The final episode was 24 hours away. The Race For The White House, USA would wrap up with a dramatic showdown between Alan and Chester: a live debate in Washington D.C. The candidates were given the day off to prepare, with no zany hijinks or humiliating stunts to perform.
Chester’s bus was parked next to ours, but I avoided it, as if it had rabies. Peter and I hadn’t spoken since our catastrophic date two days earlier, and I was hesitant to make the first move. Making a play for a boy who couldn’t care less about you would be pretty embarrassing.
I gave Alan the distance he needed while he studied in The Lounge. My day was spent at the hotel, enjoying good food, lounging by the pool, and being pampered at the Goddess de Relaxus spa.
After a sumptuous lunch, I returned to the bus and peeked through the windshield to see if Alan was ready to emerge from his cocoon. The Lounge door was still shut.
I wandered around to the back of the bus and sat down on the rear bumper. You almost couldn’t see it through all the layers of stickers that Alan had accumulated over the years. Most of them were appeals to save the whales, end global warming, and stuff like that. Even a souvenir from Woodstock was buried about ten layers down.
But there was one bumper sticker that didn’t quite fit the theme of the others. It read My daughter is an honor student at . . . The rest was torn off. There had to be a story behind that sticker. I carefully peeled it off and stuffed it in my back pocket.
It was near sundown when The Lounge door finally opened. I entered the bus to find Alan sitting quietly at the kitchen table with a veggie cocktail in his hand.
“How’s it going?” I said. Alan didn’t answer, nor even look up at me. He just stared drearily at his drink.
“Anything I can do to help?” I asked.
Alan took a swig of his drink. “Why did you come on this trip?” he asked, stone-faced.
Something was obviously bothering him.
“I came because I didn’t want to see Chester win the primary,” I said.
“Seems to me there was another matter of a boy named Peter.”
“True, I wanted to see him limp home with his dad; kind of like killing two birds with one stone.”
“You’re still committed to that, are you?”
Alan was fishing for something. That was certain. But whatever it was, I didn’t like his interrogation-style approach.
“Why are you being so weird?” I said. “What are you getting at?”
Alan’s eyes met mine. “Where do you go, when I’m away from the bus?
“Nowhere,” I said, knowing full well that it was a lie.
Then Alan tossed the score card from the Mini Golf Palace onto the table. “You’ve been out with him, haven’t you?”
“Peter?” I said.
“Don’t play dumb with me. You know who I mean.”
The pitch of our voices rose with each bitter remark.
“So what if I have?” I said. “What’s wrong with it?”
“What if it got out?” said Alan. “What do you think the Press would say? We’ve got one scandal running in the tabloids already, and I’m tired of having to defend my honor.”
“Your honor? Have you given one thought to what all this is doing to me?”
Alan abruptly stood up and faced me.
“I am thinking of you,” he shouted, “and I don’t want you to see that boy!”
“You sound like my parents,” I said. “I’ve heard it all before: I’m too young for dating, blah, blah, blah.”
“You’re not grown up enough.”
“And you’re not my father!”
The rage in Alan’s eyes was starting to frighten me.
“You’re gonna pay for your disrespect, young lady!” he yelled.
I pulled the torn bumper sticker out of my back pocket. “Is that what you told her?”
I shoved the torn paper into Alan’s hands. He froze at the sight of it, like he had just been handed the worse news of his life.
A whisper left Alan’s lips: “Helen.”
He sat down slowly, holding the paper like it was an injured butterfly. “She was about your age. She got mixed up with some online creep. I tried everything to pull the plug on her, but she always found a way around it. She went missing one day, and neither I nor the police were able to find her. She was just too headstrong—like you.”
I should have found some sympathy for Alan, but anger was still coursing through my veins. “So, you failed to control your own daughter, and now you want to control me!”
Alan stood up, and quietly retreated to the back of the bus.
“Maybe I’m not a grownup yet,” I said, “but I’ve learned something in my sixteen years that you haven’t: Sometimes you have to show a little faith, if you want to be respected as a father.”
Alan dropped the bumper sticker to the floor as he entered The Lounge, and buried his shame behind the closed door.
The heated argument left me exhausted. I told myself that I was right to defend my independence. Who was he to tell me how to live my life?
Still, I regretted being so hard on him. I had unearthed a painful memory that I knew nothing about. Whatever hurt he felt inside was beyond my comprehension. I guess what Atticus Finch says is true: You can’t really know someone “until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
It was right about then that a note slid under the front door. It was from Peter: I have to talk to you. Come on over. My dad’s away.
At last! Peter had broken the ice. I couldn’t wait to see him.
The door to Chester’s bus stood open, inviting me to enter. But as I started to climb the steps, voices seeped out from inside.
“Your honor? Have you given one thought to what all this is doing to me?”
It was my voice!
“She was about your age. She got mixed up with some online creep.”
And Alan’s!
I charged up the steps and saw a man with his back to me, standing at a computer, controlling the audio playback with a mouse in his hand.
“What is this?” I said. Then I realized that it wasn’t Peter’s hand on the mouse. It was Chester’s!
“Oh! Mr. Fields,” I said, drawing back. “I thought you were Peter.”
Chester turned around. “I sent you the note,” he said. “Forgive me for deceiving you, but I’m afraid I have some bad news, and I thought it best that you hear it from me. Peter is no longer part of this road trip.”
“Why? What happened?”
