“What are you doing?”

  I climb into the back of the truck and grab the map.

  “Just seeing where we’re going,” Carter says.

  “There is no we. Don’t you two know how to mind your own business?”

  “At least you could answer some of our questions,” June says.

  “At least? I’m not some middle-aged bus driver escorting you across the country on a Greyhound.”

  “Maybe we could help you,” Carter starts.

  “Help me?”

  “Maybe if you told us what you were looking for we could—”

  “I’m not…” I bite back the words.

  Because the truth is that I don’t know what I’m doing. Or where I’m going. Or why. And I can’t say it out loud.

  I see June’s face in the corner of my eye, lips breaking out of that tight line she likes to fix them in, eyes softening.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  I look away, afraid of what she means, of what she’s figured out. If she’s figured me out at all. For a second I wish someone would.

  “It’s okay,” I finally say. “At least you didn’t murder me and steal my truck.”

  “Is that how you got it?” Carter laughs.

  A smile cuts into my cheeks and I shake it off. “Maybe.”

  It grows quiet, so quiet that I can hear the slow sizzle of morning rising from the street.

  “Next stop’s only about an hour from here,” Carter finally says, nodding to the map in my hands.

  I find Louisiana, tracing the line from New Orleans to Baton Rouge with my thumbnail.

  “We should…”

  A deep thrum barrels up the street, the sound of horns tangled in the wind. I see people in white shirts, amassed and marching, coming toward us. I step aside as they pass—men in slacks, women in wide brimmed hats, the force of their steps vibrating through the soles of my feet.

  “This some sort of re-enactment?” Carter asks.

  June shushes him and we’re pushed to the front of the truck, to the end of the block, giving them room. There’s at least a hundred of them chanting, dancing, their voices charged, every move spelling out this strange dark joy that makes me feel haunted just watching them.

  “What are they doing?” June asks.

  The sun glints off something smooth and raised above their heads and that’s when I see the casket. I blink, wandering across the street. Carter and June follow me, their eyes fixed on the crowd.

  “For a funeral, I sure am digging this music,” Carter says.

  He stomps in place, dancing, waving at the people passing by. June shoves him and he laughs, both of them completely oblivious to the fact that there is a person in there, riding high above their heads, there is a person. What’s left of one anyway.

  I remember standing in front of Nia’s casket, the slight tilt of her head to the left even though it had always fallen to the right, the dull tint to her fingernails even though she’d always had a neon colored thumbnail pinched between her teeth. My stomach lurches and I keep walking, trying to abandon the noise, that dry taste at the back of my throat.

  “Hey, wait up,” Carter yells. He runs past me. “Check it out. Free pancakes.”

  I look up and see the ten-foot sign hanging over the church’s front doors.

  “That was probably for the funeral,” June says.

  But Carter is already pushing through the double doors and waving a hand at me to follow him inside. We find the kitchen and there, lining the counter, are six foil containers, steam billowing out from the seams. Carter peels one open and we’ve hit the pancake mother lode.

  “Ah, shit.”

  June smacks his hand. “We can’t eat that.”

  “Why not? I’m starving.”

  “It’s stealing. You want to get arrested?”

  “For eating pancakes?”

  “This is a church,” she clarifies. “You don’t know. These could be holy pancakes or something.”

  “Holy… What the hell are you talking about? They’re pancakes.” He shoves one in his mouth. “And they’re delicious.”

  I think about the truck sitting there in the daylight, exposed.

  “Just hurry,” I say. “Take them with you or something.”

  “Fine. I’ll be quick.”

  We each grab some napkins, covering the pancakes before folding them into the waist of our pants. I hear the doors then, wind slicing through them as someone makes their way inside.

  “Shit. Someone’s coming.”

  We find another doorway, this one leading to the front of the church, and we wind through pews and candelabras, tip-toing past sculptures as we make our way outside. We see another group of people heading in our direction and one of them points right at us.

  “This way,” Carter whispers.

  He leads us through someone’s backyard, fences flattened against the damp yellow grass. I see empty doorways and cracked porches, roofs bowed and riddled with holes.

  “Shit. It’s like a junkyard,” I say, sidestepping a metal post from a chain-link fence and maneuvering past an armchair half sunken in the ground.

  “It’s from the hurricane,” June says, her voice low.

  She hangs back, slowing to look at something. There are books, their pages black with mildew, covers bleached from the sun. We pass house after house. All ruined, all empty. It’s a graveyard of Saturday morning memories: a metal baseball bat, an iron, dishes scattered in splintering piles among dresser drawers and muddy laundry, and a kitchen table scorched black as if someone had tried to burn it.

  I spot a bible, pages splayed and blank, the text settling in a pale grey blob at the bottom of the page. I glance back at the church just a few yards away and wonder if whoever owned it carried it there on Sunday mornings. If it rested on the nightstand next to her bed, if she thumbed through it on the nights leading up the storm, if it did her any good.

