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The only word to describe her was “exotic.” Only not in the dancing-on-a-pole sense. The other kind.

I shook my head. Maybe not having Win as my partner was a very good thing.

She stared at me. “Well?”

I
really
wanted to say the right thing. “Huh?”

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Do you want to be my partner?”

Yes, please
. “Sure.”

She turned her desk around to face mine. “I’m Vanti,” she said.

“Chris. What kind of name is Vanti?” Idiot! I tried again. “I mean … it’s so unusual,” I stumbled.

“It’s actually short for Avantika. It means ‘princess of some place or other.’ I was born in Punjab.” When I didn’t register the reference, she added, “In India.”

“Chris, skinny white kid from West Virginia,” I said. “But I’ve no idea what my name means.”

“Nice to meet you, Chris.” She laughed.

“Likewise.”

“What do you think of Lenoir?” she asked, reaching for a pen.

I shrugged. “I think I’ll stick it out. Seems entertaining at least.”

She nodded. “I’m staying too.”

I grabbed my pencil and began to write. “‘Princess Vanti of Punjab.’ What else should I say when I introduce you?”

She sighed and looked up at the ceiling, stuck the end of her pen in her mouth. I was in love. “I don’t know. I’m from DC … forward on the soccer team … I like dogs,” she said.

I nodded as I wrote. “Good start. Major?”

“Premed, I think,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”

“You like Atlanta?” I asked.

“Other than the fact that you can’t find decent Indian food it’s okay.”

“Well, you can’t find anything decent on campus, period,” I said.

“True. But I did find some killer Mexican food. I got here two weeks ago for soccer tryouts. After Saturday practices the captains take us to this little place with awesome guacamole. The veterans love it because they don’t card and will give anybody a margarita, but not me. My dad would totally deport me, and he
would
find out. But the flautas! Oh, man. I’ll just have to take you sometime so you can understand.”

I was on a campus where the male-female ratio was two to one. I’d managed to connect with surely the most beautiful freshman and she’d just asked me out.

“Sorry,” she said, suddenly embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

Okay. Accidentally asked out. But still.

“So anyway,” she said, blushing. “What about you? I’ve told you a lot about me and managed to humiliate myself. Your turn.”

“Embarrassing myself is sort of a hobby. Fire away.”

“I should write that down,” she said, smiling into her notebook.

“Don’t worry. I’ll probably end up giving a demonstration.”

“Family?” she asked.

“Also embarrassing,” I said.

“No. I mean tell me about your family.”

“One mom, one dad,” I said.

“Major?”

“Aeronautical engineering—I guess.”

She jotted and nodded.

“Sports?”

“Biking, mainly. That’s what I did all summer, at least.”

She looked up from her notes. “Racing or something?”

I shook my head. “No. My friend Win and I rode our bikes out to the Pacific Northwest.”

She stared at me a second. “Like … bikes you pedal?”

This was a moment I loved. I’d loved it all the way across the country when people found out how far we’d come under just our own power. The trick here was to avoid playing it too big and thereby letting the other person know how much I loved the look of surprise, then the unguarded admiration.

I just nodded.

“No motors? No ridiculous wearing of black leather?”

I laughed. “No. There was some spandex I’d rather not discuss, though.”

“Wow,” she said, putting down her pen. “That’s really amazing.”

For the next eight minutes she wanted to know how long it had taken, what all we’d seen, how we’d gotten the idea. By the time
Dr. Flynn Lenoir re-entered the classroom, we were laughing at something I’d said and she was smiling this really warm smile that made me sort of dig college in a way I hadn’t yet.

Lenoir looked at his wrist and announced we had just enough time for one brave pair to start things off. He wasn’t actually wearing a watch.

“Would anyone like to go first?”

Before I could say anything, Vanti had her hand in the air. “Chris and I will.”

I started to protest, but she stood, turned, and flashed a smile that would have made me crawl across broken glass if she’d asked. I ripped out the page where I’d taken my notes and joined her at the front of the room.

“You go first,” she whispered. “I’ll seem totally boring if you introduce me after I’ve talked about your adventures.”

“No way you could ever be boring,” I said back, maybe a bit louder than I meant to, because Flynn Lenoir gave this heavy moan and smiled goofily from his seat next to the podium.

