Chapter 6

288 Miles

For the first forty-seven minutes, no one says anything. We just listen to the radio and look straight ahead down the interstate.

When the music starts crackling with static, I adjust the knob left and right, but the only things I can get are Christian rock and talk radio. I leave it on talk radio because then at least someone will be talking.

The host is interviewing hikers who completed the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia all the way to Maine. They’re talking about what they carried in their packs.

My harmonica, one says. It was a huge lifesaver, especially on rainy nights, when I was stuck in my tent.

Anything you wish you’d left behind?

The hiker laughs. My book. I figured I’d be doing all this reading and finish it by the time I got out of Georgia.

Not the case? the interviewer asks.

Not a page. The hiker laughs again. I left it in the first town we crossed.

Another hiker butts in. See, that’s funny, because reading was my lifesaver. Books are heavy, but I ripped out the pages as I read, and recycled them when I crossed through towns.

I like imagining the pages of a story scattered between Georgia and Maine.

I guess you just bring what you think you’ll need out there, the first hiker says. And that’s different for everybody.

Dad humphs and glances across me at Mom.

I try to change the channel, but all I can find is static.

“What, Henry?”

I keep turning the dial, but nothing is coming through clearly.

“I can’t imagine having to go that far with so little,” Dad says.

“Sounds pretty liberating to me,” Mom retorts. “Being on the move with only what you need.”

My shoulders are trapped tight between theirs, and it feels like the space in the front of the van is getting smaller.

Dad humphs again. “Put it back on that interview, Rain.”

I turn the dial back toward the talk radio station, but I’m hoping that it’s been taken over by static, or that they’ve moved on to some boring subject that Mom and Dad can’t argue about. Though something tells me they’d find a way.

A voice breaks through the static.

“There,” Dad says.

The hiker says the trail is about 2,190 miles long. It crosses fourteen states, and about one in four people who set out to hike the whole trail actually make it. Everyone else quits.

One in four.

That’s the same odds as marriages that survive the death of a child. And that’s a fact, because I’ve been researching.

After reading pages and pages of Dr. Cyn’s blog, I basically know that most marriages don’t make it. She writes about the stages of grief, and support systems, and emotional stress, and how the death of a child goes against nature.

And even though she wrote a post seventy-four days ago that finding a fresh start could help a couple come back together, she admits that a lot of why a marriage suffers or survives through it all is still a big who-knows.

And if I want my parents to be that one out of four, I know I have a big job to do. And that’s a fact, because they argue over garden equipment and some stranger on the radio’s hiking pack.

The thing is, you don’t really know exactly what you’ll need or what works for you until you’re out there on the trail. It’s a lot of trial and error and getting what you need along the way.

Now Mom says, “Huh, this is interesting.”

Another hiker, a new voice, speaks up and adds, It’s not about the what, it’s about the who. It’s with who you choose to walk this trail.

Dad crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against the headrest. Mom has both hands high on the steering wheel and looks far down the interstate.

We’ve only gone sixty-eight miles, and I’m already feeling like the air in the van is disappearing fast. And I want to yell. Yell at them both to just stop. Stop arguing over stupid stuff. Stop humphing and edging closer to the middle because they’re taking up my space. Just stop because I already miss Izzy and right now I’m supposed to be stretched out and reading in Ms. Carol’s room, but instead I returned my book to the school library yesterday when I was only forty-six pages in, and hugged Ms. Carol goodbye forever.

Instead of yelling like I really want to and taking back all my space in the front of the van, I just crack my knuckles and stare down the interstate and my brain tells me that maybe if I can keep the station from going staticky the whole way to New York City, everything will go back to the way it was, and my parents will be one out of four.