After the End

34 MILES

“HOLY CRAP, I FEEL LIKE I SLEPT ON A PILE OF rocks,” I say, crawling out of the tent and pressing my thumbs hard against my temples as the sunlight burns my eyes.

“Breakfast,” says Juneau, and shakes a box of Cap’n Crunch at me from where she sits next to the impeccably clean fire pit. I glance around the clearing. Everything’s been packed up, and the trunk of the car is open with our supplies stowed neatly inside.

“Does this mean we’re leaving?”

“Yep,” she confirms, and hand-feeds a piece of cereal to the bird, who stands obediently next to her like the freeloading fleabag he is.

I sit a few feet away and pour myself a mug of orange juice and take a sip. I glance at Juneau, and she looks away. There’s an elephant in the campsite, and it’s called last night’s kiss. But if Juneau’s not going to say anything about it, I’m certainly not going to bring it up. I can’t help looking at her lips, berry red though she’s not wearing any makeup, and I feel a hunger that has nothing to do with my empty stomach.

“No more sleeping on the ground,” I moan, setting my mug down and massaging my forehead. “I don’t care if you insist on being out in nature, we’re staying in a hotel tonight.”

Juneau looks at me funny, then reaches over and pulls a tiny pouch out of her pack. She shakes a couple of pills into her hand and passes them to me. “What are these? Hippie moonbeam pills?” I ask without thinking, and then freeze. “Sorry. Bad habit.” I’m determined not to bait her today.

“They’re a miracle pill introduced to me by the owner of the Seattle guesthouse where I stayed,” she says with a wry smile. “She called them… Advil.”

I laugh and pop them into my mouth, washing them down with a swig of juice. Juneau pours me a bowl of cereal, plops a spoon in it, and pushes it over to me. “Wow, what’d I do to deserve such service?” I ask.

An odd expression flashes across her face—is it guilt?—but she quickly rearranges her lips into a smile. Something seems wrong. But what hasn’t felt wrong in the last four days? I remind myself.

She holds up the cereal box and points to the mustachioed cartoon character in the blue hat. “This is seriously good stuff, but this”—she points to a family-sized box of frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts—“is the best thing I have ever put in my mouth.”

I laugh. “Is it your desert island food?”

“What’s that mean?” she asks.

“It’s a game. If you were stuck on a desert island and could only have one food, what would it be?”

She doesn’t even hesitate. “I could eat Pop-Tarts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of my life. No problem,” she says. A small grin breaks through the habitual stern-face. And there she is again. The normal teenage girl I kissed last night. Who I really want to kiss again. Who I wish wouldn’t keep hiding behind a facade of grown-upness and responsibility. Talk about split personality… Juneau could be the poster girl.

I pick up my bowl and inspect its contents closely. I don’t think I’ve ever had Cap’n Crunch before. My mom raised me on a diet of unsweetened granola sprinkled liberally with nasty wheat germ. Thinking of her makes my stomach twist, and I force her from my mind.

Sugared cereal, I think, pulling my thoughts back to the here and now. I munch tentatively on the 100 percent artificial puffed squares. And my taste buds melt in ecstasy. Juneau’s right; these are so good.

“Yummy,” I say with my mouth full, and she gives me a full-on beam. Happy Juneau. About as rare as a triple rainbow.

She gets up. “You finish breakfast and I’ll do the tent.”

By the time I’ve washed my dishes in the lake, Juneau and the bird are sitting in the car, waiting for me. “Are we in a rush?” I ask as I settle behind the steering wheel.

“We’re in a permanent rush until I find my clan,” she says.

We reach the main road, and I turn right to head to the highway. Juneau is studying the map. “Just stay on the smaller road,” she says after we’ve driven a couple of minutes. “We don’t want to join up with Highway 84.”

“We don’t?” I ask. “Why not?”

“Trust me,” she says. We drive in silence for about fifteen minutes. The bird is standing up in the backseat, looking out the window, enjoying the scenery like it thinks it’s the family dog. “There!” Juneau says, pointing to a sign that says SPRAY.

“That’s the name of a town?” I ask incredulously.

She shrugs. “That’s where we’re going.”

“It’s a hundred twenty-two miles away,” I say. “That’s going to take a couple of hours.”

She nods, as if she was expecting that.

“Might I point out the fact that Spray is southwest of us, not southeast?” I ask.

“I know that,” she responds. “I’ve got the map.”

“May I also point out that we are on day four of this road trip, and we are still pretty damn far from the Wild West?”

“Just start driving, we’re on a schedule,” she says.

“We’re on a schedule now that we’ve spent an entire day just sitting around?”

“We weren’t just sitting around,” she responds defensively. “I was waiting for a sign. For confirmation of what to do next.”

“And you got your sign?” I ask.

“Yes. I got a few.”

“Hey, good for you!” I say, and mean it. Looks like my pep talk worked and she’s back into delusional magical mode. I feel a slight pang of guilt at egging her on, but if it makes her happy and I don’t have to sleep on the ground another night, I can deal.

“Yeah, but who knows if those are the last signs I ever get,” she says, looking out her window with her head propped against the headrest.

“May I ask what they were?”

“One is that Whit is still searching for me and he’s not far behind us. He knows where my clan is, and if you and I are heading in the right direction, we have to be careful not to cross paths with them. It’s going to be close.”

“Double-crossing medicine man and his cronies are gaining on us. Joy,” I say as we reach the turnoff for Spray. I take it and we begin heading southwest. Toward California. Toward home. I have to call my dad.

As if reading my mind, Juneau asks, “Aren’t your parents going to be worried about you?”

