It's just before midnight on a Friday. You're happy because you don't have to work tomorrow, and because you're a bit stoned on this Blue Velvet weed Carly brought home, and because the lights across the street shine such a pretty silver and red as you sit in the drive-thru. It was Carly's idea to go on a late night food run, and she's driving your Explorer, the one your uncle Eli got real cheap for you. She's got Red Sparowes, this band she recently discovered, playing on your CD player. She's been listening to lots of dark, new music lately, but you don't mind because right now the pretty guitar arpeggios and the weed and the vivid lights are all such a perfect combination.
She's nudging you for some change, so you dig some loose quarters out of the ash tray and the cup holder and drop them in her palm. And when the Hispanic guy working the drive-thru window hands her the greasy sacks of food, you know you could never be jealous of anything or anyone, for you are the embodiment of cool as you sit so relaxed in your leather seat. You and Carly look cool and dress cool, and you're sharing this moment with your perfect friend, and the server dude should consider himself lucky to get this glimpse into your world.
She pulls out of the parking lot and into the street. You're holding bags of egg rolls, tacos, and chicken strips in your lap, and Carly is tapping her thumb on the steering wheel to the beat of the music.
"I think I could sing over stuff like this," she tells you. "You think I should start a band?"
"I think you can do whatever you put your mind to, Carly girl," you say.
You are puzzled by the mysterious timing of her touches. She might go days without initiating any physical contact; then, like tonight, she can come home from a group study session, kick off her Chucks by the front door, fall onto the couch, and plop her feet in your lap without comment. You rest your hand on her ankle and watch the last few minutes of The Killing War in silence. This movie used to bother her, but ever since she started college she's been bringing home all kinds of crazy foreign movies to watch.
When the movie is over she swings her feet out of your lap and moves her skinny body sprightly off the couch.
"Come check this out," she says. Your body is tired from working all day, but you make yourself get up to follow. You know she's been up since dawn, going from class to class, studying, researching papers in the library, running errands. She's been in focus all day, and she's finally home now at 8 o'clock, but her boundless energy won't let her relax. You sit in your chair next to hers at the computer nook.
"I downloaded some new stuff last night," she says. She stays up later than you, too, now, even though you both have to get up at the same time. Every night when you go to bed, the light from the living room seeps through the crack under your bedroom door for another hour or two, until she finally turns it off.
"What did you get?" you ask, resting your elbow on her shoulder.
"Oh, some solo stuff from John Frusciante, some stuff from this band Jejune, umm... Some post rock bands from China..."
She scrolls through the thousands of items on her media library and seems to be clicking on things at random, but you sit and listen to all these strange new sounds, because you know she wants to share all these new things with you. You certainly don't mind that her musical tastes of changed - no, expanded - so much in the last year, because all the spiritual things people say you're supposed to feel but have never felt in church or among nature is what you feel on these evenings when she shows you some new songs she downloaded.
She comes to your bed in the still of night. You awake to see her outline standing over you in the darkness; just standing, still.
"Did you have a bad dream?" you ask through sleepy lips.
"Yes."
Your hand, reaching through the dark for hers, finds her pinky and ring finger.
"Sit down," you say, tugging her hand as you sit up.
She sits silently on the edge of your bed, grabs her own elbows as if to still or warm herself.
"Bad dreams suck, don't they?" you say, hooking your arm around her shoulder.
"They really do," she agrees, that first spark of her natural pep returning to her voice as her hand reaches up to lock onto your wrist. Her head goes to you shoulder.
You remember laying down together, but all too soon you're waking up next to an empty spot in the bed. She is standing over you again, fully dressed and fresh from the shower, ready to start the day, her hand on your shoulder, gently shaking you, saying, "Wake up, Sam. You don't want to be late for work."
She walks through the door of the apartment about 7.
"Have you eaten yet?" she asks.
"Waiting for you," you say from the couch, not turning your eyes from the TV because you're watching Jackson Colt's Greatest Knockouts.
"I got a new Thai cookbook. Want to try to make something out of it?"
You turn and meet her eyes. She's by the door, kicking off her shoes and running fingers through long, dark hair, fixing it where the wind had blown tangles.
"We've had different Asian stuff every night for the last week," you say. "Sometimes I just want some good old bacon, you know?"
