Don't Stop Now (7 page)

I'd love to be able to share the sordid details of our night together, but, alas, there are no sordid details to share. When Josh finally emerged from the bathroom, not as a blond but as a sort of sweet potato–flavored, I mean
colored,
mess (the bleach wasn't enough for his brown hair), I was already a shriveled prune danish and decided to get out of the tub and into bed. Josh, on the other hand, was all ready to chillax in the hot tub, and so by the time he came up to our round space bed of love, I was, as he told me seventy-six times and counting this morning, snoring like a silverback gorilla.

I dress in one of my new shirts, which reads, wisconsin:
BEER, BRATS, AND CHEESE: THE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
, and throw on a pair of cheese boxers as undies. We partake in the continental breakfast set out in the lobby—choice of three cereals from magical mechanical cereal dispensers in which all you do is turn a dial and *
presto
* the cereal dumps into your bowl, OJ, coffee, and assorted very dry, but still delicious enough pastries. It's only eight in the morning, but we decide to get on the road.

“One thing my dad always taught me”—flecks of cruller fly as Josh speaks from his green dentist-barber chair—“the early bird misses the traffic.”

“Prophetic.” I nod. I'm a tad peeved about last night because I guess I was expecting something to happen. But Josh doesn't have a clue. As usual.

After we stuff our faces to the point of feeling like continents (so that's why they call it a
continental
breakfast), I pull out a map of Wisconsin. We sit on a flowery couch in the lobby, having both exhausted ourselves of space-themed jokes (“That's one small crap for man, one giant turd for mankind,” Josh proclaimed this morning as he emerged from the bathroom).

“We can either backtrack and head through Madison or take some smaller roads and hit I-Ninety at La Crosse,” I tell Josh.

“No turning back,” he states, ejecting himself from the green pleather.

“La Crosse it is.”

 

Josh checks out, and I step into the hot Wisconsin summer. It's already humid, which means today will be sweaty in the Eurosport's lack of air-conditioning. I face the Don Q Inn and try to imagine who else is in there, doing what they're supposed to be doing in a FantaSuite theme room. What a waste.

When Josh emerges from the hotel in his dick shades and
I CUT THE CHEESE IN WISCONSIN
T-shirt, goofy smile displayed, I drop the spite and remember that we have plenty more hotels to come.

The car is already starting to look like a tornado hit indoors, so I tidy up by stuffing the maps into the glove box. But there's so much stuff already inside that the maps keep sliding out. Along with the maps, a photograph falls to the floor. “What's this?” I ask.

Josh peers over at me as he drives. “Oh. Um, that was from some party we were at. I thought it was a good picture, so I kept it.”

It is a good picture. Me and Josh, with our arms around each other, vamping for the camera. My hair looks really good, edgily bobbed, and I have on my favorite perfectly fitted heather gray T-shirt. Josh looks even better. Model hot, but completely unaware of the hotness. I'm so drawn to this perfect couple that it takes me a minute to notice the figure in the background: Penny. She's holding a cup, shoulders tensed as they often are, and she's blatantly watching me and Josh. Her expression is hard to read. Is she happy? Intrigued? Jealous? Plotting to murder us in our sleep? Isn't there some detective trick whereby, in order to catch a killer, you have to get into their heads? Not that Penny's a killer, but if she was? I don't know if anyone out there is smart enough to crack that code.

I put the photo in my wallet, just in case we need some sort of identifying picture of Penny along the way. That's what I tell myself, anyway. It's not just so I can look at me and Josh together. Why would I have to, since we're technically together now? If only we weren't so technical.

 

We stop for gas in La Crosse and marvel at the world's largest six-pack of beer (really giant beer vats painted to look like cans). I'm not sure if it's impressive or just slightly clever. How do we even know there's beer in there?

Outside of La Crosse and heading west we come upon an enormous bridge spanning a large body of water. A sign reads, mississippi river.

“Is this the Mississippi River?” Josh asks.

“That's what the sign says.”

“The Mississippi River?” he asks again.

“Yes,” I confirm.

“The M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I River?” Josh spells it out like we learned to do as kids.

