Melissa Senate Read Online Free Page A

land at the Portland Jetport, I’d walked over to the huge expanse of windows, stared at the planes coming in, the planes being loaded up with bags. I stood there sobbing. And I called Nick on my cell phone, but got his voice mail and left a message. And very late that night, after Stella had fallen asleep wearing my mother’s favorite huge wool sweater, and Tom had gone home, Nick had knocked on my apartment door with two pints of ice cream, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two boxes of Puffs tissues. And we sat on the floor in my living room, on the rug, in front of the fireplace, and he told me about the day his mother had died, also a car accident. He was thirteen and thought he wasn’t supposed to cry but then couldn’t contain himself anymore and sobbed through the funeral. His father and older brother held him tight and let him cry without a single shush, and that was what he remembered most. The not being shushed.

    What Stella remembered most about our mother’s funeral was what I’d said about not loving Tom.

    “Aren’t you curious to know what Nebraska is like?” she asked now. “If it’s all cornfields? We can break the drive into a week, stay along the way, see some really cool sites. I’m dying to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Ohio. That’s just a couple days into our trip! Ruby, you could actually touch the hem of the leather jacket Bruce Springsteen wore on the cover of Born To Run. ”

    I doubted you could actually touch it, but I wouldn’t mind seeing that leather jacket. Or driving through a cornfield that never ended.

    “Come on, Ruby,” she said. “School is out. You said all you’re planning to do this summer is take a Spanish class and learn to knit. You can do that in the car! You can bring those Berlitz tapes. I’ll plan the entire trip—down to where and when to stop for the night. I’ll even make all the reservations. We’ll stick to a plan, and you know how you like plans. We’ll take a week to drive down, spend a week there, and then Tom can fly down, you’ll get married if you’re really serious about it, and then we’ll all drive back. You’ll drop me in New York, and then you two can drive back up to Maine and live boringly ever after. Or we can even fly back, and you know how I hate to fly.”

    “Why do you want to do this so bad, anyway?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her. “Why do you want to be stuck in a car with me for three thousand miles? Why do you suddenly want to help me pick out a wedding chapel when you think Tom is wrong for me?”

    “The plan isn’t to pick out a wedding chapel, Rubes. It’s to trap you in the car for a couple of weeks. Someone has to try to save you from making the biggest mistake of your life, Ruby. And Grammy Zelda doesn’t drive. I’m all you’ve got.”

    At least she was honest.

    “So, you’re going to drive all the way to Las Vegas to convince me not to get married.”

    “Just say yes, Ruby. I want to make sure I can reserve a really cool car. A convertible. Red.”

    “Say yes to what, exactly? To listening to you tell me that I don’t love my fiancé? I don’t think—”

    She clutched her map. “Okay, so there might be another reason I want to go to Las Vegas,” she said, biting her lip. “And I remembered how you said that if you ever got married, you’d want to elope to Las Vegas, so that’s why I thought of you, why I figured I’d ask if you were interested in driving there.”

    I waited for the reason, which seemed slow in coming. Which was worrisome.

    “I…uh…I can—what’s that cliché? Kill a bird with a stone?”

    “Two birds,” I said. “With one stone.”

    “Well, the first bird is your engagement. Which I do plan to kill.”

    “And the other bird?” I prompted. It was that bird that was making me nervous. Did Stella have a gambling problem? Did she owe loan sharks a pot of money or something? Did she want to be a legal prostitute?

    “No other bird.