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Kerouacing
Story by StormDancer
Chapter the First
From the pages of Meg's Journal:
Well, we’ve begun.
Connor picked me up bright and early (I wasn’t aware that he could wake up that early, the sun was only just hinting at the horizon, but apparently miracles do happen), before Mom or Dad or Colleen were up. Anticipating that, I had said my good-byes last night, even though they told me to wake them so they could “make sure I had everything I needed, and was alright.” Honestly. I’ve been traveling before; I can take care of myself. And leave on my own. It’s not even like I’ll be gone that long, either, only three weeks. Not to mention Kevin and I managed to talk Connor into bringing a cell phone with us. He didn’t want to, too caught up in the Romanticism (in the sense of the style of literature, not lovey-doviness) of setting off into the unknown, with no ties to bind us. Eighty years ago, I swear, he would have been a tramp. Now, he’s just a wanna-be poet. It’s rather endearing, occasionally, his desire to live in the past. It’s one of the few things about him I can sympathize with.
But Kevin put his foot down for a just-in-case sort of phone, and Connor relented, because no one can deny Kevin when he insists. There is a reason our entire grade calls him Jesus, after all. It will, we agreed, be turned on once daily to check for messages, in case something important happened at home, and will only be used for outbound calls if there’s an actual emergency. Otherwise, we will be completely incommunicado- not even Internet, if we happen to stop in a town with an Internet café. That’s why I’m writing this long hand, no computers allowed. It’s fun, in a novel sort of way that’s probably going to get old really fast when my hand starts to cramp.
But, as I had started to say- this notebook, as a record of our cross-country trip, will most likely be horribly disorganized, as topsy-turvy as my mind is. My future self, reading this, I apologize. But I’m just going to set down thoughts as they come, and hope you can muddle through them.
So, returning to the point for the third attempt, Connor arrived at my house this morning in his van. How he managed to acquire it, I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to. No complaints, however he did it, because it’s comfy and big enough to fit three people for three weeks, though we aren’t planning on sleeping in it. Well, more accurately, Kevin and I aren’t. Connor may, “Just to get the feel for it.” I don’t think that will last long. As much as we want to hide it- we are taking this trip- we’re all spoiled rich kids, and one night in a car without AC will almost certainly be enough for Connor.
So, Connor got there, and I loaded all my stuff .The same amount as the boys, I’m proud to say- take that stereotypes- though the percent of book-weight in my bags was considerably higher, given how vociferously Connor whined when he helped me pick up a backpack. But I have to entertain myself somehow! And Connor has a guitar, which takes up just as much room and two times as much of his anxiety, with him babying it and making sure that, wherever he put it, it wasn’t going to fall. He’s playing it now, in the backseat. It’s a nice accompaniment to the semi-familiar countryside. Especially as I’m not entirely sure how long our radio will hold out, given that the boys spent a good hour arguing about what station to put it on, before finally deciding that all the stations were crappy. Neither of them is particularly fiery, as far as I know, but they both were ready to smash it by the end of that hour. I laughed. I don’t think they appreciated it.
Kevin’s driving, obviously, as I just mention Connor’s music-ing and I’m writing. He looks rather melancholy, staring at the road without even a smile to crack his strong, handsome face. He’s missing Katlynn already, I’d guess. They had a very long, touching farewell scene when we left his house, complete with tears and the drawn out letting go of the hug and him burying his face in her curls. Connor and I could hardly keep from laughing, it was so cliché, but in reality, I’m kind of jealous. I doubt if I’d be here right now if I had a girlfriend like Katlynn (well, a boyfriend like Kevin, except I don’t want him. Just that connection). I don’t even know why he’s here. Connor came to live out a dream and find a foundation for his philosophy, that much is certain, and I’m here for material, something more real to write about than high school drama and fancies. But Kevin’s so much more a mystery; he already has everything.
Of course, this whole trip is rather enigmatic. I mean, could you find three more disparate people than us? The nerd (yours truly), the artiste partier (Connor) and the jock over-achiever (Kevin). How it came to be, I’m not entirely sure. I know the actual words that proposed it, obviously- but how it actually came together must have been Fate. Except I don’t believe in Fate, so we’ll call it coincidence, which doesn’t have nearly the same ring to it but satisfies the rationalist in me more.
Just for the record (I don’t know how much you’ll remember, future me, or if this is found next to our dead bodies somewhere in Nowheresville, North Dakota, I want blame to be pointed where its due), it’s all Connor’s fault. He suggested it. The three of us were sitting in the student lounge, sometime in the middle of winter, me with my homework, Connor because he had been too lazy to turn in his last thousand homeworks and so had been restricted there, and Kevin waiting to see the college advisor, when, leafing through a book a later saw was by Kerouac, Connor observed, “I should do that.”
I didn’t look up from my math notebook (freaking indefinite integrals, I still don’t get them), but answered anyway, because even if we’d hardly exchanged a dozen words during the seven years we’d been at school together, he seemed to expect a reply. “Do what?”
