“Yeah,” I say. “Could I see the menu again?” I want to order something like a salad to go, because even if suburban gas station food is better than rural gas station food, I’m definitely hitting the point of being sick of hot dogs. “We’ll get there when we get there,” I say. “I mean, if CheshireCat wanted someone who could sweep in for a rescue right away, they definitely should have shared their secret with Firestar, not me.”
I am worried about CheshireCat, but I try to push my fear and impatience aside. Whatever’s happened to them, they’re probably not actually in some sort of countdown where if we’re not there in forty-eight hours they’ll disappear forever. Rachel is my best friend. She’s killing herself to help me, and now she feels like she’s not doing enough, and all I really want right now is to convince her that she’s doing enough. That she is enough. That what matters to me most is that she’s with me, not that she’s going to take me to Massachusetts in a certain number of days.
Rachel’s staring at the menu, and she has tears in her eyes. “I just feel like I’m letting you down,” she says.
“No!” I say. “You’re not. I mean, how are you letting me down? You brought me all the way to … what town is this?” I check the menu. “You brought me all the way to Valparaiso, Indiana. I can’t drive. My mom sure wasn’t going to do this for me.”
“What if I can’t—I mean—if I can’t go any farther, all I’ve done is strand you in the middle of nowhere.”
“That’s not true. I’m pretty sure I could get back to Chicago from here, and I bet there are buses that run from Chicago to Boston. There’s nothing that runs through New Coburg.”
That gets through. She looks up. “So if I don’t think I can go any farther…”
“I can take a bus. Or both of us can.”
She swallows hard. “Okay. Do you need me to tell you right now?”
“No,” I say. “You can decide in the morning.”
We get salads to go and remember to tip, and then we start trying to figure out where to spend the night. There’s a hotel across the parking lot right next to the restaurant, but they refuse to rent to us when we try to pay with cash. We try the cheaper, shadier-looking motel up the road, and they aren’t bothered by the cash but they ask for ID and then refuse to rent to us when they see we’re under eighteen.
Rachel looks like she’s going to start crying again, so I try asking, “Is there anyone nearby who might rent to us?”
The clerk hands back my cash and says, “No one will rent to you, because you are a minor. You can’t be held legally responsible for your room, so it is too risky.”
We get back into Rachel’s car, and I try asking the Clowder for ideas.
“Campground?” Hermione says.
“Those won’t rent to minors, either,” Marvin says. “Just park somewhere and sleep in the car.”
“You just made Georgia cry,” I report. This isn’t technically true; she was already crying, although the thought of sleeping in the car made her cry more.
“Also, if they park somewhere that’s not allowed, they could get arrested which is NOT IDEAL,” Hermione adds.
“You can camp in Walmart parking lots. Though usually they expect people to do it in campers,” Marvin says.
“Try another cheap motel and bribe the desk clerk not to ask for ID,” Ico suggests.
“How do you bribe someone?” I ask. “I mean, do I say, ‘Here’s a bribe! Please don’t ask for my ID’ or what exactly?”
“You definitely don’t say, ‘Here’s a bribe,’” Marvin says. “I think maybe when they ask for ID, you slide a hundred-dollar bill across the desk and say, ‘How does this look?’ and if you’re lucky, they take it and let you have the room. Of course if they just take the money and don’t let you have the room, you don’t have much recourse.”
“If you’re going to try this,” Hermione says, “call it a tip. Say something like ‘I’ve always thought desk clerks should get tips’ and give them the money and then try booking the room. But yeah. They could take it and still not rent you the room.”
Thanks to the anonymous benefactor and Hermione, we actually have plenty of money, and Rachel was able to withdraw it as cash when we passed through Black River Falls, so I figure it’s worth a try. Rachel refuses to come in with me this time, so I count out enough bills to cover the seventy-nine dollars the hotel costs, the tax it presumably also costs, and a hundred-dollar bribe. I check to make sure no one else is in the office, then go in. The desk clerk looks at me. “May I help you?” he says after a beat.
I square my shoulders and walk up to the desk, trying not to think too hard about what I’m doing because I’ll just get even more nervous. “I have always thought hotel desk clerks should get tips,” I say and lay the five twenties down in front of him. “I’d like to book a room.”
The clerk eyes the money with obvious regret and then shoots a significant look over my shoulder. “I am not allowed to accept tips, unfortunately,” he says. I follow his eyes to a little camera over the door.
I pick the money back up. “So … about a room…”
“I’ll need to see an ID.”
I stuff the money back into my pocket. At least he didn’t take the bribe and then refuse to rent to me.
“No good,” I report back to the Clowder. “Any ideas for a motel that won’t have a camera? I bet they all have cameras.”
“Did you rule out a campground?” Firestar asks. “I bet they wouldn’t have a camera. There’s one kind of near you called Camp Whispering Pines.”
“That sounds like a summer camp,