  My mother had tried the church thing. I remember the wooden pew sticking to my legs on those Sundays she was sober (sporadic during those two years she’d tried to get clean for good). I don’t remember any of the sermons or prayers or songs I hummed through since we never stuck around long enough for me to learn the words. But I do remember that whatever my mother had been hoping for, whatever remedy she’d been seeking, it didn’t work.

  But maybe that’s not the point of religion. Maybe the gift of faith isn’t salvation. Maybe the gift of faith is forgetting. Whatever you’ve been through, whatever you’ve been carrying, not having to take that trauma into the next life.

  Soon the broken things start to disappear and all I can sense is the smell—a thick raw thing that cleaves to my lungs. I pull the collar of my shirt over my mouth, my feet finding Carter’s carefully placed foot holes until he comes to a stop.

  There’s a pile twisted at his feet of pastel colored fabrics, small collars and sleeves. They look like rags, pink weeds rising up from the mud. But then I see the small yellow buttons. Daisies. I feel June looking over my shoulder; can feel her breath hitch as it slips down my arm. But no one says a word.

  I hear a soft clanking, something uncoiling. The dog springs out of the shadows, jaw unhinged, teeth bared.

  “Holy shit.” I stumble. “Whose dog is that?”

  It’s bald, pale grey spots rippling up from its skin. It looks deranged, mad from the heat, from the smell. It looks hungry. We back away, slowly, the chain growing taut. It writhes there, inches from us, trying to twist free and my eyes follow the silver chain to a tree near the side of the house.

  “Do you think someone still lives here?” June asks.

  We’re cinched in, the house to our right, debris to our left. He bounds forward and I see the chain tremble, carving into the bark of the tree.

  “Shit, he smells the pancakes,” I say. “Lose ‘em.”

  “What?” Carter snaps.

  “Toss him the food.”

  “I’m not tossing him my food.”

  June reaches under her shirt and pulls a pancake free. “I’ll do it.”

  She tosses it and the dog leaps, tearing it out of the air.

  “What good was that?” I moan.

  I grab another pancake and toss it near the tree. The dog’s head snaps in the direction of the food but he doesn’t see it.

  “Dumb shit.” I toss out another one.

  This time he skirts for it, nose tight to the ground, and we take off running. I hear his chain uncoiling again, grating against the tree. He’s on our heels. But then he’s on his hind legs, veins pulsing against his collar, and he’s jerked back into the yard. He collapses there on the ground, face planted on his paws, panting.

  We slowly make our way back to the truck, our steps turning into a strange waddle from the pancakes still in the waist of our pants. When we reach the truck Carter stops, pulling them out, inspecting each one.

  “We really should go,” I say, impatient.

  Carter looks at me, narrows his eyes. “I thought there was no we.”

  I turn away and shrug before climbing back in the truck. A moment later Carter and June slide in next to me and I hand him the map.

  “Let me know when you see the next turn,” I say.

  He unfolds the map, holding it taut in front of his face and chirps under his breath, “No we my ass.”

  Chapter 18

  31.5° N, 91.4° W

  We wound through Baton Rouge, June taking photos on her cell phone of all of the places Nia’d listed roadside that she’d wanted to see: a giant root beer mug hanging over an old fashioned diner, the capitol building, the old house at The Myrtles Plantation.

  I knew she would have wanted to stop, to tread across that grass, to stand next to the marble pillars of the capitol and stretch her arms out wide around them. But she was the one who knew what she was looking for. I would have been the spectator, watching her eyes swell over the bare bark of a whipping tree, deep scars burned there by ropes, or watching her laugh as we trudged through a shallow swamp of bluebonnets, me plucking one from the muck and tucking it behind her ear.

  But without her I couldn’t even make it out of the truck, viewing these snapshots of a life she’d never get to live from behind the dingy bug-smeared glass of the windshield. And every time I didn’t stop I could feel June’s and Carter’s eyes on me, waiting for me to say something, to explain the resolve that was enough to send me driving all over a strange city but not enough to get out and see it for myself.

  It didn’t feel like it was for me, the sort of revelations Nia may have had in these places. I didn’t want them anyway. I just wanted her.

  Maybe that’s why we’d tore through the city in a rush, ticking off landmarks as if I was crossing off items on a grocery list. Because the second I didn’t see her, the moment it sunk in that she wasn’t there, not this time, I was ready to leave and start looking for her somewhere else.

  But the next location on her map was over 2,000 miles long. She’d only drawn a small raft over the city of Natchez but among the hundreds of tourists, private docks, riverside restaurants and boat tours, she could be anywhere. And with June and Carter following me who knew how long it would take to find her. I could wander riverside for a while, try to lose them, but I wouldn’t even know where to start.

  Carter’s hungry again so we find a place to eat near the center of town. The entryway is lined with tri-folds and pocket calendars and I swipe one about the Mississippi River. There are directions to different parks and camping grounds along the river’s bank and I chew on a French fry, trying to figure out where Nia would have wanted to go.

  “Bluff’s nice.” The waitress leans over me, refilling my glass. “Lots of trails and a good view of the bridge. Most people go there.”

  Most people. Is Nia most people?

  “Is it far?” I ask.

  “Just down the road,” she says before heading back to the kitchen.

