Day trip

I woke up feeling like absolute hell. Too much rum. Not enough water. Not nearly enough sleep. My mouth felt like a cat shit in it.

The room had smelled bad the night before, but now it was something else entirely—like the smell had settled in and decided to stay. Stale beer, musky sex, rotten stomach.

I sat up slowly, immediately regretting it. My neck too stiff to even crack.

Somewhere near the bathroom, someone had missed the toilet entirely. I didn’t need to look to know. I just knew.

I got out of there before my stomach could decide to join the conversation.

Outside, the motel parking lot was already alive in that slow, hungover way—people squinting at the sun, barefoot in yesterday’s clothes, holding coffee like it was medicine. Counselors were breaking off into groups like it was planned.

Beach trip. Hiking. Rafting. A lobster run up the coast.

Everyone had somewhere to go. Everyone had someone to go with.

I stood there for a minute longer than I should have, waiting for someone to say my name. No one did. Eventually I just started walking.

I found her by accident. Or maybe not.

She was leaning against a car that looked like it had never seen a dirty road in its life—clean, expensive, completely out of place in a motel parking lot full of rust and duct tape. Blonde hair. Perfectly done, even after last night. She looked like she belonged on the arm of a SEC quarterback or in a magazine ad for something I couldn’t afford. There was no way she had been part of the chaos from the night before. She looked too put together for that. Too untouched.

I hesitated, then walked over. “Hey.”

She looked up. “Hey.”

“What are you doing today?”

She shrugged. “Well, I was supposed to go to Boston with my boyfriend.”

A pause.

“Was?”

She smiled a little, like she was still deciding how she felt about it. “Last night he decided on other things.”

I waited.

“So… I’m single now.” She jingled a set of keys in her hand. “And I have his car.”

That should’ve been a red flag. Instead, I just nodded. His loss, my gain. “Let’s go for a drive.”

She raised an eyebrow. “A drive?”

“Yeah. Scenic. Stop wherever looks interesting.”

For a second she studied me like she was deciding if I was serious. Then she grinned,“Good idea.”

We left the motel and hit the first stop: Dunkin for ice coffees and bacon, egg and cheese.

Then we left the civilized world behind and just kept going. Windows down. Maine air cutting through the car like it had something to prove. She pulled off highway onto back roads, and the back roads turned into something quieter. Pine trees everywhere, stretching up like they were trying to block out the rest of the world. Then blueberry fields—divided out by stone fences like a Robert Frost poem.

Little country stores that looked like they sold everything and nothing at the same time. We stopped at one and came out with lobster rolls wrapped in foil and a couple of sodas that were too cold to hold comfortably.

By the time we reached the overlook, the world had gone wide and quiet. Lakes in the distance. Sky doing that thing where it looked too big to belong to anyone.

We sat on a splintering picnic table at the edge of it all. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a joint like it was just another thing in her day. “Want to partake?”

I looked at her.

She shrugged. “It’ll make the lobster taste better.”

That sounded like a lie. I said yes anyway.

It didn’t just make the lobster taste better. It made everything better. The view. The air. Her smile—now less photo ready and now goofy and welcoming. The way the wind moved through the trees like it had nowhere else to be.

We sat there for a long time without really talking. Just eating. Watching clouds drift like they weren’t in any hurry to arrive anywhere.

Her eyes were a little red now, but she looked happier than she had in the parking lot. She leaned back on her hands and glanced at me. The sun bathing her. She could be a poster plastered in every garage back home.

“We’ve spent the whole day together and you haven’t hit on me once.”

I blinked. “Is that… unusual?”

She laughed. “Very.”

I thought about it. Then shrugged. “It’s because I’d have absolutely no shot.”

She tilted her head. “What makes you say that?”

“I wouldn’t hit on Jessica Simpson either.”

That got a real laugh out of her.

“Getting rejected is humiliating,” I added.

She studied me for a second, like she was trying to decide if I was joking. “You think I would humiliate you?”

The weed had softened everything—her voice, her expression, the edges of the world.

“No,” I said honestly. “But I don’t want to make things weird. I just like being around you.”

That seemed to land differently. She looked at me for a long moment. “You have an energy about you,” she said slowly. “I can’t describe it.”

I laughed. “I’m just a nobody from nowhere. Out here to get away.”

She squinted at me like she didn’t believe a word of it. “You are strange.” A pause. “I like it.”

We didn’t say much after that. We just lay back on the table, letting the sky do what it wanted. No expectations. No chasing anything. Just existing in the same moment without trying to turn it into something else.

We didn’t hold hands. We didn’t flirt. We didn’t try to make it more than it was. The beast in me was satisfied with the seven girls last night. The other me was ashamed, especially after Maggie’s rejection. I didn’t have that urge to fuck anything that walk.

I was content.

We ate. We laughed at nothing. We shared another joint. We let the day disappear around us.

And for the first time in a while, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything.

We’d been driving long enough that the road stopped feeling like it belonged to anyone. Pine trees. Stone walls. Tiny white churches. General stores with hand-painted signs. Every town looked like the last one. The radio had dissolved into static somewhere an hour ago. Neither of us cared enough to fix it.

She leaned forward over the steering wheel. “I think we’re lost.”

“I’ve thought that for twenty minutes.”

“You could’ve said something.”

