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“I’m so sorry,” she repeated, and I almost believed her. “I’ll totally pay for the cleaning, or your breakfast, or whatever.”

The other waitress said something to the man and began ushering him toward the bathroom. He glared at Danielle, threw a glance my way, and let himself be pushed toward the men’s room.

When he was out of sight, Danielle turned and crossed back to us. “Go get your stuff, then hide out back in my car—the red Jeep—until the bus leaves. Wait till Earl comes round to get you.”

“I can’t believe you just did that,” I said as she grabbed a handful of clean rags and dunked them in a sink full of soapy water.

“It wasn’t fresh. Halfway cold,” she said, shrugging. “Go.”

“Are you sure this will work?” I asked, shoving a last bite of pancake into my mouth.

“Girl said go, son,” Earl said. “I’ll see you in a while.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Danielle passed through the open space in the counter, heading toward the mess she’d made. She slowed as she passed me, looked into my eyes.

“I hope I didn’t just punk the FBI so you could take Win back,” she said.

“You didn’t. I’ll make sure he gets you a corsage,” I said.

“Son, I think
you’d
better get her a corsage,” Earl said.

“Go now,” she whispered.

I raced outside, tried not to look like I was running across the lot, and circled to the back side of the bus. I pushed on the door. It didn’t budge.

The driver had locked it up.

Crap.

“Eagle! Get up!” Win shouted.

“Five more minutes, Mom,” I mumbled.

“Five more minutes and Morgan will have eaten all the processed pork products. You wouldn’t want that, now, would you?” he said.

I looked over the edge of the loft. Win was already packed and dressed. He was never ready before me. After stuffing my bag back into the sack and rolling up my pad, I chucked them over the edge of the loft and then moved toward the ladder. I was sore everywhere. Bruises mottled my arms and legs like lace.

I pulled on a T-shirt. “How long you been up?”

“Long enough to look around. This place is amazing.”

I studied my friend. His bruises matched my own, but he also
sported a sizable knot just above his left eye. I slipped my feet into my shoes and strapped my sleeping bag onto the bike, then followed Win out of the barn to breakfast.

Effie dropped the skillet she was pouring gravy from when we walked into the kitchen.

“What happened?” she shrieked as she looked us over.

I shrugged. What the hell had happened, anyway?

“Nothing,” Win said. “Really.”

Effie stared at us, apparently unaccustomed to such a smooth liar as Win.

“But you two look like—”

“Effie, the boys said it was nothing. Let it be.”

Her face flushed as she smoothed a stray silver hair back into place and gestured toward the table. Morgan had already begun to eat. We ate quickly, Win and I again packing more food into our bellies than anyone might have thought possible. Biscuits. Gravy. Sausage. Eggs. Ham. We ate in relative silence, the entire meal like one of those awkward pauses that had punctuated our easy evening the night before.

“You should make Glacier by noon,” Morgan said without looking at either of us.

I nodded as I sopped up egg and gravy with the nub of a biscuit. “Good. Shouldn’t put us too far behind.”

And that was the extent of the conversation. Minutes later Win and I were on our feet, saying polite good-byes to our hosts, hauling the paper bag Effie thrust into my hands.

“Just a light lunch,” she said as I accepted a parcel that weighed at least as much as my front pannier.

We thanked her, accepted her embraces, and followed Morgan out to the porch and our bikes.

He shook our hands. “Good luck to you boys,” he said solemnly.

“Thank you,” Win said. We stood awkwardly for half a minute. Something inside Effie’s lunch bag was seeping through the paper bottom.

“If you’re ever back this way,” Morgan said, “be sure to come by.”

I nodded. Win reached for his helmet. “See you later, Morgan.”

Sixty miles and five hours later we arrived. We’d stopped only for a short and very cold swim in a lake at the eastern edge of the park. The glacial melt eased the soreness from last night’s grudge match.

“What do you want to do now?” Win asked me as he unpacked the contents of Effie’s lunch. The bag had made the journey tied precariously to his handlebars, dark purple goo dripping a trail as we rode.

