Jess, Chunk, and the Road Trip to Infinity by Kristin Elizabeth Clark

Author:Kristin Elizabeth Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

CHAPTER 11

Just after eight o’clock we grab food from the Subway off of I-80 near Laramie.

I make Chunk go in alone while I wait in Betty. When he’s gone I remember to grab the extra key he has tucked under the floor mat and slide it into my pocket.

He rolls his eyes when he comes back with his hands full and I have to unlock the door from the inside. The parking lot’s dead but I’m taking no chances in this part of the world.

Chunk inhales his sandwich while we’re still parked so he can drive.

“You’ve been driving all day. Are you sure you don’t want me to?”

“I’m good. Maybe in a little while.”

“What’d you get?”

“Turkey, no cheese.” He digs into the sunflower seeds from yesterday.

My meatball sandwich smells amazing. I haven’t even taken a bite yet. I want to savor it.

We pull back onto 80, and I feel sorry for him. Poor guy must still be starving.

“Want half?” I ask.

“Naw,” he says.

I take a huge bite. “It’s really good,” I say from around a mouthful of sauce and meat and toasty Parmesan bread.

“Maybe just a bite,” he says, keeping his face forward but leaning toward me, his mouth open. I hold up the sandwich so he can have some. Feeding him feels oddly, stomach-twitchingly intimate. When he takes a bite his top lip brushes my knuckle.

My flesh prickles and he jerks up straight again, eyes never leaving the road.

Did he feel it too?

I grab my phone in one hand and open the trivia app to stave off a weird silence.

I read questions out loud and eat my sandwich during his answers.

* * *

At almost nine o’clock, the sun’s gone down behind us, but it’s not dark yet. We’re approaching what Chunk’s printout tells us is Buford, Wyoming’s Tree in the Rock.

There’s just enough light to see, and I read the description on Chunk’s printout aloud.

This limber pine has been around so long that when the railroad was built in 1867, the workers jogged the track sideways to avoid it. The railroad was eventually moved south, and the stretch was paved as Lincoln Highway. When Highway 80 was built, the tree was again left alone, the highway splitting around it.

“Isn’t the Two-Story Outhouse around here too?” Chunk asks, exiting into the center median, just as a Volkswagen van pulls out of it, going in the opposite direction.

I check the list.

“Yeah, but it’s a little off the highway. Maybe we shouldn’t bother with stuff that isn’t right on 80?”

“Except for Riverside,” Chunk says, parking.

“I don’t get your sudden interest in the Future Birthplace of Captain Kirk.”

“I just think it’ll be cool.”

“Whatever.”

Chunk grabs the camera. We get out, stretch, and walk closer to take a look at this tree, which indeed seems to be growing out of a boulder. There’s a tall and stabby-looking fence surrounding both tree and rock.

I take the camera from Chunk and turn it on. It’s getting dark and we probably won’t be able to see much.

“Captain’s Log, Stardate 11706.

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