The Long Road Home

People believed in the old days if you sailed far enough you fell over the edge and were swallowed by dragons or engulfed by mermaids.

In reality, if you go far enough from a city the high towers turn to flatlands. Light poles dim or disappear altogether.

But for Jane and Luna they only made it far enough as a half tank of gas could take them.

“You Uncle is going to wonder where his truck is.” Luna said watching Jane count change in the middle console, crusted in old takeout sauce, lint, and dust, to make a full twenty dollars.

“By the time we’re in Yolk he won't care. Besides this is my truck, he just never gave it to me. A tin can on wheels.

Jane's head tilts. “You wouldn’t have two quarters would you?”

Luna fishes in her pockets. Clinking the two coins into the partial neat stack. She looked around gauging how the light from the gas station stopped before it reached the road. It was as if they were sitting in a puddle of sunshine.

The air was brisk as the sun retrieved on the long horizon. Grasshoppers buzzed, and if she stared hard enough she could see them hopping from one stalk to the next.

“Are they open?” Jane gathered the change and divided them into her many pockets in her pants, and sweater. Straightening the fourteen dollars on her thigh.

The gas station was old, but not overly rundown. The signs of age evident in the chipped red sign turned orange from sunburn. The steel railing rusting at the bolts in the ground. An open sign flashed in the window, most of which was overtaken by numerous advertisements.

“The sign says it’s open,” Luna sinks into her seat, pulling over the hood of her sweater.

Throwing her arms in the air, Jane climbs back in, “What now? Having second thoughts? The plan is fool proof. We both wanted this.”

“I did. Or I do…it’s. It’s complicated Jane.”

“Complicated? You say that about everything. Complicated this. Complicated that. When is it not?”

“If you turned the truck off we’d save gas.”

“Now you're telling me what to do. I have a mom.”

“You had a mom.” Sitting up from her seat. Adding, sharper than intended,“I’m just trying to help.”

Jane kills the engine tapping the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sure,” Jane cramps the flat bills back into her wallet. Staring at her lap. It’s the fourth day in a row she’s worn these jeans. Her favorite pair.

Picking at a bit of yesterday's pizza she’d negotiated for half-off. It was a bit stale but still tasty.

I thought my savings would get us farther than this.

My body warms at the memory. My mom would tell me I had a way with people, believing I’d make it well in the marketing industry.

Luna was proud of my achievement when I arrived back at the car with a box of pizza.

Then she’d been motivated. Ready to go.

Nothing could stop us.

Now she's second guessing, I can tell. We haven’t been friends for long, but we clicked. She was like the sister I had in another life.

“Jane?” Luna asks, barely loud enough to shake her from her thoughts.

Jane twists in her seat to face her friend, irritated, “What?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, it gets old,” glancing out the window as a man exits the station, a heavy black trash bag slung over his shoulder whistling an off- tune jazz song. He man was the owner of Pelt’s Pit Stop.

He’d noticed the truck and decided to further investigate. It was odd to receive customers at this time of day. Most came from town, often he could close earlier than eight pm, but he preferred to stay longer. Just in case. Two young girls and an old truck. He knew what a runway was like. Once he was one.

In the truck, Luna says,“But I brought up your mother.”

“It's fine,” in a tone that implies she wasn’t. Jane clutches a section of change in her pocket, rubbing the coins together.

Luna’s right. I had a mom. She’s the only thing that held me back, now that she’s gone. I need to move on.

Remembering the day she pulled me close in the hospice room, “We should get out of here. See the world.”

We both knew this wasn’t possible. Mom was on her death bed, but I went along with the idea for death bed sakes. “Yes, let's eat ramen at a shop in downtown Tokyo.”

My mother had used every ounce of strength to sit forward a bit, she still smelled like baby breath and orange zest. “No. We go to the flea markets in France first.”

If Janice Macintire had an obsession with anything; it was baskets and plants.