She smiles. "Okay, we'll stick with something familiar."
But what she throws together in the kitchen is anything but familiar - strips of bacon broken into chunks, mixed in a bowl of Asian noodles, smothered in Mexican cheese, seasoned with Cajun spices.
"This is actually pretty good," you mumble through a mouth full of noodles and bacon bits.
"See?" she says. Her dark eyes sparkle. "It's nice to try new things."
"I try new things," you insist. "As long as it has some form of dead pig in it, I'll try it."
She gives you the 'Carly reaction' - that's what you call it, when she does that little thing that is more than a smile but not quite a laugh.
"Okay, then we'll call it 'putting a new twist on something familiar,'" she says.
"There's nothing wrong with familiarity."
"No," she says. "There isn't, is there?"
You wake up thirsty that night, and stumble out of your bedroom to get a drink of water. Carly is still up, sitting under the light at the kitchen table, reading a book. As you pad by barefoot you can see her dark eyes brimming with tears.
"What are you reading?" you ask softly.
"Some Guy Davenport," she says, looking up at you, holding the book for you to see. A Table of Green Fields.
"Why is it making you cry?" You pull out a chair and sit by her. Your bare knee rests against her blue jeaned one.
"There's this short story in here called Belinda's World Tour," she says. "You know Franz Kafka?"
"Yeah, the bug guy, right?"
She chuckles. "Right. Well, one day he was visiting some people when their little girl came home with the nanny, and the girl was crying because she lost her doll on the trolley car. So Kafka told the little girl that, no, her doll wasn't really lost, he ran into her on the street, and that the doll had actually met a boy doll and had to leave with him right then to travel the world. She hadn't had time to say bye to the little girl, but she wanted Kafka to let the little girl know that she would write to her. So every day for the next two weeks Kafka mailed a postcard or a letter to the little girl, pretending to be her doll and telling her about all the adventures she was having as she traveled. And he did this every day until the girl's parents bought her a new doll."
Carly sighs and shuts the book. "Of course, those letters got lost, so no one knows what Kafka actually wrote to the little girl, but Guy Davenport kind of re-imagines what might have been in those letters, and... It's just a beautiful story."
You gently tap her knuckle with your middle finger. "Can I read it?"
"Okay, but no one gets beaten up in it."
You shrug.
"I'm sorry," she says. "Yeah, I'll leave it out for you."
When Carly comes home the next evening, you tell her how, after work, you read Belinda's World Tour three times in a row, trying to absorb all the rich detail in its few pages; and you tell her how you got online and looked for some new music for the both of you to listen to, how you surfed and some online radio stations until you found something that jumped out and really spoke to you.
"You ever heard of Sparklehorse?" you ask.
"Oh, no, I've heard the name but I've never actually listened to them," she says.
"It was only one dude," you tell her. "Too bad he killed himself. Anyway, come listen to this song."
You sit her down by the computer and click on the file you want her to hear. A haunting guitar chord is strummed, then a slow drum beat kicks in, followed by some ethereal piano notes, and finally a voice that is barely more than a whisper.
Can you feel the wind of Venus on your skin?
Can you taste the crush of a sunset's dying blush?
Stars will always hand in summer's bleeding veils.
Can you fell the rings of Saturn on your finger?
Can you taste the ghosts who shed their creaking hosts?
But seas forever boil, trees will turn to soil.
Stars will always hand in summer's bleeding veils
but seas forever boil, trees will turn to soil.
She doesn't say a word until the last mournful note fades away.
"Sam, that was beautiful."
"I figured you would like it."
On Fridays she gets home early. You're already there, after a hard day at work, having your first Peppy Cola to relax, when she comes through the door and goes straight to the computer. She turns on This Time Around, by the band Luna, and you get out of your chair because you know that's her celebration song.
"Come dance with me," she says.
You move over to her and she grabs your fingertips with her fingertips and does a little jitterbug, then a twist, and her fingers feel light, weightless in your hand like her body is made of air.
"Remember random dancing?" she asks. Her dark eyes meet yours and you laugh at each other.
"Of course. How could I ever forget?" She does a little spin move, then grabs your fingers and turns you under her arm. "So what are we celebrating?"
