Shift (11 page)

Somehow I convinced myself that if I stared at it long enough, I’d remember. But it was just like those pathetic photos. No matter how long I looked at them, they weren’t going to match up to what it was like out there. I was probably better off imagining this girl. Reality had a disappointing habit of not measuring up to my memories.

“Isn’t Illinois supposed to be flatter than this?” Win complained as I followed him up another hill.

“I don’t know,” I said, standing on my pedals for extra leverage, rocking the bike side to side, panniers drifting just a few inches from the pavement. “Do you think we made a wrong turn? Ended up in Arkansas or something?”

I felt strong. We’d made good time through Indiana, and each day I ached a little less when we started our morning ride. We were moving so fast we decided to veer toward Iowa to follow the Mississippi up a ways before heading due west again.

And last night we’d gotten an unexpectedly good night’s sleep after scamping just outside Freeport—self-proclaimed
pretzel capital of the world and home to about nine thousand Abraham Lincoln statues.

My quads now strained slightly at the elastic of my bike shorts—the beginnings of the first real muscle I’d ever had on my legs. Two weeks and a thousand miles on a Trek will do that. Sadly, the arms were not keeping up. To compensate, we had nightly push-up contests, or pull-up challenges if we scamped close enough to a playground with monkey bars.

Win ranted on. “Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, right? Well, how’d all the lakes get here if these hills are in the way?

“Ow!” he shouted, slapping his calf as his tirade continued. “And nobody ever mentions the mosquitoes. If they were really going to be honest, they’d have to say Land of Ten Thousand Lakes and Ten Billion Mosquitoes. And where are all the cows? Shouldn’t we be seeing, like, acres of cheese out there or something?” he said, gesturing toward a cornfield.

“Wisconsin has cheese. Minnesota has lakes. This is Illinois, idiot,” I said.

“What do they have?” he asked.

“Lincoln,” I said, adding, “and the Blues Brothers.”

I laughed, but then I heard a sudden hiss of air as my back wheel wobbled. “Flat,” I called out automatically.

“Front or back?”

I dismounted and stood next to my bike. “Back. Ready?” I asked him.

He pushed a button on his Timex, looked at me. “Are
you
ready?”

I nodded.

My relationship with Win walks a fine line between friendship
and rivalry. When two guys have been friends as long as we have, almost everything becomes an opportunity for competition. Out on the road those contests took on new forms. The push-ups. The cheddar challenge—in which we dared each other to eat whole blocks of off-brand processed cheese without throwing up. Hell, we’d been arguing a couple of days ago about whose bike-glove tan was worse.

But despite the fact that we spent the bulk of our days on the bikes, we never raced. It seemed understood that this crossing was something bigger than even our friendship or our rivalry. It was a
partnership
. Still, I had noticed that over the last two weeks we’d been stretching the imaginary line that connected our two bikes as we rode. Seemed through Ohio we stayed within a dozen feet of each other. Now we were slowly spreading out, sometimes riding for an hour or more maybe ten or fifteen yards apart, without talking. But we always finished our days side by side somehow.

That didn’t mean that other aspects of cycling were immune from competition.

Win hit the timer. “Go.”

I sprang to action, took off my right rear pannier, and laid my bike on its side. The air wasn’t escaping anymore now that there was no weight on the tire. I undid the quick release, extracted the wheel from the chain and then reached into my pannier pocket for the plastic tire irons. I unsnapped them from each other and laid them aside. Carefully I rotated the tire, poring over its surface.

“Got it,” I said, using my thumb and forefinger to pinch out a sliver of amber-colored glass.

“Nothing beats a cold Budweiser,” Win intoned, “unless it’s the
poetry of throwing the empty bottle from the window of a jackedup pickup with a gun rack.”

I grabbed my irons, inserted the narrow ends a few inches on either side of the puncture, and slid them sideways to lever the rubber tire off the rim. With practiced precision I pulled out the section of the tube and dropped a mouthful of spit onto the area where I’d recovered the glass. I didn’t even slow down to wipe the stringer off my chin.

“So gross, dude,” Win said.

