Since You've Been Gone

16 TAKE A ROAD TRIP

An hour later, we were on the road.

I had gone home to take a shower and try and get my head around the fact that we were actually going to do this.

I’d gotten dressed but hadn’t put on any more makeup than usual, or attempted to do anything special with my hair. The last thing I wanted, after kissing him in my car, was for Frank to think that this was some kind of plot to get him alone so I could seduce him or something. I thought for a moment of wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved shirt, but the fact was, it was simply too hot out. I’d looked at my pajamas for a long moment, doing the math. According to the directions I’d found, it seemed like the drive down there was going to take around ten hours, which would also mean ten hours back. Which meant that, at some point, we’d have to get some sleep.

But I headed out of my room without packing my pajamas, or anything I would normally bring for an overnight stay. I couldn’t even begin to picture where we would be tonight, or what it would look like, so it was like I couldn’t make the leap to prepare for it. I somehow still couldn’t understand that I might be seeing Sloane in just a few hours.

I’d closed the blinds and poured some extra food in the cat’s bowl, despite the fact he hadn’t been inside for a week or so. And as I’d left the kitchen, I’d grabbed the emergency cash from the conch shell even though I was pretty sure my Paradise wages would cover all our food and gas. Then I’d locked up and headed outside just as Frank pulled his truck into the driveway.

I got in the passenger seat and buckled up while Frank turned around and headed down the driveway to the road. “Ninety-five South?” he asked, at the end of the driveway, and I nodded. I had directions on my phone, and I’d also printed them out, in case my phone died on the return trip. “Here we go,” he said quietly, turning right, in the direction that would take us to the highway.

We drove for maybe half an hour in silence before I fully grasped the impact of what I’d just gotten us into. Not the trip itself—though I was well aware that it was crazy in its own right. But I hadn’t thought through the fact I was putting myself in a confined space with someone I hadn’t really spoken to in over a week. And we were going to have to be together for twenty hours, at least. This somehow hadn’t been factored in to my earlier decision to ask Frank, and as we crossed into New York, and then New Jersey, I started to regret not investigating how much it would have been to take a cab, or a bus. Because our conversation on this road trip so far had been limited to only the most basic driving talk—Can I get over to that lane? How are we on gas? Take the left exit. And I was realizing that it was pretty terrible to be sitting in silence with someone who you always used to have something to say to.

“Music?” I asked, after we’d been driving in New Jersey for a good twenty minutes and I just couldn’t stand the silence any longer. Frank glanced over at me and shrugged, nodding down at his iPod on the console.

“Sure,” he said, politely, like I was a stranger. “Whatever you want.”

I could feel myself getting mad at him, which wasn’t really fair, since he was currently in the middle of doing me a huge favor. I bit back saying something to him, and reached forward to the radio. I scrolled through until I found something not-terrible, a station that seemed to mostly be playing music that had been popular five years ago. “This okay?”

“Whatever you want,” Frank repeated, with the same inflection, irritating me even further.

“Fine,” I said, turning the volume up slightly, so that the silence in the truck wouldn’t be quite so apparent. We’d only passed two exits, though, before I reached forward and turned it down again. “Thank you for doing this,” I said, when I realized I hadn’t told him this yet. “I really appreciate it.”

Frank looked away from the road and glanced at me, then turned back to the highway that still seemed pretty clear, despite my parents’ worries. “Sure,” he said, in the same overly polite and formal voice that was currently driving me crazy. “It’s what friends do, right?”

He put a spin on the word, like he was saying it sarcastically. I wasn’t even sure what to make of that, so I just gave him a tight smile, turned the volume back up, and looked out the window again.

Maybe Frank had been feeling as annoyed as me, because by the time we crossed into Pennsylvania—the Keystone State—the tension between us was palpable, and rising, like the shimmering heat coming off the asphalt in the distance. And in contrast to the occasional license plates I saw, it was becoming clear by the charged silence between us that neither of us currently had a friend in Pennsylvania.

We’d long since lost the somewhat decent radio station, and while I’d tried to scan through them to find something else, I kept getting commercials and what sounded like polka. So I’d finally just turned off the radio, but the quiet in the truck felt oppressive, and I couldn’t help but wonder if we would have been better off with the accordions.

“We need gas,” Frank announced four exits later, breaking what felt like hours of silence.