“Eat,” I said. “Stare at that,” I added, pointing at the view. We were looking out at the canyon, the cars snaking up the ribbon of pavement known as the Going-to-the-Sun Road. We’d just climbed it, exulting in the fact that the ascent didn’t wind us as much as we’d expected it to, as much as it would have nearly two months ago when we started this trip. Now I enjoyed the full heat of the early-afternoon sun drying the cold water out of my bike shorts.

“Yeah,” Win said. “I think this is what they call basking.”

I grabbed one of the blueberry turnovers that had been leaking, took a bite. “Basking.”

I don’t know if Glacier National Park was ever something I’d even thought of before we realized it was on our route to Seattle. I don’t think I’d ever even heard of it, but now it felt like something we’d discovered. Sure, we’d been honked at by a hundred cars that thought we were crazy to take our bikes up the steep, exposed highway. And sharing that bit of road with giant, foul-smelling RVs hadn’t been that fun. But the scenery, the pure exertion, the scale of it all, had resurrected a sort of epic quality that I’d forgotten the trip could hold.

And it was going a long way toward helping us forget last night.

“How long can we stay here?” Win asked me.

I shrugged. “When’s your uncle expecting us?”

He hesitated. “Next week sometime. I think I told him the first of August, or so.”

“Do you want to call him? Have you called him?”

Again hesitation, as if there was something he wanted to say but didn’t. “Nah. He’s pretty laid back. When do you have to go for orientation, college boy?”

“I’m not the one going Ivy League,” I said.

Win ignored me.

“Orientation’s on the fourteenth. I have to catch the bus back by the fifth at the latest,” I said.

He nodded. “If it takes us a week to get over the Cascades and then head south into Seattle, I’d say we’ve got just today here.”

For the first time on the trip I knew regret. Regret that we’d wasted so much time in less impressive places during the early part of our trip. If we’d known how amazing it would be out here, we
probably would have ridden a little faster, taken a more direct route. And now the ride was almost over. But I was also feeling a bit relieved. Finishing was a sure thing now.

“Let’s find a campsite, ditch the gear, look around,” Win said.

I nodded. “But nothing illegal—they get pretty tweaked about that kind of thing in these places.”

“As if the admission fee we paid wasn’t bad enough,” Win said. “How pathetic is that, by the way? Charging us the rate for a car? I mean, we’re doing a good thing for the planet here. We’re saving the environment from emissions on the most efficient machines in the world, and yet they still charge us the same usage fee as one of those rolling duplexes that all the blue-hairs are backing into each other—”

“Shut up,” I said as something large pushed out of the brush fifteen feet from where we sat.

“Whoa,” Win said as a snowy mountain goat emerged from the thicket.

“That thing’s huge,” I whispered. We both watched the goat in silence. Probably three feet high at the shoulder, long white coat, powerful legs, serious-looking horns.

“Awesome.”

I nodded.

“No, really. That thing looks, like …
regal
.”

He was right. The animal had a presence that would have inspired reverence even without those horns.

“But what’s it doing down here?” I whispered.

The goat ignored us as it walked over to a spot where a footpath broke from the parking lot into the brush. It sprang onto the
asphalt. Immediately it looked less impressive, stacked up next to the station wagons and SUVs.

We turned and watched it navigate through the lines of cars, hooves clicking distinctly on the pavement like the clips on the bottoms of my bike shoes.

Even in its less impressive surroundings, it was still pretty cool. I tried to enjoy it as much as I could, knowing that as soon as the tourists saw it, we’d be covered up in amateur wildlife photographers.

The goat sniffed the ground. “What’s it looking for?” I asked.

Win shrugged.

And then the goat came upon a space where a giant RV had been parked only a few minutes ago. This one had left behind a puddle of antifreeze—a two-foot-wide neon green stain on the pavement. I took small consolation in the fact that the motor home might be disabled somewhere.

As soon as the goat entered the stall, it made straight for the pool and began licking it up.

Perfect.

“We come all the way out here, and we get to see a goat lick up antifreeze,” I muttered.

But Win was stage-whispering in a ridiculous British accent, “The
Mountainus goatus
is a unique species, known for its keen appetite for automotive fluids. Some attribute its longevity to the pickling properties of these agents. And isn’t this one a beaut?”