  “We should check it out,” Carter says, eyeing me. “Unless you had other plans.”

  I know what he’s getting at. That this trip is a little weird. That I’m a little weird. But I still don’t know how to explain.

  “Are you doing some kind of bucket list thing?” he asks.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Leave it alone, Carter.” June stares at her plate, fingers picking at what’s left of her burger.

  “What’s the big deal? I’m just asking the guy a question.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “So…? You about to kick it or something?”

  “Carter.” June shoots him a look.

  “Oh, I’m sorry June. I forgot that we’re all supposed to just pretend like nobody ever dies. Like the dreaded D word is totally off limits. That it’s not some kind of inevitability.”

  “Stop it.”

  They’re both just staring at their hands, the clank of my silverware the only sound until the waitress brings out the check. I think about saying something but I don’t. June’s resolved to minding her own business, even after what she found in my bag, and in that moment I resolve to do the same. I’ve got enough baggage, I don’t need theirs too. All I need is Carter’s gas money and they can rip each other’s heads off for all I care.

  When I’m back in the truck, I watch from behind the glass as Carter says something to June. Three syllables. His face dark. She just nods and then they both slide in.

  They’re both quiet the rest of the way to the bluff. I see the bridge first, riverboats floating under it, people on the deck laughing and eating an early dinner. We walk to the wooden railing lining the trail and it’s so quiet we can hear the clank of silverware on their plates.

  The river looks grey but close up it churns the color of rust, mud clinging to the dark trees along the bank. I can see where it bends, where the wide neck disappears in a dense cluster of green. Birds skirt along the surface, a few kids tossing them crackers from the deck of one of the boats when their parents aren’t looking.

  I hear footsteps and see June dragging Carter down one of the concrete paths to get a closer look at the water. I think about that note sprawled across her lap, about her eyes swelling over every word, and then her snapping at Carter when he’d asked me what I was doing. I need to know what she read.

  I find a bench under a small gazebo, sunlight glinting off the bridge as I pull my pack into my lap. I sift for the note she’d been reading, corners torn from where I’d ripped it out of her hands. I pull it out, careful not to rip it more, and press it flat against my thighs.

  A List of Things River Will Never Do But Should:

  -Listen to me.

  -Read a book. (Okay you can stop laughing now.)

  -Get a full-body tattoo of me that covers over 90% of your skin.

  -Touch a stranger (No, I don’t mean grabbing the door handle right after they do. I mean a handshake, a pat on the back, maybe even one of those awkward side hugs.)

  -Tell someone your name without making that weird apologetic face you do. (Your name is a badass relic from your mother’s glory days when she still believed in miracles.)

  -Find a stray dog and take it home. (I know you like dogs. I’ve seen your face when we walk by their glass display cases in the mall. Stop being afraid to take care of something. You can do it.)

  -Walk around barefoot for an entire day (Shoes are an uncomfortable modern invention that are completely unnecessary.)

  -Eat a bologna sandwich (I know you think it’s the absolute worst part of every farm raised animal but it’s actually the best.)

  -Sing karaoke (I’ve heard you hum Little Red Corvette and I know that’s not all you’ve got.)

  -Stop waiting for me to pause and take a breath so that you can tell me I’m wrong, or that I don’t make any sense, or that I’m certifiably insane. Sometimes being wrong or right isn’t the point. Sometimes the point is that we’re different and that’s okay.

  -Let me paint a nude portrait of you. (Okay so maybe there are a few sketches of you in the buff in one very obscure notebook that I keep tucked under my mattress. But sketching from memory will never be as good as the real thing.)

  -Make your own map filled with old record stores and food trucks, trees the size of your house, food challenges and the hometowns of notorious serial killers, that place where you were born but I can never pronounce, to meet that one sister you might have but you aren’t sure, to that place in that pawn shop show you like, to see a NASCAR race even though you hate NASCAR.

  -Look at the ocean without seeing the debris, the sea sludge, the plastic ice cream wrappers skittering across the sand, the people stuffed into bathing suits too small for them, or the beer bottles clanking in the tide.

  -Look at people without turning them into something they’re not.

  -Look at a star without reminding yourself that it is dead.

  I feel my pulse in the back of my throat. And not because June read this. Not because she knows everything. But because Nia did.

  I sit there until the moon is rising over the river, reflection rippled in the current. I sit there reading Nia’s notes—poems and parables, addresses and drawings and bits of her biology notes. I sift through rushed retellings of her weekend at her grandparents, the weird dream she’d had the night before, the customer at her uncle’s restaurant who’d left her a fifty cent tip, and her latest fight with Mari.

  I sit there, stitching together memories and waiting for her to sit down next to me until it’s dark. Until I can’t see the words anymore. Until I feel as invisible as they are.

  Shadows crawl across the grass, steps muted. Someone sinks down next to me and when I look I see Carter.

  “Sorry about earlier,” he says.

  June keeps walking toward the truck, not looking at either of us, and for a second I feel charged, a little angry. I don’t want to think about what she might have said to him. But then he gets up without another word and in the silence I feel relieved.

 

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