“But it works,” I crowed as I pressed the tube slightly and watched the bubbles form around the puncture. I dried it quickly with an orphaned sock that had spilled from my bag, and snatched the sandpaper from my repair kit. I roughed the tube carefully in two directions, grabbed one of the precut patches, peeled off the adhesive backing, and pressed it in place, holding for a ten count.

“Too long,” Win said, glancing at his watch. “You’ll never make it!”

I ignored him, slipped the tube inside the tire, fed the edge back into the rim, and grabbed my pump from where it was strapped beneath the length of my crossbar. I uncapped the valve on the tire, fitted the nozzle, and began sliding the shaft back and forth to fill the tire with air.

“Remind you of anything?” Win asked.

“Pervert,” I said, paying close attention to the growing tension in the tire. When I was satisfied with the pressure, I recapped the tube, stowed my gear, and grabbed the wheel, threading it carefully back into the rear fork and the chain. Then I tightened the
quick release, righted my bike, repositioned my panniers, and shouted, “Time!”

Win hit the button on his watch. “Impressive. Two minutes and sixteen seconds. I think that’s a new record for rear-tire flat replacement,” he said.

“You know it is,” I said, fixing my left foot into my pedal.

“At least I’m still safe with the front record,” he said, following suit.

“For now.” I took the lead. The hill leveled out just beyond the spot where I’d blown the flat, cresting with a covered wooden bridge spanning a bright, still river.

“I think my shrink has that painting,” Win said.

“Looks like somebody’s going to come out and offer us a lemonade or something,” I said.

We hadn’t seen a car in half an hour. Our wheels switched from pavement to the worn timbers of the bridge floor, and the bikes bounced along between the ruts. The sides of the bridge were partially open to the air, with a low wall rising about two feet off the floor. Support posts stood sentry every ten feet or so down the length.

We stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked down.

“That the Mississippi?” Win asked me.

“No. Not until we get to the state line. This is just a creek. Probably flows in, though,” I said.

“Didn’t think so. It doesn’t look mighty enough,” he said quietly.

I nodded. “But it looks pretty deep.”

“And we do have that thing about jumping into water,” he said back.

I judged the distance. “What is that? Maybe thirty feet down?”

Win nodded. We both watched the current flow silently beneath us for a full minute.

“We really should, shouldn’t we?” I said.

Win reached for his helmet, unclipped it, and hooked it on his handlebars. “It’d be a crime not to.”

Within seconds we had removed T-shirts, shoes, and socks and were standing on the opposite side of the low wall, staring down at the water.

“It seems higher now,” Win said.

“You want to go first?”

“No, you.”

“On three, then?”

Win nodded.

“One,” he said.

We edged closer to the drop, loosened our grip on the beams beside us.

“Two,” I said, but before I could think, Win was already halfway to the water.

“Chicken!” he yelled a split second before disappearing in a splash of muddy green.

“Bastard,” I muttered as I stepped out into nothing and let the creek rush up to meet me.

I’d been carrying that postcard around with me since yesterday, but I hadn’t had much time to devote to who Tricksey might be. Classes were already piling on work, and washing dishes twelve hours a week was proving soggy and exhausting. And now my adviser had requested a meeting with me. Yesterday I’d received an e-mail asking me to meet him in his office. Since I hadn’t even taken a quiz yet, I couldn’t imagine what he wanted.

I reached the College of Engineering building at the heart of the old campus and descended the stairs to his basement office. I knew the place—I’d spent time here when my parents brought me for a campus visit last spring, and again during orientation, making sure my classes were in order. Both times I’d found it a little
stifling, sitting as Halverson laid out what my future at Tech would look like—exactly how many nonscience classes I’d have room for in my schedule after I got my general ed requirements out of the way. The prospect of more of that, or him trying to make me feel bad for already falling behind, was adding a new ingredient to the anger-worry-panic cocktail I’d been stewing in: envy.

But I arrived on time and stepped toward the open door, slowing as I heard two voices coming from inside. I recognized Halverson’s gravelly drawl, but another accent cut through, even more familiar. It couldn’t be. …

But it was. There in Dr. Halverson’s office sat Winston Coggans II, sipping at a paper coffee cup and laughing at something Halverson had said.

“Mr. Collins,” Dr. Halverson said as I stood gaping in the doorway.