“I was hoping you had a secret plan.”

She laughed. “My secret plan was pretending I knew where I was going.”

A weathered green highway sign appeared around the next bend.

She slowed enough for both of us to read it.

CHINA

She frowned.

“…China?”

I blinked. “…I don’t remember crossing an ocean.”

She looked over at me.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be anywhere.”

She groaned. “Oh, this is bad.”

“What?”

“We’ve got to get back before curfew.”

I looked at the dashboard clock. “We’ve got time.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Just ahead, a chrome-sided diner sat beside the road beneath a flickering neon OPEN sign.

She pointed. “I’m pulling in.”

“Good idea.”

“Somebody has to know how to get back to Camp Orgee.”

The gravel crunched beneath the tires as we parked. The diner looked frozen somewhere around 1978. A pickup truck. A logging company van. Three motorcycles. The bell above the door jingled as we stepped inside.

Conversation stopped. Not dramatically. Just enough to notice. Forks paused halfway to mouths. Coffee cups hung in midair. Every pair of eyes measured us for a second before returning to breakfast.

The waitress appeared with a coffee pot. “You eating?”

The girl beside me answered first. “We’re actually trying to get back to—”

“What camp?”

“Orgee.”

The waitress nodded once. “Oh.”

Silence.

“…Do you know how to get there?”

The woman stared for a second. Then rattled off directions that sounded less like English and more like rocks tumbling downhill. She smiled. “Can’t miss it.”

We both blinked. “…Could you say that again?”

A man in a faded Red Sox cap chuckled into his coffee.

“She’s tellin’ ya ta stay on 202.”

Another voice called from a booth. “No take 137.”

A third added something neither of us understood.

The waitress looked at our confused faces and sighed, “You out-of-statahs nevah have fucking maps.”

“No,” I admitted.

Then she grabbed a paper placemat and borrowed a crayon from the counter. With surprising precision, she drew a map. Roads. Lakes. A tiny rectangle labeled DINER. Another labeled CAMP.

“There.” She slid it across the counter. “Follow this.”

The girl beside me smiled. “Thank you.”

The waitress poured herself another cup of coffee. “Try not ta end up in Canaduh.”

Back outside, we climbed into the car. She unfolded the hand-drawn map across the steering wheel.

“I think I understood about four words she said.”

“I understood three.”

She started the engine. “Good enough.”

As we pulled back onto the road, I looked once more at the sign pointing toward China.

Maine was officially the strangest place I’d ever been.

And somehow, I was beginning to like getting lost in it.

The road looked familiar. Until it didn’t. Every intersection seemed to have two roads that looked exactly alike. Every lake looked like the last one. Every pine forest could’ve been the same pine forest we’d already driven through.

“Have we passed this church already?” she asked.

“I was just wondering the same thing.”

She laughed nervously. “That’s not reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

An hour slipped by. Then another. The sun dropped behind the trees. The dashboard clock became impossible to ignore.

7:38.

8:21.

9:04.

Neither of us said much anymore. The excitement of getting lost had worn off. Now it was just getting lost. She drummed her fingers against the steering wheel.

“I am so fired.”

“I missed curfew last night. I’m doubly fired

I looked out the window. Darkness had swallowed the road. The headlights carved a narrow tunnel through the woods.

Then, almost suddenly— Bright lights. Traffic. A giant blue sign. Walmart.

“Augusta,” I said.

She let out a long breath. “I’ve never been so happy to see a Walmart.”

She pulled into the parking lot.

I jumped out and found the pay phone near the entrance. The office answered after three rings. “Camp Orgee.”

“It’s me.”

A pause.

“The gopher.”

“Oh.”

“I know curfew’s in ten minutes…” I looked at the dashboard clock. “…but we’re still about thirty minutes away.”

Silence.

Then the voice answered flatly. “Be here by curfew.”

Click.

The line went dead. I stared at the receiver. “…Hello?”

Nothing.

I hung up.

She rolled down the passenger window. “Well?”

I climbed back into the car. “They said…” I laughed once in disbelief. “…be here by curfew.”

She looked at the clock. “That’s impossible.”

“I know.”

She gripped the steering wheel. “What do we do?”

I looked down the empty road leading out of the parking lot.

“You’ve gotta floor it.”

Her grin returned. “There he is.”

The engine roared.

The tires chirped against the pavement. Her boyfriend’s car shot onto the highway. The speedometer climbed. The woods blurred together into black walls on either side.

Neither of us talked. Every minute felt expensive. Every red taillight ahead became an obstacle. Every passing zone became an opportunity.

The camp sign finally appeared in the headlights. She slowed only enough to make the turn. Gravel sprayed behind us. I looked at the dashboard clock.

12:15.

Fifteen minutes late.

“…Well.”

“We tried.”

She nodded. “We definitely tried.”

The office lights were still on. That wasn’t encouraging.

Three silhouettes waited on the porch. Deb. Sal. Amanda.

Nobody moved as we rolled to a stop.

Deb folded her arms. Sal looked like he’d been rehearsing a speech. Amanda simply leaned against the porch railing, unreadable in the glow of the light.

Just the sound of the gravel crunching under our shoes.

I looked at her.

“You first?”

She looked back. “Absolutely not.”

Despite everything, we both laughed.

Then we stepped up to the judge and jury out to face whatever came next.