I leaned forward to look at the signs that were posted by every exit, letting you know what you could find at that turnoff—usually just food, gas, and lodging, but I had seen the occasional ones for camping and swimming. Once we had gotten out of the tangle of the tri-state area and cleared New Jersey, things had opened up, and now I could see across the horizon, as this stretch of the state was pretty flat—blue sky stretching out endlessly in front of us, and bright-green grass on either side of the highway. It wasn’t congested, and Frank had mostly been staying in the left lane, driving fast but always within shouting distance of the speed limit. “It looks like there will be some in three miles,” I said as we passed the sign, and he moved a lane over.

Frank nodded but didn’t say anything, and I just looked at him, long enough that he noticed as he shifted and glanced over at me with raised eyebrows. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said, turning to look out the window. Frank took the exit—in addition to gas and food (no lodging) there was fishing at this location, as well. If we’d been talking, I had a feeling we would have been joking about the sign’s fish symbol, which was comically oversized and about to bite down on a tiny hook. I would have made some remark about how this exit apparently had giant mutant fish, in addition to a Chevron, or Frank would have. But instead, we just passed the sign in silence and headed to the gas station, which happened to be part of an enormous travel mart.

“I’m happy to get the gas,” Frank said as he pulled up next to the pump, but I shook my head.

“I insist.” It was one thing I knew I wasn’t going to budge on. If Frank was driving me, in his car, down to South Carolina, I was not going to let him pay for gas as well.

He handed me the keys and said, “It takes regular. Do you need some help?” I just shook my head, and Frank headed inside to the travel mart. I used my debit card to fill up the tank—I didn’t want to use the conch money until we had to. As I watched the numbers go up—it appeared that the truck had a very large tank, which meant I was paying more for gas than I ever had in my life—I felt myself getting more and more frustrated. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with what Frank had said; it was the tone—so blandly polite. It occurred to me that maybe the only reason he’d agreed to come on this trip was because he was Frank Porter, ever the Boy Scout. And if that was the case, maybe he was fine with us just not talking for the next twenty hours. I suddenly thought back to Frank’s parents at the gala, standing next to each other but not speaking, not once throughout the course of the night. Frank might have been okay with it, but I wasn’t. The pump clicked off, and I winced at the amount and returned the nozzle. Not stopping to get my receipt, letting the wind take it and bear it away, I marched into the travel mart.

I found Frank by the cold drinks case, grabbing a water and a Coke.

“Hey,” I said. Frank looked over at me, letting the glass refrigerator door swing shut, giving me a little blast of cool air.

“All filled up?” he asked in that same bland, maddening tone.

“Listen, I don’t think it’s fair for you to be mad at me.” I was speaking without thinking about it first, not hesitating, just saying what I felt.

He just blinked at me for a moment, then looked down at the bottles in his hands, wiping the condensation off his water bottle’s label—Lancaster Blue, a brand I’d never heard of before. “Let’s not do this,” he said, his voice tight. “We have a long drive ahead.”

“So we’re just supposed to sit there in silence?”

Frank looked back at me, and I saw frustration pass over his features. “Look, I’m here, aren’t I? I’m helping you out. Let’s leave it at that.” He turned and headed to the chips aisle, and I followed, after grabbing myself a water and a Diet Coke.

“No,” I said, more loudly than I intended to, and a woman who’d been reaching for a bag of Fritos glanced up at me. I took a step closer to him and lowered my voice. “If you’re mad at me, just be mad at me. Don’t pretend you’re not.” Somewhere in all this was getting lost the fact that I was mad at him, but I was no longer sure who was in the right, since we’d both behaved badly—me by kissing him, him by ignoring me for a week.

The woman with the Fritos was still looking at us, and Frank must have seen this, because he retreated to the candy aisle, and I followed. “If I am mad at you?” he asked, stopping in front of the chocolate section, like it was a rhetorical question, like the answer was obvious. “You ran away from me, Emily. Literally.  You left me standing in the middle of the road because you wouldn’t even hear me out.”

I stared at him for a moment. I hadn’t realized he would be mad about this; I’d assumed it was because of the kiss. “Well,” I said, feeling a little off-balance, “maybe I didn’t want to listen to you tell me we couldn’t be friends anymore.”

Frank just looked at me. “And what if that’s not what I was going to say?”

