Kids born in cities don't see the sky the same way as kids from the small towns. In a small town, you look up more because there's nothing on the ground. You look up, and all around you is sky. Great, endless sky. Setting suns that turn everything shades of pink, purple, and rainbow. Night skies full of stars and possibilities. Kids search for chaos in dusty cornfields and trees that aren't meant to be climbed, growing wild as they look up. No one ever feels as small as they do in a small town, looking up at the sky. That's why everyone wants to leave them, because they grow up staring at that big sky, and they want to go somewhere where the ground is just as exciting as the stars. You can't have that in a small town, and Eeva Henderson knew it.
Eeva was my best friend. She was different, and everybody in our small Illinois town knew it. While we all looked up at the night sky, she threw things towards it, trying to knock the stars down so that she might catch one. Eeva was unique. She grew her hair long and wore animal claw necklaces and beanies. She was always up for an adventure, and I was happy to join her. There was only so much one could do in a small town, so at some point you had to start learning how to make your own adventures. Eeva was good at that. Over the years, we had broken into rated R movies and burned our own permanent records. After we graduated high school, everyone started taking bets on the future. Everybody said they were leaving town and never coming back, but we all knew that never happened. Small towns only survived because the kids who said they'd never return came back to raise families of their own. I was one of the kids they bet would stick around. Hall Williams! They crowed at me. He'll never leave! Eighteen and never even been outside of Illinois! They had a point. I was even commuting to college. Other kids weren't. The theater kids were all heading to New York or Hollywood, saying they were gonna be the next Keanu Reeves or Amy Winehouse. They wouldn't be. I'd seen all the musicals our school put on— there wasn't a lick of talent among us. If anyone in the town became famous, my money was on Eeva. She had never done anything famous worthy in her life, but you just got the aura from her that she was gonna be something.
I wasn't in love with Eeva, despite what you might be thinking. I know it's the old trope- guy and girl are childhood friends, girl grows up to be pretty, so boy falls for girl and vice versa. But not this one. Eeva was different, but not in a way that would make me fall in love with her. I'd marry a girl as boring as our town one day, and we both knew it. Eeva was eccentric where I was normal, and neither of us saw that as a bad thing. She always said yes and I never said no, so when she threw pebbles at my window one night, I had already agreed to whatever she wanted before she opened her mouth.
"Get the car, Hall!" She yelled up at me, a bag swung over her shoulder. "We're going on an adventure!"
It was 3 a.m. and dark as hell, yet Eeva was standing on my front lawn wearing a pair of aviators, like she was a rejected Blues brother.
"Where are we going?" I asked, leaning out the window a little bit.
"I think it's about time we stopped singing along to the Lumineers and actually met them for once." Eeva grinned. I had no idea how she planned to meet her favorite band, but hey, it was Eeva. We'd only been arrested once for her ideas.
"I'm in," I declared.
"Duh!" She flipped me off and laughed as I rolled my eyes. I never had an explanation for the things she did. My father always thought Eeva was constantly high, thinking it was the only reason for her behavior, but I knew better. Eeva was too pure for drugs. She got high on the meaning of her name- life.
Eeva flung herself into the car the second I unlocked the doors, and I followed even though I had no clue where we were going other than that it would involve the Lumineers. I never quite understood her obsession with the band- I'd always expected her to be more of a death metal kind of girl. But that was one of Eeva's favorite things to do- throw people off guard with what they expected from her.
Eeva kicked her shoes up on the dashboard, stretching out as far as she could with a long sigh.
"I love this car," She said, inhaling deeply, as if she could smell the very soul of the vehicle. I don't know why she liked it. I drove a run down Caddie that I'd bought off the town gardener for a thousand bucks. It had cloth seats, slushie stains, and an inescapable odor of cheese whiz. The only real perk to the car was that the radio was up to date enough for Eeva to plug in her phone and start blasting the latest Lumineers single out of the one working speaker. She turned to me with a devious look. "Drive," she dared.
"I think I need a direction first," I replied. Unless she wanted me to drive forward and through my garage door. Highly unlikely, but with Eeva, you never really knew.
"Oh! Right." She dug around in her bag and pulled out a map. It was 2020. GPS had been a thing for years and yet here she was, with a physical paper map. I knew vintage was back in style, but I never imagined it would get this far. "That way." She pointed west, and so I shrugged and drove. It occurred to me after about a half an hour that even though Eeva had a map, I still had no idea where we were going.
