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“
This
,” Ward said, “is an investigation.”

“Of what?” I asked. “Me?”

Ward was quiet for a beat. The fans droned heavily behind me.
On TV the announcer shouted, “Yahtzee!” as a player smacked the ball out of the park on the highlight reel.

“Win
has
no uncle in Seattle,” he said carefully, gauging my reaction. “And he hasn’t contacted his parents in over a month. You’re the last person to have seen him.”

Shit.

“I think you’d better start from the beginning, Chris,” Abe Ward said as he settled back into the sofa, one arm tossed casually across the back so I had a better view of the weapon sleeping quietly in its holster.

Three weeks before I graduated from high school my mother asked me a question. Actually, Mom never really asked anything, she just camouflaged commands inside queries.

“Wouldn’t you like to get a job this summer, Chris?” Translation: “You’re too old to sit around here all summer mooching money off your father and me.”

“I mean, you’ll want to have spending money for college next fall, right?”

I hadn’t even decided if I was going to college yet. The acceptance letter and my housing application for Georgia Tech were still in my backpack, wedged between wave theory and relativity in my AP physics textbook—a fitting spot for a decision I’d yet to make.

“Mom …”

“Kmart’s hiring. You’d like working there, wouldn’t you?”

Generally talking about me getting a job was one thing, but she’d clearly been making plans. I had an immediate and horrifying vision of myself wearing a stupid plastic name tag and one of those lower-back support belts as I unloaded giant boxes of toilet paper destined for Blue Light Specials.

The thought of a summer spent shuffling two-ply for the value-minded made me desperate. And I did sort of have other plans. Plans I’d so far been too chicken to share with anyone but Win.

“Actually … I’m going to ride my bike to the West Coast with Win,” I said.

Mom blinked. “West Coast? West Coast of what?”

My father, who had just come into the kitchen, tossed his lunch box in the sink and said, “Sounds good, Chris. Make sure you call once in a while.” He tried to sound casual, but instead of emptying his lunch box and loading the mason jar he used as a thermos into the dishwasher, he leaned against the counter and looked at me, his eyes filled with a weird blend of admiration and crazy hope.

“Now hold on,” my mother said, regaining her composure. “Shouldn’t we discuss this?” I could see her regretting the early graduation present—a rebuilt Trek 1200—they’d given me a few weeks back. Sure, Abby Sanders got a new 4Runner, but I wasn’t complaining. The road bike fit. Win and I had been entering biathlons since freshman year. I’d been limping to decent finishes on a pathetic ten-speed my dad found at a flea market. This bike would fly. It begged to.

Saying out loud that I was going to ride across the country and seeing that nobody laughed gave me confidence. It
was
as crazy as it sounded, but it was within the realm of possibility. If it weren’t, Mom wouldn’t have been so worried.

“Win and I have been talking about it,” I said. That wasn’t technically true. A few months ago we’d been sitting around watching the Discovery Channel on a Friday night because … well, because we really were that lame. They ran a documentary about this guy who rode his bike from somewhere in Europe all the way down to the bottom of Africa. One of us said, “Wouldn’t it be cool to ride our bikes out west?” Win and I hadn’t so much as discussed it since, but the notion had sustained me through the most debilitating later stages of senioritis.

But Mom was not to be denied her discussion. “The West Coast is a long way from West Virginia. Probably at least two thousand miles,” she said.

“Closer to three, I’d imagine,” my father said, sounding excited. I wasn’t exactly surprised at his reaction, but maybe a little at his enthusiasm. He’d had moments that made me wonder if he hadn’t been a hell-raiser before he got married, built this house, and started moving heavy stuff around for a living. When I built a tiny ramp on the flat part of the driveway for that five-horsepower minibike I got one Christmas, he was the one who squirted a thin line of lighter fluid and laid a match to it when I came tearing around the house to jump it again. This felt a little like that.

Mom shot him a
Don’t encourage the boy
look. “Maybe you could just ride to Gram’s house.” Gram’s house was in Ohio, a three-hour drive away. Not
out west
.