“ ’Scuse me.” I turned around and saw what looked like a bleary-eyed trucker reaching for the Reese’s Pieces, which I was currently standing in front of.

I stepped aside, and Frank turned and walked up to the register. I followed, placing my items next to his on the counter, my thoughts spinning. I glanced over at him as I reached into my bag for my wallet. I was so sure I’d known what he’d come to my house to say; it was like I’d never allowed for another possibility.

“Um,” I said, as the woman behind the counter started to scan our items, “So what were—”

“Four eighty,” the woman said. Frank reached into his pocket, but I pushed a five across the counter to her before he could pay.

I took my change, and we picked up our respective drinks. Frank headed out of the mini-mart, into the sun, and I hurried to follow him. I realized, as we walked to the truck, that I had the keys, and could refuse to let him in until he told me, but I didn’t think this would be the best way to go about things. I handed him the keys and walked around to the passenger side. I made myself wait until we were back on the highway before asking him again.

“So,” I said, playing with the cap on my water bottle. “What was it that you were going to say?”

Frank let out a breath, and I saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel. “This is why I’m mad,” he finally said, still looking straight ahead at the horizon. “I go to speak to you. I get my courage up, and you won’t even listen to me. But now, a week later, only when we’re stuck in a car together, you want to know.”

Just like that, I felt myself get mad again. “You disappeared for days. You weren’t texting me back.”

“But then I came to your house,” Frank said, as he changed lanes, his voice rising. “And you wouldn’t give me a chance to explain.”

“Well, I’m sorry if I’d had enough of people vanishing on me this summer!” I was yelling this before I knew I was going to say it, before I was really even aware it was what I felt.

“Oh,” Frank said after a moment. He glanced over at me, and I thought I saw something in his expression soften. “I guess I didn’t think about that.”

We drove in silence, and I kicked off my flip-flops and curled my legs up under me. I noticed the silence didn’t feel quite so charged any longer. It wasn’t the easy quiet that had been between us before, but it no longer felt uncomfortable. “So do you want to tell me now?” I finally asked.

Frank shook his head, but then said, “Maybe later.” He reached forward and turned on the radio, starting to scan for a station, and I let it go for the moment, unrolling my window and letting the warm air whip my hair around my face.

I wasn’t sure if it was the heat, or the fact that we’d landed on a station that seemed to be mostly easy listening, all soft wailing saxophones, or the fact that I’d gotten almost no sleep the night before, but as we crossed into Virginia, I felt myself yawning, my eyes getting heavy. I rested my head against the window and felt my eyes close.

I half expected I would dream about Sloane, if I dreamed at all. But when I opened my eyes again, I realized that I’d been dreaming about Frank. We’d been back together in his tent, where it was warm and peaceful, and he wanted to tell me something, something important.

I sat up and looked around.  At first, all I could see was green. The truck was parked, I was alone in it, and all around me was green—brilliantly colored trees and grass. After a moment, I realized we were parked at a scenic overlook, and that Frank was standing a few feet away, taking pictures with his phone.

From the light, it looked like it was getting to be later in the afternoon, and when I pulled out my phone, I saw that it was almost six. It no longer felt quite so oppressively hot out, though it was hard to tell inside the truck. I stretched my legs in front of me, and rolled my shoulders back. Even though I could see the highway, you couldn’t hear it here, just the low drone of cicadas and the occasional birdcall.

I wasn’t sure how long Frank was going to be, so mostly to occupy myself, I reached for his iPod and started scrolling through it. He never titled his playlists—this had been one of our bones of contention as we exchanged music, since I always titled mine, titles that he’d liked to make fun of—so I just went to “Mix 14,” which I assumed was the newest one, and scrolled through the songs.

MIX #14

Entertainment

Phoenix

My Racing Thoughts

Jack’s Mannequin

I Need My Girl

The National

Let’s Not Let It

Randy Houser

Yesterday

The Beatles

Each Coming Night

Iron & Wine

Magnolia

The Hush Sound

I Always Knew

The Vaccines

Little Talks

Of Monsters and Men

You Came Around

Nico Stai

Everybody Talks

Neon Trees

Makes Me Lose Control

Eric Carmen

In My Life

The Beatles

Let’s Go Surfing

The Drums

Young Love

Mystery Jets

Emmylou

First Aid Kit

Moth’s Wings (stripped down version)

Passion Pit

It’s a Hit

Rilo Kiley

Lights & Music

Cut Copy

You and Me

Parachute

Eleanor Rigby

The Beatles

Man/Bag of Sand

Frightened Rabbit

Isn’t It a Lovely Night?

