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“Snoopy sings.” I honestly hadn’t known there was a Peanuts musical until Russell had played me songs from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.
“That’s true. I can’t argue with that.”
“So what do you think?”
“I mean—I’m sure it would,” he said slowly, like he was trying to figure out what I was talking about.
“So you could write it. If you wanted to do a new musical—you could base it on the book.” I glanced over at him to see what he thought about this, but he was already shaking his head.
“I don’t have the rights.”
“I’m not saying that you need to get it produced. But just to have something to reapply with—if you wanted to do that—you could, right? Isn’t there some kind of exception for students, if you’re not going to try to sell it?”
I looked across the car at Russell and smiled when I saw that his eyes had lit up.
* * *
“Okay. I had a thought,” Russell said. He’d taken out his copy of Theseus’s Sailboat and was using it for reference, talking through plot points as we tossed around ideas. I’d secretly been hoping that when he pulled out the book, he’d put his glasses back on, but it seemed like maybe he had his contacts in now, and I might not get to see him in glasses again, which honestly was incredibly disappointing.
We were on a stretch of highway that was a straight shot toward the horizon, mountains in the distance that we kept driving toward but somehow never seemed to get any closer to. Three lanes and a shoulder, with short, scrubby green bushes on the side of the road. The sky was huge and blue and endless above us, wispy white clouds drifting across it. The road wasn’t very busy—I was staying in the middle lane, mostly to avoid the trucks barreling past in the right lane and the cars on the left whipping past us at speeds that seemed, even on a fairly deserted highway, really ill-advised. But the openness of the road—and the real lack of traffic—made me feel like I could relax into the drive, leaning back against the cloth-covered seat and resting my elbow on the window, occasionally letting the wind drift through my open fingers.
“Darcy?”
“Sorry,” I said, glancing away from the road for a moment to look at Russell. He was bent over his book, the way he had been the very first time I’d seen him. “What did you say?”
“Just that I had an idea. What do you think about this—the camp song can be a motif we keep revisiting; it can be threaded through the whole show. And then in act 2, when the campers sing, Will can actually be having a duet with his younger self.”
“We’ve gone through this.” I laughed. “They’re not the same person.”
“Okay, except they totally are.”
“Give me some proof.”
“What about the scar they both have on their left hand?”
I frowned. “Remind me?”
“Here, I’ll read it.” He leaned back against the door, one leg bent. He cleared his throat, then started to read out loud. And as he did, I had to catch my breath.
I was in a vintage car, windows down, driving across the desert. A very cute guy was reading to me from my favorite book. I’d wanted to go to Silverspun so I could have some memories to hang on to before I left—of mountains and sunshine and music.
But that all seemed so shortsighted now. As I let the familiar words wash over me, I knew that Silverspun was only going to be a blip in my memory—more a means to an end than anything else. This was what I would remember, and take with me, and think about in November. The wind in my hair, the sun on my legs, Russell in his sunglasses reading to me, the endless horizon in front of us.
“ ‘Emma traced her hand over the small, crescent-shaped scar on William’s thumb, letting her fingers rest there for just a moment before—’ ”
BANG.
A sound like a gunshot ripped through the car. I jumped, and Russell yelped, the book tumbling to the floor. “Fuck! Darcy, what was—”
But before I could even think about answering, the Bronco swerved to the right, out of my control. “Ohmygodohmygod,” I said, all one word. I gripped the wheel hard and tried to swerve back, but overcompensated and veered into the left lane. There had hardly been any cars on the road but there were some now—in my peripheral vision, I saw a blue sports car barely get out of our way in time.
Everything seemed to be happening very fast and very slow, all at once. My heart was racing—I could feel the adrenaline coursing through me, everything in my body screaming danger danger danger. The car was shaking, the steering wheel getting hard to hold on to, the wheel pulling right even though I wasn’t turning it that way.
“Gonna pull over,” I managed, and Russell turned to glance behind him.
“You’re clear.”
I put on my turn signal, then slowed down, feeling the jerky movement of the car that I knew couldn’t be good, and then pulled off the road, the steering wheel fighting me the whole time. When we were on the shoulder, I shifted into park, shut off the engine, then lifted my trembling hands from the steering wheel.
