Knox
Sylvie rouses in the back and sits up, bleary-eyed, stroking Winslow’s belly absentmindedly. Maybe I was wrong and she really was sleeping.
“Feel better?” I ask.
Sylvie does a sort of side-to-side head motion that’s neither a shake nor a nod. It’s answer enough. Then she says, quietly, “Sorry for putting you through that.”
“There was a lot of chopped cilantro but it was really good otherwise.”
She laughs a little—more a puff of air expelled from between her lips. “My mom’s a trip, huh?” She says it to Winslow, but it’s clear the question is for me.
“I never know what to say when someone asks me something like that. I don’t know if you want me to defend your mom or agree.”
“So it sounds like either you secretly agree and could defend my mom, or could just skip right to agree.”
“Would you believe me if I told you I’ve known a lot of people who were trips in the short time I’ve been alive?”
“My mom is a special kind.” Throughout this conversation, Sylvie hasn’t looked at me once.
A long silence unspools between us.
“Should we talk about—” I begin hesitantly, without really knowing where I was going to end. Cal? The kiss? Both? Neither? Who knows.
Fortunately Sylvie cuts me off. “No.”
“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”
“Don’t need to. I know that something was going to follow the word ‘about’ and please believe me when I tell you that I don’t want to talk about anything right now.”
“Okay. That’s cool. We don’t have to talk. We can just . . . sit here silently.”
We do just that for a while.
“Is this the weirdest day you’ve ever had?” Sylvie asks.
I laugh the way you might if you saw a tornado carry away your house and there’s nothing else you can do. “Baby, this doesn’t make my top twenty.”
“Oh yeah? That a challenge? Telling me to step it up?”
“No, more a wistful reflection on the pretty chaotic life I’ve led up until this point.”
“Have you been abducted by aliens or what?”
As a matter of fact, I don’t say. “Kinda.”
“Kinda?”
“Hey, you know how you were talking about how you don’t want to talk about stuff?”
“Oh, I’m fine talking about stuff you don’t want to talk about.
” When she finally makes eye contact with me, she gives me a smile that’s somehow sad and mischievous simultaneously.
Then she makes her way back to the front of the van and sits in the driver’s seat.
“I need to get out of here. You still wanna go see an eclipse with me?”
“Nothing I’d rather do.”
She fires up the engine and we pull away, leaving Springfield behind us. I wonder if I’ll ever visit Springfield again. I don’t mind if I don’t.