A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter thirty-six

t h i r t y - s i x

*

Sam has been unusually quiet since we left our lunch spot. We ended up whiling away quite a bit of time there, languishing in a quiet spot of wooded land beside a river, and we've been on the road for two hours. If I could count, I'd be able to count on both hands the number of cars we've passed in that time. These roads are so quiet that it's eerie, and Sam's uncharacteristic silence only adds to that.

Ordinarily, like Arjun, he spends our driving time sharing anecdotes or cracking jokes, or educating us about every valley and river and lake we pass. He has stories for everything and everywhere, it seems, from places he's been with exes to rivers he's swum in on treks, but he has hardly said a word more than necessary for two full hours.

It's beginning to freak me out, now that I've latched onto it. It's getting late, after six o'clock, and my maps app tells me that we're still three hours from San Francisco. Something tells me that may not be right. If I was up in the front, I'd quiz him, but he has Klara as co-pilot and she is absorbed in queuing up music and spamming her Instagram feed.

Young-mi's back to her row now that we've eaten and she's dozing off against the window in a post-food daze, and I'm sitting sideways with one foot up on the seat next to me, the other foot stretched across Arjun. Between us is a stack of cards held in place by a makeshift clothes border, and we're on our fifth game of snap. I've won once, purely because there were no matches until I put down my second-to-last card and by some fluke, I noticed before Arjun.

It's not my favourite game, but it's better than I-spy, and it's more fruitful than what Sam calls the license plate game which, it turns out, is pretty hard to play when we have the road to ourselves. We did play a couple of rounds of twenty questions, but it turns out I know a lot less about famous people than I thought I did.

"Snap!" Arjun yells, slapping the pile a moment before I do, and he laughs dirtily when I have to pick up almost the entire deck. This game will be over soon too. Six cards later, it is.

The end of the game coincides with Sam pulling over on the side of the road, right next to the entrance for what looks like a rundown campsite near Tulloch Reservoir. He kills the engine and turns around.

"Right, folks. There's something iffy going on with the van right now and I'd rather be safe than sorry," he says. "Also, I'm not legally allowed to drive you guys if I have any reasonable doubt. So, we're gonna have to stay here for a bit while I try to figure it out and call my guy. Really sorry about this."

"Hey, you're just doing your job," Kristin says. "San Francisco will wait for us."

He gives her a grateful smile and meets everyone's eye, and we all nod along. As excited as I am to see the Golden Gate City, I'm quite happy for the trip to be delayed or drawn out, and to have a chance to get out and stretch my legs.

Sam pulls into the campsite and heads in to talk to the owner and explain our situation, and the eight of us gather around a picnic table on a patch of grass in need of a mow. The table's legs are one with the ground, weeds tangling up the wood, and it looks as though it might fall apart when we crowd onto it four-a-side but the slats hold.

Young-mi sits next to me and links arms, resting her head on my shoulder so her hair tickles my cheek. "Hi," she says. her hand finding mine and lacing our fingers together.

"Hey."

Arjun's sitting on my other side, perched on the very edge of the bench with his arm around my waist to anchor himself. He leans forward slightly to see Young-mi across me and he asks, "So what exactly are you doing once the trip's over?" He scans the table and opens the question up to everyone.