21. Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-One
“Wake up, sleepyhead.” Leila stands at the foot of the bed and tickles my feet until I blink at her, bleary. “I have so many plans today! Do you like to hike? Because I know some great hikes. And I have to take you to the best sandwich place in town. You’ll die.”
I sit up and rub my eyes. “Are you caffeinated?”
She laughs. “No. I’m worse when I’m caffeinated. So, hiking?”
I’m dreading my next words. “I need to get back on the road.”
Her face falls. “What? Why? There’s no more sibs in the database. Do you have to go home?”
“No, I just . . . I found David Lombard. He lives in Philadelphia.”
Her eyes widen in surprise then shoot me a sharp look. “How?”
“I’m afraid to tell you. You’re going to be mad.”
She studies me for an uncomfortably long moment. “I think I know. You may as well spill.”
“When you threw me your phone to charge last night, I kept the screen active. You got an autoreply from Erin with her last name and her area code in her signature. So I did some googling. And I found him. And now I need to go see him.”
She snorts. “You’re going to drive literally across the country to see some guy who’s made it clear he doesn’t want to meet us?”
“That’s the thing. I found out he’s teaching at a conference in San Diego on Friday morning. I’m going to try to find him at the hotel tomorrow night, but even if I don’t, I’ll be able to find him Friday morning when he has to teach.”
Leila stands and paces. To the window. To the door. To the window. She stops in front of me. “This is a bad idea. I think it will make him mad. And have I mentioned—screw that guy? He’s not our actual dad.”
“Maybe not to you, but you have Tom. There’s no hole. For me, there’s a big one. I have to do this. I have to.”
“But to me, you suddenly leaving, it feels like ‘peace out,’ you know? Like, hey, we just had this amazing sister bonding evening but there’s another more interesting relative so byeeee.”
I hop to my feet, wide awake now. “That’s not it, I swear, Leila. It’s not. It’s only because he’s on the West Coast, and I have to take the shot now . I’ve had questions about my biological father my whole life, but I thought I would never get answers because he was some rando who hit it and quit it. Then DNA tests came around, and every year the need to know got stronger until I couldn’t take it anymore. And to find out that my bio dad isn’t some random hookup who my mom can’t remember? That he’s someone she mindfully chose? I need to know. And she won’t tell me anything. I have to go.”
She stares at me for another eternity. Finally, she nods.
The thing I already know about Leila is that she means it. “Thanks for understanding.”
“Now I’m mad at that guy for cutting my time with you short. Blerg.” She plops down on the bed. “All right. Let’s figure this out.” She’s already googling. “Even if you leave right this second, you won’t make it until almost midnight, and that’s if you never stopped.”
“We’ll do half today.” I’m trying to figure out the schedule in my mind.
She bounces up from the bed. “Good. You might as well leave after lunch, then stop somewhere cool tonight, like San Francisco. You can explore it in the morning, then head down to San Diego.”
I laugh. “You talked me into it.”
She gives me a smug smile. “I’m very good at that.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not that hard, nerd. I’d love to hang out with you longer today.”
We get up and get ready, then after a huge breakfast from Fereshteh, Leila drags us on a four-mile hike to a place called Tumalo Falls. Gabe and Mia come too, but they hang back, giving Leila and me space to talk. When we reach the hundred-foot falls, I half-wait for Gabe to sidle up next to me and have a metaphor moment again like at General Sherman, but he stays with Mia.
“It’s gorgeous,” I shout over the roar of the falls to Leila.
“So are we. Selfie time. Let’s do it for the ‘gram.” We grin into her camera, faces pressed against each other, and her smile looks as real and happy as mine feels. I take another picture of the falls to text Mom and tell her Mia and I found them while hiking.
When it’s time to head back, I’m sad, both because there are falls farther along the trail we could explore if we had time, but mostly because it means I have to leave Leila.
I couldn’t leave her if I didn’t know that David Lombard and big answers are waiting for me nine hundred miles away.
Fereshteh serves us lunch before we leave with promises between Leila and me to visit each other soon.
I heave my suitcase into the Jeep, and Leila throws her arms around me. “You’re my favorite sister in the whole world. Even if we find twenty more, you’ll still be my favorite.”
“You’re my favorite sister too.” I squeeze back hard. I hate to leave her, and it makes me almost angry at David Lombard for not speaking one day later so I can have more time with Leila.
“We should get on the road,” Mia says. She climbs into the back seat and slams the door. Gabe scowls at her for the slam but takes shotgun without a word.