“To my shock and disappointment, Peter has done some reprehensible things, that could kill this whole campaign.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s been cheating. He cut the fuel lines to your rocket engine on the first day. Your bus went off course because he hacked into your GPS. He planted listening devices inside your bus to eavesdrop on your conversations with Alan.”
I clasped my hands to keep myself from shaking. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“I honestly believe that he thought his misdeeds would help me win the election.”
“But how did he get inside our bus? I never left it unlocked, not even for a minute.”
“While you thought he was doing you a favor by washing your bus, he sneaked inside and made an impression of the front door key. He had total access from then on.”
I wanted to believe that what I was hearing was untrue—but it all added up. Peter hadn’t changed, just as I suspected. He was as big a bully as he ever was.
“I’m truly sorry to have to tell you this, Amy,” said Chester. “I know you’ve become quite fond of Peter. Everything he told you might have sounded sincere, but he’s been lying to you all along.”
My insides felt like they had been kicked in. I covered my mouth while holding back the tears.
Then a man entered the bus behind me, his face reflecting in the computer screen. “Is that anyway to talk about your son?” said the man’s voice.
It was Alan.
“My son has deceived us all,” said Chester. He pointed to the audio program running on the computer monitor. “Here’s the evidence.”
“No room for doubt?” asked Alan. “No possibility of error? Maybe there’s more to this than you know.”
Chester held firm. “It’s all true.”
“True or not,” said Alan, placing his hand on my shoulder, “a father that has no faith in his own, is no father at all.”
I sniffled, then looked up at Alan.
He gave me a wink.
Alan reached over and grabbed the mouse out of Chester’s hand. “The Press is going to have a field day when they hear about this,” said Alan.
A Delete All button popped up on the monitor. Chester hit the Enter key on the keyboard. “Not much chance of that happening now,” he said.
“What makes you think I won’t go to them anyway?”
“Go ahead. I’m sure they’d like to hear all about you and Helen, too.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Try me!”
The two men battled on, while my heart was shattering into little pieces. Their determination to destroy each other left them no thought of sparing my feelings.
“To Hell with all of you!” I screamed, then ran off into the night.
I knew Alan would come after me, so I ran around to the hotel service entrance, and crouched down behind a stack of wooden pallets to hide from him.
There I cried, and didn’t care who heard me. My sorrow was excruciating. I wanted to rip my heart out.
Moments later, I heard footsteps, then saw a figure standing over me.
“I’m not going back with you, Alan,” I said through my tears.
The figure came closer. “I don’t blame you,” said the youthful voice of . . . Peter!
“Stay away from me, you freak!” I shouted.
“Aren’t you even going to let me explain?” he said.
“I hate you!”
“I see. You’d rather believe my father than me.”
“I only believe what I feel, and my feelings tell me you’re nothing but a mean bully!”
He kneeled down and held my hand. “You’re feelings don’t lie,” he said. “I’ve been a terrible person. What I did to you all those years ago is unforgivable. I’ve lived my life thinking only of me. But now I have a chance to redeem myself. My father’s the one who sabotaged your bus, and I have the goods to prove it. That’s why he wanted me gone, for fear that I would expose him.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“No reason. But tomorrow’s the last night of this fiasco, and I’m going to blow the lid off this whole phony affair.”
I calmed down and listened.
“Now, look,” said Peter. “My dad had me picked up by his goon squad, but I got away. He thinks I’m miles away from here. You can’t tell anyone you’ve seen me. Got it?”
“But why—”
“You gotta trust me, Amy. Please!”
Then he ran off.
Talk about a roller coaster of emotions! I was totally confused, and didn’t know what to think, or who to believe, or what my next step should be.
Alan finally caught up to me. “You ready to come back?” he said.
“No, sir!” I said, wiping my nose on the back of my hand.
“Love isn’t fair,” he said. “It hurts. I know that better than anyone. You’re experiencing the worst pain a human can endure. Oddly enough, it’s usually not as bad as you think it is right now.”
I held my head in my hands. “I want to die.”
Then Alan placed an object in my lap: the What’s-next-specs. He switched it on, then quietly walked away.
I stared at the helmet’s blinking lights, afraid that putting it on would make things even worse. But, put it on, I did.
The contraption took me to a dark place. I was surrounded by black smoke that thickened, then melted into an ugly brew that swirled like a deadly potion in a witch’s caldron. A lightening bolt lit up the dark. The loud thunder that followed faded into an eerie stillness. I was afraid to go on, but then a sweet taste touched my lips. Raindrops cascaded down my face. No, they were teardrops. Little by little, as I blinked away the tears, the layers of darkness were wiped clean.
Sunlight broke through, rimming the crest of a small dirt hill. A sad, little tree sat on the top, its branches bare. The teardrop rainfall ended, leaving behind little, white clouds that glided across a blissful sky. The dirt-brown hill turned emerald-green, as grass broke through the bleak soil. Tiny buds burst from the tree’s branches, then exploded into fragrant blossoms. My ears were filled with the cheerful songs of chirping birds, that swooped and danced in the tree, now leafy and full.
It was a peaceful scene, but my emotions were still overcome with sadness. Then a voice called to me from beyond the hill. “Hold on,” it said, ever so faintly. “Hold on, Amy. Hold on.” My heart didn’t ache quite so badly now. I breathed in the fresh, moist air, and was whole once again.
The soothing voice had healed my heart and restored my courage, and I was glad that I heeded its advice. But then, why wouldn’t I?
The voice was my own.