CHAPTER EIGHT

THE TIRED GIRL, THE MAD GIRL, OR THE CELEBRITY

The vehicle bounced out of the cul-de-sac and hit the curb, the glove compartment dropped open, and the horn beeped twice. The van sounded like it was held together by rusty hinges, and it stretched noisily with every roll of the tires in the quiet neighborhood. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.

“Jesus, don’t hit the horn!” I said.

“I didn’t! It beeped by itself!” Holly laughed her deep college laugh, and it made me remember all those nights we’d spent together dancing in our apartment with Katie and singing into our beer bottles. When girls were friends, it was like a beautiful bouquet of funny flowers eternally watered by their togetherness. When the friendship failed, it was an ice storm on a hothouse plant.

Holly peered through the rearview mirror and said, “Do you think Misty will regret this?”

“Nah,” said Summer. “Her story isn’t finished. I think she is going to surprise us. You’ll see.”

Holly and I exchanged glances.

“Why was she so willing to hand over the camper to us? Does she know we’re all here to help Katie?” said Holly.

“Yes. Misty doesn’t have anything against Katie, as it turns out. But she’d like not to think of her every time she looks out her window.”

I was about to ask Summer what Misty said about Tom, but Holly interrupted me.

“Thanks so much for this, Summer. Where can we drop you?”

“Oh, I don’t have anywhere to be.”

“We’re driving back to Wisconsin.”

“I’ve never been there. This is exciting.” Sun lit up the cab of the RV and landed squarely on Summer’s face, filled with expectation, and I noted a fraying around her carefully curated edges. Her blonde hair stopped at her crown, showing a half inch of gray I hadn’t noticed before. A line of makeup at her chin, a dark vein on the back of her hand showed through her paper-thin skin. I held my breath. I wanted her to stay with us.

Holly’s tone had turned lawyerly, a tone I knew well and hated when she used it on me. “Summer, we appreciate your help. But this is going to be a big trip. No nonsense. We gotta go.”

This was exactly the kind of conflict-filled conversation that I avoided. I would come to parent meetings late and leave early just to miss all the sideline bitching that happened there. In restaurants when the waiter asked how the meal was, I gave a cheerful thumbs-up and then spat my food into a napkin.

Summer dug around in her Mary Poppins bag and extracted a file folder. “Misty gave me the registration and proof of insurance. I also have a handwritten note from her that says she has lent the vehicle to me, Summer Silva, to return on the completion of our journey.” As quickly as she pulled the documents out, she shoved them back in. “You’re stuck with me.”

Holly made a protest noise in her throat, and I enjoyed seeing her speechless.

Summer slid a sturdy plastic storage container from behind my seat and parked her tiny butt on it. To me, she said, “Does she smoke weed? She should. She would benefit.”

I stifled a laugh.

“Or CBD oil on your stress points.” She pulled out a brown bottle with a rubber dropper top and said, “I have medical grade CBD oil right here. Hand me your wrist.”

“I’m not giving you my wrist.” Holly sucked the corner of her bottom lip. “Why would you even want to go with us? We have to drive thousands of miles to the Midwest. We’ll be sleeping in this crap bus. You’re Summer Silva. Don’t you have something better to do?”

Summer put her head back and squeezed a drop of the alleged CBD oil on her tongue and said, “No, I don’t.” She slipped into what I can only assume was LA lingo. “I’ve got a few projects in the works, but funding got held up with talk of the screenwriters’ strike. My agent says there is a reality TV show looking for a host, and there’s a sitcom a director likes me for, but it hasn’t been green-lighted yet. So”—she put her hands together as if she were praying and dropped her head to her fingertips—“I’m at your service.”

“No offense, Summer, but we don’t need your services.”

To her credit, Summer snapped back, “You don’t know what you need, no offense.”

“Shots fired,” I said. I couldn’t help myself; I had the feeling Summer was tossing me a lifeline.

Holly said, “You are not helping, Sammie.”

“Look, you two,” Summer said. “Consider me a benign stowaway rather than an interloper. I’m working on a memoir, and a road trip will help me clear my head. Plus, this one”—she gestured to me—“needs to meet with my shaman, and she can’t get in without me. He owes me a favor too.” I was about to protest, but Holly beat me to it.

“Too?” Holly had pulled over, and the bus idled at the curb. She looked at me. “Did you put her up to this so you weren’t stuck in the car with me for days?”

“No! I’m telling you I slept the whole flight.”

“Sam’s a wreck. Leave her out of this.”

“Hey!” I was a smidgen offended by that. I was on Team Summer, after all. Admittedly I wasn’t thrilled about being alone with Holly, but I was holding up pretty well. I didn’t feel too tired. I was game to be riding in a vehicle obtained under questionable circumstances, and we were about to pick up Peanut. I was on point.

“You guys,” Summer said, “I can be a goby fish to your snapping shrimp.”

