10. Paige
10
Paige
I was hit by a truck.
Or so it feels like waking up this morning. My arm is propped at an odd angle above my head, and all of the blood has rushed out of it, leaving me with nothing more than a pool noodle to hit snooze. That might be why I knocked the small cloud-shaped alarm to the floor.
And my foot is in my sink.
Wait…what ?
I lift my head just enough to see my foot in the small stainless sink built into the cabinetry beside the end of my bed. Just lovely.
My arm tingles while I hang it off the side of the bed, so the blood rushes back. I groan loudly, still listening to the upbeat electronica music I chose to get me pumped to wake up in the morning.
Consider me enthusiastic.
Not .
“Cleo, turn it off.”
She stretches her paws out across my stomach, saying nothing.
I still reply like she did. “I know you don’t know how, but please?”
I’m talking to my cat, which would be weird for anyone who isn’t an animal lover, but to me, it’s completely normal. I have conversations with her every day. I imagine how she’d respond, and I think this fits because there is no way she’d ever get out of bed before me.
She sprawls across my stomach like she’s getting comfy again. Not helping.
The pinpricks in my arm have lessened, and my foot is starting to get cold from resting it in the sink.
I peel the covers off me, and Cleo quickly scurries off to find another resting place at the end of the bed. Pulling my legs in, I use whatever’s left of my weak abs to sit up. I’m like a corpse rising from the dead. I feel like I’ve slept like the dead, too, in the strain of my neck and tightness in my shoulders. I suppose falling asleep upright for the first half of the night while journaling will do that.
I slide off the edge and pick up my alarm clock, finally getting some relief, and turn it off. Silence . My ears are still ringing slightly, but my body comes back online, as I stretch every limb out or up.
My hand flops around on the shelf above my pillow without the help of my eyes to look for my glasses. When I find them, I shove them on my face and wince when I slam my palm into my nose. I yelp and curse myself for doing this too often as someone who has worn glasses her whole life.
There’s a humming sound coming from outside that steals the quiet once again, except this time, I’m instantly curious since it’s right outside my van. When I arrived last night, there weren’t any other campers, and I wondered why I was the only one. But peeling back the blue corduroy curtains, matching the rest of the blue in this vehicle, I spy a few other campers and a much nicer van next to me.
This one is white and sleek, with a top rack and a bike hanging off the back. The woman who must have been humming comes around to the driver’s side door of her vehicle to put something away, and I’m met with a wave of nostalgia.
Her bright red highlights remind me of Delia, my ex-coworker from Upstairs Closet Thrift. She’s the one who recommended I do the blind dating experiment, leaving me with a best friend who admitted his feelings for me. But seeing this person with dyed red hair gives me a rush of homesickness.
What a way to wake up.
I shake my head and brush off the memories.
For now, I need to figure out how to make coffee in a van.
I let the curtain fall closed and squat low to open the cabinet under the sink to assess the water situation. I wish I knew the specifics of how the tank worked, but I wasn’t really listening when Dad was explaining it. I see the water, but how do I get it out? There are no valves, hoses, or spigots that I can see, and I start to worry.
I could call Dad and ask, but giving in to this urge feels like I’d somehow be failing.
“Cleo, did you hear what he said?” I flip the handle on the sink. No water. I sigh. “Maybe it’s outside.”
I grab a thick sweater with small bows stitched into it and slip on a pair of Birks I scored at Upstairs Closet before heading outside in my flannel pajamas. I’m just hoping the people at this campground have seen worse. I note the woman is no longer near her driver’s side door, so I slip around the other side of my van to start looking for a valve.
There’s a screw top cap that’s in the same area as the water tank under my sink just outside, but upon opening it, I’m positive this is only for filling it. At least I’ll know that for later.
The woman is humming again, so I peep around the back of my van to see what she’s up to now. There’s a small fire in the pit with a hanging kettle over it and a grill of some sort stretched from one side to the other with a cast iron pan on top.
Bacon .
The familiar sizzle and crackle are making my stomach knot with hunger pains. My mouth waters as she starts flipping them over. It doesn’t appear like there’s anyone else with her. She’s alone, like me, but wholly more prepared for camping with an outdoor trash bin, a pop-up wash station complete with a drying rack on the picnic table, and a folding table to rest utensils on. The one chair she has looks like it’s from the future with two legs she has to balance on, planting her feet into the ground as the other chair legs.
Her gaze drifts toward my van, doing a double take when she sees me peeking. I yank my head back, but I guarantee it wasn’t fast enough. She saw me.
“Care for some bacon?” she calls out.
I inwardly and outwardly cringe, knowing she saw me watching her. But what am I supposed to do now? I can’t just deny her offer. It looked like a lot of bacon, and she probably couldn’t eat it all on her own.
I poke my head back out, and the rest of my body follows. “Good morning.”
She tips her chin, a knowing glint in her eye. “Morning.”
