Applewhites Coast to Coast Read online

  Luckily, when they got down into the very big, very well-lit mine, it didn’t take Destiny long to find something better than gold. “Batman!” he shouted. “They gots Batman down here! The realio, trulio, honest-to-goodness Batman!” Sure enough, Jake saw, one of the costumes from a Batman movie was on display in a glass case. There was a ton of neat stuff stored in the mine, which was why it was also a museum. It was so deep underground that important things could be stored there to keep them safe.

  Melody, who looked sort of wonderful even in a hard hat, he thought, grabbed him by the arm. “Come on. Let’s go on the Dark Ride!”

  Jake remembered how very dark the darkness in the elevator had been and would have preferred to stay in the well-lit museum part. E.D. had already flat out refused to take the Dark Ride, through completely unlit parts of the mine. But he couldn’t let Melody know he was more chicken than she was. He let her pull him over to it.

  The ride was like a bunch of electric golf carts all strung together into a train. He climbed into the nearest car, and Melody swung herself onto the seat next to him, giving his shoulder a playful nudge. Hal climbed in after her. She hadn’t had to pull him to the ride—he had just followed her, which didn’t surprise Jake. Hal had, after all, taken to riding in whichever bus Melody chose, following her like a puppy.

  In spite of the darkness, Jake thought, once the train got going it was a pretty neat ride. The cool, dry air blew against their faces, and sometimes they could just barely see the rough tunnel walls sliding past. In the darkest parts, it was so dark that even putting his palm right against his nose, he couldn’t see his hand at all.

  They were pulling past an alcove, carved into the mine wall and crammed full of antique mining tools, lit with a single electric bulb, when Jake noticed that Melody was resting her leg against his. Firmly. He found his pulse racing. Maybe it’s just an accident, he told himself, and pulled his leg back just a little bit. He didn’t want to crowd her.

  She pressed her leg up against his again. It wasn’t an accident. Bump-thump, went his heart.

  All of a sudden he remembered what she had said to him in Memphis. That he would never even try to kiss her. That he wouldn’t have the guts.

  As they passed another display, Jake glanced down and saw that Melody’s hand was lying in her lap. The carts bumped over something and they jostled back and forth. Melody slipped sideways a little and ended up pressing up against Jake even harder. Without thinking any more about it, he reached across and took her hand.

  She shifted a little bit so that their fingers were entwined, and closed her hand around his. Jake’s heart stopped going bump-thump and felt, for a moment, as if it had stopped completely.

  Be cool, Semple, he thought fiercely to himself. It’s just holding hands. With a girl. Just ’cause you haven’t done it much . . . okay, any . . . He felt like he was holding on to a live wire, getting just a little bit electrocuted. It was awesome. All of a sudden he didn’t mind the dark anymore. She had called him a lap dog. He was not. He found himself suddenly fixated on the idea of kissing her. Hal was right there in the car with them, but it was pitch-dark. Melody’s fingers gave his an encouraging little squeeze.

  Quickly, before he could chicken out, he slid his hand out of hers and reached out to put his arm around her shoulders. He didn’t know exactly what he was planning to do, but maybe at least a quick kiss before they hit the next pool of light. He could turn her face toward him, just to show her he had the guts. To show himself, too.

  As he reached around her shoulders, he felt something weird. It was bony and muscley. He felt along it until he realized with a rush of sickening mortification that he was squeezing Hal’s shoulder. Hal had his arm around Melody. She was sitting there, between them, holding Jake’s hand, with Hal’s arm around her shoulder.

  He heard Melody give a single, dry snort of laughter.

  Jake pulled his arm back and pressed himself against the side of the cart, as far as he could go. At the next lit alcove Hal jumped out of the car, which they had been told not to do, and ran ahead to climb into the empty car in front of them, where he slid down into the bench until he almost disappeared.

  Seething with anger and humiliation in the darkness, Jake decided he was done trying to make sense of girls. He would become a monk or something. He couldn’t help blessing the deep darkness that hid his burning cheeks and kept anybody—anybody—from taking a video of this awful thing, like the video of his first performance as Asa Trenchard. Hal hadn’t sent that video to the Rutherfords, he knew, but it still existed somewhere. Now there were two awful, embarrassing things that—recorded or not—he suspected he would never forget.