Then I blushed. “See?” I said to Vanti. “Told you I’d end up demonstrating.”

To avoid further embarrassment, I dove in, covering her short bio and love for Mexican food in less than a couple of minutes. The part of the class that wasn’t still looking for a new course to join applauded weakly as I concluded. Then it was her turn.

“This is Chris Collins from Hurricane, West Virginia. He rode his
bike
across the country this summer,” she gushed. I didn’t hear the rest. Didn’t hear her mention my family or retell one of the funny stories. I heard only one thing—Chris,
not
Chrisandwin.

“You want to stop?” Win asked me as we crested a hill somewhere in the third hour of our post-lunch ride. We’d covered almost thirty miles that morning before we broke to eat at a city park in Leon.

“No, I’m good,” I said.

We’d been having the exact same exchange for the last ten miles. I was pretty sure we both would have been happy to call it a day at the last campground we passed, but every time one of us asked the other, it was like some weird, dumb challenge not to be the one to go weak first.

“Yeah, I’m good too,” Win said. We rode quietly for a few minutes before Win spoke again.

“Dude, my butt hurts,” he complained, signaling an end to our standoff.

“Yeah, the padding isn’t quite getting it done,” I said, referring to the half inch of gel cushioning sewn into the lining of my bike shorts. I stood on my pedals to let some blood move back into that spot.

“I’m pretty sure,” Win huffed as he topped out just behind me, “that all this pressure and heat on my boys might make me sterile.”

“Bonus. No way should you be allowed to reproduce,” I shouted over my shoulder as we picked up speed on a downhill. In the distance I could see the Ohio River bridge and the state line, maybe a five-minute ride away.

“Car back,” Win yelled, and I sidled more toward the shoulder of the road in an automated response. The car roared past, kicking up too much exhaust, the radio blaring “Sweet Home Alabama” just a little too loud.

“I’ll be glad to get to a place where Lynyrd Skynyrd isn’t considered refined musical craftsmanship,” Win said.

“Almost there,” I said. “Ohio, dead ahead.”

“Right,” Win said. “Ohio’s just like West Virginia only without the hillbilly jokes.”

A hundred yards from the bridge I pulled to a stop next to a sign declaring
LEAVING WEST VIRGINIA
. Win pulled up beside me.

“Like it’s a warning or something,” he said, shaking his head.

I laughed. “Let’s take a picture.”

Win rolled his eyes. “Promise me that you won’t be taking pictures of every mile marker in Iowa.”

“This is a big deal,” I reasoned. “We’ve never ridden out of state before.”

Still, Win unclipped his other pedal and swung his leg over the bike.

“Gimme your camera,” I said. Win had a digital. I had a pair of disposable point-and-shoots to last me the whole trip.

He sighed but obeyed, rummaging for the camera in his handlebar bag. “You sound like those damn Hobbits,” he said. “‘Take one more step and it will be the farthest I’ve ever been from the Shire. …’”

“I’m not the one who memorized all three
Lord of the Rings
movies. That was you, remember?” I snatched the camera from his hand.

“Tricksey Hobbitses stole my precious!” he hissed, lunging for the Nikon with his free hand as I slid it from the neoprene case.

“Just go stand by the sign,” I ordered, dodging his reach. Win relented, leaned his bike against mine in a sort of tepee, and walked over to the sign.

My handlebar bag had a flat, clear lid for holding the map, and it made a perfect shelf for balancing the camera. I arranged the shot and hit the timer.

“Helmets on or off?” I asked as I trotted over.

“Uh, off,” Win muttered as he clawed at the catch. The timer was beeping steadily as I reached him and unclipped my own helmet, running my fingertips through my matted hair.

As the light flashed on the camera front and the beep sped up, Win and I stood next to each other, helmets tucked under our arms like a couple of astronauts in a NASA promotional photo. Neither of us smiled. The beeping climaxed with an understated click.

“Well, there’s the album cover,” Win said. “Now let’s find a place to crash in the Buckeye State.”

I returned to my bike, chucked the camera and case at Win, and studied the map. “According to this, there’s a campground just over the line,” I said.

