THE NEXT DAY BROUGHT THE SPRING WEATHER everyone in Salt Lake City had been waiting for throughout the month of May. The morning dawned bright and cloudless, and the perfectly yellow sun rose in the east over Grandeur Peak, clearly visible from the Matlins’ kitchen window. After a wet, long winter, the regal mountain was green and lush.
But the beauty of the morning was lost on Mitch Matlin as he sat sulking over a cup of lukewarm coffee at the kitchen table. He had barely slept after the miserable encounter with Nora Dickinson the previous afternoon. Or, if he had slept, his dreams were no different than the images and sounds running on repeat through his head.
Ohh, ohh! I think he’s trying to ask you to prom, babe.
What’s your name again?
I know that, and I do like Hanson, but what are you doing here?
What’s your name again?
Mitch shuddered. It wasn’t easy to shake off, since he’d been picturing and perfecting his Say Anything moment for too many years to remember.
“How ’bout I make you a fresh cup, eh? That looks like sludge,” Mitch’s dad said, coming up behind him. He put his hands on Mitch’s shoulders and gave them a forceful rub.
“Agh, no thanks,” Mitch said, arching his back like an irritated tabby cat. “I gotta get going.” Mitch got up from the table and grabbed his backpack from the floor. Did it even have his books and notebooks in it? He didn’t care to check.
“TGIF, right son?” his dad said cheerfully. “I know yesterday sucked, but let’s do something fun this weekend. If the Jazz ever decided to play well enough to get into the playoffs, we would have a basketball game to go to, but—”
“I’ll probably just sleep, don’t worry about it,” Mitch said bitterly, blowing past his dad and out the door.
After three forgettable morning classes, Kendra made her way into the courtyard at East High to eat her lunch in the sunshine. Though she was in a sour mood, even she had to acknowledge the warmth was soothing. She searched the sprawling grass for Mitch, to no avail. She’d been waiting to see him all morning so they could commiserate about their miserable attempts at getting prom dates the day before. Though they’d texted a bit the night before, Kendra knew he had more to tell her and she him.
As she scanned the grass, Kendra couldn’t help but replay the events of the previous afternoon. Every single person had abandoned her in her hour of need! Of course, the apologies and excuses had rolled in to the group thread in the minutes and hours after the end of school (I couldn’t find you!; Ugh sorry I had to pee and then I missed you!; OMG my grandpa literally died during seventh period, it was srsly so crazy, so sorry girl). But that didn’t make the sting of rejection any easier.
Lost in her reverie, Kendra didn’t notice Mitch cutting across the lawn towards her, waving sheepishly. “Forever alone much?” he asked, flicking her forehead.
“Gah!” Kendra sputtered, jerking her head away. “Sorry, I was just a little distracted thinking about the fact that I have no game whatsoever and no one will ever love me.”
Smiling ever so slightly, Mitch sat down on the grass and opened his backpack. Immediately he realized he hadn’t brought any food. “Of course,” he said. “Hard to pack a lunch when you’d rather never eat again and wither away like the pathetic corpse of a human you truly are.”
“Well, I can help you there,” she said. Mitch gawked as Kendra pulled out bag after bag of junk food: Oreos, Cheetos, three different flavors of Lay’s, and a Tupperware of pizza rolls.
“God, it’s like Obese Mary Poppins’s handbag,” he said.
Kendra tore open the bag of Cheetos and pounded a fistful before saying anything. Mitch took her lead and dove into the package of Oreos. After a minute of desperate eating, Mitch managed a soft, “Thanks.”
“I’m pretty good at finding ways to soothe deep internal pain,” Kendra said. “I have to do it once a month.”
“God, yesterday was awful,” Mitch said. And out of nowhere—with his mouth still half full of Oreo—his eyes welled up hot with tears. “I just can’t—” he croaked before cutting himself off.
“Yeah, man,” Kendra said. “I just sort of stood here after everybody walked away to their buses and stuff. After like ten minutes, the stress wore off and I guess it was good it was raining because nobody could tell I was just, like, openly weeping.”
“I don’t know why I thought I had a chance,” Mitch said. “I mean, honestly. I still haven’t managed to get any girl to date me. Why did I think Nora Dickinson would have any interest?”
Kendra nodded. “I felt pretty stupid standing here, yesterday,” she said softly. “Really stupid.”
