Applewhites Coast to Coast Page 17

  She could see Jake wandering over by the campground’s playground, talking out loud to himself, his script for Our American Cousin tucked under his arm. Randolph had announced that they would be doing another several readings at some point—without, E.D. noticed, any regard for the Expedition’s schedule or the challenges they’d be sent. Jake had been diligently working on the role of Asa, and from what E.D. had overheard, he was actually starting to get really good at it.

  Otherwise, the campsite was peaceful and quiet. It almost felt like the Expedition was finally coming together the way it was intended, and E.D. couldn’t believe there was less than a week left! Everyone was finally following their own interests and getting something rich and meaningful from it. Lucille and Cordelia had set off at the crack of sunrise for their vortex hike—Lucille had been raving about the intense psychic energy all around from the moment they arrived.

  “There had better be good energy,” Sybil said. “I sent Petunia Possum, Detective off to my editor last night, so this will be the birthplace of my new career!” With her manuscript submitted and nothing pressing to do, Sybil had gone off with Destiny to the local historical museum. Archie was planning to spend his day in the art galleries that seemed to line all of Sedona’s streets, Hal took off on his own for a hike after breakfast, and Randolph, having been up well into the night making phone calls about his upcoming performances, was just now waking up, banging around in the back of Brunhilda. Even from out here, E.D. could hear him grumbling about his desperate need for coffee. E.D. sighed, and got up to turn on the camp stove and heat up what was left in the pot.

  Through the hissing of the gas, she heard a holler from Brunhilda. “Cockroaches!” her father shouted. And then she heard a string of parrot words accompanied by banging and smashing. E.D. had no idea how roaches had suddenly become a problem, but she suspected Jake knew more than he was letting on—he got a weird gulpy look every time one was spotted.

  As soon as the bus was quiet again, there was a shriek in the distance, and Melody came running into the campsite. She was waving her cell phone in the air and slid to a stop, dust rising around her sequined sandals.

  “Change of plans,” she shouted. Her face, E.D. noticed, was incredibly pale. “Change of plans! We have to drop everything and get on the road. There’s an e-mail from the Rutherfords’ TV guy!”

  Randolph banged open the door of Brunhilda, looking groggy and rubbing his eyes. “What’s all this noise? And where’s my coffee?” E.D. wordlessly pointed him toward the stove.

  “We’ve got to head for California immediately,” Melody insisted. “This morning. All further stops canceled. They’ve pushed up the whole schedule! They’re shooting interviews with everybody, which will air during the award show, and they’re shooting them this weekend. We’ve got to go!”

  Randolph stared at her, then shook his head. “Not possible. I’ve got plans for two more performances in California, on our way to the Rutherfords. The actors are flying in tomorrow to start rehearsal while we’re here in Arizona.” He waved dismissively. “We can’t just change plans like that.”

  “Jeez, Dad, talk about changing plans,” E.D. objected. He hadn’t given her any warning! And now she had actors to coordinate and rehearsals to schedule?

  Jake had, by now, come over to see what was going on. Melody’s hands were in fists. “Look,” she shouted, “this is it. This is the part where we get famous! Where people find out who we are! You want to be famous, right, Randy?” Randolph choked on his coffee as Melody plunged ahead. “We’re supposed to get there—with our finished, edited video for the final presentation, which is basically the most important part of the whole competition, by noon tomorrow so they can start shooting behind-the-scenes, human-interest, interview stuff. All the other expeditions are closer—it’ll take us over twelve hours! Really, really, we have to start now!”

  “Preposterous,” said Randolph, impatiently drumming his fingers on the side of his coffee mug. “I will not have my performances jerked around for some television shooting schedule.”

  Melody stared at him in utter disbelief. “B-but . . . ,” she sputtered, “we just took the lead! We’re finally in first place! We can win this thing!”

  “Exactly,” said Randolph, sipping confidently from his mug. “You saw those lunatics in the other group! I’m certain we’re going to win. And no small part of that victory,” he added with a humble bow of his head, “will be the performances that I am putting together. We will still arrive in time for the award ceremony. We are not leaving early, and that’s final.”

