Golden (22 page)

Fifty-seven minutes later we pull into Casa Junction, a rest stop complete with gas, an extensive food mart, and a sprawling grassy area where people can let their kids run around and their dogs do their business. Kat leaps from the car and makes for the mini-mart and the bathroom, Trevor gets out, pops the gas cap, and takes the nozzle from the pump. I climb from my seat and stretch in the sun. It's not even noon yet, and we've hit the halfway mark. The air here is already warmer than it will be at home today, and this little thing feels like a gift. I pull my sweatshirt up over my head, and when I lean over to put it in the car, I catch Trevor watching me. He smiles, slow, and like he wants to say something.

“What?” I ask, instantly self-conscious. This morning, in the dim light of my bedroom, I was feeling confident and optimistic and daring. Daring enough to throw on one of Kat's little tank tops and a pair of cutoffs I'd ordinarily never wear out of the house because they're so short. Now I feel like I'm dressed up as someone else. Someone far more sure of herself than I feel at the moment.

“Nothing,” Trevor answers with that same smile. He turns and watches the numbers roll over on the gas pump, and I fidget with my shorts and sneak a downward glance to make sure my bra's not showing or anything.

“Um . . . I'm gonna go get something to drink inside. You want anything?” I try to sound casual and confident instead of like I wish I was wearing something else.

“Sure.” He looks at me again—really looks at me—and I fight the urge to throw my sweatshirt back on. “I'll take a Coke and a pack of Starburst, since you're offering.” I nod and start to back away, but he stops me. “Hey, Frost.”

“Yeah?”

“You look good today.”

Normally, with him, I would toss back a little sarcasm and brush off the comment as disingenuous. Especially after our little moment in my car. But after he says it he clears his throat, looks down, and kicks something on the ground. Almost like
he's
all of a sudden self-conscious.

“Thanks,” I say simply. I can't hide the smile it puts on my face, so I turn and head for the store without saying anything else, and I hope he's watching me as I walk away, because after that, I'm sure there's just a little strut in my step.

Inside the empty store it's not hard to find Kat. She's in the candy aisle, plucking a rainbow of packages from the racks like she's picking berries or something.

“So,” she asks as she examines the remaining candy on the shelves. “Did you guys have a moment out there?”

I laugh. “What are you talking about? No.” She just looks at me, and I look over my shoulder and through the window to where I can see Trevor now washing the windshield with a squeegee. “Maybe. Sort of. Were you watching?”

She breaks into a wide smile, unwraps a red Tootsie Pop, and pops it in her mouth. “Maybe. Nice outfit, by the way. Glad to see you finally owning your hotness, even if it is a little late.” She beams like a proud mother. “He watched you walk all the way over here, and I watched you look all giddy and nervous about it.”

“I looked nervous?”

“Only from the front. I'm sure you looked just fine from behind,” she says with a wink. “Good. My genius plan is working.”

“What genius plan?”

“I love you, P, but for a smart person you can be awfully dense sometimes.”

“What?”

She sighs. “Look. I don't actually know how much of a chance there is that we're going to find Julianna Farnetti. But I did know that if I put you and Trevor Collins together in a car for long enough, something would happen, and chasing after a ghost was the best way to do it. Probably the only way you'd go along with this.”

“With what?” I ask, a little offended. Julianna Farnetti was the point of the whole trip, in my mind.

“With
this
.” Kat gestures around her like I should understand it. “With letting loose and taking off and having one last hurrah with your best friend and the boy you've wanted since seventh grade.” She pauses. “I did this for you, P. For us.”

It's clear by her voice and the smile on her face that she thinks I should be happy about this. That she thinks she's doing me a favor. “So, what?” I ask calmly. “All that ‘we have to find her,' and ‘you're totally right,' was just a bunch of BS?”

When I say the words out loud, I don't bother to hide how mad they make me. I feel stupid, like she's been laughing at me the entire time. Probably with Trevor. Does he think the same thing? Is he just along for the ride and an easy hookup?

“It wasn't
total
BS,” Kat says. “It's a crazy idea, and it would be amazing if it actually worked out like that.” She pauses and looks at me with what feels almost like pity. “But honestly? I think Julianna Farnetti's at the bottom of Summit Lake with Shane Cruz, and all of this—the journal, and Josh, and the painting—it's pretty impossible.”

Her words sting, and the way she just dismisses the entire reason I've risked this trip feels like a slap in the face. I avoid her eyes and focus on the rack of gum behind her because I don't want to look at her right now. “Why would you even
bother
then? What's the point?”

“I'm trying to
tell
you what the point is.” Her voice comes out a touch sharper than when she spoke before, but she reels it back in with her next sentence. Her voice is softer.
“This is our last chance for something like this, P, and you never would've done it without her as a reason.” She pauses. “Right?”

It's true, but I don't answer her.

“And I would've done it for any reason you gave me—you know why?”

I sigh, not wanting to hear her carpe diem speech right now.

“Because school's about to end, Parker, and when it does, everything's gonna change. You're going away, and I'm staying in town, and no matter how much we want things to stay the same between us, they won't. You'll make a bunch of friends at Stanford who are all crazy smart and driven like you, and I'll stay home and try not to become my mom, and pretty soon there'll be too much between us that's different. Things change, Parker. It doesn't take a valedictorian to figure that out.”

She stops and I glance up in time to see her drop her eyes to the floor.

