christopher.

“Would you still have taken this trip if I hadn’t come, too? Would you still have left?” Jake asks quietly, taking Aiden completely aback. Vulnerability pulls at the corners of Jake’s mouth, and the lights from inside the office spill out through half-closed horizontal blinds, casting a swath of shadow over his eyes.

The truth is that Aiden has been waiting for this for years, since the day the bottom dropped out of his world, mere weeks after he came out to his parents and Jake came out to Charlie. Maine represents a lot of things for him, not all of them good. He needs to see so much more of the world, leave a mark behind. He wants to be something good, something great, to reach out and affect someone—even if it’s just one person.