It’s the first time she’s asked anything about me besides the vague “tell me something about yourself.” It’s the first hint that she is the least bit interested in me. So why does that spark a tiny flame of hope inside me? Maybe because all I’ve been able to think about this morning are her golden-honey eyes, inches away from my own, and those warm, soft lips.

“My mom left Dad and me last year, so she’s not doing any worrying,” I find myself revealing.

“Miles, I’m sorry to hear that,” she says, and puts her hand on mine. Warmth spreads from where her fingers touch my skin. I try to ignore my body’s reaction to this girl, but it’s getting increasingly difficult.

Juneau looks at me inquisitively like she’s wondering whether I’m going to cry, but those rivers have dried, and it’s only the furrows they carved in my heart that are left. “What happened?” she asks when she sees I’m not going to break down.

“She’s sick. Severe depression. She tried to kill herself last year, and when she didn’t succeed, she said we would be better off without her. And then she left.”

Juneau sits there looking horrified and firms her grip on my hand. “Do you know where she is?” she asks.

“Yeah, Dad tracked her down. She’s living with her aunt outside New York City.”

“Oh, Miles. I don’t even know what to say.” She looks shaken up. Really upset.

“It’s okay,” I say, feeling like I’m comforting her instead of vice versa. “I mean, I miss her, but you get used to someone being gone after a while.” I’m a big fat liar. And it doesn’t look like Juneau’s buying it.

“I just can’t imagine it,” she says. “I’ve never known anyone to get sick.”

“Yeah, well, mental illness is just the same as any other illness. At least that’s what people keep telling me. It happens all the time.”

Juneau just looks at me funny, like she feels sorry for me. My gaze drops to her lips, causing my heartbeat to stutter, and I quickly turn my focus back to the road.

“What about your dad?” she asks.

“What about him?” I ask, and realize how defensive it sounds once it’s out of my mouth.

“Won’t he be worrying?”

“Well, he knows I was in Seattle,” I say carefully. “I really should check in with him so he doesn’t freak out.”

Juneau bites her lip.

“What?” I ask.

“Frankie was really clear about me not letting you use the phone while I was with you,” she says.

Well, Frankie stumbled upon a grain of truth, I think, and wonder what I’m going to tell my dad once I do talk to him. I mean, I can’t just hand Juneau over to him. Not now that I’m sure she’s not the person he thinks she is.

“Can I ask you something?” I say, pulling my hand away from hers so I can take some sharp bends in the road. A hawk takes off in flight from the ground near us, carrying its unlucky prey—looks like a mouse—in its claws.

“Sure,” she says.

“All that money you were flashing around in Walmart… where did you get it?”

A flash of suspicion crosses her features, but then she shrugs as if it can’t hurt to tell me. “I traded a gold nugget for cash.”

“So you’re not actually… working for anyone?” I ask, and it comes out all wrong. But she doesn’t seem to notice and shakes her head.

“The only job I’ve ever had is hunting for food. I’m one of the best shots in our clan. Oh, and apprentice clan Sage, of course. Which I have a feeling is over now that Whit is out to get me.”

She tries to say it flippantly, but besides the one smile I got at breakfast and just now when I talked about Mom, she’s been colder toward me today. Maybe it was the kiss, but I have a feeling it’s something else. She seems remote. Something has changed in her.

She picks up a battered old notebook and pen that I keep stashed in the passenger-side door. “Can I use this?” she asks, and begins scribbling something.

“What are you writing?” I ask.

“A note,” she says.

I thank my lucky stars for the kazillionth time that she’s not a big talker like most of the girls I know in L.A. and turn on the radio. We drive without talking for the next two hours, the bird napping in the backseat and Juneau looking out her window, glancing up occasionally to see how far we’ve gone.

When we’re a mile away from our destination, she sits up and pays attention until finally we arrive at the town limit. “Stop there,” Juneau says, pointing to a sign reading ENTERING SPRAY, POPULATION 160.

Tearing the page from her notebook, she folds it up, tears a hole in one end, and laces a piece of string through it. “Okay, Poe. This is the end of the line for you,” she says, getting out of the car and scooping the bird out of the backseat. It squawks belligerently, as if it understands what she was saying and prefers to stay in the warm car and be chauffeured across the Pacific Northwest.

She holds it to her as she ties the note around its foot. “Miles, could you tear two blank pages from the notebook and fold one over the front license plate and the other over the back?” I don’t even bother asking why and do what she says, hoping that none of the 160 townspeople decides to leave Spray just as I am doing something that looks extremely iffy, if not downright illegal.

Juneau waits until I am done and then carries the bird toward the sign. She makes sure he looks directly at it, and then bows her head and whispers something to it. Standing for a moment with her eyes closed and the raven squeezed close to her chest, she throws it up into the air. It dips for a second, and then flaps upward, circling overhead.

“Get back in the car,” Juneau says, “and start driving into town, slowly.”

“Can I take the paper off—” I begin, but she cuts me off.

“Just drive, Miles.”

“Your word is my command, O dark mistress of bird wrangling,” I mumble, and press the gas, rolling into town as slowly as possible. In the rearview mirror I see the bird finish its circling and head back in the direction we came from.

“Stop,” Juneau orders before we reach the first building. She jumps out, takes the paper off the license plates, and then hops back in. She pulls the atlas to her lap and traces on it with her finger. “We’re going to drive south out of town, and then take 26 east until we get back to the main highway we were on.”

I glance at where she’s pointing. “So we’re going toward Idaho? Which means we’re backtracking,” I comment.

“Not quite—we’ll end up a half hour south of where we camped,” she says, and raises her chin like she thinks I’m going to contest her choice. Instead, I shrug and drive through the small town, stopping for gas at the far end of the main street before continuing on Juneau’s chosen route.

I don’t need to ask. I saw her note. And it explained everything.