I can already tell she’s far cooler than I am with her red hair, water-resistant pants that zipper at the knees, and hiking boots with legit tread. But I still walk tentatively toward her five-star camping resort, hooking a thumb over my shoulder. “I wasn’t spying. I was just trying to figure out my water and smelled bacon. No one was in this spot when I got here last night.”
“I’m Penny.” She quickly scans my flannel pants and mismatched sweater, then gestures toward another space chair I hadn’t noticed. “Got in late last night. Drove up from Oregon.”
“Paige.” I give a small wave and then lift the chair, assessing how I’m supposed to sit. “Is that where you’re from?”
“No,” she states then uses a pair of tongs to move the bacon around. “I’m from Maine.”
I squat down like I’m doing wall sits, my legs quivering while I hold the back of the chair in one of my hands, hoping it will catch me in this trust fall. “Did you drive all that way?” I ask, looking far less graceful than her as I try to sit, then bail at the last second.
She smiles, then stands to walk over and hold the back of the chair for me. “That’s it. Just sink right down and keep your feet grounded in order to stay balanced.”
I’m falling back, holding my legs at a perfect ninety-degree angle and trusting her and this futuristic chair despite them being strangers.
When she realizes I won’t fall backward, she returns to sit with ease. “I’ve been on the road for a year, going slowly from place to place and stopping wherever I feel like it. I’m planning to winter somewhere in the south and figure this was a good time to visit the north before the snow hits.”
“A year?” I don’t mean to sound aghast, but I’m just over twenty-four hours into this thing and just now starting to believe in people like her, Winnie, and Archie, living life on the road. it's not like I'm seeing Bigfoot for the first time.
She laughs and plucks the bacon from the pan, depositing it on a plate. “It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long at all. Life on the road is slower, but time still ticks.”
I nod like I understand this completely.
“How long have you been traveling?” she asks, offering me the plate.
I carefully take a slice of bacon and then decide two is always better, but I have to bounce it around in my hands since it’s still so hot. “Since yesterday. It’s why I was trying to figure out my water.”
“You have a tank?”
I bite into the bacon and swear it’s the best I’ve ever eaten, perfectly crispy. “Yeah, I can see the tank under the sink, but I don’t know how to get the water out. I’m sure that probably sounds ridiculous. Maybe you’re thinking: Why would you drive across multiple states when you don’t know how to get water ?” I mime this with wild hand motions, looking more like I’m doing the robot than anything.
She takes a bite, chewing as she says, “You’d be surprised what you can learn just by doing something. You’re forced to figure it out.”
“I guess you’re right since I’d probably be willing to offer my left arm just to make a cup of coffee.”
She laughs. “I can help.”
Hope swells in my chest. “Really?”
Her brows lower. “Of course. That’s what neighbors do.”
She stands swiftly, walking toward my van before I’ve even stood.
Let’s be real…rolling out would have been a generous description.
PENNY FIGURED OUT the issue in less than a minute.
I only had time to look down at my phone and back up before the problem was fixed, and my sink was spitting out a decent stream of liquid.
She pushes from her knees to a squat, pointing at the turn dial I must have missed in my haste to figure it out. “It’s just a valve you need to turn whenever you want to use it, and your vehicle is parked. Don’t forget that part; you could spring a leak and have a bigger problem to handle.” Cleo bumps up against her leg, and she pets my friendly feline before standing.
“Did you build out the interior?” I’m still a little bit in shock when she waves a finger around the cramped space.
I snicker while grabbing a mug from my upper cabinet. “No, definitely not. I bought it like this and added a few design touches.”
“It looks great for the age of the vehicle.”
“Thanks.” Pride bubbles up in my chest at hearing this. Maybe I didn’t pick a total loser to travel part of the country with. It’s validating.
“Do you know how to flush your waste system?”
I stare at Penny blankly, then realize what she’s referring to. “Oh! No. I don’t have a bathroom in here.”
“What about your gray water?”
I shake my head since I had no idea water came in colors.
She laughs and packs up the small toolkit she brought over. “The water that you use in your sink. Sometimes food gets in there and turns the water—”
“Gray!” I say with a snap of my fingers.
“Yeah,” she confirms. “There’s usually a tank that holds this water, and you want to make sure to flush it regularly.”
That makes a lot of sense and would probably be good information to know.
Seeing the panic rising on my face, she adds, “I could show you how to do it if you want. Maybe a few other things that might be helpful to know, too?”
I practically jump on her when I circle her in a surprise hug. “Yes! Thank you! I will pay you, if you want, or name my firstborn child after you. I love the name Penny—”
“No need,” she says with a friendly pat on the back. “This is exactly how I learned—asking people at every stop and gaining a little more with every conversation. Oh, and the internet. But you could help me hem a couple of curtains.”
I pull away, and she tips her head to my sewing machine sitting behind the passenger seat I snuck in when Amber and Rhodes weren’t looking. As a seamstress, curtains are the number one thing I’ve been asked to sew over the years. I could stitch them together with my eyes closed, which I probably shouldn’t do.
It’s an easy answer that makes me feel like a bartering goddess. “Done.”