Interchange

They spent the night in Medford, Oregon. Liam hadn’t wanted to send the night in a motel on the first night, but was too tired to object when Jenna insisted. He woke up the next morning to find Jenna asleep next to him. He found it strange to wake up next to someone he barely knew without a hangover pounding around in his head and a complete memory to how she got there. It was cheaper to get a single bed, and soon enough they would be sharing a tent, which according to Jenna, was basically the same thing.

He got out of bed and went outside for a smoke.

Jenna was up when he returned. “Hey, can we stop in Ashland for a bit this morning?” She asked while running a brush through her hair. “There’s something I want to get there.”

“Uh, sure. I don’t know why not.”

“Awesome. I didn’t know if you were going to be a time Nazi about getting down to Yosemite or not.”

“Time Nazi?” Liam asked under his breath. He may have been a bit of a miser when it came to the trip funds, but he was still far from enforcing a strict schedule. If he was going to be honest, which he almost always was, he liked the idea of making a few stops before Yosemite. He wasn’t exactly in a hurry to meet Jenna’s parents. It would be one thing if he was dating her, but to meet them under these circumstances was something different altogether. Their weekend stay in Yosemite was like a job interview or a pitch for program funding. If he passed, their trip would be cushioned by extra money from Jenna’s parents. If he didn’t, the future of their cross country trip would be up in the air. Her parents couldn’t exactly forbid Jenna from going on the trip, but they could make it more difficult. “What do you want to get?”

“A mug.”

“A mug?”

“Yes, a mug.”

“Why?”

“Because I always get one when I go through Ashland. The bookstore there sells mugs by a local potter and they’re really awesome and it would feel wrong if I didn’t get one.”

She didn’t notice the look on Liam’s face as he walked past her to go brush his teeth.



They decided to forgo the complimentary breakfast at the motel for a more substantial meal in Ashland. Normally Liam would have insisted on eating at the motel, but with the slim pickings that were out on the counter, he felt that the splurge would be justified. He wouldn’t be able to drive all morning running on only a small cup of yogurt and a piece of toast. After breakfast, they walked down the street to the bookstore.

Liam browsed the fiction section while Jenna decided on her mug upstairs. He sighed as he looked at the shelves of books. Bookstores tended to make him feel discouraged. So many people had already been published. So many stories already written. How could he even compete with that? How could he ever write anything remotely original if it had already been done? He shook off the feeling before it took over and walked away from the section of the book store that haunted him.

She found him staring at the bookshelves of the non-fiction section when she came down from the upstairs coffee shop. “I got my mug,” she told him, stepping beside him. “Find anything good?”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“That’s too bad.” She shifted from one foot to the other. “Oh!”

Liam looked at her curiously. “What now?”

“You know what we should get?”

“What?”

“One of those guide books on National Monuments or something. Then we can find fun places to go.”

“I thought we already had a route with places to go.”

“Yeah, but it’s really vague and consists of cities. I want to go hiking!”

Hiking. Great. One of the things that smoking made difficult. “If you want to get it.”

She did little hop in excitement before rushing off to the travel section. While she was gone, an uneasy feeling filled his stomach. This trip wasn’t as planned as he thought it was. With the new impromptu plan to go to monuments, the entire schedule would be off. If the trip ended up taking longer than they thought, he was going to have an even harder time playing bills when he got home. He didn’t like the sound of that. Yet, he wasn’t going to complain. She was the one paying for the trip. He also didn’t want to be called a Time Nazi again.

They left the bookstore twenty minutes later, guide book in hand, and set out on the open road. She spent the next hour or so with her nose in the book. He liked the silence. It meant that he could focus on driving and his thoughts and not have to juggle a conversation on top of those things. It didn’t feel real, taking a road trip with a girl who was practically a complete stranger. Agreeing to go on this trip was a rash decision. He didn’t make rash decisions, so what did that mean about him? Was he a different person than he thought he was? Or was something inside him fed up with staying in one place?

He didn’t know.

After a while Liam was forced to come out of his thoughts. “How many national monuments have you seen?” Jenna asked. He glanced over at her. She was holding one of the cards from her conversation deck.

He chuckled. “Isn’t that a little ironic?”

“To be honest, I fished this one out of the stack.”

“Wouldn’t that be considered cheating?”

“I never said that they had to be random.”

“But if you pick and choose which cards we’re going to talk about, then that kind of defeats the purpose of the cards, doesn’t it?” He glanced over at her with a wry smile and she rolled her eyes.

“Answer the question, Liam.”

“No need to be so hostile.” He hoped she picked up on his joking tone. “Let’s see. I’m pretty sure that I can count the amount of National Monuments I’ve been to on one hand.”

“How many would that be?”

“Two.”

“Two?”

“You know I’ve barely been out of Washington. I’ve only been to Mt. St Helens and the San Juan Islands. That’s it. How many have you been to?”

Jenna was quiet for a moment. From the corner of his eye, he could see her counting on her fingers. “At least twenty, if not more,” she finally said.

“Holy shit.”

“It’s really not that big of a deal and most of them were in DC.”

“I doubt most of the population of the United States has even been to that many. Not many people have had the travel opportunities that you have.”

Jenna was quiet for a moment and looked out the window. “I never thought about it like that until the past few years. Where I grew up, being affluent was normal. I knew poverty existed, but not the reality of it.”

“That’s the trouble of being the princess in the tower. You don’t get to see the kingdom and all of its people.”

“What if I’m tired of being the princess.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to be the peasant. It sucks.”