Mitch looked over at his best friend and their eyes met, each a little damp and red. But he also couldn’t help but smile. He marveled at how pathetic his life felt at that moment and how lucky he was to have Kendra in the boat with him.
“You didn’t know that Bo Dennis is dating Nora, right?” Mitch asked. “You would have told me?”
“Oh yeah, sorry, forgot to mention my best friend Bo Dennis is shtupping the love of your life. My bad,” Kendra said, chuckling. “Like, what is the appeal of him, anyway? He looks like a thumb.”
“Kendra, it’s okay, you don’t have to comfort me like that.”
“You’re not hearing me. He’s not a boy. He’s not human. He’s a thumb. And thumbs are ugly.”
Mitch sighed, cracking open the pizza rolls. “Well, she likes him for some reason, I guess. Not only am I not cool enough to take Nora Dickinson to prom, I’m not even cool enough to know that I can’t!”
“Maybe Adam is dating somebody, too,” Kendra said.
“You know,” Mitch said softly, “you were probably right.”
Kendra looked up, panicked. “About what? Adam does have a girlfriend?”
“That I should have asked someone I actually kind of know. That way she would have had to, like, be nice or offer some kind of explanation, or at least say more to me than just ‘uh’ . . . ”
“Well,” Kendra started, “Adam didn’t say much of anything either. He just said that somebody had already asked him—which was a lie, I asked around—and that he had to go catch his bus, and that he was really sorry. And that we could totally still dance together for, like, one song. So I guess there’s that.”
This caught Mitch off guard. “Oh. So you’re still gonna go?”
“Well, I thought about it,” Kendra said. “You can go stag, you know.”
“Oh my God, but that’s social suicide!” Mitch bellowed, nearly choking on a pizza roll. “I’m not gonna let you do that!”
“But dancing with Adam!” Kendra whined, making a pouty face. “He’s so hot!”
“It’ll be the saddest Cha-Cha Slide you ever slid,” Mitch said. “And then it’ll be over, and you’ll wonder why you came.”
Kendra sighed, taking another handful of Cheetos. Her shoulders sank as she imagined that feeling, standing on the dance floor as Adam parted ways with her to go find his actual date again. She could picture the cheap colored lights dancing around her feet and in her eyes as she frantically searched the room for the life raft of another friend to dance with—or even just someone else to talk to.
“Maybe we could go together?” Kendra asked. “I guess.”
“Wow, try to sound a little less enthusiastic,” Mitch said. “I don’t know, I’m just sort of over the whole thing, to be honest. No offense.”
“None taken,” Kendra said. “I know exactly what you mean.”
A heavy silence hung in the air between them. The dream of prom was flickering out before their eyes.
Mitch looked out around the courtyard at the other East High students enjoying the sunshine and their well-rounded lunches. Suddenly, he felt completely out of place. All the people around the courtyard—many of whom Mitch had known since elementary school—seemed like complete strangers.
“I feel, like, really far away from everyone right now,” Kendra said.
“Yes!” Mitch yelled, amazed at how in sync they were. “My thoughts exactly.”
Kendra looked at Mitch with a serious gaze. She took a breath. “You know,” she said, “I have kind of a crazy idea.”
“Oh boy,” Mitch said. “Better hand me those Cheetos.”
Kendra did and said, “So, prom is only three days before graduation. And prom is a week from now. So that means we’ll be free birds in ten days.”
Mitch nodded. “Three plus seven is ten. Couldn’t agree with you more.”
“So, the other thing,” Kendra said, “is that my graduation present is my dad’s old Mustang.”
Mitch gawked at his best friend, his pulse quickening. “The red one?”
“Yep.”
“The 1970?”
“Yep.”
“The convertible?”
“Yes. The red 1970 convertible Ford Mustang.”
“It’s going to be yours.”
“Correct.”
“In ten days.”
“The Mustang.”
“Mitch!” Kendra shouted. “So, what if . . . we take a road trip? We get out of here, we put high school in the rearview mirror—”
“Ha, car puns,” Mitch said.
“Nice,” Kendra said. “We’re over this, you and me. Nobody wants us at prom? Fine. We’re about to be adults anyway—flying out of the coop, baby, wings spread wide! Let’s do something crazy!”
“So our retribution for prom is to take a road trip—not on prom, but after graduation?”
“Exactly,” said Kendra. “We’ll just tough out prom night, and then we’ll have an epic start to our summer that will more than make up for it.”