The anger welled up in my chest softens, then starts to recede with the realization that this may be the first time I've ever seen a weak spot in Kat's bravado. She clenches her jaw tight, like she knows she gave too much away. Like she doesn't know what else to say. Kat doesn't do tender moments.

It makes me want to reach out and hug her and promise that none of that is true. But what if it is? What if she's right, and everything changes as soon as I leave? I don't know what to do with this moment either, because now we're both
standing awkwardly in the middle of the Casa Junction food mart, and I'm pretty sure if we look at each other, one or both of us is gonna cry.

Then, just like she's always done, Kat steps up when I can't. “I'm sorry,” she says, and she puts her hand on my arm, and steps close, forcing me to look her in the eye. “I just wanted us to have one last, big thing together that we'll always be able to look back on and say ‘we did that.' And if we find Julianna Farnetti while we're doing it, and you get your happy ending, that's bonus.
And
 . . .”

I see a smile creep back onto her face, and I know whatever she's about to say is going to lighten the mood. I'm grateful for it, because I don't want us to be mad at each other anymore. “And what?” I ask.

“And I thought if I could get you and Trevor together, maybe you'd have one more reason to come back after you leave.” She shrugs. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that crap.”

It's so ridiculous, I can't not laugh. “Seriously? That's how Trevor fits into all of this? As bait to get me to come home? That doesn't make any logical sense.”

She shrugs. “If you'd just give up the whole prim and proper thing, you'd realize he might actually be something worth coming back for. And then you can look back and say
you
did that.”

“Oh my God. I'm
not
gonna sleep with him, if that's what you're talking about.”

“Sleep with who?” a familiar voice cuts in.

Of course
.
Of course he would walk in right at this moment
. The
last thing in the world I want to do is turn around with my cheeks on fire, but I force myself. “No one,” I manage, and then I pretend to be choosing between a Twix and Sour Patch Kids.

“You. She means she's not sharing a hotel room with you,” Kat says, like it's nothing.

“Damn,” Trevor says with a smile. “Had I known that was even a possibility I would've gotten my butt in here a lot quicker and made a better case than you just did.”

Kat laughs.

I cringe. “It wasn't ever—it's not—what kind of candy did you want again?”

He holds up a pack of Starburst. “Don't worry about it, I got it. You guys ready to get back to the open road and the chance at something worth coming back for?”

I shake my head and make a run for the counter—no strutting this time. Kat laughs again as she and Trevor follow me, and I make up my mind to try not to be mad at her for using my own ridiculous idea to sucker me into this trip. But just because I don't want to be mad doesn't mean I'm not disappointed that she doesn't seem to think there's even a chance. Half of me wonders if it's the same with Trevor, but the other half of me doesn't want to know. I'd rather spend this trip thinking he believes in something impossible too.

When we get back to the car, I claim tired and volunteer to take the backseat. I don't think the blush is ever going to leave my cheeks, and between my outfit and Trevor walking in at the perfect moment for my mortification yet again, I don't feel like riding shotgun. And also—what Kat said to me
in the store has left me with this sad, uneasy feeling I need to sort out.

Of course things change, that's a given. I've spent the last four years of my life working and waiting for them to change. Always waiting for the next thing—to graduate, to leave town, to go to college. And it's felt like an eternity. Time goes by slowly when you spend it waiting. But now, all of a sudden, it feels like everything has sped up. Or like it's actually been flying by this whole time, and I've been too busy waiting to see what was happening all around me. Now I don't know if it's too late to try.

“One Step Backward Taken”

—1945

Three hours, two pit stops, and a carful of empty candy wrappers later, we pass a highway sign that reads
HARMONY 5 MI
, and a tremor that's a mix of nervous anticipation and all the junk I've eaten passes through my stomach.

“We made it!” Kat cheers from the front. She looks back at me, probably expecting me to match her enthusiasm, but I'm too busy freaking out inside. We really did make it. We're here. In Harmony. The town where Julianna Farnetti might be after all these years.

“You want me to go straight to the gallery?” Trevor asks over his shoulder.

I want to puke, actually.
I don't know what's worse—the
possibility that she might be there or the possibility that I'm wrong about this whole thing. I look out the window at the rolling green hills, try to follow their graceful curves to calm the storm thundering around in my chest. Then I stall.

“Maybe we should get something to eat first—and make a plan. Aren't you hungry again by now, Kat?”

“Surprisingly, no. Weird, huh? It might be because I burned all of my taste buds off with too much sour crap. So it's your lucky day—we can go straight there.”

I look to Trevor like he can help me. “What about you? Did you want to have lunch or something? The beach is over those hills, just a few miles away. We could go there first, and then come back in a little while.” It's more of a plea than a suggestion.

“Nah, I'm good,” he answers. Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror. “I think we should go to the gallery. It's kinda what we just drove four hundred miles for. You'll be fine.”

Fine? Really, are you kidding me?
He glances back at me one more time, waiting for a response. Maybe it's from so many years of practice saying one thing while thinking another, or maybe it's because his voice actually does sound reassuring, but after a long moment, I nod. “Okay. You're right. Let's just go and get it over with.”

“Wait. Did you just say get it
over
with?” Kat asks from the front seat. She turns around now so we're face to face. “Parker, you have to stop thinking of things that way. Whatever happens, this is a big fucking moment for you. Don't you dare just ‘get it over with.' Go in there and
do
something with it. Carpe fuckin' diem.” I wince a little at her trucker mouth. She
sits back in her seat and faces forward like that's all there is to it, case closed, which gets a surprised laugh from Trevor.