“What are you talking about?” Holly had her phone out, and the glasses she never wore except for reading were perched on the end of her nose. She appeared to be looking for directions to the animal shelter.

“The goby fish helps the nearly blind snapping shrimp by alerting the shrimp to danger while they build burrows for them both to sleep.”

Summer was kind of hilarious and definitely could read people. I thought about her assessment of me. A wreck. Instead of outrage I felt a pang of fondness for the skinny woman who didn’t have it quite as together as it had first seemed.

“Let’s go,” I said. “It’s almost five. We have to get to the shelter before it closes.” My phone vibrated again, and I read the text.

BDREW: What’s happening over there?

I thought of that old country-western song that was on jukeboxes in college. The one where the question is asked. Love? Friendship? Check the box yes or no. A wash of Of course not, Samantha!

ME: We just stole the camper and we either have a stowaway or we’ve been kidnapped. Unsure which.

BDREW: Do you need the police?

ME: God NO.

BDREW: All in hand then?

ME: All in hand. How’s Katie?

The three dots rolled and I waited as the camper lurched forward. I anticipated getting a long, thorough assessment of how my friend was faring without us by her side.

The dots appeared again and words followed.

BDREW: She’s good.

I thought about pressing him for more details, but this didn’t feel like the time. I wanted to get to the shelter, figure out what was next, and to be honest, I was starting to feel fatigue drip like thick honey filling the ventricles of my brain.

ME: Can you write me a prescription for my sleep medication?

BDREW: No.

ME: Come on. What’s some amphetamines between friends?

BDREW: No. I’m deleting this request.

She’s good, Drew had said. Katie was good. Not much information but enough for now. I should have asked for more, but I wasn’t sure I could handle more stress. If the information was not positive, I worried I wouldn’t be awake to get Peanut.

I decided to text Katie; I knew she’d be waiting to hear from me.

ME: Hi Honey. On the way to get Peanut. Everything is good here.

KATIE: Hi! I was getting worried but then I remembered the time change.

ME: How are you?

KATIE: I feel good. Drew stopped in.

ME: I asked him to. OK?

KATIE: Sure. ☺

KATIE: He’s kind of chatty honestly.

If I had been a dog, my ears would have perked up with anticipation—He talks about you —or cautiousness—I think he likes me .

ME: What about?

The dots scrolled, and I felt my mouth go dry.

KATIE: Nothing. I’m kind of tired. Holly okay?

I knew what she was asking. How was I doing with Holly?

ME: She’s great! Rushing off. Go to sleep. xo

KATIE: xo

I tuned back in to what was going on around me just in time to see Summer pluck the phone from Holly’s hand and say, “I’ll navigate.”

I would never, ever take Holly’s phone out of her hand, and I waited for the explosion. When none came, I thought about the Group Dynamics class I took in college where the professor had said, “However large or small a group is, the addition of one person will forever change interactions, and preexisting ground rules no longer apply.” Just like Katie had added a new dimension to our lives, I saw Summer was causing some shifting as well.

Katie was the ghost leader for this expedition. The three of us had our historic dynamics. Katie was the glue, I was the puppy, and Holly was our motor. With Katie’s physical absence but her illness hanging over our heads, she had become the motor, which left Holly, Summer, and me jockeying for position. Who was in charge? The tired girl, the mad girl, or the celebrity? It was a low-stakes Hunger Games in the camper.

Summer looked at the address of the animal shelter. “I know right where this is. Okay, Hol, we’re not far at all.”

I glanced at Holly. She always told me and Katie, “There are two syllables in my name. If you don’t have the time or energy to enunciate both, then you need a stress management class.” Yet here she was, driving this dusty barn of a camper through the streets of LA letting a D-list celebrity, who we just met, hold her phone and call her Hol. I’d never been more interested in life than at that very moment.

“Take a left up here. There’s a Juice Bar and a real hippy-dippy market on the left. Sometimes Gwyneth herself sells her Goop stuff there. Everyone shows up for Gwynnie,” she said with a snide tone. “The perfect Gwyn Gwyn.” She exhaled and squinted at the phone. “We’re just going to make it. While you guys go in and get Peanut, I’ll air this camper out, try to clean it up.”

The camper smelled of damp dog, balls of white fur rolled with every bump in the road, and an old fleece blanket I recognized as Katie’s lay in a lump in a grimy corner. The cracked caramel-colored seats spoke of a different era, and every surface had a fine layer of dust. It may have been the height of modern in the seventies, but the bus had seen better days.

I remembered when Katie and Tom bought it for Peanut. They’d searched for an inexpensive vehicle for carting the nervous dog around, and they’d found someone on Craigslist who was willing to give it to them for hauling it away. Tom hated the thing, but Katie had insisted. The vehicle had to be big enough so that Peanut would voluntarily walk into it without falling into a heap of anxiety, but not so big Katie couldn’t parallel park it. She had anticipated needing it for small trips like the vet and dog park but never a cross-country drive without her. For a second I was flooded with sadness for Katie, her broken marriage, her bitter divorce, the loss of her darling dog, and now more cancer. All this happening in the last few years. As if she knew what I was feeling, Summer touched my knee and squeezed.

