A minute later, I’m standing across from him at a desk, where he’s gently tending to my battered finger, opening a kit he keeps in a drawer. “So many accidents in an art room,” he sighs. “It does one good to keep help within reach, I always say. By the way, are you not an artist? You are here so often, I can never tell whether it’s friends that keep you coming back or just nagging intrigue. As far as I’m aware, you’re not enrolled in any classes here?”
“Nope.” I pat my satchel with my free hand. “I just doodle.”
He chuckles. “Can I be so lucky as to see one of your ‘doodles’? I’m so often struck by the untapped talent of our student body and marvel how so many deny themselves the divine endeavor of—”
My notebook is slapped open before his eyes, revealing my latest doodle. He draws silent.
To be fair, I never claimed to be Van Gogh.
“It’s a … a lovely … lovely little monster,” he decides to call it.
“Chihuahua,” I correct him. “With a banana gun. And this one is a cat eating a chocolate pie. It’s me and my bestie AJ.”
After troubling over a few choice adjectives, he looks up at me with a smile so tight, his eyes are gone. “Charming.” He clears his throat and frowns. “What was your actual major again?”
“Something my parents chose for me at birth.”
“I … somehow understand perfectly without understanding a thing at all. Timothy, if I may. The vastly more important aspect of art is puttingyourselfinto what you do. That way, a bit of your soul is left in anything you create. Keep with thesedoodlesif they bring you joy, even if … life takes you on a different path. As it so often does. It isn’t the result that matters. It’s the adventure.”
I frown. “Doesn’t the result matter at least a teeny bit?”
“Only if your parents send you to grad school.” He smiles and shuts his kit. “Hope that isn’t your doodling hand.”
It isn’t; I’m a lefty. But itismy jerking one, and I doubt that’s information Professor Patel needs nor cares to have. Yes, I use my right to poodle my noodle, sure, unexpected, but as masturbation commonly goes, no one’s there to criticize how I do it.
When I’m outside again, heavy clouds have brushed aside the afternoon sun, and my bench is covered in a ton of birds whose wrath I’d rather not incur.
They cleaned the grass of the Cheetos.
Professor Patel’s haunting words about paths and doodling and adventure don’t get to me. I’ve got Project Spruce Jailbreak, the greatest adventure I’m about to embark on. It’s more than just a road trip; it’s a chance to prove to myself that I have authority over my own life. That I can be my own man. That I can be free.
Also, less delicately put: it’s going to befucking fun.
It’s two hours later in my dorm that I drop onto my computer chair, ass naked, phone slack in my hand. “You did what?”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry!” cries AJ on the line. “I was telling Ollie about our trip, then his girl found this deal on TravelBuddy … and thenPariswanted in. Paris, bro! My futurewife! It became this big thing, a group chat got started, some of the other gear crew got roped in … I couldn’t stop it, man.”
I just showered, and my first thought is: I definitely should’ve dressed before answering the phone.
Thissoisn’t a naked conversation.
“Iwasgonna be, like, hey, why don’t you just come with us,” he says, like suddenly my road trip is their idea, “but I know how you are about big groups, so I figured you’d, uh,notwant to go …”
I’m staring at the screen of my laptop, left open on the desk. There’s a folder in the dead center namedProject_Spruce_Jailbreakjust like in my notebook, but with underscores separating the words. Next to it, the thumbnail of a pic I took of me and AJ on the last day of class that I gave an egregiously long filename:My_best_ buddy_&_roadtrip_pal_who_will_save_me_from_another_long_summer_of_being_stuck_in_my_tiny_adorable_hometown. Again, underscores. Not me pretending long-ass filenames are suddenly the most important thing in the universe.
“Ollie has a cousin in Cali,” AJ goes on, “so everyone, like, just wants to go straight there and skip all the boring desert stuff …”
Behind my laptop, colorful sticky notes line the wall covered in my bad handwriting and doodles. Notes about Las Vegas, Planet Hollywood, Elvis impersonators. Grand Canyon. Fire Wave Trail. Cave systems in Arizona, like the Lava River Cave in Flagstaff I’ve been dying to see. A back-road journey to the west coast through the mountains, cheapest hotels in LA and San Francisco. Each spot I planned to take selfies with AJ. I even made a list of our favorite stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame so we don’t forget any.
He doesn’t know about that last part.Supposed to be a surprise.
“I gotta chase after Paris, bro, ‘cause if I chicken out again, I’m kissing our future goodbye, and I can’t do that. I gotta man up! I’m gonna marry that girl someday, y’know?”
He doesn’t know how dangerous it was going to be to drop this bomb on my parents a mere week before I was expected back:Surprise, I won’t be home until the tip end of July!By then, I’d only have to spend a mere two weeks home in Spruce before I’m due back on campus. That seems like the perfect amount of time to be home, right? Not too much, not too little. Hell, maybe I’d even appreciate those weeks more and not spend them sulking by my window at night wondering what else my life could be.
“You understand, right?” His voice turns into pudding. I know he feels bad. I’m always the guy who understands. He relies on that a lot. “I’m pretty sure you don’t still wanna tag along. It’d be, like, ten of us. Maybe twelve. Ashleigh might bring her weed.” He rethinks it. “Definitelywill bring her weed. And it’ll be all straight couples, too, I guess. That’s like a nightmare for you, huh?”
“Y-Yeah,” I agree, then wonder if I might’ve agreed too fast.