Page 25 of Born to be Wilder

Instead, I was standing in a pile of trash shredded by raccoons, with no plan, as fate, it seemed, didn’t want me hurling myself off into oblivion to try to control my terrifying feelings for my friend.

“Well…” Alice nudged a piece of shredded plastic with her toe. “At least the raccoons had a good time. A better time than we would have had bungee jumping. Really, Sylvie? I would expect that from Marge, but you?” She shook her head. “Shocking.”

And she wasn’t wrong. It was shocking coming from me. But maybe that was the point when I’d made that decision.

“So what will we do instead?” Doris asked, joining Marge in the cleanup after finishing her prayers.

“I’m not sure, but as soon as we hit the road, I’ll get searching. I’ll find something.”

The stress settled onto my shoulders as I picked up garbage beside them. This was my last day as captain, and I would need to come up with something, anything, to make sure this adventure of ours would be one we’d laugh about and remember always.

We finished cleaning the site, then piled back into Bertha. Marge climbed behind the wheel, and I settled into the chair beside her.

“Well? Where am I going?” she asked.

I picked up my phone and opened the search bar.

“Things to do in central Indiana,” I muttered as I typed.

“Whatever it is,” Alice said from behind me, “make sure it’s not a nudist colony.”

“Or bungee jumping,” Doris added.

I put on my Viking hat.

“Marge, start driving. I’ll tell you where we’re going when I figure it out.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” she responded. Then she fired up Bertha and we bumped back down the gravel road toward our next adventure… whatever the hell that would be.

Chapter Six

“Are you sure there isn’t bat crap in my hair?” Alice leaned forward for Doris to give her a look.

Again.

We’d left the cave tour an hour ago, and when we’d gotten back to Bertha, Alice had found a cobweb on her jacket. It had sent her into a tailspin with worry that she was covered in creepy crawlies.

Doris poked through her hair. “You’re good, Alice. I promise.”

Marge glanced at them in the rearview, snickering. “You look like a monkey when you do that, Doris. Good thing we aren’t on that zipline tour or you’d definitely attract a monkey mate again.”

“Marge!” Doris swatted a hand at the air. “Stop it!”

Marge rolled with a belly laugh as Doris pouted behind her, Alice still obsessively sweeping a hand through her hair.

I sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window as the Indiana countryside began to give way to the neon-lit fringes of a mid-sized town. A nagging sense of failure tugged at my insides. The only thing I could find in southern Indiana in a pinch had been a local cave tour. The caves had been fine. A nice walk. But they weren’t bungee jumping. They weren’t the face-your-mortality moment I’d promised myself.

I wanted to give Alice something epic. Something that felt as big as the mountain she was about to climb. Instead, I’d given her a damp walk through a limestone crevice... and apparently a new OCD symptom of being covered in bat shit.

I tried not to be too hard on myself. Picking a captain’s wish on the fly was like trying to find a needle in a haystack while the haystack was moving at sixty-five miles per hour. When we’d had the wish basket, we had thought long and hard about our greatest dreams before we wrote them down. Now I was supposed to conjure magic out of whatever happened to be alongside whatever highway we were on, and the honest truth was that most things alongside most highways were not magic. They were gas stations and chain restaurants and, apparently, nudist colonies if you didn’t read carefully enough.

“I’m starving,” Alice announced from the seat behind me. “And don’t say ‘eat some Funyuns,’” she quickly added, peering up at Marge.

“You’re missing out on the Funyuns,” Marge answered. “Those things are damn good.”

“What’s not damn good? How your breath smells after eating them.” Alice pulled a face. “I’d rather stand in a cave and let bats shit on me than stand across from you and smell that rancid breath.”

“Can we please find a real restaurant tonight?” Doris asked. “Cooking out was fun last night, but I don’t want to risk another raccoon run-in. Maybe we can find something in this town?”