“Turn here!” Summer hollered, and we skidded to a stop in front of a one-story storefront decorated with an enormous mural of cats and dogs. “Let’s get Peanut, team!”

“Let’s go get the dog,” Holly said like a bookworm forced onto a cheerleading squad who would rather thumb through her Kindle.

“Here we come, Peanut!” I said with enthusiasm that fell below Summer’s but was several notches above Holly’s. I noticed that Holly rarely called Peanut by name, and I didn’t know if it was a thing or just a Holly-ism.

Summer wiped her hand over the dashboard and grimaced. “This chariot is not worthy of this noble mission.”

Holly ignored her as we pushed our way through the heavy glass doors of the Found Animals Stop and Shop. A short woman in a T-shirt that read My dog is smarter than you lifted her head and said, “Are you looking for a furry buddy today?”

Still jazzed from Summer’s enthusiasm I shouted, “Yes!”

Holly scowled at me. To the woman at the desk she said, “We are looking for a Great Pyrenees with diabetes that was dropped here a few days ago.”

“Peanut. His name is Peanut.” I tucked myself in next to Holly and the wall. A tabby cat, curled in a plaid fleece bed on the desk, stared unblinking at me.

A startled woman with overplucked eyebrows was ready for our energy. “I know exactly who you mean. A darling doggo. He left earlier today for the Best Friends Sanctuary.” She reached into the neck of her royal-blue T-shirt and gave her bra strap a yank as if she were just getting started. “His size and diabetic status make him a low adoption choice.”

“What do you mean ‘left’?” I said so abruptly that the cat stood, lifted her back, and resettled away from my drama.

“We are a no-kill shelter, and when the Best Friends Sanctuary people are making a pickup, we hand over hard-to-adopt dogs, and they go to the sanctuary.” The woman pushed her black plastic glasses up her nose. “No offense to Peanut, but big dogs with diabetes are super hard to find homes for. Plus, he’s not a puppy. People want puppies.”

“That’s fine. What’s the address? We’ll go get him,” Holly said.

I was grateful for Holly’s determination. I couldn’t see myself texting Beautiful Drew or Katie to say that we didn’t have Peanut.

“Hang on.” The woman clicked through computer screens. “Okay. I’ve got it. Five hundred Angel Canyon Drive, Kanab, Utah.”

“Utah?” I blurted. “We’ll never make it by five.”

Holly gave me another unfriendly look.

The woman hesitated. “Um. No. It’s far. But, it’s an amazing place. I went there earlier this year and volunteered in the Bunny House. It was life changing. I adored Mr. Piddles and Catmando.” She pointed to the grumpy tabby on the desk. “When you go to get your dog, be careful. Almost no one comes out without a few best friends.”

My screen lit up with a text from Beautiful Drew: Is Peanut in hand?

I cringed and closed my phone. “How far is Utah?” I asked the woman.

“Past Vegas, on top of Arizona. I think it took me something like six hours to get there. That’s why I’ve only been the one time.”

Holly seemed to kick into gear. “Six hours?” She turned to the receptionist. “You sent a big ol’ dog that wasn’t yours six hours into the desert?”

The woman frowned and said, “Hey now. That dog was abandoned, and we took care of it.”

“You got rid of it, you mean.”

“No. It’s, he’s , in a better place. He’ll love it out there. So many other dogs and open spaces to run.”

Holly slammed her flat hand on the counter and said, “We came for the dog, and now he’s not here.” The tabby on the counter lifted her tail like a big middle finger and turned her butt around to face Holly.

“Easy, tiger.” I’d seen Holly mad before, but I was surprised at this outburst. I smiled apologetically to the woman and said, “Come on, Holly. We have to make a plan B.”

“Can’t we go in the back and get another dog? You know Katie—she’ll fall in love with any dog.”

The woman behind the counter gasped.

I yanked Holly toward the door and said, “Are you kidding me right now? Asking a dog owner if their dog is interchangeable is like asking a mother if she could take a different kid home from day care.”

“Don’t be dramatic. That’s not the same thing.”

“It is to dog owners. What is your deal with Peanut anyway?”

“It’s not just Peanut. It’s people with pets in general. We spend so much time and money on animals: rescuing them, saving them with expensive surgery and meds. What’s the point?”

The woman behind the desk called out, “We don’t save them. They save us!”

The second we stepped out of the glass doors, I heard the dead bolt slide into place behind us. With Holly, you either made friends or enemies quickly.

I looked over my shoulder, sending the woman apology-eyebrows, when I heard Holly say, “Where is the camper?”