  The fight escalated from there. Melody wondered, loudly, who cared about his “stupid little play.” Randolph pointed out, even more loudly, that he, the rest of the family, and the cast all cared quite a lot about it. She said some mean stuff about theater people in general and Randolph in particular. He said some mean stuff about “selfish, spoiled little girls,” and Melody, trembling and shouting, held her hands up at him like claws. For a moment E.D. thought Melody was going to jump on Randolph and try to rip him apart like a wildcat. I have to do something! E.D. thought.

  So she got in between them, even though it was the last place she wanted to be, and held her hands up in both of their faces.

  “ALL RIGHT,” she hollered. “THAT’S ENOUGH! Jake!” Jake snapped to attention, and E.D. fought down a sudden rush of annoyance that he had just been standing there watching while E.D., as usual, was doing something. “Take Melody someplace and find out what’s really going on. Dad, take a breath and let’s talk about these extra performances that you never even bothered to tell me about.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When E.D. told Jake to take Melody away, Melody shouted, “Nobody’s taking me anywhere!” and grabbed Jake by the arm, dragging him toward a hiking path that led off from the campground into the red rock hills.

  “Twelve hours, it’ll take to get there,” she fumed as they walked. “Twelve at least! The TV crew will be there in the morning. They want to start filming in the afternoon. This is it! The big deal. He’s going to ruin everything! We have to go NOW!” She was walking fast, and Jake found himself struggling to keep up with her.

  He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. At least, he thought, when a lion tamer went into the ring with a lion, he had a whip and a chair with him. The path went around the side of a hill and started to climb. Soon they reached a ledge that overlooked a really breathtaking view, dark green bushes climbing up the red and tan cliffs and towers of rock, across a little valley and off into the distance. Jake thought it looked like a landscape that dinosaurs should be walking through, not people.

  Melody stopped walking. She wasn’t looking at the view, she just seemed to have run out of steam. She sat down on a big rock that had tumbled down near the path. Jake sat about a foot away.

  “If we waited until everybody got back from what they’re doing this morning, and we got on the road right after lunch—right after!—we could still get there when they want us. This family is like some kind of democracy, right?” she said, picking up a pebble and winging it down the hill in front of them. “So, he can’t just make the rules. If everybody else wants to go right now so we can get there when the filming starts . . .” She trailed off and flung another rock. She was probably thinking the same thing Jake was: that the odds were against her. He wondered if Melody had ever felt completely at a loss before.

  “I know getting interviewed and being on TV would be cool,” he said carefully, “but even if we were a little late, maybe—”

  “Being on TV would be cool?” she asked witheringly. “Are you crazy?”

  “What do you mean crazy?”

  “Are you happy? Are you happy being just what you are?” To Jake’s astonishment, she had tears in her eyes. “How many people—how many people on the whole planet—even know you exist? Like, how many people, if somebody said ‘Jake Semple’ to them, would even say, ‘Oh yeah, that kid’? A couple hundred? A thousand?
In the whole world?”

  Jake had never really thought about it before. He thought now about everybody he’d known in school, and his family, and the Applewhites. He thought about everybody he had performed for, in The Sound of Music and Oliver! and the other shows he’d done. Did any of them remember his name? But then again . . . “What difference does it make?” he asked. “If people know who I am? I mean, it would be nice, but what would be different?”

  “Everything!” Melody shouted. “Everything would be different! Nobody could treat you like just some kid. You wouldn’t be just some dumb anybody, like all those other dumb anybodies. Think about them! Think about those millions of people we’ve driven past on this Expedition! They’re like ants! There are so many of them and they’re all exactly the same!”

  That didn’t seem right to Jake. Very few of the folks they’d met on this Expedition seemed much like anybody else at all.

  Suddenly she reached out and grabbed his hands. “You’re on my side at least, right? About leaving? I mean, we have to be there for the filming. We have to be on TV, and we have to win. We absolutely have to!”

