She covers the phone with her hand and whispers back to me. “Go pack a suitcase and get ready. We’re driving to Tennessee.”
“What?”
“Just do it,” she whispers, shooing me away.
Grudgingly, I head to my room and pack a backpack. I’m not sure how many days we’ll be gone, so I grab a few outfits and my toothbrush and phone charger. A few minutes later, Dad walks in looking exhausted and annoyed.
“I’m sorry to pull you out of school,” he says, sitting on my bed with a heavy sigh. “I’m going to need your help.”
“What exactly is going on?”
“My uncle was taken advantage of before he died. Some grifters seem to have moved into his house and are cashing his social security checks and won’t move out. My aunt isn’t able to do anything and she’s saying they’re trying to claim squatter’s rights to avoid being evicted. It’s a whole mess. I’m going up there to sort this out and plan a funeral, and I need your help.”
“What exactly can I do?” I ask.
Dad shrugs. “You’re intimidating. You’re an extra person on my side. I just need your help, son. I’ve already called the principal and explained that you’ll be out the rest of the week. He said your teachers will email you some schoolwork you can do in the meantime so you don’t get behind. And Coach was understanding, too. Don’t worry—he’s not going to let anything take you off that team. Oh, and can you go pick up your sister? She’s still at school.”
I nod. Schoolwork and football is the last thing on my mind right now. I don’t want to be away from Zara. But this is clearly important, and I need to be there for my dad.
When he leaves my room, he tells me we’ll be heading out in about half an hour. I go pick up my sister from her elementary school and she’s super excited for the road trip and excuse to skip school. Once I’m back at home, I text Zara. I don’t tell her all the drama, just a quick summary. I say my great uncle died and my dad needs my help with arranging the funeral in Tennessee. She’s really understanding about the whole thing, which makes this even harder.
Back at my old school, Andrea would yell at me any time I had to cancel or change plans. If I wasn’t doing exactly what she wanted me to do, she was mad and I was apologizing. But with Zara, even though I tell her I’m sorry, she doesn’t make me feel like I need to apologize for things that are out of my control.
This next week in Tennessee will suck, but at least I have Zara to talk to each day.
* * *
I do not getto talk to Zara each day.
My great uncle lived out in the middle of nowhere. When I think of Tennessee, I think of Nashville and country music legends. I failed to realize that we would not be staying in Nashville. I don’t get any cell phone signal in the hotel we’re staying in, which is on the outskirts of some small town that barely registers on the map. The first two days, I help my dad try to talk sense into the squatters at my great uncle’s house, and when they refuse to move out, my dad has to go see a lawyer. I stay at the hotel, walking all around the small place with my phone in the air, trying to get some kind of signal.
I send Zara texts, and every so often the signal gets strong enough for it to go through.
It’s slow and painful waiting on these texts, which are the highlights of my day. The hotel doesn’t even have Wi-Fi, so I can’t try to email her. All I can do is wander around hoping my texts go through. It’s agony.
On Thursday night, I’m standing in the hotel lobby, my phone up in front of me. I learned that if I stand in this corner of the lobby with my phone just right, I’ll get two bars of signal. Sometimes it lasts enough to text three or four times before the signal disappears.
“Excuse me?” a woman says from behind the front desk.
Crap. She’s going to tell me I’m annoying and I have to leave.
“Sorry,” I say with a bashful smile. “I’m just trying to get signal.”
“I’ve seen you around every day this week trying to make that work,” she says. She looks about my mom’s age, wearing the same black vest every other hotel employee wears. “I’m not really supposed to do this but…” She holds up a big cell phone. “It’s a satellite phone, which gets signal everywhere. We have it in case guests have an urgent need to call someone since no one gets cell signal out here.” She smiles at me. “Do you have an urgent need?”
“Eh…” I bite my lip. “It’s urgent to me, but it’s probably not urgent to you.”
She chuckles. “Girlfriends are an urgent matter. I can give you fifteen minutes a day for free.”
“Really?” I walk up and take the phone. It’s heavy and has a huge antenna on top of it. “Thank you so much.”
“The only rule is you have to sit in the lobby to talk on it. Feel free to come get it tomorrow too.”
I thank her again and then walk to a couch in the corner of the room and call Zara. She answers on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me. Zane, I mean.”
