Page 165 of Wayfarers

“Because I stopped believing in it,” he says. “All they talked about were the evils of the world. But I didn’t see any good in them. That gas station, the one I didn’t want to go into. We ripped it off. Stole a few hundred dollars’ worth of gas. We called it ‘bleeding the Beast.’ I don’t want to make anything bleed anymore.”

“I’m sure you didn’t hurt anyone by stealing gas.”

“I wish that were true. I tripped the owner up when he started chasing us and he fell and hurt his arm.”

“The fortune teller saying that thing about your arm must have freaked you out.”

“Oh, it did. She nailed it.”

“So it was hurting the gas station guy?”

“It’s that, but it’s also the hypocrisy that led to it. We were all trying to act like we were free, but we kept making decisions that just bound us up in other people’s pain. Or our own pain. It’s a different kind of shackles. And I love my mom, but if I stayed, I couldn’t escape it.”

“But why did you leave them in Michigan?”

“Why anywhere?” Finally he looks at me, and there’s something in his eyes that makes my skin prickle. “There was this Girl with Serious Eyebrows. She asked me where the showers were.”

“It wasn’t just any girl? Whatever girl was there?”

“No,” he says. “It was you. Just like . . . well, I don’t know. Was I just the first guy to rescue your dog?”

“No. Of course not. When I met you, it was like . . . I knew you already.”

“I know. Maybe you were my reason, the idea of you before I knew the real Sylvie. Maybe it was the way everyone was throwing their stuff in the bus, yelling go go go. We were running from something else. We were always running.”

“That time, it was probably from me. When I caught Dawn in the van.”

“I didn’t know about the robbery. Not until you told me later, on the road.”

“I know. Anyway I don’t think I was the one who scared you all off. It was mostly that older couple with the taser. Dan and Jan.” I hug myself. “I hope they saw a lot more waterfalls. Jan liked to swim in them.”

“I wonder if Dan and Jan will make it to the eclipse.”

“There’s a lot of eclipse. A big swath of it to see in the Midwest. Maybe they’ll be somewhere out there, watching it from a waterfall.”

A LITTLE LATER

“I’ll get my tent,” he says. “I’ll see you in the morning. Do you—do you still want to see the eclipse?”

“Might as well,” I tell him, and there it is, sneaking up on me again: anticipation.

Sylvie

When I wake up the next morning, it’s to a couple squabbling outside. I never told you that, a woman is insisting. Never! I never said that! Winslow’s nose is tucked up against my neck, and I pet him, and I wonder what the thing is she never said.

“Sylvie?” Knox says, and taps on the window. “Can I come in?”

I unlock the van by way of an answer.

When he opens the sliding door, his arms are full of tent. “Breakfast? We have a couple hours until the eclipse.”

Inside the Walmart, we buy all the stuff we had to leave in our baskets the night before: Milano cookies, Sour Patch Kids, and Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke. Also a bag of bagels and iced coffee and creamer.

A LITTLE LATER

“I’ll take you straight to your mamaw’s after this.”

“Sounds good,” he says. “I’ll have to look up her number again because it had her address with it and I don’t remember it.” He hesitates. “Are we still—not talking on that drive?”