“Pen, yes. Book, sort of.”
I hand both over. The book is basically just sludgy pulp at this point. There’s not a single page he can write on.
“Right. I’ll just use my hand.”
The traffic in Sperlonga is at a standstill because everyone is trying to head in the same direction: away from the beach, all at the same time. There’s congestion at every turn. Honking, rain, windshield wipers whipping back and forth—none of it will let up.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to stick close to the vans because we immediately lose them. Noah’s phone dies about ten minutes in and he guides me with the directions he wrote on his skin. I tell him to guard those scribbles with his life. I don’t want to end up in the middle of nowhere in this downpour.
Lorenzo was right to be concerned about the roads. These old Italian towns weren’t built with modern transportation in mind. There’s mud and muck everywhere. My tires keep spinning out, and not far into our drive, I pass straight over a shallow pothole flooded with water. I didn’t see it coming or I would have swerved around it or at least slowed down. I wince at the heavy THUMP from the front right tire.
“Sorry! I didn’t even see that!”
“It’s fine,” Noah tells me. “I would have done the same thing. You can’t see anything right now. Just keep going slow. You’re doing great. Here, I’ll clean the windshield again.”
It keeps fogging up because of the temperature difference between outside and in here. The humidity level in our car resembles a tropical rainforest. We can’t even roll the windows down for a breeze like we did on the drive earlier, so we’re just stuck like this.
“I’m just as wet as I was when we left the beach,” I say with a deflated laugh.
“We’ll dry off soon.”
We make it out of Sperlonga after an hour of driving. The trip back to Rome is going to take us all night.
“What a mess.”
That’s when I notice something’s wrong with the car. Through the heavy rain, I start to hear a perpetual thump, thump, thump, and the car keeps trying to pull to one side. I keep my hands firmly on the steering wheel and then we start to bounce. The car’s suspension was never great to start with, but now it’s like we’ve got a—
“Flat tire,” Noah says, just as I realize it myself. “Don’t slam on the brakes. Put on your hazards. Shit, does this thing have hazards? Oh, there. Okay. Try to gently steer toward the side of the road and let the car slow itself down. I’m not sure if it’s a blowout or just a flat.”
Noah keeps me from panicking as drivers lay on their horns behind me. Even with my hazard lights on, they’re confused about why I’m going so slow.
“Go around me!” I shout even though they can’t hear me.
Noah’s hand touches my arm. “You’re fine. Ignore them. See up there? That little turnoff? Pull over there for me.”
When I get there, I kill the engine and heave a deep breath.
Panic hasn’t fully set in. We don’t know what’s going on. We’ll assess the tire and then worry about what we need to do after knowing what sort of dire situation we’ve found ourselves in.
“Stay in here and I’ll check it out,” Noah tells me, bracing himself before he opens his door and goes back out into the rain. I turn off my windshield wipers so I don’t make it worse for him as he inspects all the tires. Then I cross my fingers.
Please don’t be flat. Please don’t be flat.
He flings his door open and stuffs himself back inside the car as quickly as possible. In the rush, his elbow accidentally jabs my side. “Shoot, sorry. Are you okay?” He sounds like he really cares.
“No broken ribs. Promise. How’d everything look?”
He points out his window. “This tire up here is toast. I’m surprised we made it as far as we did. We were scraping metal at the end.”
“Are you serious?”
He knows my question is rhetorical.
For a second, we sit in silence, individually processing what this means.
We’re still two hours from Rome, on the outskirts of Sperlonga, without phones, and now we have a flat tire.
“Oh my god,” I whisper. Then as reality really sinks in, I say it again, with emphasis. “OH MY GOD! Noah! What are we going to do?”
“Listen, it could be worse. We’re not totally in the middle of nowhere. I saw some shops back about a mile. I’ll go and see if I can find a mechanic who can tow us and fix the tire.”
Already, I’m unbuckling my seatbelt. “I’ll come with you.”
“Absolutely not. Walking along the highway in rain like this is pure lunacy, but I don’t see any other way around it. You’re staying here. Lock the doors and sit tight. I’ll be back. Okay?”
“Wait. Wear this.”
I hand him my pink baseball hat from my bag.
He’s thoroughly confused.
“Just…so you’re more visible.”
He laughs. “Thanks, but it won’t fit on my head.”
Right. I dig around in my bag, but I have nothing else to give him. I wish I had a neon vest. Glow sticks. Something.
He’s about to open his door and leave when I reach out and grip his bicep, panicked. “Don’t do anything stupid! Walk as far away from the road as you can!”
He turns back to look at me, his eyes narrowed with good humor. “Careful or I’ll start to think you might actually care about me.”
Right before he’s gone for good, I lean over. “Don’t you dare die out there, Noah Peterson!”
Then his car door slams and I’m absolutely, utterly alone. I don’t even have my crossword book to distract me.
I turn around and find Noah walking along the road. I watch him for as long as I can, and when he drifts out of view, my lower lip starts to wobble.
No.
Keep it together.
Noah is doing the brave, hard work. I’m just patiently waiting. I can be good at this. First, I count the cars that pass, and when I get to a hundred, I change course and start reciting Edgar Allan Poe poems that live in my head rent-free. When that gets boring, I decide to look in every compartment in the car, nosing around. There’s not much to work with. Some napkins. A tin of mints that have gone bad. Official-looking Italian documents in the glovebox. Nothing salacious, unfortunately.
Noah has a bag on the floorboard, and though I’m tempted to, I don’t rifle through it—on principle. I’m better than that. But, would you believe it? My pen gets caught on the edge of his bag, and I can’t just leave it like that. Clumsy ol’ me, when I reach down to get it, the pen sort of tugs open the whole bag so I can see clear inside.
Dead cell phone. Soggy hat. Wet book.
I tilt it a little to the side so I can read the title, expecting it to be that economics book he had on the plane.
Night by Elie Wiesel. A favorite book of mine to discuss in class. Judging by the little bookmark between the pages, he’s almost done. Wait… I lean over and squint so I can make out the tiny computer type visible on the scrap of paper he’s using to mark his place.
Ms. Cohen’s Eighth Grade English Class - Required Summer Reading List
Before I can help myself, I reach down for the book and carefully flip it open, extracting the wet paper.