Page 1 of Stops Along the Way
Chapter One
It’s a one-mile walk to the strip mall that houses Roll Again Games. Not the pleasant kind of walk, either, but a journey down the sidewalk of a road that has four lanes of traffic with drivers all going at least ten miles over the speed limit in each direction. I should tie back my long blond hair, but the strong gusts of wind make a quick mess of it no matter what I do, so right now it’s swirling around my head like my own personal tornado.
I’m trying to play Taylor Swift’s latest album, but the Bluetooth keeps disconnecting from my hearing aids, which makes for a staticky and frustrating listening experience. It finally manages to connect long enough to reach a fantastic bridge when an incoming call interrupts and rings loudly directly into my ears.
It’s my sister, of course. I answer the call. Who else would I actually talk to on the phone?
Like always, it’s bad timing. We’ve been playing phone tag for nearly a year now since she left for college.
“Hey, Lee—” I start, but Amelia launches right into something I can’t hear over the noise. “What was that?” I shout at my cell phone. She’s still rambling on. “Wait, I have not heard a single word you’ve said.”
There’s a lull in traffic as I near the stoplight intersection where I need to cross the street. There’s a family walking their dog in the opposite direction. I nod toward them as I advance to the other side of the road.
“Where are you?” Amelia asks. “I’m just trying to figure some stuff out real quick. How much do you actually need the car this summer?”
I laugh, uninhibited and wild, at the absurdity of what she’s saying to me right now. A driver stuck at the light glances my way. “You’re asking me this as I’mliterallywalking on the side of the highway.”
“It’s not a highway.” She’s quick to correct, assuming where I am. “It’s just a road.”
“I’m not debating the definition of a highway with you right now as I’m walking next to one. Yes, I need the car.”
“On your way to game night, right? You’re still doing that?”
I roll my eyes and adjust the strap of my bag that’s been digging into my shoulder. “Yes, I told you about the new character drop. I got the Fortune Teller, who has action cards that—”
“I think I’ve just outgrown playing Rivalry,” she continues, stuck on her own thought, asking me another question without listening to my answer. “Doesn’t Peyton drive you sometimes?”
We’re often on a similar wavelength that enables conversational shortcuts, but sometimes it just feels like I’m being steamrolled. “She has to watch her brothers tonight.”
Amelia is speaking again, but quieter now—and not to me, I realize. It seems like she’s dropped the phone away from her ear to talk to someone else, probably her roommate.
My sister is only a year older than me—and still many, many years younger than several of the people I’ll see at Roll Again Games in a few minutes—but since she went off to college, she’s been abandoning our shared hobbies, like this board game, Rivalry, that we used to play all weekend long, imagining elaborate backstories for our chosen character decks. We didn’t even fully understand the game’s rules back then. We’d just roll dice and swap cards at random until we eventually declared a winner.
(Which meant that, as the older sibling, Amelia usually “won.”)
We’ve been growing apart for a while now, but the roots took hold long before she even left for school in Philadelphia. If I had to pinpoint an exact moment where I finally stumbled upon a divide between the two of us, it would be Amelia’s diagnosis.
These days it still isn’t obvious to most people. Put us in front of any stranger and ask them to spot the difference, and they likely wouldn’t discover how we no longer experience theworld the same way. However, I’ve felt the wedge driven between us, even if it goes unaddressed for the most part.
Five years ago, when Amelia started high school, she began having difficulty reading the board, which led to several doctors’ appointments. Eventually, she got diagnosed with a rare eye disease that causes central vision loss. Our parents shed tears that they tried and failed to keep secret from us, but somehow Amelia kept her chin up, almost unfazed.
I know my sister better than to buy into that act.
I know why she gave up playing Rivalry with me. Her growing frustration at not being able to take in the entire game board the way she once did, each turn taking just a bit longer for her to get her bearings. The effort to play outmatching her enthusiasm for the game until, ultimately, she insisted she simply wasn’t interested.
Eager to keep my favorite opponent, I researched and found a large-print edition, but by then, I wasn’t sure how to push her about it. I wasn’t going to beg. Instead, the large-print box sits on a shelf in the family room, collecting dust, along with our original Red Witch and Twilight Elf character kits.
“I’m almost there. Hello? Lee,” I say, dragging out theeeof her name until she returns her focus to our call, wrapping up whatever she was discussing with her roommate.
“Sorry, yeah, so okay, I was thinking—” Amelia says right as the Bluetooth cuts out again and the call drops. She doesn’t hesitate to call back and continue talking as if we were never disconnected. “What I’m trying to figure out is how exactly I’m getting the car home for the summer.”
I step carefully over an uneven sidewalk crack. The obvious comes to mind. “By driving it?”
It’s easy to picture her lying on her dorm room bed, pursing her lips together and humming for a moment before she raises her concern with that plan. “It’s at least eighteen hours from Philly back to Omaha. More like twenty-plus, with traffic and stops.”
“I remember.” From having driven all that way with our parents last fall to drop her off at school.
She ignores the snark in my voice. “How am I supposed to drive it back by myself now?”
