The interstate was free of traffic all the way north to Cheyenne, where we made our first stop for gas at a rough old truck station just north of the city.
While Rick filled his tank up, Nova and I walked inside the convenience store to find something to munch on for the drive. We were the only two people in the store besides a trio of bearded bikers eating hotdogs in front of the front counter. They looked us up and down when we entered, making me feel uneasy, but otherwise seemed uninterested in anything but their lunch.
While I picked through some candy and beef jerky, Nova wandered her way over to the souvenirs and looked at a row of Wyoming-themed shirts. I offered to get some drinks for us, and she said she would have whatever I was having. With a shrug, I filled two Styrofoam cups to the brim with Code Red and started toward the counter, carrying both cups in one arm so I could fish my wallet out of my pocket. With all my luck, my foot landed on a wet patch of floor two steps away from the cash register and I lurched forward, mouth hung open in horror as I watched the two cups fly through the air and hit the ugliest, meanest looking biker square in the face, dousing him in a virtual shower of sticky red soda.
"Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?" The bikers all put down their hot dogs and turned to face me, a wall of muscle and stale cigarette smoke. I gulped, life flashing before my eyes, and tried to stammer out an apology. Nova was at my side in a flash. She grabbed a pile of napkins from the nearest napkin holder and handed them to the bikers.
"I'm so sorry, guys, my little brother is such a klutz sometimes! Here, we'll help you clean up!" I stared at her blankly but she shot me a look, so I got down on my knees and began mopping up the sticky soda off the grimy floor. The trio still looked as if they wanted to take me out back and beat me to death, so Nova offered to pay for their lunch. Finally, with grumbles and glares, they agreed to her terms, finished cleaning up, and marched outside to their motorcycles.
"Little brother?" I looked at her quizzically as I dropped a handful of sodden napkins in a trash can and paid for everything (including a t-shirt for Nova) before we started back to the truck.
"Trust me, Puck, I have a little more experience with rough characters than you," she said with a knowing smile. "Family is everything to guys like those, and pretending we were family probably saved you a beat-down."
"Whatever," I sighed, admitting to myself that she was probably right once again.
"What took you guys so long?" Rick was lounging against his front fender, tapping his foot impatiently.
"Puck was practicing his ice dancing," Nova said, climbing into the middle with her t-shirt on her lap. Rick cocked his head at me but I just shook mine with a sigh. We pulled out of the parking lot and onto the on-ramp just ahead of the bikers, who seemed to be travelling the same direction as us. As we approached the interstate itself, we were met by several cars travelling side-by-side, blocking all the lanes. Rick flipped on his signal but nobody budged. Cursing, Rick floored the gas pedal and swung out into the lane just as the ramp ended--cutting off the three bikers with a screech of tires.
"Oh, shit," Rick was watching his rearview mirror closely and I turned back to see the bikers switch to the left lane and speed up. Even Nova looked concerned when they pulled up beside us at seventy miles an hour screaming obscenities and throwing us very rude hand gestures. Finally, the biker I had spilled the drinks on swung closest to us and began fumbling around in his saddlebag for something.
"He's getting a gun!" Rick yelled, swerving a little and speeding up. The biker kept up with us effortlessly and pulled something large out of the bag. Nova and I ducked, covering our faces in sheer terror. Then came a thundering BANG! and something wet and warm splattered all over my face. I couldn't help myself: I screamed. I was sure we were covered in Rick's brains and that our lives were about to end in a fiery car wreck in Wyoming.
The car began to slow down and pulled gently over to the shoulder. I looked up, trembling, and turned to Rick. His nose was bleeding profusely, but other than that, he seemed okay. The cab was a disaster, though, covered in some sort of pinkish-orange, sweet smelling goo.
"Is... is that cantaloupe?" Nova reached a hand out and picked a chunk off the dashboard, giving it a sniff.
"Yes. It. Was. Definitely. A. Cantaloupe." Rick was clinging to the steering wheel for dear life, teeth gritted and knuckles white.
"So, that guy just chucked a cantaloupe at us from a motorcycle at seventy miles an hour?" Nova looked genuinely impressed.
Rick looked absolutely pissed. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and let out a stream of curses that would make a sailor cringe.
"Did... did he hit you right in the face?" I ventured, unsure of what else to say.
Rick turned to me slowly, a murderous look on his blood-smeared, cantaloupe-spattered face. "Does it look like he hit me in the face? I just want to know why a biker I've never seen before in my life hit me in the face with a fucking cantaloupe!"
Nova dug some napkins out of the glove box and helped Rick clean up his face, explaining to him what happened in the store, while I found a towel and a water bottle and tried to clean up the cab as best I could. It took us a solid twenty minutes to take care of the mess. Rick refused to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the who situation, no matter how hard Nova tried to get him to laugh about it
"Puck," Rick said as he put the truck in gear and rumbled back onto the pavement. "Watch where you step please, or you're going to get us all killed."
