Page 77 of Wayfarers

“But her phone was disconnected.”

“I know,” he says. “But it’s been disconnected before. She didn’t ever have a lot of money.”

“You’re worried about someone you love. There’s nothing shameful in that.”

“I appreciate it. But I’m tired of having my life being dictated by charlatans. I don’t know. I have to think about it.”

And I let him have his thoughts, but they’re taking him a while to process. Eventually I pull into a rest stop so that I can reroute us through the little lake towns clustered on Michigan’s western shore. Saugatuck, South Haven, St. Joseph. Whether we’re headed toward Wisconsin or eclipses or points unknown, it’s still on our way.

Knox smiles a little, watching me. “We gonna go swimming?”

“I love swimming,” I tell him, “but no one loves it more than Winslow. The second he sees the water, he—”

“Bolts?”

“Probably not a surprise, is it.”

“I’d be more surprised if he approached it at a slow, dignified walk.”

“For a while I kept a running list of the things that Winslow’s made a break for. Once he decided to befriend a traffic cone. Across a busy four-lane road. Once I was walking him downtown and he just flattened me trying to get into a shoe store.”

“He’s trying to communicate his needs.”

“His shoe needs?”

“He wants new sandals for summer.”

“Don’t we all?”

Winslow, having heard his name, sticks his big, sweet head between our seats. Knox goes quiet. He scratches Winslow between the eyes.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t snap at me for asking. Cal always snapped at me for asking. “I was just all excited, I guess, about all the possibility—chasing meteorological phenomenons, weird things in Wisconsin—and then I kept thinking about possibility. And how there’s nothing but possibility in front of me. Nothing sure. I guess it’s always been like that for me, but I didn’t really feel it until now.”

“Do you know what you want?”

“Today? Next week? Next year? I have lots of different answers. Do you know what you want?”

“I’m bad at it. Ten years from now feels easier than tomorrow. I always sort of thought I’d be a lawyer, maybe. I like reading. I like coming up with arguments. There’s a path to something like that, and decisions I can make that’ll lead me there. But like . . .” I think about it. “If you weren’t here, I’d be kind of paralyzed about where I’d go next. Like it would feel arbitrary. That I was just counting the weeks down until college.”

“You’re going to college in the fall?”

“Northwestern.”

“Is that up near Seattle?”

“No,” I say, “actually, it’s in Chicago. Wow. Now I wonder why they call it Northwestern.”

“Are you excited to go?”

“I think so. Yeah, maybe. It’s a fresh start. And it’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“Is it what you want to do?”

I tick off the reasons. “Well, I like school. I don’t want to be in central Illinois anymore. I was top of my class, and because of that everyone expected me to go on and do something fancy and far away. Enough that I started wanting it too, I guess. But . . . wow, I’m starting to feel like a mutant.”

“Noted. Continue.”