“I …”

“Hello, Chris,” Mr. Coggans said, eyeing me from his seat.

“Hi,” I managed.

Dr. Halverson looked nervous, despite the fact that I’d heard them laughing moments before. “I had no idea you and Winston’s son were such good friends,” he said, looking from my face to Mr. Coggans’s.

“Um, yeah,” I said, wondering if this was Coggans’s way of nailing me for ignoring his e-mail.

“Titan Chemical has been a major supporter of the engineering college. They host a great many of our co-op students every year. They even offer a competitive scholarship for chemical engineering majors,” he said.

“Really?” I said, easing into a chair on the opposite side of the small office. I hugged my backpack to my chest.

“You mean you didn’t know of the connection when you applied?” he asked, looking at me in a way that made me know he was worried he’d underestimated my importance. “Mr. Coggans tells me you and his boy have been the best of friends for years.” Then he turned to Win’s father.

“You still should have sent him here, I say. Where did he end up, anyway?”

Win’s father hesitated a moment, shot me a quick glance. “Dartmouth.”

“Well, I suppose that’s all right,” Halverson said, smiling. Win’s father hadn’t told him. Of course he hadn’t told him. When no one spoke again for what seemed an inappropriate length of time, Halverson stood abruptly.

“Well, I’ve got another meeting,” he said.

“What about our appointment?” I asked.

He looked at me blankly. “I don’t need to speak with you. Mr. Coggans asked me to summon you here. He thought it might be a nice surprise to see a familiar face during this transition period. I agreed,” he said, though his tone sounded more like he wondered what the hell was going on.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Nice.”

Halverson looked almost apologetic. “Well, I’ll leave you the room. Winston,” he said, extending his hand, “always a pleasure.”

“Likewise,” said Win’s father, shaking his hand.

“And stop by if you need anything, Chris. Anything at all. My door is always open.”

He hadn’t been that friendly when I was here before with my parents or on my own during orientation. Win’s dad had him spooked.

He hurried from the office and left the two of us sitting in silence. A Frisbee sailed into the glass of the closed window, making me jump. A muffled “Sorry, dude” followed. And then Mr. Coggans spoke.

“I paid for the restorations to this building, you know,” he said, looking around at the books and diplomas on the wall of Halverson’s office.

“It’s nice,” I said. What was I supposed to say to a man who was clearly trying to show me how much he owned? Including my school and professors?

“Are you finding your classes challenging?”

“Um, yeah,” I said, adding, “Among other things.”

He hesitated again before standing to deposit his coffee cup in the garbage. Then he leaned against the desk. “Hope you don’t mind me stopping by. I had business here in Atlanta. The company pilot was kind enough to hold the return flight at my request.”

He paused. He still hadn’t told me why he was here, but of course I knew.

He continued. “Thank you for your discretion about Win,” he said.

I nodded before he went on. “We’re intent on keeping the circle of people as small as possible for as long as we can.”

“That makes sense, I guess.” I’d never even been around Mr. Coggans when Win wasn’t present, much less tried to have a conversation with him.

“And Abe Ward tells me you’ve been very cooperative so far,” he said, pausing again and waiting for a challenge.

“He seems to trust you,” he added, watching me for some reaction. I wondered again what it might have been like to grow up with him for a father. What it must have been like for Win. What it might feel like to always worry about saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment.

“He said you think I did something to Win,” I said, adding, “For his money.”

He sighed and shook his head. “I’m sure you appreciate how concerned Win’s mother and I are. It may be hard to understand if you’re not a parent, but imagine how many questions you’d have, how many theories you’d test out if any of them might lead you to find your son. We’re very worried.”

“Me too,” I said.

He weighed that for a moment. “And your parents have been very supportive as well.”

“They like Win a lot,” I said.

“So I’m sure you’ll understand why I’ve taken certain measures of late to … to try and speed the process along.”

I nodded. “I guess I’d do whatever I could to find Win if I were you,” I said. This was a side of Coggans I’d never really seen before. I’d only seen the one that yelled at Win or acted annoyed with him. Even at the meeting between our parents after I got back alone, he’d been sort of businesslike and official, trying to establish timelines and exactly what had happened, more like the guy who’d written me that e-mail.