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“Fasten your seatbelt, Eli. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.”
Chapter12
Eli
Missouri
“You’re doing this wrong,” Jeb complains from the driver’s seat.
I don’t bother looking up from my computer. “Doing what wrong?” I ask absently.
“The whole road trip thing. You’re supposed to watch the scenery.”
My eyes raise up a few inches to look out the windshield. It’s the same endlessly flat road we’ve been traveling on for hours.
I turn toward Jeb. “There. I watched. Are you satisfied now?”
“No,” he says in a tone that’s just shy of whining. “When the scenery is boring, you’re supposed to play games.”
“Games?”
“Yeah, like hitting each other every time you see a Volkswagen bug or—”
My irritated sigh interrupts what he’s about to suggest next. “I have work to do.”
“Fine,” Jeb says, his eyes, that are usually sparking with amusement or some form of trouble, go flat in disappointment. The sight makes my chest ping. I shut the lid to my laptop.
“Is there a game that doesn’t involve bodily physical harm?”
“License plate game,” Jeb says, his face lighting up. He actually seems more excited about playing this game than when he found a million dollars in the police cruiser.
“What exactly does that entail?” I ask.
“We try to spot a license plate of each state in alphabetical order before we reach our destination.
Well, at least this game doesn’t involve getting slapped on the forehead. I can placate Jeb for a few minutes with this inane pastime and then get back to running data.
* * *
“Look, look.” I lean forward in my seat, pointing eagerly at an old, beat-up sedan going in the opposite direction with the license plate featuring a butterfly, a monarch bee, and a honeybee. “That’s Pennsylvania. Now we have to find Rhode Island next.”
Jeb smiles smugly at my excitement. We’ve been playing his game for hours, and though I know it would be a statistical improbability to spot plates from all fifty states in alphabetical order, I’m determined to try before we reach our destination.
That’s why when Jeb swerves off the highway and pulls to the side of the road, I give a frustrated cry.
I’m suddenly embarrassed.It’s just a silly game, Eli.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “We won’t officially reach our destination until St. Louis, so we still have time to find the rest of the plates.” He nods to the field where a wooden stand sits with a large hand-painted sign proclaiming ‘$20 a Bushel’amid an orchard of trees. “This is lunch.”
“We’re eating again?” I say with a sigh, but follow him out of the car. Jeb seems to be obsessed with making sure we stop every few hours and try whatever food is the regional specialty. “It’s a highly inefficient use of our time.”
“You can’t survive on caffeine and black licorice all the time, Eli.” He slips a twenty-dollar bill into the metal cash box built into the stand, then grabs a thatched basket from a stack of them and hands it to me. “Now, come and help me pick some nectarines.”
I follow him as he strolls down a row of trees, their branches heavy with red-and-yellow fruit. Every so often, he stops to examine a tree or touch one of the plump fruits, but then walks on without picking any of them.
With each step we take, I feel all the time I’ve lost today weigh on me. First, with becoming caught up with Jeb’s license plate game, and now pointlessly walking around some orchard in Missouri while Jeb turns finding the perfect nectarine into some grand quest.
“Would you pick some already so we can get back on the road?” I bitch.