By now a crowd was forming around the animal. Families with cameras. A kid started pelting it with Oreos, until a ranger came
and broke up the show. Visitors dispersed reluctantly, snapping photos as the ranger shooed the goat away.

She saw us sitting by ourselves, bikes leaned against each other, and walked over.

“How long you guys been riding?” she asked.

“About seven weeks,” Win said. “Took off from West Virginia.”

She raised her eyebrows in appreciation. “You’ve made good time.”

We absorbed her compliment silently.

“I see you’ve met Eddie, our resident drug-addicted goat,” she said. “He’s crazy. Harmless, but that’s probably more of a problem than the crazy part.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“My name’s Rita, by the way,” she said, sounding a little annoyed.

Rita was too old for us to hit on. We only asked names when girls were young. And cute. “Sorry. Chris,” I said, pointing at myself before hooking a thumb at Win, “Winston.”

She nodded. “Harmless is worse than crazy because he can’t defend himself. Doesn’t know people aren’t good for him, just keeps a range of about a mile around this parking lot.”

“He never goes up into the mountains?”

She shook her head. “Not as far as we can tell. Nothing he can lick up there that might corrode his brain. We’ve tried three times to relocate him, but he always comes back. He’s sort of forgotten how to be a mountain goat.”

“What, he’s like a big, stupid house dog?” I asked.

Rita nodded. “With really dangerous horns.”

Win finally spoke. “What’s going to happen to him?”

Rita picked up a corner of an Oreo wrapper and put it in her pocket. “Park management is talking about putting him down. It’d be a shame, though. It’s not his fault he’s like this …,” she trailed off. “Well, I’ve gotta get back to work. If you see him again, try to shoo him away. He’ll go if you take a good run at him,” she said.

The thought that I might be able to scare him away made me even sadder.

“You guys camping here tonight?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Try the lodge at Lake McDonald. They let cyclists crash in the bus driver barracks for free.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I watched her go. When I turned back, Win was still staring at the spot where Eddie had disappeared into the brush.

“Win?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, still staring after the goat.

“You all right, man?” I asked.

He didn’t respond. I recognized the feel of the coming moment. Didn’t want to climb back in. It was shaping up like the night at the church, finding the money in his saddlebag, last night in the barn. It felt like, well, like
distance
. I didn’t want to see where it led this time.

“Win? You been sampling the antifreeze with old Eddie?” I asked.

Dumb jokes. Always the escape hatch. Win turned and faced me. It was like I’d thrown a switch.

“Lake McDonald, right? Let’s check it out. I feel like another swim anyway,” he said, springing up and going to his bike. I watched him walk away, feeling more and more like I was watching a stranger.

After a moment of panic and a frantic search for anything resembling a normal keyhole with a pickable lock (not that I knew how anyway), I glanced back at the diner. I could see Danielle pouring coffee at a corner booth, keeping an eye on me.

Think
.

I scanned the sides of the bus. The rest of my stuff was on board. It wasn’t much, but I couldn’t afford to leave it either. And if they discovered it when the bus stopped in Spokane, Jacketman would know I’d gotten off long ago instead of just managing to slip away in a crowded bus terminal.

I circled around to the other side of the bus and found what I was looking for: a slightly open window an aisle or two ahead of
my own. I hopped up, grabbed the exposed lip, and eased my left hand over, sliding the window in its track to widen the opening. My hands were cramping by the time I had it open enough, and I dropped down to shake them out. Ignoring the stiffness that had crept into my back after trying to sleep in my seat, I hopped back up, planted my feet on the side of the bus, and cranked with my upper arms to lever myself in.

Sometimes it pays to be the skinny guy. It wasn’t graceful, and I’m glad no one could see me from the diner. Someone passing on the highway honked, but that was it. Maybe twenty seconds later I spilled onto a seat filled with someone’s knitting bag and crawled into the aisle.

I hustled back, grabbed my stuff from the seat, and hurried out my window, dropping to the asphalt as quietly as I could manage. I crept up to the front of the bus. Danielle was back behind the counter. Jacketman’s stool was still empty.