I never should have come to this stupid party.
At two in the morning, I leave Daniel and Mark playing Thumper with their buddies at the fifth hole, and drive Trish and myself back to her house. As I help Trish to bed, she flings her arms around me and slurs, “Omigod, that was so much fun. You’re such a good friend,” and passes out.
On Sunday morning I get up early. I don’t even bother waking Trish. I just change clothes, pack up my stuff, and text her:
Hope you slept OK. Too bad we didn’t get to hang out like we planned. See you Monday
Against my better judgment, I add a heart and a smiley face. Her phone chirps, and I pad downstairs. Mrs. Campbell is in the kitchen, nursing a coffee and, from the looks of her wan face, a hangover. “Oh, hi, Sana honey. I’m sorry I’m such a mess—I keep thinking I’m still young enough to handle more than a couple drinks.” She winks. “I didn’t hear you girls come home last night,” she adds, yawning. “Did you have fun?”
“Oh . . . yeah,” I lie.
“Trish didn’t drink too much, did she?”
“What? Oh. Uh.”
“Oh, honey, it’s okay. I know she drinks,” says Mrs. Campbell with a smile. “I just want her to do it responsibly, you know?”
I nod. I wonder if she knows what else Trish may or may not be doing responsibly, but all I say is, “Oh, she was fine. Maybe she had a little too much.”
Mrs. Campbell tilts her head and smiles—ruefully? Affectionately? “That girl. Just like her mother.” Then, as if seeing me for the first time, her eyes widen in surprise. “You’ve got your bag. Are you leaving? So early?”
“Yeah, my mom needs me to help her pack today.” Another lie.
“I wish you and Trish hung out more.” Mrs. Campbell sighs. “You’re such a good influence. You study hard, you get good grades, you don’t drink . . . such a sweetheart.” She sighs again and smiles at me. “We’re really going to miss you, Sana.”
“I’ll miss you, too.”
“Grab a cinnamon roll on your way out, honey. They’re delicious. I’m so glad I thought to buy them yesterday—I just can’t face making breakfast right now.” She winks again. Then, as I take a roll and head toward the door, “Do you need a ride home?”
“No, it’s just a couple of miles. It’s a nice day. I’ll walk.”
“Really?” Mrs. Campbell puts her coffee cup down and leans forward, as if she’s considering getting up. Her mouth purses into a little frown of doubt.
“Yes, it’s fine.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” she says. Her face relaxes into a relieved smile, and she sinks back into her chair. “Bye, honey! Oh—try not to slam the door on your way out, okay?”
I thank her and head out, shutting the door behind me as quietly as I can.
3
THE END OF SCHOOL COINCIDES WITH A WEEK of hot humidity and humming cicadas that make the air feel so oppressive, I want to push it out of the way like a too-heavy blanket. But our last night in Wisconsin brings a sudden rush of cool wind, the smell of water, and the splotch-splotch-splotch of the first raindrops on the sidewalk. Mom and I pack the car to the sound of rain pelting the roof of the garage like wild applause for show-stopping flash-boom-bangs of lightning and thunder.
In the morning, the world offers the scent of wet asphalt and earth, the sparkle of rain on bright green grass, and the magic of shape-shifting oil rainbows in puddles. It’s dawn, the best time to start a road trip. Mom locks the door for the last time, and we roll through the silent streets of Glen Lake in our packed-to-the-gills white Prius. We grab one last coffee at the Starbucks on Kohler Avenue before heading west on I-94 toward California, toward Dad and his new job, toward a brand-new life.
When I was twelve, Mom, Dad, and I took a weeklong summer trip to Wisconsin Dells, a resort town that grew around the spot where the Wisconsin River has carved its own tiny version of the Grand Canyon—the Dells. It’s only a couple of hours west of Glen Lake on I-94, and everyone goes there for weekend trips.
Mom was driving because Dad had returned late the night before from a business trip to California; I sat in the front seat as navigator while Dad slept in the back.
As so often happens when she drives someplace new, Mom took the wrong exit and got lost. But she didn’t want to wake Dad up, so I fished his phone out of his jacket pocket for her.
“This would be a lot easier if you’d just let me have a smartphone,” I grumbled, entering his password and tapping on the map app.
“I don’t need such expensive toy, and you don’t need, either. The regular cell phone for communication is enough for twelve-year-old.”
“Turn around and go three miles back to the highway.”
As I played with the map to get a better picture of our route, a text message popped up at the top of the screen. It was in Japanese, from an area code I didn’t recognize.
I’m about as literate as a first-grader in Japanese, despite Mom’s best efforts and two miserable years of Saturday Japanese school in Milwaukee, so I couldn’t read most of what the text said. I was about to ask Mom to take a look when another message appeared that I could read. It said,
Hearts and lips? Who would send Dad something like that? It had to be a mistake. I tapped the text and discovered that it was part of a long thread between Dad and someone who was apparently a huge fan of emojis—hearts, kissing smiley faces, shoes, and lips being her particular favorites.
I looked out the window at the cornfields. There had to be some explanation. Maybe Dad had a niece or a little girl cousin who loved emojis that he’d never told us about.
Living in the United States. Whose name he hadn’t saved in his contacts list. Who’d texted emojis of a bikini, a wineglass, and the ever-present lips exactly two weeks ago, the morning he left for a three-day business trip . . .
“Sana, chotto! Tsugi wa?”
What next, indeed.
I fumbled with the phone. “Um, go west—take this first entrance ramp on the right. For seven miles.”
As Mom negotiated the merge, gripping the steering wheel anxiously and casting many a backward glance out the window, irritation crawled up my spine like a snake. She was a terrible driver. For starters, she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—keep constant pressure on the gas. She alternated between pushing down and easing off the gas pedal, so that we were always either speeding up or slowing down: vrROOoom . . . vrROOoom. On straightaways, she did what people do when they pretend to drive, turning the wheel quickly left and right, left and right, making a thousand unnecessary adjustments as she jiggled the car cautiously down the road.