  “Maybe Randolph’s right,” he said, “and the timing really doesn’t matter that much. The Rutherfords aren’t going to just dump the leaders because they get there a little bit late. They can do the human-interest stuff and the interviews and all that with everybody else till we get there.”

  “We can’t take that chance!” she said. “They’ve turned it all over to the television people. And all they care about is numbers—they fired Jeremy! I need—we need to be there for everything they’re planning! If we can get the family to vote, are you with me?”

  Melody was leaning in close and staring right into his eyes. For one wild moment, he felt sort of sorry for her. And then he heard himself saying yes.

  Her face lit up. “Really? You’ll vote that we dump Big Randy’s stupid play and go today?” When she put it that way, he was pretty sure that was the wrong decision. But he found himself nodding anyway.

  “Come on,” she called, “let’s go see if Lucille and Cordelia are back yet!”

  After lunch, once everybody had returned to camp, a family meeting was called to discuss what they would do. It was surprisingly civilized, Jake thought, given that Melody on one side and Randolph on the other had both dug their heels in.

  When the vote was called it had pretty much come down to a battle between the Applewhites’ desire for winning and good publicity, and their intense dislike of being told what to do. And it was way closer than Jake had expected—Archie, Cordelia, Melody, and, reluctantly, Jake, voted to leave immediately. Hal didn’t want to be interviewed, he said—ever—and Lucille wasn’t ready to leave Sedona yet, so they both voted with Randolph and E.D. to stay.

  Then Sybil, the deciding vote, announced that she was going to abstain.

  “What’s that?” asked Destiny.

  “It means I’m not voting,” Sybil said. “I see both sides and I can’t make up my mind.” She held up a hand toward Randolph as he opened his mouth to start arguing with her. “I abstain,” she repeated firmly.

  “So it’s a tie,” said E.D. “Now what?”

  “It’s not a tie,” said a little voice. “I hasn’t voted.”

  Melody and Randolph both turned to Destiny in disbelief. “You don’t get a vote!” they both shouted.

  “Why not?” asked Destiny indignantly.

  “You’re five,” they said, then glared at each other.

  “I’m an Applewhite,” Destiny insisted, putting his hands on his hips. “I gets a vote!”

  “Talk some sense into him, Jake, he’ll listen to you,” Melody whispered urgently. Jake hesitated, and then it was too late.

  “I wanna stay,” said Destiny decisively. “I likes it here. I wanna visit a vortex. I wanna take a cowboy ride. I wanna stay.”

  Randolph whooped in triumph. Melody went very, very quiet. It seemed like everyone was holding their breath.

  “Fine,” she said after a long, long while, her mouth tight. Then she flipped her hair out of her face. “Whatever. If we’re doing these shows, I need to work with my script.” The fire seemed to have left Melody like a thunderstorm disappearing from a summer sky.

  That evening, Lucille went into Brunhilda to start getting dinner together. Minutes later, screeching and smashing sounds split the early-evening air. Jake and Archie jumped up and ran for the bus. Inside they found Lucille standing in the aisle by the kitchen, staring at her hands and quivering. Her hair was wild. She looked at them with big, horrified eyes. “I . . . I killed them.” She held her hands up, palms out, and there were brown- and cream-colored smears on them. “I killed them with my bare hands. . . .”

  Jake edged toward her. He saw a leg, an antenna, part of a wing. Her hands were covered in chunks of mashed up cockroaches. Archie grabbed a dish towel and started wiping her clean. Lucille was shivering violently. “I asked them to leave,” she told Archie pleadingly. “SO many times, yesterday—and the day before. They wouldn’t leave! I came in and opened the cabinets and they just fell out all over the counter . . . And I killed them!” Archie led her down the aisle and out of Brunhilda.

  Hal and Archie took over dinner, which was a giant vat of pasta and sauce. “Any more roaches?” asked Jake quietly as Hal carried the big steaming pot out to the picnic table.

  “Couple,” said Hal. “I don’t think any made it into the pasta. Let’s not talk about it.”