“Yes,” I had nodded. Dropping my calculus sheet formulas to the floor. “Where next?”

Two days later, she was gone.

And then I knew I had to leave Winalow. The tiny town, dedicated to cow mills and potato fields.

I moved on to senior year and that’s when I met Luna Goldenrod.

Second-guessing-sensative smart ambitious Luna.

I was in the library, trying to find a subject in history on a research paper. A small voice had said, “This is the wrong section if you're looking for the Fall of the Berlin wall.”

I glanced over, a look of disgust on my face. I was upset that my thought trail had been interrupted. “Really?”

“I’m sorry,” studying me with big eyes before staring at her shoes.

But I was overcome by curiosity. We had calculus together but never talked. Or was it because she never made eye contact with anyone. “How do you know this is the wrong section?”

“I volunteer here. On the weekends.”

“Right.”

As they say, the rest is history.

About three months ago we were sitting at the back of the library. Luna was deep in studying, or so I thought, when she tossed the pencil to the side. “Have you ever just wanted to get out of here?”

I glanced up from my studying, startled by her abruptness, “Like, out the library?”

“No like out of this town. I’ve had it here. I want to leave.”

“Me too. Okay. Let’s plan.”

So the planning started. I inherited it from my mother. Colored coded notes, plans, and a few prices sorted off the library computers. I even bought a map, and arranged it like a massive road trip. Going everywhere, but nowhere at the same time.

I told Luna my plans in increments. Each time offering an unenthusiastic nod. I pretended not to notice. Thinking she was trying to focus on graduating.

I know she only wears ankle socks because long ones make her legs itch.

I know she uses two spoons of honey in ginger tea, the only kind she drinks.

I know she has a slit in each tank top, because she accidentally cut one and decided they all need to be identical.

I believed I knew her, the long conversations we had, laying on a blow up mattress while counting the stars in the wide window, during her days she spent at my Uncles.

Maybe I should have pushed more, when she showed up at mine with faint hand prints on her wrist. I had asked.

“Where are those from?” Realizing I’ve never seen her arms.

“I fell.” Was all she said.

Luna shifts in her seat. “Are you mad at me?”

“Huh?”

“Are you mad at me?” Hazel eyes pit sadness and confusion.

“No. No. I’m not.”

“But-”

Jane releases the coins with a clink. “But what?”

“Your knee.”

“And?”

“It's bobbing.”

“Okay.”

“You do that when you're mad or thinking.” Luna quickly turns to the window. A jackal or coyote of some type hugging the field’s edge before sprinting across the street.

“Yeah. That’s what I’m doing. Thinking.”

Luna glances at her from across the truck. Eyebrows pressed in unison. Jane would tease her about her uni-brow she never shaved.

Jane exhales, holding unto the wheel. “I’m thinking about how we got here. This was your idea.”

“I know.”

“I thought we left for adventure. But you never seemed excited about the places just to leave. Now we left and you're…doing what Luna does.”

“What does that mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

Luna crosses her arms. “I don’t know.”

“See what I mean. I wouldn’t have had the spirit to follow through if you weren’t there. I’ve been wanting to do this, you know that.”

Quietly, “And I don’t want to stop that from happening.”

“Luna, you need to decide. I don’t know much about your home life…but you're my friend and…just choose.”

Choose.

The words hung between them. Saying everything and nothing at the same time. It called for action and decisiveness.

Luna sank further in her seat. Socks scratching the rough floor carpet.

A single word with so much magnitude.

As a kid I had dreams of becoming a librarian. I used to line up my bunch of stuffed bunnies, reading them bedtime stories. Using an old stamp I had found at the park to stamp imaginary “check-outs.” I wrote several papers in middle school about the sights and places in Scotland, particularly, the stone hedges. The fog, the quiet, the snow and green expanses.

I thought being surrounded by stones and stories would save me when everything at home started to crack.

