“Rest stop,” Zach said.
Scott shrugged. “I’ll stay here. Get me a Coke, will you?”
Zach unfolded his stiff muscles and headed into the building. He made his way to the bathroom, then washed his hands and caught up with the rest of the group. The whole caravan of Madrigals kids was gathered by the pizza shop in the food-court area. When he saw Fairen looking at the menu above the cash registers, he approached her from behind and poked her in the waist with both index fingers.
“How’re you doing?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Okay. Tired.”
“You and me both.” He glanced around to be sure no one was paying attention to their conversation, then said in a low voice, “I keep thinking about last night.”
She smiled, but her smile seemed thin. “Yeah, pretty crazy.”
“Yep. Not in a bad way.”
Abruptly, she turned and began to walk away. He pursued her and, catching up, grabbed her wrist to get her attention. She jerked it from his grasp and when she turned her hard eyes on him he gazed back full of dismay.
“Give me some space, will you?” she snapped. “It wasn’t very nice, what you did.”
“What did I do?”
“Pulling on my hair like that. I wasn’t going anywhere, you know. There was no need to treat me like a freakin’ farm animal.”
The crowds of people moving all around them seemed to exist in a different world. Zach was alone, with only Fairen standing across from him with her strange stony stare, barking words at him that made no sense. After the silence in which he struggled to gather his thoughts he asked, “Well, why didn’t you say anything then? Or after?”
“Because I’m bigger than that. I’m not going to bitch you out and make it awkward. But it’s done now, all right? So give me
“I’m sorry.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and squinted at her, his head tipping, entreating her to forgive him. “Really, I’m sorry.”
The sidelong look she offered failed to absolve him. She disappeared into the crowd of Madrigals gathered in front of the pizza stand. He stayed in place, his feet unwilling to move, his rumbling stomach unexpectedly silent. With pizza in hand she walked past him, back to the car she had been traveling in, without even acknowledging him. By the time he slammed the car door and handed Scott his soda, he felt bewildered almost to tears.
Back on the highway, Judy turned on some crap ’70s music. He fished his CD player out of his backpack and put on the headphones, turning up the Goo Goo Dolls loud enough to drown out her purple hippie haze. By the time it reached the eleventh track, he had himself so worked up that the despondent lyrics of “Iris” were intolerable. He shut off the player, tore the headphones from his ears, and chucked the whole setup into his backpack.
“You okay back there?” asked Judy.
Temple was asleep, his head lolling against the window. Scott was still gazing out at the landscape through half-closed eyes, portable CD player spinning. In a grudging voice Zach replied, “Yeah.”
“You’ve been very quiet.”
“I’m tired.”
“I think you ought to stay home tomorrow and sleep in. You can tell your teachers I told you to cut class.”
He indulged her with a half smile. Keeping her eyes on the road, she reached back and patted him on the thigh. It was enough to remind him that he wasn’t repugnant to every woman on earth, only to one, and that lifted his spirits very slightly. He looked at Judy’s mild expression, her hands back at ten and two on the wheel, and considered how crazy it was that inside that Suzy Homemaker exterior was a woman who’d grab his ass while tongue-kissing him in a room where they could easily have been caught. Suddenly he laughed. He said, “Turn up the radio.”
She twisted the dial. “Do you like this song?”
“Like it? I love it. I love the Lemonheads.” Sometimes the radio seemed to be possessed. It could read his mind.
She grinned. “It’s not the Lemonheads, it’s Simon and Garfunkel.”
“It’s ‘Mrs. Robinson,’” he insisted. “It’s a Lemonheads song. I’m sure of it.”
“Then they must have covered it, because this is Simon and Garfunkel. They’re not going to play the Lemonheads on an oldies rock station. And I remember this song from when I was your age.”
He gave up the argument. She was probably right; what he had mistaken for an unfamiliar version of the CD track was starting to sound more folksy than live. Still, the coincidence was uncanny. He glanced at Temple and at Scott, and then, satisfied that they were too brain-dead to be listening, asked, “Do you know what it’s about?”
“Sure I do. Do you?”
He worked up his nerve and said, “It’s about an older woman who’s into younger guys.”
She laughed. “Everyone thinks that, just because they played it in
“What do you think it’s about, then?”
Her fingers flexed on the steering wheel. She glanced at him in the rearview mirror and said, “It’s about a woman who’s going crazy. She’s trapped in the suburbs and in her crappy marriage and she’s losing it.”
He nodded. Her interpretation wasn’t as interesting as his. He said, “Ah.”
