Page 144 of Wayfarers

“Should we talk about—” I begin hesitantly, without really knowing where I was going to end. Cal? The kiss? Both? Neither? Who knows.

Fortunately Sylvie cuts me off. “No.”

“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”

“Don’t need to. I know that something was going to follow the word ‘about’ and please believe me when I tell you that I don’t want to talk about anything right now.”

“Okay. That’s cool. We don’t have to talk. We can just . . . sit here silently.”

We do just that for a while.

“Is this the weirdest day you’ve ever had?” Sylvie asks.

I laugh the way you might if you saw a tornado carry away your house and there’s nothing else you can do. “Baby, this doesn’t make my top twenty.”

“Oh yeah? That a challenge? Telling me to step it up?”

“No, more a wistful reflection on the pretty chaotic life I’ve led up until this point.”

“Have you been abducted by aliens or what?”

As a matter of fact, I don’t say. “Kinda.”

“Kinda?”

“Hey, you know how you were talking about how you don’t want to talk about stuff?”

“Oh, I’m fine talking about stuff you don’t want to talk about.” When she finally makes eye contact with me, she gives me a smile that’s somehow sad and mischievous simultaneously. Then she makes her way back to the front of the van and sits in the driver’s seat. “I need to get out of here. You still wanna go see an eclipse with me?”

“Nothing I’d rather do.”

She fires up the engine and we pull away, leaving Springfield behind us. I wonder if I’ll ever visit Springfield again. I don’t mind if I don’t.

Sylvie

“When you said you’d never see me again—”

“Is this Taylor Swift?” Knox asks, reaching for the volume.

“Don’t you wish. It’s Noah Kahan. That is clearly a man singing.”

“Oh.”

I hit the power button. “For real. When you said—”

“Sylvie,” Knox says. “Can I ask you something?”

“Okay.”

“I know that the Cal stuff is painful to think about, and probably more painful to talk about. I know you’ve been through the wringer in the last few months. But still. Why didn’t you tell me?” He’s asking with genuine curiosity, and so I try for a genuine answer.

“I don’t know,” I say. “The reasons you just gave, maybe.”

He’s looking at my hands on the wheel. “Can I take a shot at it?”

“My motivations?”

“Yeah. I won’t if it’ll make you feel bad. But I think—I think I have an idea why.”