CHAPTER 4

We traveled through the cities that lined the I-44 in Oklahoma, watching the landscape turn greener, thicker and lusher. By the time we made it to Missouri, Lee was getting cabin fever.

So far, we’d only made one stop that wasn’t for food or gas: Miami, Oklahoma.

As we’d entered the town, Lee told me, ‘Come on, Shelly, we’ve gotta do something on this trip that’s not just driving to Boston! This is the dream! This is the best time of our lives! And, hey, now we can tell everyone we went to Miami for spring break.’

‘You know we’ve gotta show people, right?’

He caught my eye and grinned. We took a quick bathroom break at a diner to change into our swimsuits, then got someone to take a photo of us jumping in the air in front of a sign reading MIAMI. Lee even found an inflatable flamingo pool float at a convenience store (which was now sticking up from the back of the car, too big to fit in the trunk). We got plenty of weird looks from the locals, but the photo also got plenty of likes on Instagram from our friends, jealous at how much fun we were having on our road trip.

That brief stop-off had been a couple of hours ago, and it had only made Lee more determined to get off the road for a while and do something.

Lee tore his phone out of its holder on the dash and tossed it into my lap so he didn’t have to follow Google Maps any more. He leaned forward with grim determination, his eyebrows furrowed together and his mouth pressed into a thin line.

‘What the hell, Lee?’

He didn’t respond.

‘You want a snack?’

Still nothing.

‘Here, have some –’

‘I don’t need a snack,’ he snapped. ‘I need to get out of this car. We’re in Missouri, Elle! There must be things to see and do in Missouri! Come on, look something up.’

He turned to me now with bulging eyes and a twitching smile.

‘You think you’ve maybe had too much sugar, Lee?’ I asked, but I obligingly looked on the map to see what we were near. ‘Eyes back on the road, buddy.’

He sighed, slumping down. ‘Sorry, it’s just … This is a lot of driving, you know? And we’re not even halfway there yet.’

‘We’re basically halfway there. Give or take a couple hours.’

But I got his point. Our carefully curated playlist and a few podcasts had helped keep us entertained, but we were just … driving. There were only so many BuzzFeed articles and tweets we could read aloud, and while one of us drove, the other one usually napped anyway.

It turned out road trips weren’t exactly glamorous.

Our little impromptu photoshoot in Oklahoma had given me a taste for spontaneity and adventure, too. Nobody was around to tell us what to do. We made our own rules. Noah could wait a few extra hours. What was a few more hours when we hadn’t seen each other in months?

And besides, right now those few hours felt like the most exciting and important thing Lee and I could indulge in.

‘Okay, got it!’ I exclaimed after a few minutes of research on my phone. ‘We’re coming up on the Mark Twain National Forest …’

Lee groaned. Beaches were his thing. The woods? Not so much.

‘Hey, you’re the one who said you were sick of looking at roads, mister. We’re gonna go see some trees and eat our lunch there.’ I reprogrammed the destination on Google Maps and wrestled his phone back into the holder. ‘It’ll be cute. We’ll have a picnic. Send your mom some photos. Maybe see a deer.’

‘As if we’re going to see a deer.’ He thought about it. ‘Ten bucks we see a bear.’

‘Do they even have bears in Missouri?’

‘Ten bucks.’

I shrugged and took the bet, thinking I’d much rather have my lunch interrupted by Bambi than a bear. I texted the family WhatsApp – which consisted of me, Lee, Noah and our parents – to let them know about our change of plans. My dad and June were both nervous about Lee and me driving across the country and they liked regular updates.

Lee turned up the music, now singing with gusto as he bounced his head and drummed his fingers along to the song. Having a new destination in mind that wasn’t just the next gas station seemed to have cheered him up.

Honestly, I was kind of looking forward to the break, too. One more unscheduled stop wouldn’t hurt, right? We had plenty of time.

We sat on top of a rock just off the start of a hiking trail in Mark Twain National Forest, hidden away from the rest of the world in a cute spot by a stream surrounded by trees. We dug into the sandwiches we’d bought at a place called Bixby’s, which was recommended on both TripAdvisor and a YouTube channel I’d found. We got a pie there, too. Mostly because I couldn’t resist the delicious aroma, but also because Lee argued that we’d had pie in every state so far, and now we had to find out which state had the best pie.

(He had been updating his Instagram with lengthy reviews of each state’s pie. I kind of couldn’t wait to see what he had to say about Missouri’s, and whether or not it would beat out the weird-but-somehow-wonderful combo of mint and cherry we’d had in New Mexico.)

‘See, this is the life.’ Lee sighed, tearing off another mouthful of sandwich, then using the sandwich to gesture out in front of us. The sunlight filtered through the trees above us, casting him in a green glow. ‘Isn’t this the life, Shelly?’

‘If you ask me that one more time, I’m throwing your sandwich in the stream.’

‘Hey. Didn’t you see the signs? No littering.’

‘I’ll keep the wrapper. Just toss the sandwich. A racoon’ll eat it.’

‘A racoon would never appreciate this bacon the way I do,’ he told me gravely. He looked me in the eye as he took another slow, deliberate bite of the sandwich, then rolled his eyes back in his head as he moaned. I laughed so hard I choked on my own food and had to gulp down half a bottle of water to stop coughing.

We’d walked for an hour to find the spot where we were now sitting. We hadn’t meant to go so far, and it surprised us both how much we’d needed to get out of the car and stretch our legs for a while.

