Road to Paradise

“You heard that, did you? So?”

“Are you or aren’t you?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Well, if you are, I was wondering if you’d like some company.” She continued before I had a chance to vigorously shake my head. Actually, she continued as I was vigorously shaking my head. “I’d split the expenses with you.” She saw my head spinning from side to side like a pendulum on coke. “And we could share the driving,” she offered. “We’d get there in three days if we did that. How many miles is it? Like a thousand?”

“Three thousand to where I’m going,” I said coolly.

She tried to whistle. “Long way. Well, like I said, I’d help drive, split the gas, and the hotels, you know, it’d be cheaper.”

I was quiet. “You know what’s cheaper?” I said. “Taking the bus. If you take the Greyhound, it’s only a few hundred bucks.”

Gina hemmed and hawed. Finally she said she was scared of buses. Then admitted her mother was scared of buses. I didn’t like buses much myself, but I really wasn’t interested in her or her mother’s opinion of the Greyhound.

“Look, I really gotta go. Emma’s waiting.” Opting for no damp bra, just a T-shirt, breasts poking out, hair wet, jeans barely buttoned, I grabbed my stuff.

She followed me, clutching my arm, but when I gave her a long look, let go. “Promise you’ll think about it?” she said, stepping back. “Just think about it, that’s all. It’ll be easier and faster for you. It’ll be better. And we won’t have to talk much—if you don’t want. We can just listen to eight-tracks.”

Damn Emma. Damn car. Damn ideas. I vowed to just tell her no. Sorry, Geeena, I thought about it, and I don’t think it’s a good idea.

I was wary of her and her intentions. I was wary of her the way some people are of otters. Or leopard seals.

Gina is so ethnic-sounding, like Larchmont. Larchmont may be pretentious, but there is nothing pretentious about Gina.

In the statistics for the most popular names in the last twenty years, Gina has appeared in the top fifty every year. Gina, when she heard this, said, “Groovy!” And flung back her hair. All the boys think Gina is Italian, but there’s not an ounce of Italian blood in her. She just has an ethnic name. I don’t know why this bothers me, except perhaps because every time we went to the amusement park or the beach and the boys would hear her name, their smile would get bigger and they’d drawl, “Ohhhh, you’re Eyetalian …” as if being Italian endowed her with some special gifts, gifts I clearly did not possess. You know what wasn’t lost on me? Their expressions. “Geeeeeena,” they’d call, and every time they did, my irritation quotient twisted up.

I, on the other hand, can only wish I had an anachronistic or ethnic name. Instead mine is just androgynous. Mine isn’t a name, it’s a last name. I’m epicene. Not one thing, not the other.

Whatever it is, you can be sure that not once, not a single time, not when high on Ferris wheels, or dancing in clubs or swimming in the Sound, has any boy ever drawled out my name, with their eyes widening. “Shelbeeeeeee …”

Shelby. This is who I am. Here is my name. I am Shelby.

Gina approached me again the following day. “Are you still thinking?”

“It’s only been a day!”

“Soon summer’ll be over.”

“It’s barely June.”

“I gotta know. I gotta know if I need to make other plans.”

“Okay. I think you should make other plans.”

“Come on, Sloane.”

Sloane! “If you need to know now, my answer is no ’cause I haven’t thought about it.”

“But we’re graduating in two weeks!”

“I know when we’re graduating.”

She lowered her voice. “I gotta make tracks. I gotta get to some place called Bakersfield. I just have to. Don’t ask, okay?”

“Um—okay.” Like I’d ask.

“I have to know soon,” she said, beseechingly. “Because if we’re going, we have to make a plan.”

It was as if she had said a magic word. It was better than please. My whole face softened. “Plan?” I loved plans. I liked to think of myself as a planner.

“Yes. I have to tell my boyfriend when I’m arriving.”

Frowning, I stepped away from her. “That’s the sum total of your plan? Notifying other people?”

She didn’t know what I meant, and frowned, too. I really had to get to my Urban Public Policy class. “What else is there?”

I said nothing. What else was there?

“What? Going cross country? Oh, please.” She waved her hand dismissively. “We get in the car. We go.”

“What about gas?”

“When we run out, we get some.”

“I posit that when we run out, it will be too late.”

“So we’ll get some before. Shel, I’m telling you, you’re overthinking this.”

Ugh. I shook my head. Underthinking, clearly. “I’m not headed to Bakersfield.”

Gina blinked at me. Her blue eyes were slightly too close together, and when she stared, it made her seem vacant and cross-eyed. Perhaps I was being less than totally kind since she was pretty, and all the boys thought so. She was no slouch in the looks department, looked after herself and wore tight jeans, there was just something slightly blank about her eyes when they stared.

“I gotta go. Look, even if I agree to do this,” I said, pressing my books to my chest like palms to my breasts, “you’re going to have to take a bus to Bakersfield. I can drop you off in San Francisco, but then you’re on your own.”

“You want me to take a bus?” Gina said as if I were asking her to eat pig slops.

I moved to go. She caught up with me. “Listen,” she said. “Please say yes. I won’t be able to go without you.” She lowered her voice. “I really need to get to Bakersfield as soon as poss. And Mom won’t let me go unless I go with you.”

“Your mother won’t let you go? What are you, five?”

“That’s what mothers do, Shelby,” said Gina, pompously. “They care what happens to you.”

God! What she didn’t say was, you’d know that, Shelby, if you had a mother.

2 (#ulink_103364a5-0f63-5ab7-a63a-81de9c154f04)

Emma (#ulink_103364a5-0f63-5ab7-a63a-81de9c154f04)