“This is nothing. Tim used to make me play this stupid ‘Guess the Roadkill’ game to toughen me up, and once I literally ran out of tears.” Levi’s jaw hardens visibly. “And when I was twelve we saw a family of splattered hedgehogs on a Belgian highway and I cried so hard that when we stopped to get gas, a Federale Politie agent questioned my uncle on suspicion of child maltreatment.”
“Got it. No stops until New Orleans.”
“No, I promise I’m done crying. I’m an adult with a shriveled, hardened heart now.”
He gives me a skeptical glance, but then says, “Belgium, huh?” and his voice is curious.
“Yeah. But don’t get too excited, it was the Flemish part.”
“I thought you said you were from France.”
“I’m from all over the place.” I take off my sandals and push my legs against the dashboard, hoping Levi won’t take offense at my bright yellow nail polish and my incredibly ugly pinkies. I call them the Quasimotoes. “We were born in Germany. My father was German and Polish, and my mother half-Italian, half-American. They were very... nomadic? My dad was a technical writer, so he could work anywhere. They’d settle in one place, stay for a few months, then move to a new one. And our extended family was very scattered. So when they died, we—”
“They died?” Levi turns to me, wide-eyed.
“Yeah. Freak car accident. Airbags didn’t work. They’d been recalled, but...” I shrug. “We’d just turned four.”
“We?” He’s more invested in my life story than I expected. I thought he just wanted to fill the silence.
“Me and my twin sister. We don’t really have memories of our parents. Anyway, after their death we were sent from relative to relative. There was Italy, Germany, Germany again, Switzerland, the US, Poland, Spain, France, Belgium, the UK, Germany again, a brief stint in Japan, the US again. And so on.”
“And you’d learn the language?”
“More or less. We were enrolled in local schools—which, total pain, having to make new friends every few months. There were times I thought in so many languages I didn’t even speak, I couldn’t understand the inside of my own head. Not to mention, we’d always be the kids with an accent, the kids who didn’t really get the culture, so we never properly fit in, and— Shouldn’t you be monitoring the road instead of staring at me?”
He blinks repeatedly, as if shaking off the shock, and then looks straight ahead. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
“Anyway. There were lots of countries, lots of relatives. Eventually we landed in the US with my maternal aunt for the last two years of high school.” I shrug. “I’ve been here ever since.”
“And your sister?”
“Reike’s like my parents used to be. All wanderlustful. She left as soon as she legally could, and for the past decade she’s been going from place to place, doing odd jobs, living day by day. She likes to... just be, you know?” I laugh. “I’m positive that if my parents were alive they’d gang up with Reike against me for not loving to travel like they do. But I don’t. Reike’s all about seeing new places and making new memories, but to me, if you constantly go after new things, there’s never enough of anything.” I run a hand through my hair, playing with the purple tips. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lazy.”
“It’s not that,” Levi says. I glance up. “You want stability. Permanency.” He nods, as if he just found the missing piece of a puzzle and the resulting picture suddenly makes sense. “To be somewhere long enough to build a sense of belonging.”
“Hey, Freud,” I say mildly, “you done with the unsolicited therapy?”
He flushes. “That will be three hundred dollars.”
“Seems like the going rate.”
“Are you and your sister identical?”
“Yes. Though she insists that she’s prettier. That dumbass.” I roll my eyes fondly.
“Do you see her often?”
I shake my head. “I haven’t seen her in person in almost two years.” And even then, it was two days, a layover in New York on her way to Alaska from... I have no clue. I’ve long lost track. “But we talk on the phone a lot.” I grin. “For example, I bitch to her about you.”
“Flattering.” He smiles. “Must be nice to be close with your sibling.”
“You’re not? Did you drive a rift between you and your brothers with your bad habit of doing stuff without clearing it with them first?”
He shakes his head, still smiling. “There is no rift. Just... what’s the opposite of a rift?”
“A closing?”
“Yeah. That.”