Page 132 of Wayfarers

“Make sure.”

Sylvie pulls out her phone, swipes a few times. “Yep, I have you on a group text with my mom.”

I’m starting to feel weird just standing here, but I figure if Sylvie wanted to introduce me, she’d have done so by now.

“Okay. Hey, I gotta buy some stamps and go to Costco to grab a rotisserie chicken and a Caesar salad for dinner before Brian gets home. You’ll text me?”

“Absolutely.”

She bustles off, waving back over her shoulder. “Text me!”

“I definitely will.” Sylvie closes her eyes and mouths, no.

I wait until Helena is well and gone. “Good times, huh?”

“Yeah, good times.”

“What was that all about?”

Sylvie sighs loudly. “That, Knox, is basically the worst-case scenario of stopping off in Springfield. Helena is one of my mom’s best friends and, like, the biggest busybody on the planet. I wouldn’t be shocked if—” Sylvie’s phone buzzes. She closes her eyes and slowly turns her face up to the ceiling. She brings herself to look at her phone. “Well . . . like I was saying, I wouldn’t be shocked if she’s already texted my mom to tell her she ran into me and yep, there’s the text from my mom. ‘Sylvie, are you in town’ with, let’s count . . . seven question marks.”

“Oops.”

“Yeah, oops.”

“Is that why you didn’t introduce me?”

“Helena is one of those people with whom you want to share as little information as you can get away with.”

“What do you want to do about your mom?”

“I gotta go see her. I mean, I don’t want to. At all. But I have to. I can’t not now that she knows I’m here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Be sorry for yourself. You’re getting dragged along. Kicking and screaming.”

“I’m cool with whatever.” I still hadn’t gotten an answer to my real question, though. I remembered Sylvie mentioning a funeral in passing earlier. And now there was what Helena said. “So when Helena asked how you were holding up, what was she talking about?”

Sylvie

“Can we wait until we’re back in the van?” I ask him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course.”

Outside, Winslow is wagging away at the window. I’m his favorite person. Should that thought be comforting? Because it isn’t. When I get in, he nudges his way under my hand for a scratch, his head between the seats.

My phone is buzzing nonstop in my pocket. I don’t look. I don’t look at Knox. I just put my hands at ten and two and keep my eyes straight ahead. “I have to tell you something and you can’t hate me after.”

“I don’t think that I could hate you,” he begins, but I cut him off.

“It’s not just that.” My phone buzzes again. I am trying so hard not to cry. “I need you to not just not hate me, I need you to keep feeling the same way you feel about me now. I need you to still like me. I need that to not change.”

He’s quiet.

I keep talking. I can’t stop. “Because the version of me that you met, this girl who drives through states that have waterfalls and mountains and volcanoes and rivers and who doesn’t stop to see any of them, who parks her fancy van so she can pull the curtains to do nothing, talk to no one, read no books, think of nobody but herself and how miserable she is—I still can’t believe that you like that girl. She’s not . . . me.”

He’s still quiet. Winslow pads off to the back seat.