“Wander. Travel. Take a trip through the states, looking in the crannies, the spaces, the stuff not on the postcards.” His hazel eyes seemed to light up as he stared at the book, seeing things far away, adventures he could be having. I knew that look. I’d had it before.
Connor has a magnetism about him that’s impossible to ignore, especially when he turns it on full strength. There is a reason he gets so many girls, or at least, I’d assume that’s the reason. But Kevin was drawn in despite himself. “What, just take a road trip to California?”
“No!” Connor shoved the chair out so violently that it fell over. Ignoring it, he began to pace around the room, like it was a cage too small to contain his wandering feet. “Nothing so touristy, anyone could do that. Everyone does do that. I want to go off the map, away from everyone and everything here. Have adventures, live large, go wherever the wind takes you! Escape Suburbia and go find the world!”
Silence followed. I was too caught up in the perilously charismatic power of his vision to speak, and I think Kevin was too, though as I said, I don’t know what it was about that speech that caught him. Connor must have taken that silence for dissent- I can’t imagine the people he usually hangs out with would be sympathetic with those sorts of dreams- because he subsided into the chair next to the one he had knocked over. “Never mind, it’s stupid. No one-”
“No.” I cut him off, surprising both him and me. But Connor is beautiful when he smiles, not handsome or winsome but legitimately beautiful, when his face is lit by that rapture of dreams and artistic vision, that it hurts to see him fall back down to earth. And thank god no one will ever see that passage, because it sounded far creepier on paper than it did in my head, even if it has a purely aesthetic judgment. “No, it’s not stupid. It’s… It’s…”
“Amazing,” Kevin finished in his calm, reasonable voice, with the rumble in it that sounds like mountains moving, “We should do it.” It’s somehow fitting that, while it was Connor who began the idea, it was Kevin who brought the ‘we’ into it. Jesus does always try to unify things, to bring people together. “We will do it.”
Kevin was called into the office then, and Carrie came in, complete with a rant about how irritating Joe was being (this was during a together part of their cycle) that I had to listen to, so the conversation died, and I had thought everyone else had forgotten about it. Except, apparently, they hadn’t, because it kept on coming up, once every month, until here we are. The three of us, setting of for the great unknown, with nothing more than good sense (or at least, Kevin has that), dreams (which Connor supplies in plenty) and me. Wit, maybe? Knowledge? Or perhaps just the pen to record it all, though I think I saw Kevin scribbling something earlier and Connor has to write his songs down somewhere.
It’s bright out, now. The sun’s dancing above the treetops, flirting through the phone lines. The dark was fun, though. It made me feel more like we were the only ones in the world who actually existed, and everything else was just a figment of our imagination, the other cars just will-o’-the-wisps with no corporeal forms, just lights in the black. Once we get out of Massachusetts we’ll lose the highways but for now, when the land around us is all comfortably familiar, there’s no reason not to use the big roads.
Oh, god- I’m pretty sure Connor just started playing Journey. And while it’s a pretty appropriate song right now- though none of us were born in south Detroit- it’s going to get really old really fast, if I know myself at all. Especially as there’s only one way to cope with it- yep, he’s singing now. A ray of hope; if he’s anything like my guy friends he should wind down pretty soon, his attention span worn out- except there goes Kevin, cracking a smile and joining in. Am I really doomed to this?
Although, actually, they don’t sound half bad to my musically incompetent ears. Kevin’s got more heart than harmony, and he’s an octave or two below where his duet partner or the original singers were, but it’s a kind of comforting grumble. And I’m precisely tone deaf, so I only hear the big mistakes, which aren’t likely to pop up when there’s only a guitar accompaniment. And Connor more than makes up for it. His voice- oh, god, his voice is to melt for. A light tenor, not Kevin’s profoundly reverberating bass but light and airy and melted-chocolate smooth, like every jazz singers voice rolled into one. Why, oh why must I be so susceptible to musicians?
I really must look into hiding this. I may just die of humiliation if anyone ever read that description, although it’s fairly decent, if I do say so myself. It’s just, well, rather adoring. I sound infatuated, which I’m not. And I got so many goddamn warnings from perfectly well meaning, extremely annoying friends before coming on this trip that he was “dangerous” or “too seductive for his own good.” I refuse to give them something that, taken out of the context of my mind, could be construed as proof that his notorious charm has worked on me, because it hasn’t. Why would he bother to turn it towards me, anyway?
Ignore that, future me who’s laughing vaguely masochistically right now at my momentary lapse into angst. Hopefully, you are lovely and sparkling and confident and everything I’m not right now but wish I was. And there I go again with the angst. I better stop before I implode of it.
Connor’s started a new song anyway, one I think I can actually sing to. And I’m not going all this way just so I can spend my time buried in a journal!
I can’t wait for the adventures to start.