The December

Look at Us Now

Math & Physics Club

You Send Me

Sam Cooke

At first I was just looking through them, noticing with a bittersweet satisfaction that there was Eric Carmen on the list, which I’d introduced him to, and that Frank had even allowed some country on his precious iPod. But as I looked at it a little longer, I realized there was something else.

There was a code.

I wondered if he’d even known he was doing it. But there was my name in the song titles, over and over again. I felt myself smile as I looked down at the tiny, glowing screen, wondering when he’d done this. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it felt like he’d just given me a present.

Frank lowered his phone and turned around, and I hurriedly dropped the iPod back in the console where I’d found it. I smiled when I saw him coming toward me. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that things were strange between us at the moment; it was just my automatic reaction to seeing him. He smiled back at me, though this faded a moment later, like maybe he’d also forgotten for just a second.

“Where are we?” I asked, as he settled himself back behind the wheel.

“North Carolina,” he said. “We’re getting close.”

I nodded, expecting to feel nervous or anxious about seeing Sloane, but I didn’t. I just felt a kind of calm certainty, like we were heading in the right direction.

We got back onto the highway, and I’d only just managed to find a decent radio station before we were crossing into South Carolina. I looked at the state sign as we passed it, decorated with the palm tree and crescent moon that I now knew well. Even though it looked like we wouldn’t get to the exit for River Port for an hour, I found myself sitting up straight, not just letting the scenery and exit signs pass me by, but paying attention to them, to each mile that was bringing me closer to Sloane.

We’d been driving for about an hour after the rest stop when Frank turned the radio off and looked over at me, like he was going to say something. Then he reached over and turned it back on again, but only for a moment before he snapped it off, the silence filling the car.

“So,” he said.

I waited for more, but when nothing came after a few moments, just Frank looking straight ahead, at the highway, I prompted, “So?”

“The thing I was going to tell you,” he said slowly, like he was finding the words as he was speaking them. “You said you wanted to know what it was.”

“Yes,” I made myself say, even though I was now more scared of the answer than I had been when I was pushing Frank to tell me outside the travel mart.

He looked over at me, long enough that my heart started to beat harder. “Lissa and I broke up,” he said, then turned the radio back on again.

I stared him. We were still on the highway. I was holding the directions and looking for 14A, the exit that would take us to River Port. But nothing else was the same. It was like the very air in the truck had changed.

Frank was looking straight ahead, like he had no idea he’d just made it harder for me to breathe. “When,” I started, finally, realizing that I had to say something, and that I wasn’t up to asking him what I really wanted to know. “When did this happen?”

“A few days after the gala,” he said. “I drove down to Princeton to talk to her.”

I’d known that he’d gone to her, but I that thought it was to be with her—not to break up with her. A new, terrible fear crept in—was I responsible for this? Had Frank broken up with his long-term girlfriend because I’d kissed him?

He let out a long breath, then went on, “Things hadn’t been right with us for months,” he said. “I was really trying, this summer. I didn’t think that it would matter, being apart. But it wasn’t just the distance. It was more than that. It had been going on for a while.”

I just nodded. I had dozens of questions, but none that I felt I could ask him. Maybe Frank sensed this, because he went on, “We didn’t really have all that much in common anymore. It was more like . . . we were just used to each other.”

“So . . . ,” I started, hoping this wasn’t the exact wrong question to ask. “It wasn’t because of me?”

“No,” Frank said, shaking his head. “I mean, when we first started hanging out this summer, I wasn’t thinking that way,” he said. “At all. I was committed to Lissa.  And you and I were friends. But then . . .” Frank glanced over at me for just a second, but that was all that it took. It suddenly felt like the truck was a good ten degrees warmer than it had been just seconds ago. He cleared his throat before speaking. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the night of my birthday. But at some point, I started . . . thinking about you,” he said, a little haltingly, “more than I knew I should. Much more.” Without even leaning over to look in my side mirror, I could tell that I was blushing. “But I wasn’t sure . . . I didn’t know how you might be feeling until you drove me home.”

“Right,” I murmured, thinking about the way I had kissed him, not the other way around, making my feelings pretty clear.

