“What you been up to this summer?” Brett asks lightly.
Say something. Do not blow this. “You know, working.”
Working? That’s the best I could come up with? I work twice a week at the clinic for a few hours, so why am I making it sound like I’m slaving over a paycheck at a real job? I want a do-over, but Brett’s attention has shifted to the task of opening the big plastic cargo carrier attached to the SUV’s roof rack. Meanwhile, Lennon is looking back at me—nay, full-on staring—and I can’t tell what he’s thinking because of those stupid sunglasses, but it feels judgmental.
Is this really happening? Lennon is coming with us?
Brett pops open the cargo carrier and helps Lennon lift his pack inside, nestling it in among several others. Lennon gestures silently with one hand and a tilt of his head, offering to help me lift my pack. I try to do it myself, and end up having to let Lennon and Brett boost it up. Which is humiliating.
“Hey,” I say in greeting to Kendrick Taylor, closing the door as I get settled in my seat.
Kendrick’s family owns a successful winery that’s lauded in the press for being one of the best vineyards in Sonoma County. Since he goes to private school in Melita, I’ve only met him once, when Reagan hauled me to a party.
“Zorie, right?” he says, squinting one eye closed. In a chambray button-down and khaki shorts that contrast pleasantly with his dark brown skin, he’s better-looking than I remembered, and has a friendly, confident demeanor.
A tall girl with long, sun-streaked hair leans around the front passenger seat. Summer Valentino. If you crave gossip about anyone in school, she knows it. And even though her grades were so bad that technically she should have had to repeat eleventh grade, she’s on the yearbook committee and the online school newspaper—which apparently saved her.
“Zorie’s into astrology,” Summer tells Kendrick.
“Astronomy,” I correct.
“D’oh!” she says, smiling. “I always get those mixed up. Which one is the horoscopes?”
“Astrology,” Kendrick enunciates, pretending to give her a slap on the head, which she ducks with a silly grin.
Brett speaks up from behind me and introduces Kendrick to Lennon.
“This is my boy,” Brett tells Kendrick, roughly shaking Lennon’s shoulder. “This kid is wild. Right, John Lennon?”
Lennon’s sitting behind Kendrick, so I can see him better than Brett. “If you say so,” Lennon deadpans.
“Is that really your name?” Kendrick asks.
“Minus the John,” Lennon says. “But Brett never lets that stop him.”
If I didn’t know better, I might wonder if this is a jab. But Brett just laughs as if it’s the funniest joke in the world.
Um, okay. What is going on here?
“Lennon’s father is Adam Ahmed from Orphans of the State,” Summer supplies. “They opened for Green Day a million years ago. His dad was that Egyptian-American drummer dude.”
“Guitarist,” Lennon corrects quietly, but I don’t think anyone hears him except me.
“Didn’t one of your moms crash at Billie Joe Armstrong’s house for a few weeks?” Reagan asks, programming a route into the SUV’s navigation system. “Doesn’t she know his wife, or something?”
Before he can answer, Summer pipes in with: “Is it true that your moms were, like, together with your dad all at the same time?” She pauses, and says in a lower voice, “I mean, the three of them?”
“I got your meaning,” Lennon says.
“That’s just what I heard around school,” Summer tells him apologetically. But not so apologetic that she’s shutting the question down.
“I’ve heard that around school myself,” Lennon says.
“Well?” Summer prompts.
“My parents did a lot of things,” Lennon says enigmatically.
The intrigue inside the car is high. Scandal! Gasp! Thing is, Sunny and Mac are one of the most in-love, devoted couples I’ve ever known. Whatever they’ve done or haven’t done is none of anyone’s business. I start to say this, then wonder why the hell I should defend Lennon if he’s not even bothering to defend himself. I know it used to bother him, all the rumors people at school spread behind his back. Everyone loves to discuss his family life. Even my dad has accused Sunny and Mac of being heathens.
Maybe Lennon doesn’t care anymore. Maybe he’s just embracing it.
“One hundred percent rock-and-roll,” Brett says. “Kerouac would have so approved of that. Did you know he and his best friend Neal Cassady both slept with Carolyn Cassady, Neal’s wife? Wild, huh? I bet you have crazy stories growing up in a punk-rock household.”
“So crazy,” Lennon says flatly.
Brett claps his hands together and tells us all, “This dude right here has legendary blood in his veins. San Francisco punks were the Beat Poets of the eighties and nineties.”
Huh. Now I’m connecting the dots. Brett thinks Lennon has pedigree. That’s why he’s decided Lennon is a “wild man.”
Lennon looks wild, all right. About as wild as a depressed corpse.
“Okay, we’re all here and everyone’s acquainted,” Reagan says. “Are we ready to roll?”
“We’re gonna have some crazy-ass fun this week,” Brett says, throwing his arm over Lennon’s shoulder so that he can snap a quick selfie. Lennon’s expression remains dour while Brett sticks out his tongue toward the screen. “Right?”
Lennon leans back in his seat and echoes his previous words. “If you say so.”
“Right, Reagan?” Brett calls out to the front.
“Let’s do this,” she confirms, shifting the SUV into drive. “Sierras, here we come.”
As Reagan drives down Mission Street, she informs us that the drive to the glamping compound is more than four hours. And for the first few minutes, the car is loud and chaotic, everyone trying to talk at once. Reagan is telling Kendrick about the camp’s amenities while Summer adds her own commentary about a glamping site in Colorado that her parents visited for their anniversary. Brett is trying to tell Reagan about nearby places mentioned in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. And surprisingly, Reagan seems interested. This is news to me, because she usually tunes out whenever Brett goes all rhapsodic about the Beat Poets at school. He’s always trying to get people to drive across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco for afternoon excursions to Beat-friendly City Lights Bookstore—“It’s a historic landmark.” And Reagan is always complaining that poetry is boring.
And throughout all of this, Lennon stays quiet.
Maybe it will be easy to ignore him.
I glance around the car, and it really hits me that, minus Lennon, I’m going on a weeklong trip with some of the most popular people at school. Mom was right. I needed to do this to feel less like an outsider. I’m going to have fun. Everything’s going to be fine.
Lennon’s unwanted presence can’t ruin this.
And I am definitely not scratching my arm. If anything was going to make my hives worse, it would be Lennon. So I can’t let him. Deep breaths. I’m okay. I’m totally okay.
After we head out of the East Bay, conversation becomes as monotonous as the valley scenery. Outside my window, I spy flat farmland, fruit trees, wide blue skies, and the occasional small town. Long stretches of highway are punctuated with truck stops and roadside fruit stands, and people turn to their phones for entertainment. A little over halfway through the trip, Kendrick points out Bullion’s Bluff, a tiny historical mining town just off the highway. “They’ve got a fairly big winery,” he says. “My parents brought me once. The downtown is totally nineteenth-century Gold Rush era. I’m talking Old West saloon and general store. Gold Rush museum. The works. It’s schlocky, but it’s fun.”