Chapter 15
AS I stumbled into our campsite brokenhearted, my parents bombarded me with a firestorm of questions: How was the dance? Did I see Will? Was I hungry? Blah. Blah. Blah. I couldn’t really tell you how I responded to these assaults, however, because I felt like I was trapped in a blurry nightmare, where someone else’s voice was coming out of my mouth. I guess whatever this alien-me said to my parents was normal enough, though, because without a fight, they let me flee to my sleep pod and collapse in a heap of doom.
And I could tell right away it was going to be a long night. Because for what seemed like hours, I tossed and turned—and turned and tossed—to no avail. Was this some cruel joke? I mean, first the love of my life was snatched away from me, and now I couldn’t even fall asleep to escape the sad truth of my new reality?
Life sucks and then you die. That about summed it up, I figured. Maybe if I just screamed at the top of my lungs, I could get all the crazy, stopped-up emotional junk out of my brain, and then I could catch some shuteye. Or they’d take me away in a straitjacket. Either way, I’d be guaranteed some rest.
At about two o’clock in the morning, I finally gave up on trying to force myself to sleep. After all, blocking out the whole Mick situation wasn’t working anyway. It was time for a new plan. And as painful as this might sound, I decided to pretend Mick was in the pod with me, cuddled up in the sleeping bag, exhaling an intoxicating fog of hot, sweet breath for me to inhale.
Now I’ve never really lost anyone close to me, but I imagine what I was doing—pretending someone I loved was with me when they weren’t—was some kind of coping strategy (credit Dr. Phil with my descent into psychobabble, please). Whatever you wanted to call it, my make-believe Mick was warm and tender and soothing. And he was there loving me with all his heart, as I slipped over the edge of consciousness toward some much needed slumber.
I’m not sure how long I was out exactly, but it must have been just long enough to get into that deep, relaxed kind of sleep that feels like a coma, which is called Delta Sleep, by the way, not REM. Trust me, two super-geeks had a spastic argument on this topic in Freshman Bio. that ended in tears. Anyway, I only say I was in Delta Sleep because when I eventually realized someone was touching me, I was so confused and disoriented I didn’t know where I was—let alone who I was—for thirty seconds at least.
“Eh, Flora.” I heard the words, but they didn’t quite register. “Eh, c’mon. Get up.”
I tried to push myself awake, but whatever was happening seemed a million miles away, at the end of a stretched-out, warped tunnel.
“This ain’t gonna work,” a second whispery voice said.
“Just be quiet and help me. Get her legs.”
“She’s too heavy,” the whispery voice complained.
Who was touching me? And why? I blinked a couple of crusty-eyed, gooey blinks, but nothing came into focus. Then, with the ferocity of a gerbil, something nibbled at my feet—which was more annoying than threatening, but was freakish enough to jolt me awake.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” I protested. “Stop it. What’re you doing?”
“Mick’s gone,” one of the voices said. “He took off. You have to help us find him.”
“Huh?” I said, staring hard at the guy in the dark. Even though I couldn’t quite make out his features, something about his squirrelly profile gave him away. It was Mick’s cousin, Cal the Creeper. And unless I was mistaken, he’d brought along Forrest “Donny” Gump for the ride.
“What do you mean Mick took off?” I asked. Nothing was making sense.
“Because you guys broke up. He was upset,” Cal said.
“We did not break up,” I objected.
“Well, he’s gone. And it’s your fault,” Cal repeated.
“Stop saying that. I didn’t do anything. And we’re not broken up.”
Donny finally worked up the nerve to speak. “Just help us,” he pleaded. “He won’t listen to us. We need you.”
“But…I don’t get it? Where did he go?” If Mick was actually missing, I was very concerned. But such a rash move just didn’t seem like his style.
Cal sighed impatiently. “Are you gonna help us, or not? We don’t have all night to talk this to death. Either you want to find Mick, or you don’t.”