Stories couldn’t save me from skipped dinners, memorizing footstep patterns, and putting on a smile during family gatherings. They couldn’t prevent me from having to wear long sleeves in July or from saying “sorry” for no reason.

Jane helped me realize I didn’t have to be this way forever. When I met her in the library, something about her blue eyes made me feel like she believed she was invincible. And I wanted a fragment of that.

It was my idea to leave. One night, after a fight that left red sauce sloshed against cream walls and two broken chairs, I watched my younger siblings duck instead of scream. My bedroom door was ripped off its hinges. My father, the man who insisted he loved us, stared at me slumped in my chair, “You know I love you. Right?”

My mother’s vacant eyes nodded passively.

I nodded too. And somewhere beneath the wood cracking. I heard it.

Run.

Run.

That’s when I asked Jane. She deserved to live the dreams her and her mother had created. Tokyo ramen and French flea markets, live a life bigger than Winalow could offer. I wanted to go. Heaven I wanted to go. To choose my own clothes. To eat when I was hungry. To sleep without listening for footsteps.

But wanting something and taking it are two different things.

The grasshoppers in the corn fields leap, they know what to do with freedom. I don’t. And that scares me more than bruises ever will.

At home studying behaviors became a game of survival. Tip-toeing around clashing pots and burning glares. I’m built to persist. Home for me isn’t fuzzy and warm, it’s where danger is. But it’s familiar. And familiarity has its own magnetism.

Jane stares at me with those fiery blue eyes. Waiting.

I can’t hold her back.

The man exits purposely striding, boots crunching on the gravel, whistling jazz off kilter.

“Times up,” Jane says, hand cranking the window open.

The man stops several feet away. “I’m closing in ten minutes. Here to fill up?” His voice is gravely but kind, like a smoker who stopped the habit years ago.

“Yeah,” Jane steps out, closing the door. Counting out the change into his open palm.

“I would give you a receipt but the machine is down.”

“No worries.”

Once he leaves, Jane leaned on the open window. “So…”

“So?”

Jane sighs. “Stop pretending. You didn’t want to go in the first place.”

“But I did,” Luna weakly says.

“And when did you stop?”

Luna shakes her head. “Somewhere along the long road. You know how people say "it’s the journey not the destination that matters?”

“Yeah. A pile of nonsense if you ask me.”

“What if it’s the place before the journey and destination that matters. Because it’s the place that shapes where you go next.”

Running a hand though her hair Jane tries to grasp what Luna means. “And?”

She doesn’t answer, instead staring out the window.

“Luna, you're a friend to me. I don’t have anyone else besides my smelly uncle.”

The man comes back, still whistling an off beat jazz tune.

“Thank you, and be safe, ladies.” He hands Jane a pack of water and chips. A kindness that makes the night sky seem not so dark.

Jane takes them with a tight smile.“Thank you so much.”

Luna slides out the truck. “Uh, Mr?”

He pauses. “Yes?”

“Do you have a phone I could use?”

“Ah, yes I do. Follow me.”

Luna turns once and mouths sorry.

Jane shrugs , but flicks her eyes away quickly. Turning to the pump shoulders stiff. I did say choose, didn’t I? I guess I hoped too much she’d pick me.

I guess now I’m really on my own.

The gas station lights bizz overhead, moths smack against the glass like small pingpong balls. The corn field sways under the influence of the breeze, like a long gentle whisper. Jane climbs into the truck, and slams the door. Her face lit by the dashboard. Determined, hurt, but ever hopeful.

The engine coughes to life.

From inside Luna watches the taillights blink, then drift forward, then vanish. Two red dots, swallowed by the road, then dark, and everything else.

California rookies, here she comes.

Luna stands there hand hovering as the man fidgets with containers on the counter with his back turned. The light flickers. Grasshoppers buzz.

Had she made the right choice?

People believed if you went far enough you fell from the cliff of the world, but as the truck engine hummed far in the distance, she realized some already have.