"Am I allowed to know our final destination?" I asked ominously. Eeva only grinned at me.
"I told you, Hall. The Lumineers!"
"And where are they?" She paused, and I got the feeling that she almost didn't want to tell me. It wouldn't be not like her to hide things from me. She liked to keep our adventures vague.
"Why won't you leave small towns, Hall?" She asked, returning my question with a question. I assumed our conversation would loop back to the location of our destination eventually. I thought about the question, not sure why she was asking. I'd always been one of the small town people. It bothered me sometimes that I wouldn't amount to anything worthwhile as long as I stayed at home, but I tried to ignore that. I was familiar with our town, and familiarity meant more than accomplishments.
"They're safe," I said finally.
"Safe?" She echoed, scoffing. "So what? That's not a good reason."
"I think it is. Nothing ever happens in a small town. People get murdered in cities. The most dramatic thing that's ever happened around here is when Barney the mailman was screwing around with the Vice Principal's wife."
"But that's the thing, Hall. Nothing happens in a small town. There's nothing to do and nothing ever changes."
"And that's why they're safe, and that's why I like them. People get killed in cities, Eev." She stared at me, her gaze unusually serious.
"But they also live," She whispered. "People die everywhere; it doesn't matter how. What matters is life, and that's something you'll never have in some small town where everybody works the same 9 to 5 job and eats at the same crappy diner."
"Hey, you don't get to diss the diner," I warned. Eeva and I went there after all of our adventures, celebrating our small feats over a plate of fries and milkshakes. She did have a point about life though, but I didn't know what to tell her. I didn't know why I was choosing to stay. It was just something you did.
"Are you really okay with just being content with life?" She asked, still waiting for an answer. I got the feeling that she was trying to convince me of something, but I wasn't sure what.
"Not all of us are nomads, Eev." I turned up the radio as she fiddled with her bear claw necklace, but the words stuck with me. A content life was a safe one, but she was right. It was boring. Eeva wanted more from life; everyone did. I thought they were stupid for leaving, but maybe I just didn't know what I was missing out on. Ignorance is bliss, after all. I was starting to think that everyone who was leaving had some great knowledge about the world that I had forgotten to learn, and Eeva was the expert on the subject.
By the time we stopped for breakfast, I knew where we were going. Nashville. I wasn't sure why the Lumineers were playing there, but the venues bands picked were always surprising. I took the time to google the tour while we were stopped, only to find that they were playing in Chicago a week after Nashville. Chicago was only two hours from our town- Nashville was at least a day away. I had never been, but from what I had heard, Nashville was a cramped, noisy city with enough neon signs and live music to knock you unconscious. It sounded like a horrible place to me, which, of course, made it the perfect place for Eeva.
We hit the Kentucky border after a few more hours on the road, and Eeva took a break from playing with the wind out her window in order to properly stare at me.
"What?" I asked. She kept looking at me, like she was expecting some grand reaction.
"You've never left Illinois before," She said. "I was expecting you to explode or something once we crossed the state line." Ah, yes. Spontaneous human combustion. Our most loyal source of humor. I rolled my eyes at her but smiled anyways.
"When's the next turn?" I asked. One of the many, many downsides to using a paper map was that sudden turns were even worse than they were with a GPS.
"Just stay on this road, I think," Eeva unfolded the map further, and I had no idea how she was getting anything from it.
"You think?" I echoed. The last thing I wanted on a trip to unknown territory was to get lost, and if Eeva really was just taking us to a concert, then didn't we have a time we had to be there by?
"If we get lost, we'll just stop and figure it out," She insisted, turning the map upside down.
We got lost. Like, ending up in Missouri instead of Tennessee lost. We stopped at a rest area and studied the map over slushies as the sun went down. There were no tables at the rest stop, so we sat on the roof of the car.
"I take it we're going to miss the Lumineers," I said. There was no way we'd make it now. By the time we figured out how to get to Nashville and then got there, the concert would be over. Eeva nodded in agreement, frowning into her slushie, as if she'd just realized how terrible cherry limeade slush actually was. "Sorry." I knew it wasn't my fault that we'd gotten lost, but I knew how much the band meant to her. It was rare for our adventures to fail.
"It's fine," Eeva said with a short sigh. "Just gotta think of something new now."
