“How we doing, Toad?”

            Gwen asks every half hour, and it’s my job to look at the phone and tell her. I’ve never had a job before, but I like it, so when Gwen asks I smile real, real big ’til she can see the gap in my teeth and I hold the phone up to her where she can see.

            “Toad, I can’t read and drive at the same time, remember? That’s why you have to read it to me.” I did remember, but I also forgot. I’m real good at remembering some things but sometimes it helps if someone reminds what I’m supposed to remember. Gwen is real good at reminding me. “Go on, read it to me.”

            “In twenty mills—”

            “Miles.”

            “Miles, keep right at the fort.”

            “Fork.”

            “Fork.”

            “Just one more time,” Gwen says.

            “In twenty miles keep right at the fork.”

            “Not bad, Toadstool.” She smiles when she says it, so I smile, too, and show her the gummy part of my mouth where my tooth was and she says, “Eww, gross,” and laughs nice and I show her again. I like when Gwen smiles and laughs and calls me Toad, but not in the mean way some do.

            We only left home a little bit ago. The sun is still waking up, and we’re driving right into it like bugs toward one of them zap boxes like Daddy Charlie has. Daddy Charlie and me would sit out next to the zap box whole summer nights with the cicadas—that’s a kind of bug—singing and hollering at the stars all night ’til I falled asleep and then it was tomorrow again. Somehow, I feel like one of them bugs, but I see Gwen is smiling more than I seen her in a long time, so maybe it’s alright.

            “You can fly for a little while now,” she says. “The phone’ll buzz you with what’s next.”

            I put the phone under my leg and roll down the window of Gwen’s truck and throw my hand outside. We are going so, so fast that we’re making the wind. I can feel it all over my hand and arm at once. It flaps my t-shirt and the shoulder of my seatbelt, like the flag at school when a storm’s coming, that phhhhppppppp sound real loud in my ear, but I don’t mind. When I open my hand, the wind tries to push me back and I grab at it, try to hold onto it. I like to let the wind push my hand as far as it can, then I make my hand flat like a karate-chop and the air gets scared and runs away and now I’m the one pushing it.

*

I fall asleep for a little bit, but only a little bit. I try not to, but it’s hard. Gwen made me get up when it was still dark outside, and I didn’t know I was going nowhere.

            “Come on, Teddy. Wake up,” she said this morning. She only calls me Teddy when she’s feeling growed-up. She kept saying to wake up, but I don’t know for how long. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.” But I didn’t wanna, so with my eyes closed I said, “I don’t wanna,” and she said, “You have to,” and I said, “Why though?” and she said, “’Cause,” and she pulled me up and I made a grumpy noise and she called me a baby, and I hate that ’cause I’m not a baby, and she made me rub the sleep out of my eyes.

            “We have to go now, okay?” she said. “So get up, and be quite about it.”

            “But why though? Where we going? There ain’t no school.”

            “You’re coming with me to Knoxville.”

            “Why though?”

            “It’ll just be better for you there, okay?” Gwen said. “Now get up. I’ve already got some clothes for you, and I’ve got all your comic books.”

            “Daddy Charlie will be mad.”

            “He won’t be mad. And if he is, we’ll be far enough away that it won’t matter anyhow.”

*

I wake up and my right arm is pink ’cause the window’s still down. It don’t hurt yet, but tomorrow it will. Sometimes knowing the hurt is coming is worse than the hurt itself.

            “There he is,” Gwen says. “How was the catnap, big man?” Gwen calls me big man because I am so big. I’m eleven and the other kids in my class are taller than me but do not have big bellies like I do, and that’s why Gwen calls me big man like Daddy Charlie do, but somehow it ain’t mean the way she say it. She wears a big smile, so I know she don’t mean nothing and is just teasing good and not teasing bad. Her smile makes it seem like we’re playing a game. When other people call me big man or Toad, it feels like maybe they’s playing a game but I’m not allowed to and they want me to know that they got something I ain’t.

            She’s looking at me, and I remember I’m supposed to be the navigator, and I start looking for the phone, but it moved while I was sleeping. I find it under my seat and pick it up real quick, but Gwen says not to worry and that I didn’t miss nothing.

            “In two miles take ramp to I-40 East,” I say.

            I roll up my window so my arm don’t get no more pink and ’cause I’m done flying anyway.