Mitch thought about it silently. “This is all a lot to take in right now. Do you think your parents would let us? That car’s kind of old . . . ”
“It’s been in a garage for twenty years,” Kendra said. “It looks totally beautiful, and my dad told me it’s in perfect shape. And he knows what he’s talking about.”
“I’m not sure my parents will let me,” Mitch said. “I don’t know, Kendra, it sounds cool, but . . . ”
“But what?!” Kendra bellowed. “I am so not interested in sitting around all summer waiting for college to start so I can forget about how much it sucked getting tossed aside by Adam Green like an old sweater he outgrew. I want to blast that feeling away with the top down, flying down the highway! How awesome does that sound?”
Mitch tried to hide the grin creeping across his face, but Kendra spotted it. She sat bolt upright and grabbed Mitch’s forearm. “What?!” Mitch jolted backwards.
“We could go to Vegas,” Kendra said. She turned her head slowly to look at Mitch, her giddy eyes open wide and her mouth open even wider.
“You look like a Muppet,” Mitch said.
“All these lame-os are going to some PG imitation-Vegas where they’ll play blackjack for Hershey’s Kisses or something,” Kendra said. “But what if we do the real thing? Gambling, tanning, gross trashy people from all over the world, the excesses of capitalism around every corner. Doesn’t it sound perfect?”
“We’re not twenty-one,” Mitch said. “We won’t be able to do literally any of that.”
“Oh, that’s so NBD,” Kendra said. “We can get ourselves some IDs that say otherwise.”
“No way, man,” Mitch said, “I’ve seen Superbad. I know how that goes.”
“We’ll come up with something better than McLovin,” Kendra said, “I promise. Maybe McLovin, Jr. Oh my God, Mitch, I am obsessed with this. This is happening. We’re gonna make some memories—so many memories that we won’t have space in our heads to remember this terrible, terrible moment we’re living in right now.”
Her enthusiasm was infectious. When a small smile crept across his face, Kendra smacked his back like a proud father. “There he is! Matlin is ready to party!”
“Yeah,” Mitch said. “Yeah, I am. Why not, right? Nobody can stop us. We’re out of high school, let’s take the bull by the horns. Nora Dickinson and Adam Green don’t know what they’re missing!”
Kendra held a pizza roll between her fingers, admiring it like a nugget of fourteen-karat gold. “Ten days from now, my boy,” she said, “we will be sitting by a glistening pool, surrounded by glistening bodies, all of us lounging in glistening, gilded armchairs . . . eating only the finest pizza rolls the world has to offer.”
“It’s only seven hours away,” Kendra said, trying not to whine. “That’s way less than even going to Grandpa and Grandma’s—which I’ve done alone before, may I remind you, plenty of times!”
“I know, honey, I know,” muttered Kendra’s mother Angela, rubbing her temples. “And you’ve reminded us of that plenty of times—just in the last forty-five minutes!”
“This is all a lot to ask of us,” said Richard, Kendra’s dad, putting his arm around his wife’s waist. “It’s hard enough seeing you graduate from high school, and then the next day we’re supposed to watch you drive off into the sunset?”
“And what is there to do in Reno, anyway?” Angela asked, exasperated.
Kendra winced. She hated being reminded of the massive lie she was trying to sell to her parents. Though the idea of road tripping to Vegas was something she and Mitch were both dying to do, they quickly realized how difficult it was going to be to actually make it happen. This was one of only a few times in her life Kendra was frustrated by how much her parents cared about her well-being.
In the days since dreaming up the idea, she and Mitch had been working furiously at crafting a story. They had to have all their ducks in a row and tell their parents identical details—down to which freeway they would be taking to get there.
“I told you, my friend Danny’s grandma has a huge house there and she’s going away for a month. She’s, like, super rich. Her husband died a while ago, and she took all his money or something. It has one of those infinity pools, a hot tub, a sauna—here, I have pictures, want to see?”
Kendra’s parents’ eyes opened wide at this offer. Kendra’s heart skipped a beat. Were they starting to crack?
She pulled out her phone, where she had ten pictures of different luxurious household amenities—all from ten different homes, collected from a simple Google search. Of course, Mitch had the identical photos.
As Kendra scrolled through, she watched her parents’ gaze soften. She was off and running. She pictured Mitch being grilled by his parents at this exact same moment. She hoped he was as good at sticking to the story as she had been. Though her stomach was roiling with anxiety, she was positively serene on the outside.