"They're playing in Chicago next week. We could just head home and see them then." I wouldn't see it as a wasted trip. I had discovered that watered down slushie tasted just as crappy in Missouri as it did in Illinois, and I hoped that Eeva had learned a valuable lesson about the importance of modern day GPS technology. But instead of cracking some joke or agreeing that my plan was a good one, Eeva laughed. A loud, harsh, slap of a laugh and she shook her head at me.
"What?" I frowned, and she took another sip of her slushie before throwing it as far as she could. Cherry limeade rained down across the empty parking lot before the cup hit the ground with a satisfying clap. I stared at Eeva, my eyes wide.
"I'm not going back," She declared matter of factly, like this was something I was supposed to have known the entire time.
"What do you mean you're not going back?" Eeva shrugged, as if this major drop of news was as simple as flicking a piece of fuzz off your sweater.
"I'm not going back," She repeated. She even dared to smile at me. "You know that town as well as I do. There's nothing there for me, and there never will be. I gotta get out while I still can." I struggled to form words. Sure, I knew that Eeva would never be one of those people that stayed in our town, but I wish I had known before we started the trip that it would be our last. It was like a slap to the face, hearing that I was to return alone. Forever alone. I didn't have other friends. I guess I had just thought that my future wasn't going to be as boring as everyone else's in town because of her. But if she was gone, then I was the same as them. I would live the dull life that every kid in town was fighting to avoid.
"What about your parents?" I asked her, failing to come up with any other logical reason as to why she should return home with me. I didn't want her to rot in that town, but I wasn't ready to say goodbye to the only friend I'd ever known. Eeva only shrugged again.
"I left them a note. You know how I am, Hall, I don't really do goodbyes."
"Where are you going?" I questioned. If I was going to die of boredom back home, I at least needed a location to pin her to.
"I don't know," Eeva said. "My plan was to tag along with the Lumineers. Tour with them. Like joining the circus, but for wayward teens instead."
"How were you gonna do that? You can't play an instrument."
"I'd be a manager or something, I don't know. Why all the questions, Hall?"
"Because if you're going to leave, you need a plan."
"I have a plan."
"A plan that's realistic, Eev." She grinned and shook her head at me.
"See, that's where you're wrong." She declared. "I don't have to be realistic about anything. I've been staring at that night sky long enough that I've gone crazy with it. I don't know where I'm going and I don't want to know. I'll sleep in wheat fields and be a shoe shiner for cash if I have to. I want to wander. You said you wanted stories, well, I'm out to make some."
"So you want to be a nomad."
"I'm just going to go where the wind and the stars take me. Is that so bad?"
"If you want to live, yes." Honestly, fun as it might sound to her, I was more realistic. Wandering off in the middle of nowhere with just whatever she'd shoved into her bag? She was crazy. She'd die.
"You should see the look on your face," Eeva said, smirking. "You're thinking I'm gonna get murdered or something, aren't you?"
"You will," I said. No need to soften the blow, and I wasn't the type to talk around it. If you went off somewhere unprepared, sooner or later, your luck would run out. You needed a plan.
"Nah, I won't." Her smirk widened. "Have a little faith, Hall. I've survived this long." She took my slushie and finished it. I didn't even care; I didn't have the stomach for the sugar anymore. "See that's your problem, Hall. You play things too safe. The only risks you've ever taken are the trips you've taken with me. I'm going to find my own adventure, and it's about time you did too."
"But-" I stopped. She had a point. "I don't know the first thing about adventures," I admitted. Eeva smiled and jumped from the car roof.
"Figure it out," She told me, grabbing her bag.
"Wait, you can't leave right now-" I started. We were in the middle of nowhere.
"Figure it out!" She repeated, louder as she started walking backwards, away from the car but still facing me. "Adventures are what make life worth living, Hall. If you can't find them for yourself, then what's the point of anything?"
"Will you at least tell me where you end up?" I called after her. She shrugged and turned, long hair flipping over her shoulder.
"I don't know the destination, Hall. That's what makes it an adventure!" I watched her walk away. I watched her get smaller and smaller, and all I could see was the biggest opportunity life had ever given me walking away. It hit me then. I had a life's worth of time to live a dull, boring life in a small town. I only had one shot at adventure, and I didn't feel like giving it up just yet. I stood up on the roof of the car.
"I'll go with you!" I yelled after her. Eeva stopped walking and turned to look at me, desperate on a car roof.
"What made you change your mind?" She asked.
"Somebody has to stop you from playing in traffic!" She grinned.
"Then welcome aboard the adventure train, Hall! First stop- some place we can buy a map."