“Good. I’m hungry. And did I mention the boys are in trouble?”

Twenty minutes later we reached our destination: the Rest-a-While Campground.

“What kind of campground is this?” Win said.

I shrugged. It didn’t look like I’d imagined, based on the few state or national parks my family had camped in during summer vacations. A narrow ribbon of patchy asphalt split a strip of grass that cut back between the fields on either side. At the far end sat a small, run-down house. In two rows on either side of the house a half dozen RVs sat parked, each plugged into its own outlet for water and electricity.

“See any tents?” I asked as we rolled up.

“No,” Win said as a man emerged from the house at the end. “But that guy can probably tell us where to set up.”

The man was wearing a pair of denim overalls covered in drops and smears of what appeared to be the entire color history of the little shack. He had no shirt on beneath the bib, but around his waist he wore a tool belt stocked with a random assortment of gear, including a walkie-talkie, a couple of screwdrivers, and a ring of keys. He stood at the bottom of a short flight of steps, eyeing us cautiously from a safe twenty feet away.

“What do you want?” the guy said from beneath a ball cap advertising motor oil.

“How much for tent sites?” I asked.

He didn’t respond as he reached behind him and pulled a flashlight from one of the pockets of his tool belt. He turned it on and pointed it at us, shining it straight into my eyes and then Win’s before scanning the bikes.

It was only six o’clock and there was plenty of light left.

“No tent sites,” the man said, still shining his light at Win’s front pannier. “We’re not set up for that.”

“But this is a campground, right?” I said. “The map has a little green tent on it right here.” I pointed gently at the map, my fingertip resting on the small green icon denoting a campground just outside Hanersville, Ohio. “I guess we’ll pay the RV price. …”

“RV sites is twelve dollars, but we ain’t set up for
those
,” he said, gesturing again at the bikes with his flashlight, which I now noticed was pink.

“Well, we’re not going to use power or anything, and really all we need is a place to set up our tent, if we could get some water from the hose or whatever,” I said hopefully.

He shook his head. “The lady wouldn’t like that.”

I shot Win a look. He was staring at the flashlight, the beginnings of a smile starting at his mouth.

“The lady?” I said.

“Lady owns this campground. My wife. She wouldn’t like this,” he said. “Not civil.”

I looked around at the RVs, piles of empty pop cans strewn like landscaping across the makeshift yards.

“I don’t understand—,” I began.

“Isn’t that a kids’ flashlight?” Win asked, pointing at the pink plastic light the man clutched.

He ignored Win. “The lady wouldn’t like it,” he repeated. “You’ll mess on the grass.”

The piles of junk and the oil leaking from the undersides of the RVs had surely done plenty of damage already.

“Seriously, my little cousin in New Jersey has a light just like that. Only hers has this little thing you can put on the front that makes the light change from purple to pink to yellow. …” Win leaned a little closer. “Looks like yours broke off.”

The man stood up straighter and held the light like he might try to prove to us that in spite of its girly origins, it could still inflict some pain.

“Shut up, Win,” I said. “Sir, I promise you we won’t mess up the grass. The tent isn’t very big—”

“He thinks we’re going to poop in his yard, Chris,” Win said, starting to laugh. “He didn’t say ‘mess
up
the grass,’ he said ‘mess
on
the grass.’” Then Win collapsed across his handlebars, shoulders convulsing with laughter.

“The lady wouldn’t like that!” the man said louder, holding the light a little higher this time.

“Um, okay,” I said, edging my bike backward. “Well, do you know where we might be able to camp instead?”

Win sat up straight and stopped laughing. “Yeah, maybe someplace they’re not totally psycho?”

It took a half second for the man to realize that he—and by extension, his lady—had been insulted. I swore at Win, turned my wheel, and started to ride. Win just stood there laughing a second
longer before he joined me. The man was walking toward us now. “Time to go,” Win said.

“The lady wouldn’t like this!” the man shouted as we rode away.

Win shouted over his shoulder, across the forty feet of blacktop that now separated us. “Well, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t like the lady. Tell her the yard isn’t even worth taking a dump in!” he said as the little pink flashlight sailed dangerously close to his ear, clattered to the pavement, and began rolling toward the road.