I FELL ASLEEP in the car, lulled by Griff’s tuneless singing, and when I woke up he was shaking my shoulder.
“Passport,” I realized he was saying.
“What?” I said.
“Your dad said you have a passport. You need to get it out,” he said.
I sat up, rubbing at my eyes. My bad leg had stiffened up from sitting crammed in the car for so long. I kneaded it and peered around. We were behind a couple of other cars in some sort of line. A border checkpoint. “Where are we?” I asked.
“Heading into Canada,” Griff said. “You need your passport.”
Confused, I dug around in my bag until I found it. It was full of stamps. My mom used to take me all over the world. Paris and London and Bangkok and Hong Kong. We hardly ever got far from the airport, but I got little tastes of everywhere.
We got to the front of the line. Griff rolled down the window, and a man in a baseball cap and windbreaker leaned down to squint inside.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “How are you two doing today?”
“Good,” Griff said, more of a grunt than a word. I just gave him a crooked smile that could have meant anything. I knew it exaggerated the scars on my cheek. It tended to stop questions dead.
Griff handed over the passports. “Got one of those letters, too,” he said. He reached across me and popped the glove box. It was stuffed with paper napkins and wet wipes, along with more receipts and a folded, crumpled paper, which he held out to the border agent. “About the kid.”
He looked at our passports, then at the letter, frowning slightly. I couldn’t tell if it was a something’s-wrong frown or just a paying-attention frown. “What’s your reason for visiting Canada today?” he asked.
“Just visiting,” Griff said. “Friends, I mean. Visiting friends.” I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or if this was just more of his odd self. I did my best to look normal. I didn’t know why we were heading into Canada, either, but I didn’t want to get Griff in trouble.
“This letter says your father’s given permission for you to travel with Mr. Dawson,” the border agent said, looking me in the eye. “Is that the case?”
I blinked, then realized that Mr. Dawson must be Griff. “Yeah,” I said. I didn’t sound completely convinced. I mean, I hadn’t read the letter, and I hadn’t talked to my dad for more than two minutes on the phone in the last ten years. “Yeah, he did. We’re visiting friends.”
He looked at me for another long moment. It made me afraid, even knowing he was probably just looking out for me. He was like the lawyer who handled my mom’s will and the pilot who flew me up to Alaska. Men who saw my scars and wanted to step up and protect me, even if they couldn’t figure out anything to protect me from.
“All right, then,” he said. He handed our passports back to us after a little more examination, and we filtered our way through. In five minutes we were out the other side and in Canada. Griff relaxed, and I gave him a puzzled look.
“Why are we in Canada?” I asked.
“It’s where your dad is,” he answered. That was all the explanation I got for hours.