Craig Lancaster - Edward Adrift

At least I think so.

At the 114.6-mile mark of my trip, as Michael Stipe is singing about being the king of birds and as I near the town of Jerome, Idaho, I hear something shift in the backseat. I know I’m supposed to keep both hands on the steering wheel and my eyes forward at all times, but it’s a straight stretch of interstate, so I lean over the seat and try to secure the case of bottled water on the seat so it doesn’t tumble to the floorboards.

That’s when Kyle throws back the blanket and says, “Good morning, douchebag!”

It’s hard for me to describe what happens to me physically, because I do not like to use similes. Still, I will try: It’s as if someone sets off a bomb in my chest. The Cadillac veers hard to the left, and I try to pull it back into the right lane. I step on the brake as hard as I can, the car’s tires make a screeching noise, and I can smell burning rubber as I get control of the car and pull it over onto the shoulder. Kyle, the whole time, is laughing at me, and I get extremely angry.

“What the fucking fuck, Kyle?”

He’s still laughing. “Oh, man, you totally should see your face. That was awesome.”

It was not awesome. It was scary and awful. I sit in my seat, my hands still clutching the steering wheel so hard that I can’t feel them anymore, and I expel my breath in short bursts as I wait for my heart to stop doing flip-flops in my chest.

Kyle can’t stop laughing. Holy shit! How did he get in my car? I am going to have to turn around and go back to Boise. There’s no way I can make it to Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, on time now.

I reach Donna on my bitchin’ iPhone and tell her that Kyle is with me. She is incredulous (I love the word “incredulous”), and I hear her walking down the hallway to his room and opening the door to see if he’s in there. I’m certain he’s not, because he is right here with me. I can imagine the entire scene. Donna twitches when she is angry, and as I hear her saying, “Oh my god, oh my god,” I know that she is most assuredly angry at what her son has done.

“I will bring him back now,” I tell her.

Kyle, to quote Scott Shamwell, goes “apeshit.”

He starts screaming, so loudly and shrilly that I cannot hear Donna anymore, and he begins to plead in run-together words.

“ Pleasedon’tmakemego, pleasedon’tmakemegoback, pleaseplease pleaseplease! ”

Donna hears this, and she asks me to put him on the phone. I hand my bitchin’ iPhone to Kyle, and he listens to his mother for a few moments. Tears are running down his cheeks.

At something she says—I cannot hear her end of the conversation—he says, “Please let me stay with Edward for a few days. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease . I will do anything when I come back, just please let me stay.”

Donna says something else, and he hands the phone back to me.

I hold the phone to my ear and say hello.

“Edward, can you just wait there for a few minutes? I need to call Victor and talk to him, and I’ll call you right back.”

I tell Donna that I will wait. Kyle looks at me with expectation, and I shrug. I don’t know what to tell him.

As we wait for Donna to call back, Kyle tells me how he was able to stow away in my car. It turns out that he’s an ingenious (I love the word “ingenious”) little shit. When Donna and Victor were in the basement with me, helping me to collect my belongings and bring them upstairs to be placed in the car’s trunk, Kyle slipped out his bedroom window, ran around to the front of the house, climbed down onto the Cadillac’s floorboards, and covered himself in blankets. When I was at the gas station in Boise and looked in, I thought the blankets appeared to be a little askew (I love the word “askew”), but I also thought maybe that was just because they had shifted in transit. I will have to begin investigating my observations more rigorously. If I’d found Kyle at the Boise gas station, I wouldn’t have lost much time at all today.

Kyle tells me that he had a hard time staying quiet for almost two hours, especially when I was singing along with Michael Stipe.

“Your voice sucks, dude,” he says.

This hurts my feelings because I did not realize I had an audience and might not have sung at all if I’d known he was listening.

He says he wanted to make sure we were a ways down the road before he revealed himself.

I tell him that it was wrong and mean to reveal himself the way he did and that we’re lucky we didn’t crash. I want to tell him that I also think he’s ingenious, but I suspect that would only encourage more bad behavior, so I remain silent on that point.

Thirteen minutes and seven seconds after Donna and I hung up, the bitchin’ iPhone tells me that she’s calling, and I answer it.

“Edward, I’m going to tell you the truth. We don’t know what to do. We’ve never seen this kind of behavior out of Kyle, and we’re really at a loss here. He says he wants to stay with you for a few days. How do you feel about that?”

I look at Kyle, and he’s looking back at me hopefully.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“That’s our answer, too. It seems like to give him what he wants, after he’s behaved so badly, is the wrong thing to do. But Victor and I also talked about how maybe he’ll talk to you about things he’s scared to tell us, and we need that to happen, somehow. Does that make sense?”

It makes sense.

“Yes,” I say.

“How long do you plan to be in Colorado?”

I tell Donna that if I get to Cheyenne Wells tomorrow evening, as planned, I’ll stay two nights and then head home. I also tell her that I don’t have time in my schedule to go back to Boise on the way home to Billings. She says that’s OK and that she and Victor will meet me in Wyoming to retrieve Kyle.

“Will you do this, Edward? I know it’s a lot to ask. We clearly can’t control him, so maybe it’s just silly to think that he’ll be tamer for you. We’re operating on a gut feeling here. He trusts you, or at least he used to. Maybe he’ll let you in. It’s worth a shot.”

I agree. It’s worth a shot. I feel happiness and fear. I’m happy that I’m being allowed to help solve an adult problem; it’s the kind of thing I’m not often trusted to do. I’m fearful that Kyle will keep being mean to me and will make my trip to Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, frustrating and maybe even dangerous. While I am sympathetic to Kyle’s problems, I have my own struggles, and I’m hopeful—despite all the limitations of hope—that I will find some answers. I don’t want Kyle to mess that up.

“I will take Kyle with me,” I say, and Kyle makes a fist pump.

“Thank you,” Donna says. “And, Edward, I want you to know—if he gives you trouble you can’t handle, you call us. We will come get him, wherever you are. Impose whatever restrictions on him you feel are necessary. You’re in charge of him. Don’t let him manipulate you.”

I think that’s good advice. I also think it’s ironic—the real kind of ironic, not the Alanis Morissette kind. Kyle has been manipulating all of us. That has to end. I decide that I’m not driving another mile with him until I’ve set some rules.

“Reach into the backseat and hand me my notebook,” I tell Kyle, who obliges.

It makes me feel good that he obeys my first order.

1. Kyle is not to do anything that compromises my safe operation of the Cadillac DTS. This includes but is not limited to making loud, scary noises; attempting to cause me to look away from the road, intentionally or unintentionally; grabbing the steering wheel or manipulating any of the car’s propulsive (I love the word “propulsive”) machinery; being in any shape or form a bad kid. “Bad kid” is subject to my definition.