I was stuck for a response. “Umm…”
“Forget it. Let’s get outta here, Donny,” Cal muttered. “This is a waste of time. She doesn’t even care.”
That was it. How dare he say I didn’t care about Mick? I cared about Mick more than anyone else on earth, I was sure. “Wait! I’m coming!” I called, spastically grabbing for my Converse as the Goofball Goons shuffled off. “Hold on!”
Dumb and Dumber just kept walking. Either they were deaf, or they were ignoring me. I tried again, “Hey, wait up!” I could hardly believe I was doing it, but I jogged past the campsite next door to catch up to them. “Thanks a lot for waiting,” I said, as I joined their little search party. “Now tell me what happened. Where’s Mick?”
Cal laughed. “If we knew where he was, would we be lookin’ for ’im?” he asked with a condescending sneer.
I already knew I didn’t like this guy, but now I had absolute proof.
“That’d be stupid,” Donny said.
Really? No duh. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said defensively. “I just meant…well, what did he say? Did he say where he was going?” The thought of Mick being upset enough to run away made me ill.
“He got in a fight with Cy about a trip he wanted to take you on,” Cal said, beaming a small flashlight around in the dark, like he thought he might find Mick sleeping under a pine tree or hiding behind a rock. “Right, Donny?”
“Yeah. Right.”
Me? Mick was fighting with his dad over me? “I thought you said he was upset that we broke up,” I said, confused. Because even though I knew Mick and I weren’t broken up, I was still trying to figure out what the hell the Goofball Goons were talking about.
Cal rolled his eyes, as if I was a retard. “If he didn’t take you on the trip, then you’d break up. That’s what he told Cy. And when Cy said no, Mick said he was leaving and never coming back.”
“That’s right,” Donny said again.
Huh? Mick and I were going to break up if we couldn’t go on some mysterious trip? At first I thought Cal was wrong, that he’d misunderstood. But then I remembered Michoacán. Mick had been fixated on the place since we saw the milkweed, since he told me about the butterflies.
“We’ve gotta find him,” I blurted. “Where have you guys looked so far?”
“Easy there,” Cal said. “We’re gonna find ’im—since we got you anyway.”
The Goofball Goons stopped on the side of the road near a beat-up SUV. I couldn’t tell for sure in the dark, but it looked like one of the vehicles from their family compound.
“We’re gonna drive around and look for ’im,” Cal said, erasing any doubt about the origin of the vehicle. “You comin’?”
I glanced back at Tupelo-9, certain my parents would’ve had a total hissy if they knew I was out in the middle of the night with two strange guys—and without their permission. On the other hand, though, what if I was the only one Mick would listen to? There was no guarantee anyone but me could convince him to come home.
“Around Wild Acres, you mean?” I asked Cal. “Then you’ll drop me back off after?” One thing I knew for sure was that, to avoid being held prisoner until I turned eighteen, I had to be back in my sleep pod before my parents woke up.
“Uh-huh,” Cal mumbled.
“Yep,” Donny confirmed.
What the hell. Mick needed me. And there was no way I was getting any more sleep now anyway.
I leaned into the SUV. “Where should I sit?” I asked, sliding into an empty spot on the stained backseat.
Cal grunted something unintelligible in my direction, which I took as permission to sit wherever the hell I damn well pleased.
“Are these
for your business?” I asked, surveying the Goofball Goons’ vehicle, which was crammed to capacity with cardboard boxes.
“Huh?” Cal muttered, seemingly unable to carry on a conversation and scour the dark corners of Wild Acres for Mick at the same time.
“Your eBay business; Mick said you guys sell antiques on the internet.”
“Oh, yeah. Our eBay business,” Cal said with a chuckle. “Yeah, those are definitely for our eBay business. Right, Donny?”
Like a robot, Donny gurgled, “Umm-hmm, eBay.”