            “Whatchya think, Toad?” Gwen says. “Should we help him out?” There’s a boy about Gwen’s age next to the road with a school backpack but bigger, and he’s sitting on the backpack and has his thumb showing like I seen in old cartoons when they need to get places. I don’t know what she means, but she starts stopping the truck and I want to tell her no ’cause I like it just me and her together, but it’s too late and she pulls off the road and her window is down and her arm is out the window and waving to the boy, and the boy is walking over, and I feel myself go more quiet like I do sometimes when I don’t know what happens next.

            “Hey, what’s up?” the boy says. “Thanks for stopping, really appreciate it.”

            “That’s cool,” Gwen says. “We’re going to Knoxville. Where you headed?”

            “That’s so awesome! I mean, me too—Knoxville, yeah. That’s so crazy.”

            “Great! Hop on in,” Gwen tells the boy. Then to me she says, “Toad, hop in the back seat, won’t you?” Gwen’s truck has two rows like a car, but the back seat is little and hurts my knees to sit in and I say, “But I was here first,” and she says, “Do it,” so while the boy throws his bag into the bed of the truck, I get out and get in the back.

            The boy gets in my front seat and says, “Thanks again. I’m Jason, by the way,” and shuts the door and we pull back onto the road.

            “Gwen,” Gwen says. “And that’s Toad in back. Say hi, Toad.”

            “Ribbit,” I say, ’cause I don’t know what to say a lot of the time but know I’m supposed to say something. The boy laughs and it’s not meant to be an ugly laugh, but I don’t like it ’cause it was just supposed to be me and Gwen today and instead it’s me and Gwen and Jason. I remember something else to say and pick up the phone again, and I say, “Take ramp to I-40 East toward Sparta” to let the boy know I have a job and am more important than him even though I’m in the back seat and my window don’t roll down and I can’t fly no more if I want to.

            We take the ramp and now we are on the I-40 East and it’s a big road, way bigger than the roads in town, and we’re going even faster than we was before. Both the windows is down now, and the whole inside of the truck is noisy with wind and everything is flapping like great big pterodactyl wings, and it steals most of the words from Gwen and the boy, and I have to listen real hard.

            The boy says thanks again and that it’s cool that we’re going where he’s going. He asks Gwen what classes she’s taking, and I want to answer ’cause Gwen and me talked all summer about it and she even let me help pick them, but I don’t ’cause he’s still too new. Jason asks what dorm she’s in, and she says she’s not in the dorms, and he says that’s cool, he has friends with their own place and how far from campus is she. Gwen says she’s not at state and is going to Pellissippi Community College. The boy says well, okay, that’s cool too, but his voice is a little different than it was before.

            They talk for a long time. Sometimes they say my name—“Isn’t that right, toad?” or “What say you, big man?”—but I’m not listening much anymore, and I don’t think they’s really talking to me anyway, and I don’t say nothing back but instead I make pretend they can’t see me like I do sometimes at school. I close my eyes and think about the wind on my face and pulling at my hair and imagine I’m flying until Gwen and the boy seem far away, their words and laughs falling out the open window onto the road.

            I sleep.

*

In my sleep, I’m at school, but the school is also my house. There’s lockers in the den, bells screaming over and over, and outside is the swings and the monkey bars and the merry-go-round spinning and spinning like a bike tire that’s come off but keeps going.

            I’m outside, and all the kids from school is there, and they’s whispering and laughing and it’s the bad kind of laugh. And in front of all them is Daddy Charlie. He’s real close to me, and I can smell him, and I must’ve done something bad ’cause he’s real, real mad. The vein in his head look like a big, breathing slug, and his face and eyes is all ugly like one of them masks you see on Halloween. I remember that I’m crying and that’s why Daddy Charlie is so mad, and he keep saying, “You best stop crying or I’ll give you somethin’ to cry about,” but I keep crying anyway, and he hits me on the back of my head and says, “Quit it now,” and I make my mouth close real hard so my crying don’t make so much noise, but my nose is running so I have to keep sniffing my snots back up, and he says, “Stop that sniffling,” but I don’t how to stop, and he says, “Boy, I told you to quit it,” and hits my head again so I make myself stop sniffling and the snot runs into my mouth and down my chin and onto my shirt and my class is still there and they’s still laughing but laughing harder than they was before, and they’s pointing too, and I feel my pants and legs get warm and I’m pissing myself, and they all laugh louder and louder, filling up the sky with it ’til there ain’t nothing left in the whole word but the laughing.

*

I wake up and say, “I have to pee. Can we stop, Gwen? Please?”

            “Sure thing, Toad,” she says. “I could use a pit-stop, too.”

