Page 32 of The Someday Daughter
“Similarly,” Mick says, “I hate flying and much prefer land travel. Not for you.”
“And I’m in it for Puddles,” Silas says, rolling down his window. He holds on to her as her little paws grip the sill, her head poking out into the wind. “No thank-yous needed.”
“Okay,” I say, and Cleo reaches over to nudge me with a pack of Twizzlers. I take one out, stick it between my teeth, dig into my backpack for the Penn textbook. Feel a warmth that has absolutely nothing to do with Austin’s oppressive humidity. And then I settle in for the long haul in this car full of people who are, decisively, not doing this for me.
23
SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDWEST
We’re an hour outside Little Rock, the sun just starting to dip, when Cleo swings a right off the highway.
“Whoa,” Mick says. He’s on navigation, riding shotgun with Puddles in his lap. Sadie sits next to me, and Silas is asleep in the back seat, one long arm thrown over his eyes. “Wrong turn, maestro. You’re on 40 for another seventy miles.”
“Don’t question me, Michelangelo,” Cleo says. She has her big yellow sunglasses on and is blowing bubble gum with loud smacks. “We’re going to a point of interest.”
“What point of interest?” Mick asks, at the same moment I say, “Is your full name Michelangelo?”
He laughs. “I wish. It’s just Michael.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,justMichael,” Cleo says. She hangs another right and suddenly we’re on a gravel road, Arkansas spreading flat and arid around us. “You’re Michael fucking Selinofoto. My moonlight baby.”
“Where are we going?” Silas asks, his voice gravelly with sleep. When I look back he’s stretching, T-shirt hiking up to expose a thin strip of his stomach, and I look quickly away. At anything,anythingelse. “Rest stop?”
“We are going,” Cleo says patiently but emphatically, “to a point of interest.”
“How far is it?” Sadie asks, glancing at her watch. “Just want to remind the group that our ETA is three thirty in the morning and some of us aren’t as spry as others.”
“You don’t look a day past twenty,” Silas says, and Sadie rolls her eyes.
“It’s fifteen minutes away,” Cleo says. “And it’s going to be worth it, okay? So everyone calm the eff down.”
“How’d you find it?” I ask, and she catches my eyes in the rearview.
“I googled it while you were studying the space-time continuum or whatever it is you’re doing back there.”
I glance at my lap, where the Penn textbook is open to a diagram of the four different types of glial cells. “It’s biology,” I say, and Cleo gags.
“Disgusting. Why?”
“I’m taking a course—” I catch myself, amending: “My boyfriend, Ethan, is taking a course at the University of Pennsylvania this summer. It’s where I was supposed to be, instead of here.”
“So you’renottaking the course,” Mick clarifies, turning in the front seat to look at me.
I clear my throat. “I mean, technically—”
“She’s not taking the course,” Cleo says loudly, spreading her hand over the center console to emphasize every word, “but she’s reading the textbook back there like a freakinglibrarianinstead of enjoying our great American landscape.”
I glance out the window, flat farmland as far as the eye can see.“I can still learn,” I say, trying to keep the edge out of my words. “Even if I’m not there.”
“Or you could just be here,” Cleo says. “You know,behere. Instead of—”
“Cleo,” Sadie says. Her voice is soft, but Cleo stops immediately. “Give it a rest.”
I can’t bring myself to meet anyone’s eyes. I don’t need Sadie to defend me; the way I’m choosing to spend my summer doesn’t need defending at all. Cleo doesn’t even know me. She has no idea—
“There,” Cleo says. “The sign.”
All four of us turn to look out the window as we pass a massive metal sign hand-painted with the wordsMailbox Station, USA.