I changed the subject. “Hey, can we check the other side of the lake?” I asked, sensing I was onto something. I mean, if I had to pick a specific spot Mick might have escaped to, the secret fishing cove was definitely it.
“After we finish this loop, we’ll do the whole lake,” Cal said flatly.
Good. Hunting for Mick on foot would’ve taken all night, but in the SUV we were covering a lot of ground really quickly. Somehow I just knew we’d find him soon, and I’d be able to convince him that, despite whatever had happened between him and his dad, he should go home and work things out. After all, he’d given me the same advice when I was gearing up to knock Will’s block off, so I owed him one.
Cal cruised along the dirt road in front of the Clubhouse, periodically flashing his high beams at anything that moved in the dark; meanwhile, Donny and I just stared trance-like at, well, nothing. There was no sign of Mick whatsoever.
And we were almost to the Wild Acres entrance, when Cal suddenly floored the SUV and zoomed right out of the campground.
“What’re you doing?” I panicked. “Go back! I can’t be out here!” Weren’t these idiots listening to me before? I had limits. Clear, obvious limits.
The Goofball Goons just laughed. Apparently they still didn’t get it. “I said I’m not allowed to leave the campground. You’re gonna have to take me back before you go…wherever it is you’re going.”
“We don’t have to do anything,” Cal said menacingly.
“That’s right,” Donny muttered.
“Okay, please take me back,” I tried. Maybe they just wanted me to suck up or beg or something.
“Wow, relax,” Cal said. “You wanna help us bring Mick home, don’t you?”
“Yeah…I…well,” I stammered. “Where are we going then? Do you know where he is?”
Cal sighed and Donny imitated him. “We’ve got an idea,” Cal finally revealed. “A cabin in the mountains, where we usually go every year for a family vacation. It’s an hour or so from here.”
“How did he get there?” I asked, skeptical. I mean, the more I thought about it, the less anything these morons said was making any sense. Plus, if Mick wanted to run away, shouldn’t he have at least asked me to go along?
“Probably hitchhiked,” Donny said, his first original thought, as far as I could tell.
“We always do that,” Cal explained. “We’ve hitchhiked from Alaska to Arizona. Ain’t that right, Donny?”
“Yup.”
Okay, that was definitely a lie. I’m pretty sure you can’t hitchhike from Alaska to anywhere—unless you catch a boat, or a plane, or a spaceship somewhere along the way. But for the sake of the Goofball Goons’ egos, I decided to let the nonsense slide.
“So what’s this cabin like?” I asked, changing the subject yet again. Who knew, maybe there was a legitimate reason Mick would have gone there.
“Nothin’ special,” Cal downplayed. “Just wood and stone and mortar. Mick was born there.”
“Huh?” I managed to say. Mick was born in a cabin in the mountains? That was quite unusual. And he hadn’t even said a word about it to me. For half a second, I heard my mother’s critical voice in my head, warning me that I didn’t know enough about Mick to even date him, let alone decide he was the love of my life.
“Not a one of us was born in a hospital,” Cal went on, like it was a badge of honor. “Not me, Donny, Penny, Helen, Abby, Sean, Mick, Jo-Jo, Kat. Not even the older generation neither. We was all born on the road.”
You were all born on the road, I wanted to say. But I let that slide too. I mean, I had bigger things to worry about than grammar, like: If I married Mick and we had kids, would they have to be born on the road? Was this anti-hospital thing a Donovan family code I’d have to abide by if I wanted to be Mick’s wife someday? Somehow I doubted Mick would enforce any such rules against my will, since all signs indicated he was more the spoil-Flora-like-she’s-a-princess type.
As we whizzed along toward the middle of nowhere, I started to get drowsy again. So I tilted my head toward the window and rested it on an empty cardboard box. I must admit, the lack of pillows on this trip was getting downright alarming. It was the one thing I was looking forward to about returning to Punxsutawney: my own squishy, saggy bed.