  Between the salt mine and their packing up in Hutchinson to begin the drive to Saunders, New Mexico, Jake kept to himself as much as possible. Hal, he noticed, was fully back to his hermit self, not only not talking, but even taking his food away from everybody else to eat. Jake didn’t know whether Melody was avoiding both of them, or whether she had other reasons for wanting to be alone, but she pretty much took over the little room the Hutchinson RV park called a tech center, where people who didn’t have their own computer could “get connected while on the road.” She hadn’t come back to her bunk by the time he’d gone to sleep and was already up and out and helping to pack up by the time he dragged himself out of bed in the morning. Jake was relieved not to have to see her much.

  Melody chose to ride in Brunhilda—with Hal—on their way to Saunders, and Jake was not quite so relieved about that.

  “Wagons ho!” Archie shouted as the Pageant Wagon roared to life. Just as Archie started to move out, there was a loud thump on the door. He cranked it open and Melody jumped in. “Changed my mind!” she said, and climbed aboard. “Too crowded over there.”

  “So,” she said as she flopped down right next to Jake. “How about that Dark Ride?”

  Jake swallowed hard and said nothing, sliding a bit closer to the window.

  She punched him on the shoulder. “That was awkward, huh?”

  Jake really, really did not want to talk about it. He glared at the floor, clenching his teeth.

  “Hey,” said Melody, more gently. “Look. I’m sorry about that whole thing. I just—Hal put his arm on my shoulders and he was just so cute and shy about it that I didn’t have the heart to push him away or tell him to stop. I didn’t want to spend all that time building him up, getting him that makeover, only to wreck it all by hurting his feelings, right?”

  He glanced up. She was looking him right in the eye, and she seemed as serious and apologetic as he’d ever seen her. He wanted to stay mad at her. He really did. Then she smiled, and he gave up.

  “That was . . . ,” he started, and she was already giggling, with her hand over her mouth. “That was really, really . . .” He laughed out loud before he could stop himself, and Melody started cackling, with her head rocked back.

  “It sure was,” she agreed. “It sure was.” Jake noticed his hand was sort of near hers on the bench seat.

  “Melody!” Lucille called from the back of the bus. “I have a style question for you.”

  Melody jumped up, started toward Lucille, then turned and, with a wink, blew him a kiss.

  Bump-thump. Stop that, he told his heart. Just stop it!

  Chapter Twenty-One

  E.D. was having a hard time getting her thoughts in order. It wasn’t a feeling she enjoyed. She was sitting at the dinette as Brunhilda rolled on toward New Mexico, trying to process something that had happened in the salt mine. But where to start?

  In the mine Lucille had wandered past while E.D. was standing staring at a glass case without even seeing it. “You look a million miles away,” she said.

  E.D. sighed. “Don’t you think sometimes that there’s just too much stuff in the world to ever get it into any kind of order?”

  “I think this trip is turning you all inside out.”

  “What do you mean?” E.D. asked.

  “An adventurous ques
t, involving the ability to think things through,” Lucille said, putting a hand on E.D.’s shoulder. “You like to think things through before they happen, because then you can control them—or at least you tell yourself you can. But this is a journey. You’ve got to let go of control and get into trust. Trust that you’ll be able to think things through after the fact, and get just as much from them. After all, how could you plan for a miracle like the one right in front of you?”

  E.D. finally really looked at the display case, wondering what Lucille was talking about. It was a yellowed old newspaper, with the corners gone, and tattered edges. As she read the headline, her heart almost stopped.

  OUR LOSS—THE GREAT NATIONAL CALAMITY—DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT, she read. The date on the paper was April 16, 1865. The card next to the case identified it as the first newspaper that was printed after Lincoln was shot. After he was shot watching the very play they had just been performing.

  It was such an unbelievable coincidence that it did feel like a miracle, she thought. Trust, E.D. thought now, bouncing along in Brunhilda. Could trust really be the opposite of planning? That newspaper clipping was going to be a great addition to her video log—it would look like she did it on purpose, like she’d pulled the whole thing together, like she’d turned their trip into a curriculum. But she hadn’t! She hadn’t known she would find a connection to the Lincoln assassination in that salt mine—it was just chance. How could she rely on chance? She didn’t want to hope they would find educational connections and things to learn. She wanted to know.

