Edward Adrift

$29.43—I make my way through the early-morning traffic of Boise to the ramp for Interstate 84 eastbound.
    Michael Stipe is singing about how he waited for someone to call and he’s sorry. I’m sorry, too, about a lot of things. I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Donna, Victor, and Kyle. I’m sorry I don’t know when I’ll see them again. I’m sorry I don’t know exactly why I am heading to Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, as such displays of whimsy tend to be in conflict with my desire to rigorously plan everything. Still, I am determined to go there. When I plotted the course early this morning, I noticed that much of my route today and tomorrow will take me along the path John Charles Fremont and Charles Preuss followed when they mapped the Oregon Trail. Alanis Morissette would call that ironic, but it’s really only a coincidence. Even so, it’s a very interesting one.
    At least I think so.

    At the 114.6-mile mark of my trip, as Michael Stipe is singing about being the king of birds and as I near the town of Jerome, Idaho, I hear something shift in the backseat. I know I’m supposed to keep both hands on the steering wheel and my eyes forward at all times, but it’s a straight stretch of interstate, so I leanover the seat and try to secure the case of bottled water on the seat so it doesn’t tumble to the floorboards.
    That’s when Kyle throws back the blanket and says, “Good morning, douchebag!”
    It’s hard for me to describe what happens to me physically, because I do not like to use similes. Still, I will try: It’s as if someone sets off a bomb in my chest. The Cadillac veers hard to the left, and I try to pull it back into the right lane. I step on the brake as hard as I can, the car’s tires make a screeching noise, and I can smell burning rubber as I get control of the car and pull it over onto the shoulder. Kyle, the whole time, is laughing at me, and I get extremely angry.
    “What the fucking fuck, Kyle?”
    He’s still laughing. “Oh, man, you totally should see your face. That was awesome.”
    It was not awesome. It was scary and awful. I sit in my seat, my hands still clutching the steering wheel so hard that I can’t feel them anymore, and I expel my breath in short bursts as I wait for my heart to stop doing flip-flops in my chest.
    Kyle can’t stop laughing. Holy shit! How did he get in my car? I am going to have to turn around and go back to Boise. There’s no way I can make it to Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, on time now.

    I reach Donna on my bitchin’ iPhone and tell her that Kyle is with me. She is incredulous (I love the word “incredulous”), and I hear her walking down the hallway to his room and opening the door to see if he’s in there. I’m certain he’s not, because he is right here with me. I can imagine the entire scene. Donna twitches when she is angry, and as I hear her saying, “Oh my god, oh my god,” I know that she is most assuredly angry at what her son has done.
    “I will bring him back now,” I tell her.
    Kyle, to quote Scott Shamwell, goes “apeshit.”
    He starts screaming, so loudly and shrilly that I cannot hear Donna anymore, and he begins to plead in run-together words.
    “
Pleasedon’tmakemego, pleasedon’tmakemegoback, pleaseplease pleaseplease!
”
    Donna hears this, and she asks me to put him on the phone. I hand my bitchin’ iPhone to Kyle, and he listens to his mother for a few moments. Tears are running down his cheeks.
    At something she says—I cannot hear her end of the conversation—he says, “Please let me stay with Edward for a few days.
Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease
. I will do anything when I come back, just please let me stay.”
    Donna says something else, and he hands the phone back to me.
    I hold the phone to my ear and say hello.
    “Edward, can you just wait there for a few minutes? I need to call Victor and talk to him, and I’ll call you right back.”
    I tell Donna that I will wait. Kyle looks at me with expectation, and I shrug. I don’t know what to tell him.

    As we wait for Donna to call back, Kyle tells me how he was able to stow away in my car. It turns out that he’s an ingenious (I love the word “ingenious”) little shit. When Donna and Victor were in the basement with me, helping me to collect my belongings and bring them upstairs to be placed in the car’s trunk, Kyle slipped out his bedroom window, ran around to the front of the house, climbed down onto the Cadillac’s floorboards, and