"Oh, being alive and young, I guess, and how awesome and beautiful life can be."
"Can you be more specific?"
She smiles shyly. "My story is getting published in the school journal."
"What?" you squee. "Carly, that's excellent!"
She nods. "Yeah, haha."
"You know what mudita is?" you ask her.
"Um, no."
"It's this Buddhist concept I learned about. It's like the opposite of jealousy. It's when you're proud and happy for another person's accomplishments. That's what I feel right now."
"Sam," she smiles, "You're always full of surprises."
She shakes your arms back and forth, alternating, like the movement of pistons.
"So... you're a professional author now, or what?"
"Oh, it's just the school literary journal."
"Don't be modest. A freshman getting published is a big deal. We should celebrate."
She lets go of your wrists and does an Uma-Thurman-in-Pulp-Fiction kind of dance move. "Yeah? Go out for pizza?"
"Pfft. Uh, no. Let's just take off for the weekend."
"And go where?"
"Wherever," you say. "We have all weekend to figure it out. Let's go right now. Go get your overnight bag."
"I can't really afford -" she begins.
"My treat," you say. "Just me and you, kid."
"Well," she looks down, then up. "Okay!"
That's how you end up in Montana.
You take off down I-90 in your Explorer, the highway dense with vehicles in the late sunlight as you leave Seattle. The sun starts going down behind you as you cross over the Saddle Mountains; then comes the dark, long hours across the empty reaches of eastern Washington with nothing to see but the other cars on the road with you.
Spokane is beautiful at night, a small city with a million colors in a cluster of light out there in all that darkness. The radio stations are beautiful, too, for you and Carly sing along to everything, even songs you normally hated, for to hear them coming over the airwaves reminds you that you are not alone in the world.
It's a quick zip across the panhandle of Idaho, and it's well after midnight when you cross into Montana. You stop at an all night gas station in some tiny town off the interstate to fill up. You stand there pumping gas, and this mountain wind feels different from the salty air back home - it's cooler and drier, and blows dust across the parking lot. There is only the wind, and the lights on the concrete, and the darkness beyond, and Carly is inside getting drinks and Fat Cakes, and she signs an autograph for the woman working the counter, who just happens to recognize her from the web show the two of you used to do.
Then it's back on the road, where the mountains are just dark shapes in the night, and Missoula is asleep and deserted at this late hour, though you slow down at one point because you see a Montana state trooper car hiding in the shadows of a parking lot off the freeway.
You don't know when Carly fell asleep in her seat, but she's leaning her head against the window with her chin on the seat belt strap and pale fingers resting in her lap. You finally pull into a rest stop outside Bozeman at dawn and scoot your seat back, close your eyes, and take a nap.
It seems like you only had your eyes closed for five minutes when she shakes you awake, but the sun is bright now, if still a bit low in the sky. You both go in the rest stop bathroom, and oh God, they always smell like pee, but you take turns brushing your teeth in the sink, combing your hair, splashing water on your faces; then you're back on the road, and Carly makes you stop at some crazy looking waffle house outside Billings.
At this time of morning there are only truckers and retired couples, and a couple of young families getting early starts on weekend fishing expeditions, and the inside looks just like a million other chain restaurants but the waffles are so thick and the syrup so sweet and the milk so cold that Carly sits beside you at the bar joking how it would be worth moving to Montana just so you could eat breakfast here every day.
You make Carly drive after breakfast and she takes Hwy 87 north for a ways, then turns east on who-knows-what highway, and she keeps angling northeast deeper into the heart of Montana. You always thought this state was nothing but mountains, but God, this part of Montana is insane - she drives 100 miles of highway with nothing but grass in all directions and ancient barbed wire fence running along the two-lane blacktop on either side, and maybe one or two pickup trucks passing by you in all that time; and the little towns you pass through are like something out of a movie, with dusty streets and empty drugstores, and one story motels with wooden Indians placed about the lawn; and Carly insists on stopping for a late lunch at a little diner in some town you can't even find on the map. The inside is dim; there are cheap plastic chairs and tables in the corner, and the window curtains are thin and stained from years of tobacco smoke. The floor is red and gray checkered linoleum, and cheap wooden paneling lines the walls, and this place even has a honest-to-goodness cigarette machine by the front door.