“Mia’s right. We need to go.” I give Leila another squeeze before I take the driver’s seat and put the Jeep in gear.
She waves until the Jeep turns the corner, and I can’t see her in the rearview mirror anymore.
“Feel good?” Gabe asks. “I mean, Leila’s cool. And now you’re going to meet your dad. That’s what you wanted, right?”
“My sperm donor. But yeah. I think? I don’t know. I feel so many nerves that I’m not sure what’s under them yet.” The only clear feeling I have besides the nervousness is a buzz of happiness that Gabe wants to know how I feel about all of this. Something is happening between us. Maybe we can finally be friends?
“It’ll be good, Kendall. I still think you’re kinda nuts, but I get why you’re doing this.”
I pull onto the main road and soon we merge onto Highway 97. It will take us south through the middle of California. Still no ocean views for us. Worse, Mia is in a mood again. I ask her a couple of questions about the hike and her playlist, but she either pretends she can’t hear me or fakes a nap every time, and I give up.
“California never wants to be what I expect it to be,” Gabe says three hours later. His sunglasses are off, and he makes a slow scan of the landscape. Rocky embankments interspersed with shrubs block the view on the west. Flat fields with snowcapped mountains so far east that they look like small piles of salt on a huge, empty table. Gray sky, but not the kind of gray that means rain. The kind that hovers without a promise to do anything interesting.
“I’m beginning to doubt it has any beaches,” Mia says.
“Pretty sure San Diego is one giant beach if the map is anything to go by,” I tell her, relieved she’s talking to me. “You’ll get your sand and waves.”
She fiddles with her phone then sits up. “Hey, how close are we to getting back to Interstate 5?”
“A few miles. Been seeing road signs for a while.”
“Well, get this. If we cross it and go a little bit , we’ll get to Coffee Creek.”
I groan, already knowing what’s coming.
“Oh, come on, Kendall. We’ll still get to San Diego on time tomorrow. It’s a tiny detour. I want a picture with the Coffee Creek sign for Instagram. I’ll caption it, ‘My spiritual home.’”
“Don’t post it until we’re back in Adobe,” Gabe warns her. “I don’t need seventeen phone calls demanding to know where you are.”
“I know that, dummy. So Coffee Creek, Kendall? Pleeeeeease?”
“Fiiiiiiiiine.” But I don’t mind. We’ll have plenty of time to get to San Diego tomorrow. And I want to fix the new weirdness between us.
“Yesss.” She fist pumps, and I smile at her in the mirror. She smiles back for a second before she remembers she’s mad at me and scrunches down in her seat again.
“So you’ve made friends with my girl?” Gabe asks.
“Your what?”
He pats the dashboard. “My girl.”
Oh, the Jeep. “I love her. You think your parents would adopt me and buy me one for graduation?”
He gives a soft sigh. “You’ll pay more for it than you think you will.”
“I thought all of you got to pick a car as long as you made Gold Scholar.” It’s a state grant that gives a full ride to any CSU campus.
“I didn’t mean money.”
There’s a trace of frustration in his voice, but I sense that it’s not for me. “I’m trying to do some deductive reasoning and coming up short,” I admit. “ How does it cost you?”
“Strings. You can’t see them, but they’re attached to every inch of this car.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Sandoval kid sound resentful of Dr. and Mrs. Sandoval besides whining about chores.
“I sound like a jerk, don’t I? Complaining about my sweet Jeep when you don’t even have a car?”
“It’s not that. I’ve just never heard any of you criticize your parents before. Like, ever. I don’t know what to say.”
He shrugs. “They’re great. I love them. I recognize the good they do for us. That they want good things for us. But sometimes, the expectations, they’re a lot.”
The strain in his voice when he says “expectations” sounds the way I feel more and more lately with Mom, these invisible currents that run between us, her pulling me one way toward her ideas for my future, into the Dunn family and eggplant casserole dinners.
“It’s like that with my mom,” I say. “She yanks harder the more I try to slip away. But I need the space. When we crossed the Colorado state line, I took my first deep breath in months.”
He nods and doesn’t say anything else.
I turn my eyes back to the road while I consider these last few days of freedom, driving his Jeep down a California freeway. Sure, the view is barren and the sky looks like a digital print where the color got blown out by a filter, but . . .
I’m driving down a California freeway. It’s spring break. It’s warm.