  After stopping for lunch in Dodge City, Kansas—which was billed as a “wild frontier town of the Old West,” where Zedediah bought a cowboy hat for himself and one for Destiny—E.D. settled back in, with Winston at her feet under the table. Cordelia had brought Hal a hamburger. He hadn’t gotten out to see Dodge City. Had his makeover worn off somehow? E.D. wondered. Ever since the salt mine Hal had been his old, most reclusive self.

  She began recording in her notebook the bits of history she’d managed to collect from signs and pictures on the walls at the restaurant. In another coincidence, she had learned Fort Dodge, the fort the city was named for, had been built in April 1865, the same month Lincoln was assassinated. She underlined that bit.

  They had traveled through the panhandle of Oklahoma, which E.D. had shown Destiny on a map to explain the word panhandle, and had entered New Mexico when Randolph called out to alert them to the fact that they were passing the border to Texas. “That’s Texas, right over there.” He pointed to the left. “Biggest state in the lower forty-eight.”

  “Doesn’t look any bigger than this one,” Destiny said.

  Ahead of them, the Pageant Wagon started flashing its parking lights. “What’s Archie doing that for?” Randolph wondered out loud.

  E.D. sniffed. A familiar smell was wafting through Brunhilda’s windows. “What is that?” she asked.

  “French fries!” Destiny hollered. “Somebody’s making french fries!”

  The Pageant Wagon swung into the passing lane and Brunhilda followed. Three extraordinary buses were ahead. The one in back had an entire field of pinwheels mounted on the roof, which were spinning madly in the wind. It was painted a vigorous, electric green.

  “It seems,” Randolph said, “that we have located the Organic School.” As he pulled up next to the green pinwheel bus, Sybil and Cordelia all waved to the driver, who waved back. Up ahead, the other buses started to pull off the road with the Pageant Wagon now in the lead. The pinwheel bus backed off to let Brunhilda into the lane ahead of it, and they all turned into the big, dusty parking lot of a truck stop that had gone out of business and was shuttered and faded in the sun.

  Everyone—except Hal—climbed out of Brunhilda, and the guy with the flattop who’d been driving the pinwheel bus came striding over to them. “The Applewhites’ Creative Academy, I presume?” he said.

  “And you must be the Organic School,” Randolph said.

  “Organic Academy,” he corrected, waving one finger from side to side. E.D. heard a whuff behind her and turned to see Winston on the bottom step, looking suspiciously toward the newcomers. “Ah,” said Flattop. “Wasn’t aware you had a dog. Yeah, um . . . some of our kids have allergies. So, can you just . . . keep him in your bus? Thanks. Great.”

  E.D. grabbed Winston’s leash from Brunhilda’s door pocket and clipped it to the dog’s collar. Destiny, in his cowboy hat, was staring fixedly at the pinwheels on the roof of the bus when four small children came tumbling out of it. Not one of them was older than seven.

  Uh-oh, E.D. thought.

  Destiny hadn’t noticed them yet. Jake was on his way over from the Pageant Wagon and E.D. waved at him frantically. He raised his eyebrows questioningly, and she pointed to the little kids. She looked down at Destiny, back at the little kids, and mouthed “Do something!” at him. He understood immediately, as she knew he would, and swooped down on Destiny.

  “Hey, cowboy!” he shouted, turning the little boy around and hoisting him onto his shoulders. “How about a rodeo ride? See if you can stay on the bucking bronco!”

  He bounced around E.D. with Destiny squealing in delight and grabbing at his hair. “You get Winston inside,” Jake said to E.D., as he galloped around behind Brunhilda and out of sight of the little kids, neighing like a horse.