“It has to be farther. The whole point is to see something different,” I argued.

She sat back and crossed her arms. “This is Win’s idea, isn’t it? You know I couldn’t love that boy any more if he were my own, but his greatest talent is getting you into trouble.”

“Mom—,” I began.

“Remember the tree house incident? Or that time at school you got blamed when he decided to change those letters around on the bulletin board and made you stand watch?”

“That was fifth grade, Mom,” I said, adding, “
I
want to do this.”

“What about last fall when you guys went for your campus visit at Marshall?”

She waited for me to argue. But the mention of the Marshall Plan, as Win had called it then, threatened to make me laugh out loud—something I was sure Mom wouldn’t appreciate in this conversation.

“Remember those outlandish lies?” she said, arms crossed as she stared at me across the table.

“Mom, that was just Win goofing around—”

“He told that poor student tour guide that you’d been in a coma for three years!”

“Mom—” I tried to break in, but I could feel the smile pulling at the corners of my mouth.

“I’m not finished, Christopher,” she intoned. I shut up and let her continue. “And he wasn’t satisfied with just that lie, was he?”

I sat quietly, unsure if I was supposed to answer this question or not.

“Um, no, but—”

“He went on to tell her that he was an orphan refugee from—” She paused, waved her fingers toward me, beckoning the answer.

“I don’t remember, Mom. One of the Stan countries, maybe?”

But it didn’t matter. Now she only wanted to ensure this was as long and painful as possible. “
And
,” she said, positively vibrating as she said the words, “and he claimed to be your adopted brother who’d tutored you to make up for those years of high school you missed during your coma!”

My father laughed. “It’s not funny, Allen!” Mom said. “Chris could have gotten a lot of scholarship money at Marshall. And then he would have been close to home instead of going all the way down to Atlanta.”

“I didn’t even apply to Marshall, Mom,” I said.

Mom glowered. “Of course not! As if you could after I had to explain to the dean that Win made it all up.”

She shook her head at the memory. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so humiliated. That nice man pulling me out of a parent meeting to tell me personally how much he admired the sacrifices I’d made for my sons.”

“At least you got to be the hero in that one,” I said. “All I got to be was a coma survivor.”

“And which exactly do you think you’ll be after this little adventure with Win?” she snapped, referring to the bike trip.

“This is totally different.”

She settled down some, tried a different approach. “Really?
Because I don’t think even you have enough faith in that boy to leave the details to him. Besides, how do you even ride a bike that far? Where will you live?”

“We’ll camp.”

“How will you pay for it?”

“I’ve got some money saved. Between graduation gifts and all the lawns I mowed this spring, I have enough.”

“But it’s irresponsible—,” she began before my father cut her off.

“Of course it is. Chris is plenty responsible. Did better than either of us in school. Took all those hard classes. Got accepted into college. He works hard.”

“Allen, we—”

“He deserves this trip. He’s got a whole life of responsibility ahead of him. Let him have a season of … of …”

“Irresponsibility?” my mother supplied, sounding satisfied.

“
Fun
,” my father said. “Adventure.”

Something in his tone and the way he looked sort of past my mother as he said it was definitive. But Mom had one last line of defense. “Well, I suppose if Winston’s parents say it’s all right.”

She was of course hoping Win’s parents—famous for their unflinching ability to dampen all things fun or irresponsible—would strike down the spirit of adventure. In truth, I expected the same.

But they didn’t. At least not fatally.

When I called that night, Win picked up on the third or fourth ring. “What?”

“It’s me,” I said.

“Yeah, Collins, I have caller ID. And considering this is a private line and you’re the only person who calls me besides telemarketers or people who think they’re calling my dad’s number—”

“Dude, I get it. What’s your problem?”

He sighed. “Apparently it’s still got something to do with authority or attachment or some crap like that. I can’t remember what it is this week.”

“Therapy today?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” he said again after a moment, while I looked for something to say.

When I still couldn’t think of anything wise, I went for the obvious. “Go ask your parents if you can do the ride this summer,” I said, explaining my dad’s encouragement and Mom’s grudging permission.

