We got lost on our way to Indiana this weekend.
Wait.
[Here you need to breathe. Here you need elevation and ice and the hand of someone who loves you on your forehead. But where are they.]
We got very lost on our way to Indiana this weekend. [You see Indiana (the word) and wonder am I that much different from you. I meaning you. What is someone else’s life like.] We got lost because of thinking each town looked the same as every other town. Like a one-room maze. But they do all look the same, said the annoyed teenager in the back seat. But they don’t, said the careful observer, smugly. But they kinda do, said the life-long inhabitant.
Later I was listening to space-age music by a lake in Indiana when a butterfly alit on my knee. True story. Everyone else was swimming, so I couldn’t share this with anyone. The butterfly landing on me and flexing its wings felt like a breeze with a drop of water in it. Or: it felt like butterfly kisses, a girls eyelashes on your cheek.
At one point in the car I did that thing where you turn the map upside-down, on the off chance that that will help you navigate better. Maybe I was just holding it the wrong way. Maybe that was it. But it wasn’t. It was more of a space-time thing. We were lost along the z-axis.
I am Mason and you, prettiest-girl-in-town, are Eden. I am scheming to get you away from Cruz, because you belong with me. I am persistent. I am hated far and wide for my persistence. I am not doing this because I am evil. I am doing this because I need you. I think you could save me. My dad is trying to kill me. How did we get to Santa Barbara?
We always get so lost in Indiana. And the roads are so straight! You drive through miles of cornfields and there are very few intersections. Landmarks are highly recognizable by the very fact that they are so few-and-far-between. If I tell you to turn left after the silo with a tractor on top, then of course you will, because how often do you see something like that? And yet still: lost.