“And it wasn’t fair to her,” Frank said, glancing quickly into the rearview mirror and changing lanes. “Or you. So I drove down to see her.”

“What happened?” I asked, wishing I could seem impartial, detached, and not like someone who was desperate to know how things had turned out.

Frank took a breath and let it out. “She was feeling the same way,” he said. “It was why she didn’t come in July. She knew if she saw me, she’d have to break up with me, and she didn’t want to do that to me on my birthday. And as soon as I started to tell her what I was feeling, she was pretty quick to end it.”

“I’m really sorry.”

Frank nodded, and paused for a long moment before he said, “I think we’re going to be fine. I don’t think we’ll ever be great friends, but it’s okay.”

“Good,” I said, trying to sound cheerful about this when my thoughts were spinning. I remembered when Frank came to my house, and how happy he had seemed. He’d wanted to tell me then that they’d broken up. And I hadn’t even let him finish, and had run away from him. I suddenly wished, more than anything, that I’d let Frank tell me when he’d wanted to. Because I was no longer sure what any of this meant.

“So, um,” Frank said, sounding more nervous than I’d ever heard him, “what do you—”

“Oh my god,” I said, loudly, pointing out of my side of the car as 14A approached with worrying swiftness. “There’s our exit.” Frank glanced at the mirror, then cut across the two lanes that were thankfully free of cars, to take the exit for River Port. “Sorry,” I said, when we were off the interstate and winding around the ramp. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.” In fact, I really, really hadn’t wanted to interrupt him then, because it had seemed like he was about to ask me something important.

“It’s okay,” he said, stopping at a red and glancing over at me. “I was just . . .” The car behind us honked and Frank looked around. “Do I take a right here?”

I fumbled for the directions, and realized that this might be the worst possible moment to have an important conversation. “Right,” I confirmed, and Frank made the turn. I looked down at the directions, which got much more complicated than they previously had been, then over at Frank.

“We don’t have to talk about this now,” he said. He nodded to the directions in my hand. “Let’s just get there first.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding a few too many times. I was actually grateful to have a moment to try and process everything I’d just learned in the past few minutes. And following the instructions to get to 4 Brookside Lane, with their clear steps to a known outcome, seemed preferable to trying to sort through my tangle of thoughts.

I rolled down my window, and Frank did the same, and the warm, early evening air blew through the truck, ruffling the directions in my hand. We drove through a one-street downtown, drug stores and clothing shops, but also a lot of empty storefronts, for-sale signs in the windows. We turned down a side road that took us through a neighborhood that looked grand but fading, with mansions on either side of the road, most separated by long stretches of land. We’d been driving for a few miles when I realized we were getting close.

“We should be coming up to Brookside,” I said, leaning forward to look for it. “On the left.” A moment later, I saw the sign, half hidden by an overgrown tree. “There.”

“They don’t make this place easy to find,” Frank murmured as he made the turn. We were looking for number four, but this didn’t appear to be an ordinary road, where that would have been a simple thing to find. We passed the drive for the first house, but it wasn’t until several minutes later that we saw the second one. The road was long, with trees on either side, so overgrown they almost met above us and formed a canopy.

I glanced at my phone as Frank drove slowly down Brookside and we passed the third house. It was almost eight, and night was falling, the shadows of the trees lengthening and stretching out all around us.

“Are you sure this is right?” Frank asked. He turned on the headlights, which were suddenly bright against the falling darkness and squinted out in front of him. “Because I don’t think—”

“It’s there,” I said, pointing to the driveway.  You would have missed it unless you’d been searching for it. There was a brick pillar on either side of the drive, and they both had brass plaques on them that read 4 Brookside, but the bricks were crumbling and it looked like the brass hadn’t been polished in a while.

Frank turned down the driveway and I felt my heart start to beat faster. When a house came into view, I took off my seat belt and leaned forward to look closer.

The house was big and white and sprawling, and you could tell it had once been impressive, but the paint was peeling, and the lawn looked overgrown. But I barely noticed this, because there was a girl sitting on the mansion’s steps in the falling darkness, reading a magazine and sipping a Diet Coke.

Frank had only just stopped the car before I was getting out of it, closing my door behind me and walking toward the house and my best friend.

Sloane looked up from her magazine and her jaw dropped open. She stared at me as I walked closer in the fading light and looked up at her.

I smiled at her before I spoke. “Hi.”