The rest of the drive through Wyoming was fairly uneventful, except for when a bird hit the windshield hard enough to pop like a water balloon and we spent another twenty minutes at a different gas station scrubbing it off the windshield. We crossed into Montana in the late afternoon and began heading west toward the mountains as the sun began to sink lower and lower toward the horizon, casting everything in a pleasant flaxen hue. Nova had fallen asleep on my shoulder and I played with a thin strand of her hair, running it back and forth ceaselessly through my fingers with a smile on my face and the warmth of the sun on my heart.
We passed through Billings just before dark and began searching for a place to crash for the night, hoping for a cheap motel or something close to the highway. We drove for another two hours before we found something suitable. Rick wanted to fill up again before morning, so we pulled into a tiny gas station next to the motel at around nine. I shook Nova gently to wake her and she slowly opened her eyes up into mine.
"Where are we?" She yawned and stretched out across my lap.
"Nowhere, Montana," I said, unbuckling my seatbelt and opening my door. The air was cool and fresh, much needed after several hours in the car. The fluorescent light above the gas pump (there was only one) was buzzing obnoxiously and attracting a swarm of tiny moths. Nova stretched some more as she got out of the truck and Rick handed me some cash to go pay for gas inside the little store. A beat up old sedan screeched into the parking lot and parked right in front of the door in quite a hurry. We looked at each other curiously before starting toward the gas station.
As we moved away from the lights at the pump, Nova gasped and grabbed my sleeve, pointing straight up. My eyes followed her finger into the heavens, where a blanket of stars had been gently laid out across the darkness, sparkling like a million diamonds set in onyx. They were completely different than the stars at home and yet seemed so familiar in their unfamiliarity. Nova slid her hand into mine and we stood for a while, necks craned back in the pleasant Montana breeze of a June night, staring at a new set of old friends.
Rick finally yelled at us to get our asses inside to pay for gas, so we reluctantly started toward the store once again. The door banged open and a young guy in a black sweatshirt barreled through it and into the open door of the sedan, which proceeded to peel out of its parking space with a screech of tires, narrowly avoiding us as it sped back toward the highway. Nova shouted some choice words after them and I opened the door for her, gesturing for her to let it go.
"Hey, can we get forty dollars on pump number..." Nova turned back to the parking lot, "...well, the only pump out there, I guess?" She handed the cashier two twenty dollar bills. He looked from me to her and back again as if we were insane.
"You really want to buy gas? Like, right now?"
"Well, yes? You're not closed, are you?" She glanced around for a "closed" sign, but couldn't find one. "Those other guys were in here just a second ago."
The guy gave us another look, contemplating our insanity. "Fine, I'll sell you some gas." He said, shaking his head and putting the bills in his drawer. "Could you hang around 'til the cops get here, though? 'Cause 'those other guys' just robbed us, and I'm sure they're gonna want a statement."
Nova just sighed, rolled her eyes, and shared an "only us" kind of look with me. I shrugged and we headed back out to the vehicle to explain to Rick what happened and to wait for the authorities to show up. He seemed unphased by the news and just started filling up his tank. Something about having a biker hit you in the face with a cantaloupe made you callus, I guess.
Rick finished filling and pulled forward to the parking spaces in front of the store, where we all climbed up in the bed to lay down. Minus the whole "waiting for the cops after witnessing an armed robbery" thing, it was actually pretty peaceful.
"I could live in a place like this," Rick said finally, head leaning back against the rear window with his arms draped over his knees. All of us were staring up into the sky soundlessly, listening to the breeze and the sound of the cars zooming by on the interstate.
"Yeah?" Nova asked, looking over at him. "It's pretty nice, isn't it?"
"No, I mean I could really live here," he said, glancing down at us. "It's so open, but not like our town. Dale is... tired, I guess. Old. Nothing new ever happens there. This is on the freeway, though. Something new is always happening, someone new is always coming into town, you know?"
"Yeah, living in Dale is sort of like waiting around for nothing to happen," Nova agreed. "I remember St. Louis always being more exciting and more interesting. I mean, we were right on the river, too, so that made life different."
"I can't wait to move." Rick said confidently. "I'll miss you guys like nothing else, but... I need to get out of there."
"There's a whole world out here that we haven't seen even a little bit of." Nova agreed softly. "I'd like to get out and explore some, too"
"What about you, Puck?" Rick looked back up into the sky. The lights from inside the little store revealed a contented smile on his face. "You ever going to leave town?"
"I... I haven't really thought about it, I guess." I said finally. "I mean, I've never really left Dale, so I'm not really missing anything, am I?"
"Oh come on, Puck, you read more than anyone else I know!" Nova said. "There's gotta be some place other than Dale that you'd want to live!"
"I don't know... what about you?" I countered, trying to imagine living anywhere but Dale. It was actually harder than I thought it would be.
"I'd want to live near the ocean," Nova said immediately and confidently. "I've never been before, but the idea fascinates me, you know? I can picture myself stretched out on a beach in the cool sand at midnight, staring out at an endless expanse of black glass. It's so unreal that there's an entire world down there that we know almost nothing about!"
"It's so crowded near the ocean, though." Rick pointed out. "Everyone wants to live there, so you'd be stuck with tons of people all the time."
"Oh, shush," Nova said, tossing a pebble at him "Don't ruin my fun. You know I don't get along well with people!"
