Page 66 of Stops Along the Way
“Say goodbye to the car,” I explain.
“Oh, shit, really?” She peers forward, her nose and the edge of one eye taking up the entire screen. She isn’t too surprised, however—each trip to the mechanic the last few years became a question ofIs this fix more expensive than the car is worth?This farewell has been a long time coming, but the battery was supposed to hold out at least until the end of this school year.
But things rarely play out the way they’resupposedto.
Life always seems to have other ideas. I’m just trying to trust that it’ll get me where I need to go eventually.
“Mom and Dad didn’t tell you?” I ask.
Amelia shakes her head and leans away from the camera. “No, they’re out shopping right now. So how are you getting home?”
“I have no idea.”
My sister flew back last weekend. She managed to arrange her schedule to have the entire week off for Thanksgiving this year, whereas I’m probably one of the last few students still stuck on campus.
Fidgeting with a loose thread on my Butler sweatshirt, I ponder out loud, “Do I try an expensive last-minute flight with a nightmare connection through O’Hare? I’d rather take the bus, but I don’t know what the departure times look like.”
“Eh. Well…” Amelia goes quiet, as if hesitant to complete the suggestion that’s already waiting on her tongue, but she doesn’t let that stop her in the end. “You could see if—”
I know exactly what she’s thinking. More specifically,whoshe’s thinking of. “No, that’d be weird.”
She’s quick to counter. “I’m sure it wouldn’t.”
How does my sister know if it would be weird or not? I roll my eyes. “We haven’t talked since, like, May at this point, so it’s not like I can text him out of nowhere?” But I phrase it more like a question than a statement, part of me wishing it felt possible to reconnect that easily. That I hadn’t let this much time slip away.
Would he even want to hear from me? There’s no way he’s thought about me as much as I’ve thought about him.
Amelia has dropped her phone on the bed as if this isn’t a video call and appears to be leaning close to her laptop screen as we chat. “You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be.”
“Welp, there it goes,” I say. There’s a loud mechanical noise as the tow truck, with our sedan all loaded up, pulls away and drives off. I ball my free hand into my sleeve, leaving the other up to hold out my phone and show the final glimpse of the vehicle that’s taken us so many places.
“Goodbye, car.” Amelia’s nose and eye peer close to the camera once again.
Is this even more bittersweet for her now that she doesn’t drive anymore? She’s reached a point in her vision lossprogression where it feels safer and more comfortable not to, and at college, she’s been able to get around well enough without needing to. I’m curious how this will impact her job search, like if it’ll limit her to positions that she can easily access by public transit.
Speaking of which, it turns out Amelia was looking up the bus schedules for me. “The next available bus leaves at three fifteen a.m., with a transfer in Chicago…and again in Des Moines.”
“Two transfers?”
“It’ll be about nineteen hours total.”
“Shit, that’s more than double the time to just drive myself, and I’d miss pretty much all of Thanksgiving Day tomorrow.” I scuff my heels on the pavement. “Should I rent a car? Am I old enough to rent a car? Will there even be any cars available?”
Amelia laughs at my despair, because she thinks she has an easy solution. “Please just text Declan already.”
My heart skips a beat at the mention of his name. “That would seem a little desperate, wouldn’t it?”
“Youaredesperate for a way to get home. That’s exactly the kind of situation you’re in right now.”
Walking slowly, I exit the parking lot and loop around campus back toward my residence hall. “What if I just stay here and skip Thanksgiving? Mom and Dad will understand.”
“Yeah, but Granny won’t. You’d be hearing about it for the rest of her life.”
“I could video call during dinner.”
Amelia picks the phone up, so I hold the camera back at my own face. “You wouldn’t be able to hear anything if we passed your call around the noisy table,” she says. “Just see if Declan is even still on campus.”
There aren’t many people here as I swipe my card to go in the main entrance to the dormitory. It would be the path of least resistance to stay here for the long weekend. People do that. Granny will be mad, sure, but I’ll see her at Christmas soon enough. Hanging here could be fun, something different. I think Priya is sticking around—wait, she’s joining Jodi’s family in Carmel for dinner and I…would rather not. Maybe I’ll just hide and binge a new show and not let anyone know I’m staying on campus.