Danny, Mitch’s friend, had no grandmother who lived in Reno. But he promised to field any phone calls from Mitch’s or Kendra’s parents, if they decided to go above their kids’ heads. He said he did a pitch-perfect impression of his own father—who neither Mitch’s parents nor Kendra’s parents had ever met. Flawless.
“Gosh, it does look nice,” Angela said, sighing. “Can we come?” She chuckled at her own joke, looking back at Kendra.
“I don’t know,” Richard cut in. “I still don’t feel good about it.”
“What can I say to convince you, Dad?” Kendra asked. “I’ll wear my seatbelt. I’ll wear ten seatbelts.”
“It’s that car,” he said plainly. “I don’t know.”
“But you said it’s in perfect condition!” Kendra exclaimed. She had been hoping this would not come up. “And you know cars!”
“It’s in good shape,” Richard said, “but it’s not perfect. The gas tank can sometimes be fussy while you’re filling it up. You’ll have to top it off as far as you can to make sure the thing is full. The hydraulics that move the roof can be sketchy. I’ll have to get an outside opinion.”
You must be kidding! Kendra wanted to scream. But instead, she took a deep breath and said, “How long will that take?” Graduation was now only four days away—which meant she and Mitch wanted to hit the road in five.
“What, you got somewhere to be?” Richard raised an eyebrow.
“Reno?” Kendra said. She was genuinely confused. “I told you: Danny’s grandma comes back on June 20, so if we want a full week there we have to get going right after graduation.”
“We won’t even have any time to celebrate!” Angela pleaded.
Kendra wanted to punch a hole in the wall. The whole thing was falling apart again. How was she ever going to convince them?
“Hey, Mitch, how are ya?” Richard asked, opening the red front door.
“Not too bad, Mr. Brixton,” Mitch said, breezing through the doorway into Kendra’s house. “And you?” Mitch knew the key was to be cool and confident with Kendra’s parents. That was the only way this was going to work.
“Doing alright, no complaints,” her dad said, closing the door. “Kendra? Kendra! Mitch is here!”
“Coming!” came Kendra’s voice from upstairs. Mitch knew she’d be a while. That was part of the plan.
“Well, take a seat, why don’t you?” Richard said, indicating the brown leather couch Mitch knew very well. He couldn’t even begin to count the number of hours he’d spent at the Brixton house over the years.
“Only if you sit with me,” Mitch said, winking. Richard obliged and broached exactly the topic of conversation Mitch hoped he would.
“So, talk to me about this road trip,” Richard started, the words heavy with skepticism.
Mitch knew this was his moment. He had to project confidence and leave as little room for discussion as possible. “Well, I think it’s gonna be a blast,” he said. “I’ve actually never been to Reno, and this is, like, the perfect excuse—I mean, right? Kendra showed you the pictures, didn’t she?”
“Oh, she did,” Richard said darkly. “They’re quite . . . impressive.”
“And thanks so much for letting us use your car!” Mitch exclaimed, beaming. He was determined to talk about the trip as if it was already a sure thing. “That’s a really generous gift, Mr. B—to give it to Kendra, and to have its maiden voyage be our little trip out west.”
“I’m a little worried about the car, to be honest,” Richard said. “I’m not sure it’s up to the task.”
“But you’re the car whisperer!” Mitch said. “Or so I thought . . . ” He winked slyly. Mr. Brixton blushed bashfully, like Mitch had just called him the most handsome man on the planet.
“Well, I do know a thing or two,” he said.
“My parents are super-psyched about the whole thing,” Mitch said. “They both told me about the trips they each took after graduating from high school—and they pale in comparison to this one. I mean, staying in Danny’s grandma’s house is one thing, but to get to take this unreal car?” Mitch tossed his hands in the air, like he was truly out of words to describe the awesomeness of the trip.
He wasn’t lying about this part of it. His parents had been much easier to convince. They had regaled him with stories and told him how jealous they were of his trip to Reno—which, of course, wasn’t actually happening. But Mitch took it as an endorsement of the trip anyway.
Kendra came downstairs just as her dad seemed on the verge of giving in. Mitch assumed she’d been listening upstairs, just hidden from view. “What’re you guys talking about?” she asked innocently.
Richard looked over at his daughter calmly and sighed. “We’re talking about this awesome road trip you guys are going to take.”