"You can say that again," I said with a grin, earning myself a pebble right to the forehead.
"Shut up and tell me about your place of choice." She said with a cheeky smile.
"Alaska," I said finally, after thinking for several long moments. "I'm thinking, like, Jack London's Alaska, maybe. Or Gary Paulsen's. Trees, snow, glaciers, orcas, all of it. The final frontier, you know? That would be pretty cool, just fending for yourself in the middle of nowhere, nothing but your own wits to keep you alive, right?"
"I never would have pegged you as the 'log cabin' type," Rick mused.
"Oh, I could totally see it!" Nova said with a laugh. "Puck moves up to Alaska where his closest neighbors are a black bear and a moose, right out on the bay of some god-forsaken glacier. He drinks his coffee black and his whiskey straight, grows a big old beard, and just spends all that night time in the winter tapping away at that ancient old typewriter!"
"Yeah?" I said, a smile spreading across my face. The thought actually pleased me quite a bit. I looked over at Rick, who nodded his head in agreement. "I could see Rick somewhere here in Montana running a bed and breakfast--or something equally as gay, you know--before becoming a sour old man who chases kids off his lawn with a shotgun."
"Oh, shut up, Puck!" Rick punched me on the shoulder as Nova and I cracked up.
"Hey, I haven't made any of those jokes yet," I protested, sliding out of arm's reach.
"Whatever." Rick was determined not to smile but his eyes were laughing along with us. "I see... I see Nova living in some high rise in L.A. or something, right out in front of the beach. She listens to indie rock, drinks too much, and annoys her neighbors because she's up at all hours of the night. I imagine that every night at midnight she goes down to the beach and puts a love note in a bottle and chucks it out into the ocean, hoping the current will carry it all the way up to Alaska."
"Aww, that's... actually pretty sweet," Nova said with a big smile. I couldn't help but grin ear-to-ear as well. "What is it you imagine I do for a living?"
"Oh, you're like a porn star or something." Rick said without hesitation, inviting an onslaught of curses and playful hits from her.
A highway patrol car pulled into the parking lot at that moment and a pair of Montana State Troopers got out. We hopped out of the bed to give our statements, even Rick's "I didn't see much, I was busy wanting gas in my tank." They kept us there for another half-hour before letting us go with a bid to be careful and drive safely. We drove under the interstate to the other side where the motel was located and parked in the closest spot to the front door.
"Alright, I'm going to go inside and get us a room, you guys figure out what can stay in the bed and what has to be locked in the cab." Rick said as he unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door.
"Don't bother," I said with a sigh, looking the front of the motel over.
"You think all our stuff will be safe in the bed?"
"No, I think we won't be staying the night here," I said, pointing to a small sign hanging in the front window.
"Sorry for the inconvenience!" it said. "We stop taking customers at nine o'clock in the evening. Next lodging in 55 miles."
"As if we haven't had enough shit to deal with today!" Rick cried, throwing up his hands. He groaned and slumped against the steering wheel. "I give up. I've reached my limit. I'm done!"
"Do we want to keep going?" I asked, not at all a fan of any more driving.
"It's, like, an hour to the next town and we are sure as hell not driving back the way we came," Rick said, not raising his head. Nova silently unbuckled my seatbelt and motioned for me to scoot out the door, which I did, wondering what she was up to. She went around to the back of the truck and rummaged through our stuff until she found two puffy sleeping bags that were buried underneath everything else.
"Camping, anyone?" She asked with a smile, holding one up in each hand.
"Are you serious?" Rick looked unhappy
"What other choice do we have?" Nova asked. "There's a nice little wooded area behind the motel, and we'll be up and gone before anyone else wakes up."
"I... oh, what the hell, fine!" Rick climbed down out of the truck and began looking through his duffel for some shorts to sleep in.
"There's only two sleeping bags," I pointed out.
"That shouldn't be an issue," Nova said with a wink.
"I better not hear a whole bunch of rustling during the night," Rick said with a pointed look as he snatched one of them out of her hand and made a beeline for the trees.
We finally settled down in a clearing a few dozen yards into the tree line, generally out of sight of the parking lot. Rick was out like a light in a matter of minutes, but sleeping wasn't all that easy for me with Nova pressed up against my front, wearing only a sports bra, in the same definitely-not-made-for-two-people sleeping bag. She reached back and grabbed my hand, pulling it around until my arm was draped over her middle, just inches from her left breast. I tried to concentrate on the sound of the crickets, the fresh air, the sounds of traffic. Anything, really, except for the smell of cherries and the warmth of skin on skin.
"So, you really want to live by the ocean, huh?" I murmured quietly after a few minutes of restlessness.
"Of course I do," Nova said through a yawn and a sigh.
"Are you planning on leaving me behind?" I asked, closing my eyes and resting my forehead on the back of her head.
"Not if I can help it," she said, nestling back into me. I smiled into her hair and let sleep begin to drift over me like the cool summer air.
I would always have the ocean for myself, I thought, as long as Nova was near. Her eyes were glassy pools of sapphire light, of course, but it was the depth and the mystery that lay beneath the surface that lured me into the churning, rumbling sea that was Nova.