"Aww, poor buffalo," Carly says just before taking a bite of her burger, and you drown your fries in catsup, and then it's back onto the road, out into this sun drenched land of Old West towns and infinite highway and grassy horizons.
You notice late in the afternoon that Carly must be angling the Explorer back toward the west, for she is driving into the sun, but it's that late, soft sunlight that bathes the world in warm golden tones.
"We'll be in Great Falls tonight, then we can get back on the interstate," she informs you.
"How long is it?"
"Oh, we still have hours to go," she says, and chuckles, and continues. "I'd love to come back out here sometime and do a special iCarly from one of these little towns."
You're surprised. She's rarely mentioned the show in the last year. "Uh, I thought you'd outgrown iCarly?"
"What? No way. Just... you know, there hasn't been much time for it with college and all. But wouldn't it be cool to do a one-time special out here? Some kind of reunion thing or something? Ha, we could do our cowboy and idiot farm girl sketch right out in the middle of the street."
A bullet-pocked road sign whizzes by. "We'd have to get Freddy to come up from California."
"We could do it this summer!"
You nod. "Yeah, that would be cool." And it would be, because you actually start to feel a twinge of excitement at the idea of doing iCarly again, even if just once. And you realize just then how long it's been since you had something to look forward to beyond the next day or so.
You must have fallen asleep, for the next thing you remember is waking up in the dark. It takes you a moment to realize Carly is pulling into one of those road side picnic spots.
"Where are we at?" you ask.
"Middle of nowhere. I haven't seen another car in over an hour." She parks and cuts the engine off. "I need to get out and stretch."
You reach into the back seat and find a couple of Peppy Colas in the ice chest, and grab your jacket, and climb out. It is so dark - there is no man made light anywhere for miles, just starlight and a glimmer of the moon. You must be on a hill, for you can see by that dim natural light that you are overlooking an expanse of grassland that stretches north all the way to the dark horizon.
You put on your jacket, for this spring air in Montana is raw, and chills you. Carly is sitting on top of the picnic table, Indian style, and you hand her a Peppy Cola, and crack open yours and take a sip to wash the sleep from your mouth.
"You want me to take over driving?" you ask. "You going to be able to stay awake?"
She smiles in the dark. "I'm having too good a time to be tired."
"You know we're both going to be zombies on Monday."
"I'll skip class and sleep all day." Her hand suddenly reaches out for you across the shadows. "Call in sick. Stay home with me. We'll sleep the whole Monday away."
You reach up and squeeze her hand where it rests on your shoulder. "That's a tempting offer, kid."
She sighs. "We need some music." She slides off the table and goes to the vehicle. You climb up on the table and lay down, and call out, "What have you got?"
"I made a mix CD before we left. It has that song you showed me on it."
"That Sparklehorse song?"
"Uh huh." She turns the key back on the Explorer and rolls the windows down, then shuts the door and walks back. You soon hear those sad guitar and piano chords waltz out of the speakers, and that whispery voice rolls across the night.
Can you feel the wind of Venus on your skin?
"Wow, you really like this song?" you ask from the table.
"Of course I do," she says. Her boots scuff gravel as she starts slow dancing with an imaginary partner.
"Sam?"
"Hmm?"
"Why would you think I'd outgrown iCarly? Why'd you use that particular word?"
You shrug under the weight of your jacket. The concrete table is cold against your back. "Just...all the new stuff you've been getting into since you started college. And now that you're writing is getting published..."
"Writing is too dependent on other people," she says. "Someone else has to like it to decide if it gets published or not. I want to do something like iCarly again. Something that is totally our thing. We don't have to have anyone else's approval."
Can you feel the rings of Saturn on your finger?
"Our thing?" you ask quietly. A sudden gust of wind chills you, and you're looking up into the dark where only a few thin, wispy clouds hang, each like their own little ghost in the sky.
She leans over. "I'm not going to outgrow you, Sam. I do all the things I do because I feel... all these things inside of me that have to get out. But there's no point in feeling all those things if you don't have someone to share them with."
But seas forever boil, trees will turn to soil.
She shuffles back into her invisible dance along this desolate road, and you roll to your side, glad there is only starlight, glad the night is too dark for her to see the tears that run freely down your cheeks.