Unnova

out West. One for the road, AJ jokes. Watch the same driveway that you used to draw bright yellow chalk suns on disappear under the Outback’s wheels.

AJ picks up the other two hometown holdouts, Carson and Ryan, and the drive begins with jokes. Always jokes. There are jokes about Ryan’s ex, about how she wants him back but will never admit it. Jokes about how Carson will worry about the roof rack, tightening every knot one last time. There are even jokes about you. Grip their laughter like a life raft.    

A few hours are already gone. Everyone stumbles into silence. Their heads turn to each window, gazing. Look out your own window. There are abandoned homes there, along the highway, with splattered yellow stains on their faded white drywall pillars and haphazard tears in their screen doors. Imagine lying in bed in these houses, listening to the highway’s muffled howl night after night. Wish someone would speak again.           

Sundown. AJ stops at a rest area. Dust particles dash through the parking lot’s overhead lights. The highway roars some yards away. Keys fly toward you. You’re on the night shift. Keep heading west, AJ says. Drive into the sunset. On the road, the sedans take their exits as night draws closer. They’re almost home.    

The dashboard’s sharp glow makes sleep difficult. Conversation picks up again, but this time you all play the alphabet game. Name movies, songs, countries, plants. Everybody gets one hint. A lit tunnel appears ahead on the highway. Moments later, white light fills the SUV. Glance at Carson in the passenger seat. His index finger pushes gently on the bridge of his glasses as he searches for a book starting with “S.” His hazel eyes probe the glove box.    

The tunnel ends. A pair of glass circles reflecting the speedometer are all that’s left of him.  

The Stranger, the glass circles say. And yes, that counts.   

The hotel isn’t within sight until after midnight, but Carson’s alarm still wakes everyone up before dawn. Claim the passenger seat as the sun peeks over the horizon. Watch the morning flow over the Kansas plains like the rising tide. Admire the flatness. You’ve never seen only the horizon in every direction. Something in it calms you. From the backseat, Ryan says that looking up here feels like being swallowed by the sky. Keep your eyes on the plains, their yellowed grasses made stiff under the morning’s frost. 

The next few days are a blur. Cross the Rockies. See the arches of Utah. Step out of the car. Smile in every group photo. Drive. See the red, sloping walls of Capitol Reef. Step out again. Take a photo. Drive. See a stone gulley connected on each end with stone bridges. Step out once more. Fumble with your phone’s camera settings. Take an over-exposed photo. Drive. Track sand into the hotel. Wake up. Drink greedily from the continental breakfast’s apple juice dispenser.  

And then one day you are told to drive south. Drive into the open desert of New Mexico.   

Turn off the highway and onto a dirt road. Pitch the tent as the sun dips below the sand. The shiver of its fabric in the breeze reminds you of schoolyard flags clanging against their poles. Carson starts the campfire. Sit close to the flames in your mesh chair. You forgot that it gets cold at night in the desert. Ryan unearths a bottle of tequila from his pack. It gets around the circle. Sip quickly and wipe away a stray drop from your cheek.   

It’s quiet out here. Silent. Everyone looks up. No cities, more stars, Carson says. See the Milky Way for the first time. Its foggy tendril lies limp across the sky. Dart your eyes back to the fire. Sparks can be stars if you want them to be. A star lands on your boot and fades instantly. Another failed supernova.   

They are all still looking up when AJ says that he wants to work for NASA after he graduates in May. Send probes out there, he says. I’ll be doing cool stuff in New Jersey by then, Ryan says. Testing explosives at a military base. Carson reaches for the tequila and accidentally sends some sand into the fire with his boot. My dad’s computer store is waiting for me, he says, as he unscrews the bottle and sips. 

What about you? 

Speak, even though you don’t know what to say. Your words flow, and they shine brighter than the fire and the stars. Try to grasp some of their light. Try to take it and fill your chest with it. If it was in there, deep, then maybe your heart would not beat so fast when you see yourself walking across that stage in four months. Maybe then you could see the houses along the highway without seeing the future of your hopes, stained and torn and abandoned. Maybe then you could say: Yes, I know what I will soon do and I will do it.  

But then the light fades and you are sitting around a campfire with these people whom you’ve known since before you ever thought of such things. They’re watching the stars again and they don’t seem to have heard you at all. You wonder if they even heard each other. Maybe they also don’t want to hear it just yet. Maybe the fire and the tequila and the promise of dawn are enough.   

After a while, you inch your eyes toward the open night sky to join theirs. Carson points upward. That one is the North Star, he says. That one’s the brightest. That one you can always find.