“Why?” I ask, wondering what he's all bunged up about.

“Because this is like an iconic waterway. Mark Twain and all that. Huck Finn, you know?”

“Yeah. I guess.” I shrug, trying to get into the spirit of road-tripping. “And we're like Huck and Jim? Only we're driving across the river, not paddling down it?”

“And I'm not black,” Josh points out.

“And I'm not a boy. But I do have red hair,” I point out.

“So it's really the same thing,” Josh figures.

“I reckon.”

We enter Minnesota with some fanfare, agreeing that we need a ritual every time we cross a new state line. Cheese hats on, we do a mini-wave (I raise my hands, then Josh does, long enough for the car to swerve slightly), we “Woo!” and then we yell, “Goodbye, Wisconsin, hellllloooooo, Minnesota!” Anything more elaborate and we'd probably forget by the time we get to the next state. Maybe we still will.

About two hours into Minnesota, I decide we need to change the music. Josh has been flipping the radio dial around the entire trip just to find obscure college radio from every town we pass through. Since my iPod is at home, and Josh's ancient car only has a tape deck anyway, our options are limited. “This is wrong,” I decide. “This is not road-trip music.”

“So what then?” he asks, annoyed that I dare usurp his unspoken rule that he always chooses the music.

“We'll find something else when we stop for lunch. Only ten minutes till Blue Earth.” I have mapped out some stops along the way that don't look too small town (i.e., full of hillbilly serial killers waiting to drag me into a cornfield) or too big city (which always ends up in horrid highway complications and never quite lives up to our own big city, Chicago. Plus, big cities have no place in road trips). Blue Earth looks just about right, at least as far as I can tell by the dot on the map. Plus, it sounds sort of otherworldly.

Once we're off the highway, I insist that we top off our gas so we don't get stranded where we're not wanted (hillbillies in a cornfield, remember?). Josh fills the tank, and I explore the gas station for exotic Minnesotan snacks. Next to some Lurky Jerky, I spot a table filled with $1.99 cassette tapes. “Score,” I say to myself. Most of the tapes belong to old and obsolete groups I've never heard of, but I manage to find a few oldies compilations and an Elvis Best Of. Driving along a highway just screams for old music, almost like we're driving backward into another time. I pay for the tapes and a Jumbo Gulp Dr. Pepper, and pick up a Minnesota scratch-off lottery ticket called Fishing for Franklins.

Josh is perched on the hood of the car, shirtless as ever, and leans on the windshield. I join him and ask him for a coin. “I want to scratch off this winning ticket,” I tell him.

“Why'd you buy that? Those things are for suckers.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a penny.

I rub off the silver flakes, one at a time to create some suspense, and end up with three matching number twelves. “What does this mean?” I scan the card for the rules, and figure out that I've just won twelve dollars. “Who's the sucker now?” I gloat. I head back inside the gas station to claim my reward and pick up some celebratory Slim Jims for later.

In the car, I pop in the new-old Elvis tape. Josh approves with a light nod, not wanting to give up his music monopoly just yet. “What is that?” He points ahead to some sort of huge sculpture just up the road. We drive toward it, and as we approach, we recognize the green man figure. It's the freakin' Jolly Green Giant.

“What the…?” Josh leans forward to look up out the windshield at the statue. A message painted underneath the several-story-high statue (and I'm only guesstimating on the height, of course) reads, welcome to the valley, blue earth, mn. We park and walk around the giant for a few minutes. “You think they make the vegetables here?” Josh asks.

I laugh. “
Make
the vegetables?”

“You know what I mean. Grow them?”

“Doubtful in Minnesota, with the winters and all. Can them maybe? Or perhaps this is the Jolly Green Giant's hometown.”

Josh goes with it. “I wonder what it was like for him, growing up in Blue Earth. Must have been tough to find a winter coat.”

“Or shoes,” I interject.

“Was he always green? Always jolly? And did they really have to give him such a prominent junk lump?” We ponder these and other important questions until my cell phone rings and dances inside my pocket. I fish it out, and read the caller ID: a number I don't recognize from our home area code.