  After dinner, Melody raised a hand to speak. “Everybody,” she said, “I’m sorry about today.” Jake was stunned. “You’ve all taught me so much about teamwork, and how any group works best when it works together.” Lucille came out of her cockroach-murder trauma long enough to clasp her hands over her heart and look at Melody with misty eyes. “Let’s all go watch the sunset. All of us. In, like, togetherness. There’s an overlook Jake and I found today with a beautiful view.”

  “Well, Melody,” said Sybil. “I think that’s just lovely. I could do with an after-dinner walk. Destiny, go find Winston’s leash.”

  Randolph grumbled. “It’ll get dark. I’m sure to trip on a rock and break my neck.”

  “Togetherness!” Sybil reminded him.

  Halfway up the path to the overlook, Melody stopped short. “My camera,” she said, smacking her forehead. “I want to record this. I’ll be right back,” she said, and scampered back down the path in the gathering dusk.

  There was just room for the whole family at the overlook. It really was a beautiful view, and the sunset was copper and gold on the cliffs across the valley. At moments like this, Jake thought, for all the cramped quarters and bouncing around on country roads, and pasta with possible cockroaches in it, and weird challenges, and changing schedules . . . at moments like this, the whole Expedition made sense.

  “Melody,” said Lucille, “this was a lovely impulse. Thank you.” Silence. “Melody?”

  Everyone looked around. Melody wasn’t there. “Did she ever come back with her camera?” asked Sybil.

  They headed back down the path, having to go more slowly in the dark, now that the sun was down. “What if she fell off the path and broke her neck and died?” Destiny said.

  “Nobody died!” said Randolph. But he walked more slowly and carefully. There was no Melody along the way.

  There was no Melody back at the camp.

  There was no Pageant Wagon, either.

  Melody and the Pageant Wagon were gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “My Pageant Wagon!” Randolph shouted at the top of his lungs. “This is grand theft RV! Call the state police and have them set up roadblocks. Helicopters! Bloodhounds! She can’t have gone far. When they catch her, I fully intend to press charges!”

  E.D. stood with the rest of the family staring at the place where the Pageant Wagon wasn’t anymore. What was there instead was a blanket, piled with clothes and random belongings. In the light that shone from Brunhilda’s front windows, she saw one of Lucille�
�s ruffled skirts and a matching blouse, a couple of pairs of jeans and some socks and underwear that could have been Archie’s or Jake’s, and on the very top, lying open, Jake’s thoroughly dog-eared and highlighted script for Our American Cousin.

  “Her phone goes right to voice mail,” said Jake, his phone to his ear.

  “After her!” cried Randolph, leaping into Brunhilda’s driver’s seat. “All aboard! We’re going after her!” With that he turned Brunhilda’s key, and her engine turned over with a groan. And again. And again. But she wouldn’t start.

  E.D. worried her father might have a stroke. “She’s done something to Brunhilda!” he bellowed, tearing at his hair. “Archie! Fix it! Make it work!”

  “I don’t know much about this engine,” Archie admitted. “We’re going to have to wait for roadside assistance.” After a few minutes on his phone, he hung up and shook his head. “They can’t send anyone until morning,” he said.

  Randolph turned purple and lost the ability to speak. He just opened and closed his mouth, making furious gasping noises.

  “You don’t suppose she’s planning to drive all the way to the Rutherford Art Center by herself?” Sybil said.

  Lucille picked her blouse out of the pile on the blanket. “It was thoughtful of her to leave us something to wear. I can live without pajamas tonight.”

  “I don’t see my shaving kit,” Archie said.

  “You can use this opportunity to grow a beard,” Lucille told him. “I’ve always thought you’d look rugged and manly with a beard.”

  Jake was picking through the pile of clothes. “There’s a lot of stuff I don’t see,” he said. “She didn’t clear out the whole bus, it looks like—just a couple of armfuls.” E.D. realized he was right. There was no way the pile was big enough. She didn’t see anything but clothes and Jake’s script—no books, no papers, no electronics.