Occasionally, we heard someone else on the trail passing by. For the most part, though, the only sounds we heard were birds, rustling leaves and the burble of the stream.

It was just us.

It was … pretty glorious. Even Lee was mesmerized.

Our quick pit stop rapidly turned into an afternoon off by the time we’d finished the sandwiches, eaten half the pie and drank a bottle of iced tea. It’d take another hour to walk back to the car, but neither of us had made a move. This was exactly the kind of adventure we had been picturing when we’d planned the road trip, I knew.

Lee and I stretched out on the rock. We were lying down with our heads near each other’s knees.

My cell phone buzzed. I looked at it and saw it was a text from Noah – he hoped we were having a nice afternoon. Guilt fizzled in the pit of my stomach.

‘We should get back on the road,’ Lee said. He didn’t even need to ask who the text was from. It had been maybe five or twenty or forty minutes since I’d said the same thing – it was hard to keep track of time while in a drowsy food-induced haze, basking in the afternoon sun and listening to the wildlife.

‘You wanna take the night shift or shall I?’

Lee grumbled incoherently but I knew exactly what he meant. We shouldn’t have stopped. It was getting increasingly impossible to think about going back to the car. Neither of us was thrilled at the idea of sitting behind the wheel and driving for eight or nine hours. Not when this forest was so idyllic.

Lee rolled on to his side, almost kneeing me in the face. I propped myself up on my elbows and raised my eyebrows at him, knowing some grand proposal was on the way.

‘Okay. Just hear me out,’ he said. ‘What if we stuck around here tonight?’

My nose wrinkled before I could help it. ‘What, camping? You hate the woods. Now you wanna camp out? We don’t even have a tent.’

‘No, I just mean … in Missouri. St. Louis isn’t far. They’ve gotta have something going on tonight, right? We’ll just … extend this little detour. And then, I swear, no more stops like this. Come on, Elle. How many times in your life are you gonna be in Missouri?’

I laughed. He said it with all the grandeur of Paris or Venice, or somewhere else romantic and starry-eyed.

But, hey, I guessed they didn’t set Meet Me in St. Louis in St. Louis for nothing.

Lee’s mouth drooped, his eyes widening into a puppy-dog look.

Oh, shoot. Who was I kidding? That look totally worked on me.

We’d already lost half a day – what was a few more hours?

Lee was right. How many times in our lives would we be in Missouri?

Between the two of us, Google and Facebook, we found an outdoor concert being held that night in a park in St. Louis. Local bands and musicians were playing. There were going to be fireworks.

I beamed at Lee, the guilt of delaying seeing Noah completely gone. The excitement of the night ahead consumed me. ‘This is going to be so epic.’

Lee hopped off the rock. ‘Come on. It’s three hours to the city, and that’s without traffic. You can buy the tickets on the way.’

We hastily collected our things, and it was only as we were leaving that I gasped, grabbing at Lee’s arm and dragging him back. ‘Look! Look! I told you!’

He whispered, ‘Whoa.’

Right there, not even fifty yards away across the stream, was a deer.

It ran off when I took a photo. The flash was on – something I only realized once it was too late.

‘You’re an idiot.’ Lee wrapped an arm round my shoulders and led me back up to the path as I pouted and cursed myself. ‘Send that to my mom, huh?’

‘Sure. And you owe me ten bucks.’

‘Aw, come on. We’re not out of here yet. Might still see a bear.’

I rolled my eyes and elbowed him in the stomach. He reached up to ruffle my hair and I ducked away from him, laughing.

I spent most of the drive to St. Louis asleep. The concert only went on till ten, when the fireworks display was due to start. We grabbed a blanket from the car and found a spot in the crowd. Lee got talking to a group of college-aged guys nearby who gave us some drinks, and I got us hot dogs from a stand. We shared some of our road trip snacks with the guys and they recommended a motel nearby where we could spend the night.

‘You’re a cute couple,’ one of them told us.

‘We’re not –’ I started. I was used to strangers assuming we were a couple, but Lee cut across me.

‘Oh, yeah, she’s a total sweetie pie. I’ve never known anyone fart that loud while sleeping in my life.’

The guys looked like they didn’t know whether to laugh or look away. I draped my arms round Lee’s shoulders and leaned over him to say, ‘And you should see his daily skincare routine. Nobody rocks a sheet mask like this guy.’

One of them caught on and broke the stunned and slightly awkward silence with a burst of laughter as he realized his mistake.

The group left a little while later to go and meet their other friends who’d just arrived, leaving me and Lee behind. We watched the bands and ate cotton candy as we waited for the fireworks. Lee sighed and leaned his head on my shoulder.

‘This is what spring break should be, Shelly. Us, the open road …’

‘Random concerts in St. Louis?’

‘Yup.’ He sighed, and there was something nostalgic to it. ‘I’m glad we did this trip, Elle. Next year …’

He never finished the sentence, too busy daydreaming, but he didn’t have to. Next year … who knew what would happen? We still didn’t know where we were going to college – maybe it wouldn’t be the same place. I hoped it would be, but …

Maybe next year, Lee would want to go to Florida for spring break. Maybe I’d want to go home to see my dad and brother. Maybe I’d spend spring break traveling somewhere with Noah, and Lee would be the one who wanted to go home.

Neither of us knew what the next year would bring. But we did know that we had right now.

We held hands as the fireworks went off. I took some pictures to send to Rachel and Noah later on. I didn’t know if Lee and I would be able to spend time together like this after the summer. For now, it was beautiful.