  When she’d closed Winston into Brunhilda, E.D. walked along beside the other two amazing buses. One was done up like Vincent van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night, with a swirly blue night sky full of stars and a moon and a tall, dark tree. The other was so interesting she just stopped and stared at it for a minute. She realized her mouth was hanging open, and closed it. The bus was covered all over in shiny metal scales, like a fish, and had a big fin that looked like it was made out of folded metal on the roof, and smaller fins on the sides. There was even a tail—it was a couple of feet long, stuck on the back of the bus and hinged in sections so it could sway back and forth as the bus went down the road. E.D. began to feel a little embarrassed about Destiny’s purple possum on the side of Brunhilda.

  A pale, freckled woman wearing a long skirt made out of cut-up pairs of jeans emerged from the fish bus. She had what looked like a stretchy fabric seedpod around her waist—a baby, all curled up in a sling. “Hi, hi,” she said in general, to the whole family. “I’m Michaela, great to meet you. You must be the Applewhites, we are so looking forward to working with you on this challenge.”

  More kids had come out of the Organic Academy buses now and were wandering around, staring at the Applewhite buses, or trying to peer into the boarded-up windows of the truck stop. A couple of the littler ones, with light brown skin and soft curly dark hair, came pelting over and flung themselves onto Michaela’s legs, where they peered out suspiciously from behind her skirt.

  Jake came around Brunhilda just then and Destiny, still on his shoulders, saw the little kids. “Oh, great,” he said, kicking Jake in the chest. “Put me down!” he demanded. The moment his feet touched the ground, he ran to Brunhilda and shut himself in with Winston.

  Introductions and greetings were exchanged—Michaela’s husband, Gary, a balding dark-skinned man with wire spectacles, nodded but didn’t speak. They were joined briefly by Flattop, whose name E.D. missed. “So, those are actual windmill generators?” Archie asked, and Flattop nodded. “That’s the Green Machine. Of course the bus itself runs on recycled restaurant cooking oil.”

  “So that’s why it smells like french fries!” Randolph said as Archie and the man headed toward the back of the Green Machine.

  There were two more families traveling with the Organic Academy, but one couple was buried in their electronic devices and barely mustered a wave, and the other couple was bickering quietly but intensely, and after a quick, awkward handshake with everybody, they headed off to the far side of the parking lot to continue their argument.

  “We’d love to meet the rest of the children, as well,” said Lucille brightly. “They look like a great, exuber
ant bunch!”

  “Well, sure,” said Michaela, “but they’re all over there just now. I can’t exactly gather them up in some kind of formation like they’re in the army, can I?” She barked a quick laugh.

  Melody came over to E.D., leaned in, and whispered behind her hand. “Check that out!” E.D. looked across the parking lot where Melody was pointing. There was a boy, about fourteen or fifteen, with long wavy blond hair. Like a surfer, E.D. thought, though she had never in her life met a surfer. A very, very good-looking boy. He was laughing about something. He ruffled one of the little kids’ hair and started over toward the assembled grown-ups.

  “Hi,” he said, extending his hand confidently to Sybil and then making his way down the line of the Applewhites. “I’m Tyler.” When he got to E.D. he took her hand and held on to it for just a moment. “Well, hi,” he said. E.D. felt her cheeks get suddenly hot. She was very, very glad that she had taken the time to do her hair and put on some blush and lip gloss after they’d eaten at the restaurant in Dodge.

  Sybil proposed that the kids start getting to know one another by riding the rest of the way to Saunders, about an hour and a half away, in each other’s buses.

  “Hooray!” shouted a few of the little kids, and headed off toward Brunhilda, where Destiny was holed up. Jake hurried after them.

  As he climbed the steps Destiny was yelling from inside, “No, you GET OUT! This is MY PIRATE HAMMOCK!”

  “Let’s you and me take Winston to the Pageant Wagon, cowboy,” E.D. heard Jake say.

  She brushed her hair back into place, tugged her shirt down over her jeans, and followed Tyler, who was shepherding some of the other kids to the fish bus. Why not? she asked herself. Wasn’t that what trust was all about? Taking the chances that the journey put in front of you.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jake was warming his hands around a cup of coffee as everyone gathered for breakfast around the rickety picnic tables of the only campground in Saunders, New Mexico, wearing jackets against the high-desert October-morning chill. Whoops and shrieks from the other buses had wakened them not long after sunrise, and even Lucille had been less than cheerful as she took her turn fixing their scrambled eggs and toast.