            It’s another couple of minutes to the next exit, and I pinch my crotch hard and squeeze my knees together. When we get to the gas station, I jump out and run in as quick as I can, which isn’t very quick at all. I get to the bathroom and pee, and I’ve never felt so good my whole life.

            When I come back out, Gwen and Jason is necking a little the way I seen momma and Daddy Charlie sometime do before momma died. The boy Jason is taller than Gwen, and she has to go up on her tippy-toes to reach him. I stop ’cause they ain’t seen me see them, and I don’t know what to do, so I watch. Gwen’s hands are curled around the boy’s neck like a cat—soft, soft. The boy’s hands is resting low on Gwen’s sides on her shorts.

            I want to run at them. The boy is skinny and tall and I’m little and fat, and I want to run at him as fast as I can and throw my whole me right into his knee when he ain’t looking so he’ll fall down hard and maybe hit his head against the truck or something. Then he’ll go away, and it’ll just be Gwen and me like it was before. I want to run at him real bad, but I don’t. I’m a big scaredy crybaby like Daddy Charlie say. And Gwen would get sore at me anyways.

            After about a million years they stop long enough for Gwen to look at me and say, “You hungry?” and we head back into the gas station. Inside, they have chips and cokes and real food under lamps. I get a coke and a big thing of nachos and cheese. The boy gets pizza and Gwen a fried chicken sandwich. We eat in the bed of the truck.

            “I’m probably going to study architecture,” Jason says.

            “Oh yeah?” Gwen says.

            “Yeah, I think so. I mean, there’s so much I want to do, you know? It’s like, where do you start? That’s why I spent freshman year just knocking out every prerequisite I could. That way this year I can focus on the important stuff. Architecture or pre-med, maybe. Or both. I mean, what limit yourself, you know?” He looks at me. “Right, Toad man?”

            “Ribbit,” I say. My mouth is full of nachos, so I spray it don’t’ say it and a little cheese lands on the boy Jason’s shoe, but I don’t say nothing ’bout it.

            “You know,” he says. “You’re really good with him.”

            “What, Toad?” Gwen says. “He’s no problem.”

            “I mean, he’s like, on the spectrum or something, right?”

            “Umm, I don’t really know ’bout all that. Toad’s alright though, just real shy I think.”

            “I bet it’s Asperger’s or something,” the boy Jason explains. “I read all about it in my psych class. They say lots of geniuses have it. I mean, not everyone who has it is a genius, but lots of them do have it—Asperger’s or autism or whatever. I wonder if I have a touch of it sometimes.”

            “Okay . . .” Gwen says. “Honestly, I think my dad is the real problem. He’s never been too nice to Toad here.”

            “Your dad? So you’re not brother-sister?”

            “Step,” Gwen says. “Teddy’s momma died a couple of years back. It was actually daddy who gave him the name Toad, ’bout five, six years ago when they first got married. I was in middle school, and I thought it was so funny. Teddy was barely out of kindergarten then, but he was already this great big butterball of a thing. It wasn’t ’til his momma died that I realized how mean a name it really was. But then I’d been saying it too long—couldn’t just take it all back. So I tried to make it a sweet name instead, you know? Tried to take the hurt out of it.”

            Gwen stops. She makes a little smile to show she was done talking, but her eyes are a little wet. Jason smiles back and kisses her cheek.

            I don’t feel good. At first I was nervous ’bout her telling how momma died and Daddy Charlie not treating me good ’cause I didn’t think we were supposed to talk ’bout that. But then she started talking ’bout wanting me with her so she could take the hurt out, and I felt my whole me grow bigger, like all my fat was about to shoot up toward my head and make me tall—tall as a growed-up. And then the boy Jason kissed her check and my fat crashed back down to my belly, and I felt my ribs chase at each other like they do when I jump in the creek and the water is cold, cold, cold. And these all happened so fast that it made my stomach hurt real bad. I tell Gwen and she says, “Do you need to use the bathroom again?” and I say, “No,” and she says, “You gonna throw up?” and I say, “No,” and she says, “You can sip on some water in truck. We gotta get going anyhow.”

