CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

SO MUCH MORE GOING ON

I woke to the roar of a semitruck thundering by, pelting us with small rocks and spray. I inched away from the door.

“That truck felt close.”

It had rained while I dozed, and we were kicking up water, and the air felt muggy. I looked at my watch. Colorado?

“I think he’s playing a game with us. We’ve been passing each other for the last hundred miles. He gets past me, lets me catch up; he blinks his lights. He has a sticker on the back of his truck that says, ‘Truckers are the hero of the highway.’ I suppose that’s true. They bring us everything, don’t they? Produce. Fencing. You name it.”

Holly sounded cheerful—even, I dared say, peppy. I did not expect this. I expected tired, distracted by Rosie, maybe impatient.

I glanced at Summer. She wore noise-canceling headphones and an eye mask. Her head rested on a blow-up bathtub spa pillow in the shape of a seashell.

I stretched my legs under Peanut’s weight and discovered a sticky, wet drool spot on the top of my thigh. Utah had wedged herself between the headrest and Holly’s shoulders.

“How long have you been driving?”

Holly shrugged. “Summer gave me some Adderall. I don’t think it’s affecting me, but this trip hasn’t been that bad. I’m pretty sure I can drive the rest of the way tonight.”

“Summer has Adderall? All this time I haven’t had any of my sleep medication, and Summer has had a stash?”

“I don’t think this is the stuff you take. Like I said, I don’t think it’s affecting me. I’m just naturally energetic.”

I recognized the Adderall virgin. I had been one myself before I went for a sleep study and found out what I already knew, that I fell asleep too quickly during inappropriate times and slept too much for a healthy woman my age. Adderall felt like euphoria to a good girl who lived on one cup of coffee a day and for whom getting drunk was having one frozen margarita on Fridays—which was me more than Holly back in the day.

After the drug kicked in, you felt like your attention had been scrubbed clean and you could multitask—hell, multithink—and finish the things you’d had on your to-do list since the sixth grade. Your appetite went unnoticed while your mouth was like a swamp. It was a small price for the searing precision of your thoughts.

“Do you have a water bottle? I’m super thirsty,” Holly said.

I handed her a warm bottle of water. “That’s a side effect. Have you heard from Rosie or Katie?”

“No. No news is good news. See, we’re coming up on the truck.”

I checked my phone. There was a message from Drew.

BDREW: Catch me up.

I got much less of a bump of delight now that I’d seen Katie and Drew together.

In my periphery, I noticed the eighteen-wheeler slow as we approached. Holly hit her turn signal and pulled into the left lane. We crept up the long length of the vehicle, passing the rear lamps, the axle, and the exhaust system just behind the cab. As we moved parallel, the trucker turned on his overhead light and held up a sign.

“What does that say?” said Holly, squinting around Summer’s hair.

Through the rain-streaked window, across the road between us, I ducked my head and read the sign.

BLOWJOB? All block letters with an enormous question mark after the last B , which struck me as funny. The guy used punctuation to make sure whoever he showed it to knew it was a proposition, not a nickname.

“Blow job, Holly. It says blow job. Gun it and get out of here. That guy wants a blow job.” I jostled the dogs and leaned forward.

Our car swerved away from the trucker at the same time Holly hit the accelerator, and the engine surged and passed him. She overcorrected, yanking the wheel back. The tire hit the pavement edge and balanced there. I leaned into the dogs. The wheel spun off the asphalt edge, and the Prius came so close to the front wheel of the semitruck that I threw my body across Peanut and Moose, closed my eyes, and braced for impact. I felt the car veer again and heard the front wheel hit the gravel, but miraculously the tire lifted out of the shoulder, instead of being yanked into it and shoved into the ditch. The car lurched back and forth, working to find solid ground.

“Jesus.” Summer pushed the headphones off, along with her sleep mask. “What the hell, you guys?”

Everyone in the car sat at attention, panting. I whipped around, and out the back window I saw the trucker recede, his headlights blinking, the massive face of the truck appearing to laugh at us.

Holly lifted a shaky hand from the steering wheel and repositioned Utah more squarely against her neck. Her shoulders heaved as she caught her breath.

“We should change drivers,” I said.

“No! I’m not pulling over and risking that trucker grinding up next to us at this time of night.”

“You’ve had a shock. We all have,” I said.

Summer protested. “I haven’t had a shock. This crap happens every day. In fact, it’s a weird day when someone doesn’t whip their dick out in Hollywood and ask for a blow job. It should be getting better since Weinstein and all, but they’re getting sneakier. You don’t see as many wrinkly dicks, but you have to pay attention and not say yes to anything without making sure when they offer you a sweet potato it is in fact a potato and not their pet name for their weirdly shaped penis.”

I couldn’t help myself: I laughed, saying, “Sweet Potato,” but I was giggling so hard it came out “Sweet. Sweet Pot. Sweeeet.”

Summer said in all seriousness, “Well, once someone offered me a Summer squash, and I thought it was a kind of dirty joke. Like ‘Summer, do you want to squash?’ Squash meaning like, you know, screw. But then I learned a summer squash is a vegetable. I mean, I’ve heard of zucchini, so, I guess.”

Holly gave one of her low, throaty giggles that changed into a guffaw. The laugh rolled to her shoulders, and she threw her head back. Listening to her made me laugh harder, and I felt tears streaming down my face.

“I have to pee. Oh my God, I have to pee,” I said.

For once Summer looked pissed to be the butt of a joke, to not be in charge, but after a second of outrage, she started laughing too. In between our laughter, I could hear my phone buzzing.

BDREW: Hey, nice lady. Catch me up.

ME: I will if you will.

BDREW: Katie is doing pretty well. Lots of stories about you and Holly.

Me: Holly is driving. We just got propositioned by a guy in a big rig. Summer is our BFF now. I am dating Peanut.

BDREW: Don’t get too attached to Peanut.

ME: Story of my life. Moose is now my plus one.