The Book Club

Chapter 3

Aspen's stomach gurgled loudly from the backseat, threatening another necessary pit stop so that he could relieve the symptoms of his Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

"I'm good," he insisted, noticing my eyes locked on him in the rear view mirror.

We'd already stopped four times this morning and after sharing a motel room with him last night, my sympathy was wearing thin. We'd been accidentally diverted through a toll road because of his last urgent need and everyone in the car shared the cost, so I wasn't the only one who was getting more and more annoyed as the miles passed.

It was our first major lead in three years. I say our lead even though only two of us were here for the last lead, which ended in a cemetery and left us a man down. About a year after that, I joined the group, then a few months after that, Jenny and Aspen, a sister-brother pairing, and finally a few weeks ago, Candace wandered into our social gathering at Isobel's favorite fish 'n chips food truck.

She'd heard of us and knew what had drawn us all together. Because it had drawn her to this pseudo-Mecca and she needed answers too. It was actually thanks to her that we'd ended up on this road trip and we tolerated the noxious gas from one of our members at her request.

"I know that it's tough, but we could figure it out in just a few days! We could have an answer," she'd cooed.

Isobel was skeptical, but then again she was not only the oldest among us, her hair now turning to silver and her prescription glasses growing thicker, but she'd been at this goal for the longest as well. She couldn't believe that in just a matter of days we could all be in contact with the closest person we could find to E.P. Flakes, his sister, Margaret.

Isobel sat silently in the passenger seat, her copy of the book clutched in both hands and resting on her lap. She'd lost so much over the years and so much could have been prevented if she'd just given up her obsession with A Collection of Sorrow.

"On second thought," Aspen said suddenly after a few minutes had passed. We were on a long stretch of highway but one of the passing billboards had advertised the famous yellow arches at an exit four miles away.

I sighed and rolled my eyes, knowing that he'd been waiting for a road sign before he admitted that he needed to go again. "Fine," I said as patiently as I could manage. Isobel cleared her throat in an unnecessary way, since she remained silent as I moved lanes and prepared to exit when it was time.

The McDonald's was attached to a gas station and not much else existed on the off-ramp or neighboring plots. An old sign indicating that the pastures up the hill were for sale by owner was faded and riddled with bullet holes. A single white cross with a wreath of fake flowers lay askew at the bottom of the hill by the road, though I'd seen many along the road for the last hundred miles or so. Apparently it was a dangerous section to drive.

When Aspen returned from the restaurant and met us in the parking lot, he had a small bag in his hand and the aroma of French fries created a delicious cloud around him.

"Should you be eating...those?" I asked him as he reached for the door handle for the backseat. "And it's your turn to drive, stinky."

I'll admit—that last part was insensitive, but I also was close to my breaking point with him, so it helped to let off a little steam. He crinkled the bag in his hand and dove in for a handful of fries, then stuffed them in his mouth all at once.

"You're such an asshole, Paul," fry-mouth mumbled. Bits of potato flew from his lips as he rounded the front of the car toward me and swiped at my hand for the keys.

"Paul, you could be a little nicer," Jenny said absently from the backseat. She hadn't moved from that seat in all four—five—of our pit stops and flipped back and forth through her own copy of the book, as if she hadn't done that very thing every day for the last three years. She and her brother were close but she was very much the alpha of the pair and although they weren't they claimed to be twins.

I mumbled some kind of an apology and replaced Aspen in the backseat with Jenny and Candace once she returned from the gas station with some bottles of water and a bag of Funyuns. I liked Candace, as she was humble despite being possibly the most helpful and valuable member of our group besides Isobel and since I knew that she'd definitely share some chips with me, her favorite.

"I had to buy something to use the bathroom," Aspen said after he'd finished his mouthful of fries. He offered Isobel some from the bag, but she, disgusted, waved them away and turned up her nose.

"Did you have to, or did you just assume that you did?"

"Oh, here we go again, with the assume shit," Aspen said with a punching edge to his voice. He started the car and backed out of the space, only looking back at me in order to watch the road.

Aspen's copy of the book, which he had acquired separately from his sister's by chance when he'd talked a seller online into letting him have it practically for free, had the most detail on the edges of the ripped page than any other copy we'd seen. It had one complete word, the name Ruby, on line fourteen, and the first letters of eleven of the twelve lines and one indented line above it. His copy looked as if the torn page had been revisited by the one who tore it out and that he or she had attempted to rip out more of the page but had failed to do so. The ink was smudged around the bottom corner of the page, but not quite enough to get a fingerprint.

When we first met Jenny and Aspen, they each had their theories about the words his copy indicated, but Aspen insisted on expressing his opinion by saying that he assumed this word is apple and this word is beach and this other word is convenient. Basically, we got off on the wrong foot immediately and not, as Isobel and Jenny suggested, because I was the alpha male and Aspen was challenging me, but because the guy is a complete moron. If I'd met him in any other circumstance, I'd have assumed that he couldn't read, let alone analyze the rambling prose of an eccentric author.

I was by no means a scholar, since I'd received barely passing grades in school before I dropped out, but I'd actually learned a lot in the last few years and I knew that Aspen's comprehension skills had not improved one bit in almost the same amount of time.

Candace did share her chips with me and I let her have some of the jerky I'd brought along. We agreed to offer some of each to Jenny, but knew that she would turn both offers down, since she was a strict vegan. Unlike her brother, she was kind in her refusal and smiled pleasantly, as if she were ready to explain her choice to us for the first time.

Isobel was more talkative in the front seat with Aspen than she had been with me, but I think she knew she could control him a little better. I knew her too well by now. She advised Aspen a few too many times that if he got a speeding ticket, he'd be the one paying for it, so in exasperation, he spent the next two minutes struggling with the cruise control switch and trying to drive with all four of us coaching him through it. He was audibly grateful when the switch clicked into place and the car fell to silence as we all returned to our own traveling routines.

Isobel stared out the window. Jenny read through the book. She'd probably read it by now more times than even Isobel, but she probably didn't grasp it in the same way. Candace brought out an old Discman and played CDs she'd burned in high school. She fitted the headphone jack with a splitter so that I could listen too.

"Teen Spirit, nice," I said, too loudly. The others could hear the tinny beats through both sets of earbuds, but didn't need me to confirm whether Candace's music choices were good or not.

Despite the multiple bathroom breaks, we'd made good time that day. Our second day traveling from rural Wichita to Silverton, Oregon, we would be there by nightfall. Isobel did not want us traveling at night and we'd gotten cheap motel rooms in Colorado Springs after a solid twelve-hour drive split among four drivers—Jenny doesn't drive. Today we'd been on the road longer, having left our warm but itchy beds at five in the morning. We were in somewhat of a hurry, since there was a chance we'd be meeting Margaret at a cemetery before too long. Yet another cemetery. Hopefully we would all make it out of this one alive.