I grin and roll down the window, knowing I’ll only get to enjoy the warm wind for a few seconds before Gabe snipes at me to put it up, but he shakes his head and rolls his down too, letting his arm rest on the door and turning his face into the currents.
Mia sits up and pulls her earbuds out. “California playlist.” A few seconds later, Tupac floats out of the speakers again, rapping about LA.
It’s perfect. I throw my head back and laugh, and when Gabe reaches for the volume, I grab his wrist to stop him.
“Let go,” he says.
“Don’t touch the controls.”
“Let. Go.”
“Better do it or he’ll lick you,” Mia says.
My eyes fly to his. He wouldn’t. But he tugs his wrist, my hand still around it, toward his mouth. I sense the tiny pause where he’s giving me a chance to let go. I don’t. His tongue flicks out and runs across the back of my wrist.
I yelp and snatch my hand back, a wet line where he licked me, but it’s not cold. Not even with the wind rushing over it. It tingles instead. Mia laughs like we’re a comedy act, and Gabe smiles, waiting.
I know what I’m supposed to do. Punch him, like Mia would. Instead, I wipe my wrist against my jeans. He uses the opening to lunge for the volume again, only he turns it up instead of down which makes Mia whoop and sing the chorus at the top of her lungs.
I hate how aware I am of Gabe again, of how closely he’s watching me. I want to switch with Mia and climb into the safety of the back seat, but I don’t want him to know how much his gaze throws me. This is a Sandoval Brother classic: find something that makes you crazy and exploit it relentlessly. It’s why they all give Mia something pink for her birthday; she hated the pink Easter dress she got when we were eight, and she was doomed. She’s gotten an avalanche of pink gifts ever since.
The only way to survive is to show no weakness, so I meet Gabe’s stare and give him an I-don’t-care smile, but the wind whips a loose hank of hair into my face. I splutter and unstick it from my ChapStick.
By the time I’ve got it tucked behind my ear again, Gabe is staring out of the window. No braid today. I need one, but I’m thankful he’s not offering to do it.
And disappointed.
My head buzzes, too full of thoughts bumping into each other. I need to think them through but that takes quiet. I lower the volume after a few more California songs. I like the white noise of the wind coming through the windows, so I leave them down.
My thoughts drift first to Gabe, but I’ve given him too much real estate in my head, so I push those out. I have other things I need to think through, like why Mia is upset again. She’s acting jealous, just like I did when she got along so well with Seth. What if she’s picking up on my feelings for Gabe? When we were freshmen, one of her softball teammates, Katie, started sitting at our lunch table every day, asking us lots of questions, sharing her Cheetos. Mia invited her to hang out after school one day, but as soon as Katie set foot in the house, she beelined for Gabe and forgot Mia’s existence. Mia froze her out so hard afterwards that Katie quit the softball team.
Mia can’t know that I’m falling for Gabe. No matter how big my feelings for him grow, they’re never going to be bigger than my friendship with Mia. I run a mantra through my head.
Gabe is just my friend. That’s enough. Gabe is just my friend. That’s enough.
I switch to thinking ahead, working up questions to ask David Lombard. I stall on my first question: Why don’t you want to know us?
I can’t get past that.
“Getting close,” Gabe says when we cross Interstate 5.
Green smudges of road signs appear ahead, probably counting down the distance to Coffee Creek. I almost ask Mia to dig my glasses out of my backpack for me, but I don’t want Gabe to see me in them. I’ll be able to read the signs when we get closer. Then as soon as I remember that I don’t want to care about how I look in glasses, I immediately ask her. “Can you hand me my glasses, Mia?”
There’s some rustling, and a moment later she thrusts my glasses case between the seats. I set it on my leg and fumble them out. Gabe slips the case from my leg and puts it in the glove box. His fingers graze my thigh and send a jolt of heat straight up my nerve endings to curl low in my belly.
I swallow hard. “Thank you.”
He nods and goes back to staring out his window. I turn straight ahead, trying to ignore my reaction to his touch, and confirm that yes, those smudges are road signs. They slowly grow bigger as the scenery turns into low hills with more patches of green. A sign swims toward us announcing that Coffee Creek is ten miles ahead.
The trees grow thicker, faster. I’m not sure what they are. Baby Sequoias? Are those a thing? I lean forward to peer closer for details. Suddenly Gabe swears and there’s a loud thump. The steering wheel jerks beneath my hands, sending us toward the center line, and I scream as I lose control of the Jeep. I twist the wheel the other way and slam on the brakes, and everything around us spins into a terrifying green blur.