“Who is it?” Josh watches me as I stare at the phone.

“No clue. But it couldn't be Penny, could it? It's someone from home. And she's not home anymore. What if it's her dad calling from work or something? Or what if it's Gavin? Hell no, do I want to talk to him.”

“But what if it's a clue! A lead! Answer it!” he commands. I don't want to. I think the Jolly Green Giant is trying to tell me through his ginormous leafy codpiece that I shouldn't answer. I let it go to voicemail.

“I'll just wait for the message,” I tell him.

“Do what you gotta do. Even if it's not in the best interest of the mystery.” I stick my tongue out at him like a pouty five-year-old. Josh ignores me. “We should hit the road,” he says, and starts to make his way toward the Eurosport. “That Jolly Green groin is giving me the willies. Ha! The willies, get it?” I give a weak sympathy chuckle. On the way back to the car, I feel the buzz of voicemail and hesitantly push the button to listen. The giant's crotch had it right. This wasn't Penny.

“This message is for Lillian Erlich. This is Mike Lobel, FBI. We have reason to believe you may have some information on the whereabouts of Penny Nelson. Please call me at…”

I don't bother to write the phone number down. “Holy turd stick,” I say, and flip my phone closed with one hand. “That was the effin' FBI. They think I know something about Penny.”

“Well, you do,” Josh says all too matter-of-factly.

“How do they know that?” I'm bordering on hysterical.

“They're the FBI.
The Man
. Don't give it up to The Man, Lil.”

“Give it up to The Man? What decade are you living in? And what do you care? You don't have to worry about them kicking you out of college before you even start and putting a big red A for
Accessory
on your record.”

“Lil, we're out of high school. There's no more record.”

“There's a police record! Which I may very well already have thanks to this dumbass runaway kidnapping faker. Damn.” I'm so torn now just to tell them what I know. The FBI? That's kind of huge, right? But if they are the FBI, I mean, shouldn't they be able to figure things out for themselves? And, technically, I don't actually know where she is. I just know that at one point she told me she was maybe going to see some guy she knows in Portland. Or maybe I heard her wrong. After that, all she said was she did it, which really could have referred to anything that we had talked about after she may have mentioned a fake kidnapping plot. Maybe she bought that pair of Vans we had discussed. Or pierced her nose? She mentioned that once. How am I supposed to know what she did or didn't do? I'm not in the FBI. I'm just a recent high school graduate, out on the road with my best friend before I have to hunker down and go to college and study film or possibly creative writing. I don't even know what I'm going to major in, so how could I possibly know where my idiot friend is better than the FBI does? There it is. I don't know where Penny is, and therefore, I am not actually about to lie to the FBI.

“I'm calling the FBI guy back. Don't talk. Turn off Elvis.” Josh clicks the radio and flashes me a stay-strong fist. I grab the cheese hat for support.

The phone only has to ring once before I hear, “Mike Lobel speaking.” So serious.

“Uh, hi. This is Lillian Erlich? You called me?” Toughen up, Lil, you know
nothing
.

“Yes, Ms. Erlich. Recent developments have led us to believe that Ms. Nelson has not been kidnapped but has run away.”

“Really? What developments?” I'm going for concerned friend, but I know I sound shifty.

“Several hundred dollars were withdrawn from Ms. Nelson's bank account two days prior to her disappearance. She was still residing at her family home when this occurred. We believe she used this money for a plane ticket. Since you are the last person she contacted before her disappearance, we are asking you to cooperate and give us any information you have about her whereabouts.”

He is insinuating that I'm lying. I don't owe him any information. If he could do his job right, if he could figure out that her parents don't give a crap where she goes or what she does as long as she's there for them when they need her services, maybe that'd give him some clues. Plus, isn't that what he gets paid for? “I'm sorry,” I say, ever the concerned friend, “but I don't know where she is. Maybe you can ask her parents. Or her boyfriend, Gavin James. Check with him. I'm sure he'll have lots to tell you.” That's right. Ask the guilty parties, not me. I didn't ask to be a part of this, and I didn't do anything wrong. Plain and simple.