*

The phone says to stay on I-40 East the whole way, so there ain’t much for me to do. Gwen and the boy is still talking, talking, talking, and the windows are still down, and the wind is tugging at my hair like a million tiny ghosts, and the road underneath is purring like a cat, and it makes me sleepy. I close my eyes and dream ’bout momma. Momma was a whole lot of different people that she called her “moods” and all her mood people are in my dream, mixed up like. She strokes my hair and tells me I’m gonna get a new daddy. Then she’s yelling at a teacher for not teaching me good and it’s their fault not her fault, and then we’re outside and she’s saying it’s really my fault and always was, and I shouldn’t be so stupid ’cause then folks’ll start to think she’s stupid too. Then we’re back home and I’m little-little again, and momma picks me up and carries me out the room ’cause Daddy Charlie’s yelling and making me scared, and momma holds my head ’til I quit blubbering. Then I’m not so little no more, and Daddy Charlie is still there and still mad, but she don’t try to carry me away no more and looks at her phone instead. Then I see her in the coffin-box on her last day, and she looks a little like momma but not really ’cause her hair is combed back and she has on a dress I never seen before and her face is pale and empty like an egg’s shell, and Gwen says I can cry if I want to, that I won’t get in trouble for it, but I don’t know what to cry for.

* 

The door slams shut and it wakes me up. I watch Gwen and Jason walk up to a big building of red brick with the middle part of the bottom floor scooped out so you can walk right through it and not have to go around. There’s lots of other big kids like Gwen and Jason walking in and out and through the red building with bags and cases and great big carts stacked tall with more stuff than a person could use in their whole life.

            The boy Jason must live here. Him and Gwen start necking again just outside the building, and I watch for a little. Some of the other big kids make jokes about them when they walk by. Gwen pays them no mind, but I think Jason likes how everyone is noticing.

            They stop kissing and the boy whispers something to Gwen. Gwen smiles a little and shakes her head no. Jason smiles big and keeps talking and Gwen keeps shaking her head. Now the boy ain’t smiling at all, and he grabs Gwen at her elbow hard, and I hear Gwen and she says, “I said quit it,” and she jerks her arm away. She says something to the boy that I can’t hear, and she starts walking back to the truck. The boy gets real at that, and he starts shouting things like “fucking cunt” and “God-damned tease” and “trailer-trash bitch.” Lots of people is looking and some is kind of laughing. Gwen holds her smile like she don’t see or hear none of it and gets back in the truck with me, and we drive away.

            We don’t say nothing for a while. Her eyes is wet and she sniffs a little. I don’t tell her not to sniff like Daddy Charlie did in my dream. I let her sniff. I think it’s alright to sniff.

            We drive around a bit, not really going nowhere. Knoxville is a whole world bigger than town is. Gwen stops crying after a while and says, “I have a surprise for you, Toad.” And she takes me to a big store that’s nothing but comics—more than I ever seen. They’s in great boxes and bins and on shelves and even on the walls. Gwen tells me to pick some out and when I do, she says, “Nope, not enough,” and tells me to get even more, so I do.

            We leave and get back in the truck and sit for a bit and I can’t stop talking now. I thank Gwen for all the comics and for bringing me and how she ain’t my sister, but also she really is my sister. I tell her I’m glad that it’s just me and her again and that I didn’t like the boy Jason so good. And she says, “Yeah, I guess I didn’t either.” She smiles a little. Her eyes ain’t wet, but she don’t look happy neither. I ask her, “What did it mean, what he said?” and Gwen says, “Nothing, don’t worry about it,” and I say, “But what though?” and Gwen, she breaths out hard one time and says, “It’s just something idiots say when they don’t get what they want.”

            I ask her why she smiles so much if she ain’t too happy, and she tells me a story ’bout myself. ’Bout how last summer I got a splinter real bad, under my fingernail and everything. And it hurt so, so much, and I thought it was never gonna come out, and I was hollering and crying. Gwen asks if I remember, and I say I do. Gwen says that sometimes people get splinters deep inside their bodies where their skeletons live, so deep you can’t get at them with your fingers or tweezers neither. And there ain’t nothing to do but just let it grow over, and eventually it do. But then sometimes when you move this way or that, or you’re driving down a dirty old road and you hit a rock you didn’t know was there, that splinter just tears right on out again and you feel it all over like new.

            She asks if I know what she means and I say, “I think so,” and I tell her about my dreams today with Daddy Charlie yelling and momma in her coffin box. “But I don’t think it has to be that way for always.”

            “Maybe not,” Gwen says, and she smiles real, real big this time, and then she leans over hugs me hard, and I don’t care a lick for splinters or bad dreams or stupid Jason. Then Gwen starts up the truck and we drive out of the parking lot, but Gwen says we can come back sometimes. We turn onto the road and Gwen says, “Let’s find someplace to be.”

 *