The Sleepwalkers Read Online Free Page B

hit a tiny bit of turbulence on the way to land, and Bean had started freaking out. It was funny to Caleb, who had never seen that side of his friend, but Bean had recovered quickly and had spent the rest of the landing in macho talk about how they should kick the pilot’s ass and sue the airline and use the money to buy a giant RV so they could travel the country in real comfort and never have to fly again. All through his tirade his eyes were big and scared, and a sheen of sweat sparkled on his forehead, giving him away. Caleb had been tempted to make fun of him, since that’s certainly what Bean would have done to him, but decided against it.
    “Come on,” Caleb says now, heading off the lingering urge to crack a joke by changing the subject. “Let’s get our bags and find a rental car. I don’t know if I can find my dad’s house in the daylight, much less in the dark.”
    They hustle through the airport, which is decked out in pastel pinks and greenish blues, Florida colors, and head for the baggage claim. In no time, they reach the rental-car place where, thanks to Bean’s trusty fake ID (which lists him as a twenty-seven-year-old bearded guy named “Dirk Stephens”), they soon secure a car and hit the road.

    The windows are down, the sun is bright (though it’s past its zenith now; four o’clock has come and gone). In the air, the sickly-sweet smell of a paper mill makes the humidity seem even thicker, even more intoxicating, and Caleb keeps thinking how much difference a few days can make, how the course of everything can reverse like the changing of the tide and pull you in the opposite direction with frightening force.
    But somehow, in this moment, that’s okay. After all, the ability to change direction is freedom, and on a beautiful afternoon like this, with his best friend at his side and all the demands of his life thousands of miles away, freedom has never felt so nice. The sense of foreboding that haunted him since the moment he read Christine’s letter has dissipated, leaving in its place only the road and the sun and the warm, sweet-smelling wind. Bean, who’s been looking out the window, lost in his own thoughts, reaches down and turns on the radio. He scans for a minute and finally comes up with some old-school rock song and blasts it, singing along at the top of his lungs.
    Caleb joins in, and they laugh and mock head-bang for a minute.
    The adventure has begun. Still fifty miles to go to make Hudson-ville, they race along an empty two-lane road, skirted by endless pine trees and punctuated with the occasional run-down gas station or grapefruit stand. They’re the only car in sight; they’re free of parents and tests and stress and girls and everything complicated and bad. In this moment, there’s only the wind and the sun and the radio and the possibility of great times ahead.

    Around a turn in the road, a sign: the rotary club welcomes you to the village of hudsonville, population 123.
    Bean has been talking excitedly for the last hour. “. . . Dude, I wonder if this chick Christine’s a hottie. After we rescue her, maybe she’ll, like, rescue us a little bit, you know what I’m sayin’? Oh, yeah, forgot about your ball and chain. My bad. All I’m saying is we have to get to the beach while we’re here. I hear the beaches here are sweet. Of course, we live on the beach—but still I’ve never been to a Florida beach.”
    Bean sees the sign and falls silent for a second. “A hundred and twenty-three people? I’ve see that many people in one bathroom at LAX.”
    They pass a sandy driveway. There’s a half-collapsed green and white motor home squatting in a field of sand with tufts of scraggly grass protruding everywhere. A skinny old man wearing overalls, with close-set, beady eyes, watches them pass. The air is still and hot as it rushes through their windows, but its sound falls to a whisper as Caleb slows the car down. There’s a gas station called Pete’s Gas and Store,