I heard Win open his bedroom door and head down the hallway. “They really said yes?”

“Sort of,” I said. “Do you think your dad will go for it?”

“Maybe. The stock report’s on now.”

We were lucky the stocks were on. Lucky something more important than Win’s safety and happiness could provide the distraction. The plasma TV in the den grew louder as Win approached his father’s domain, the phone still in his hand.

A quiet knock at the door. The volume dropping on the TV a little.

“Hey, Dad?”

“What is it, Winston?” I heard his father ask, followed by the sound of an ice cube clinking against the bottom of a glass as his father tossed back the remains of what I knew was his afterwork scotch.

“Uh, Chris and I want to ride our bikes cross-country this summer,” he said.

The hum of the television was the only sound for a few seconds.

“I see,” his father said.

“His parents already said it’s okay,” Win said.

“That sounds pretty ambitious,” he said, adding, “especially for you.”

I guess I thought that since this trip was something special that maybe Win’s dad wouldn’t be the prick he usually was when Win asked him about something. I was wrong, and I found myself sort of shrinking the way I did when Win’s dad laid into him in front of me. Too afraid to move or leave or anything that might make it worse for Win or give his dad a reason to look at me like he looked at Win—as if I were somebody he wanted to fire rather than a kid. I thought about hanging up, but it felt too much like leaving Win alone in there with his dad.

“Dad?” I heard Win say again.

His father spoke above the fake exciting music accompanying the listings. “I suppose if Chris’s parents allow it, I’ll let you try. Though don’t expect us to jump in the car and come bail you out when you get bored of this adventure after a week or so.”

Win said something I couldn’t make out as the volume grew louder.

“We’re good,” he then said into the phone. “Dad seems pretty stoked, but that might have been the scotch talking.”

Since no one technically gave us permission, we never actually repeated the exact phrases to each other’s parents. We just started telling people that we were going to do it, making Seattle our destination because Win had an uncle there we could stay with.

We lived in that mode—the glory of the adventure to come—for a full week without making any concrete plans. Then my dad sat me down on the back porch after I’d reminded Mom that I was going to ride my bike across the country instead of get a job (a declaration prompted by the fact that she’d brought home an application from KFC).

My dad’s a man of few words—and those allotted to me throughout my lifetime have always seemed to mean more.

“Son,” he began.

“Nice start, Obi-Wan,” I joked. “But remember, you gave me the talk years ago, and it still hasn’t done me any good—”

“Son, when I was twenty-one, before I married your mother, I planned to drive Route 66 from Chicago to California in a ’67 Mustang I restored,” he said, the last phrase falling with uncharacteristic wistfulness.

I shut up.

“Talked about it for two years. Even overhauled the engine a couple of times.”

I focused on the gap between the decking boards, a screw whose head had been stripped out. Anything to avoid seeing on his face what I could hear in his voice: regret.

“But I just talked. Never committed. Never cleared my life
out enough to start driving. Kept thinking I’d save a little more, get a few things taken care of. Then I met your mom.”

I nodded. Less because I understood, and more because I wanted this conversation to end.

“Set a date, Chris,” he finished with an urgency I hadn’t heard in his voice since, well, since maybe never.

“Set a date and leave—no matter what,” he repeated. He stood, signaling the end of the one-sided exchange. I nodded. He turned and entered the house, leaving me with the revelation that my dad—who’d spent the last twenty-two years working construction and dreaming about a long drive—
needed
me to go on this trip.

The cicadas chirped in the trees, echoing the buzzing that had begun in my legs. What had started out as a fun way to spend a summer dodging minimum wage had become a quest. I stood, took two steps across the deck, tugged open the creaking screen door, and reached for the phone.

Win answered on the second ring.

“June sixth,” I said.

“Foxtrot,” he shot back.

I wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Code, right? We’re speaking in code or something?” he said, sounding bored.

“Does June sixth sound like code?”

“Nope. Sounds like the day after graduation. Sounds like I might be hungover.”