C H A P T E R  21: When Life Calls, You Don't Send It to Voicemail

☀ ☀ ☀

Scott Compton wasn't the kind of father that threatened boys with shotguns or locked his daughter in her room until she was thirty. He wasn't the kind of father to ask too many questions or ever make his daughter feel like she wasn't allowed to have her own identity. He didn't ask for much in return, either. All he had ever asked of Scout were the following: "Please, for the love of God, don't get pregnant in high school," and, "Please, for Christ's sake, don't do any drugs." Those weren't wild requests, and so Scout had no problem upholding either one.

However, as Scout stood in the middle of her bedroom with a duffel bag half packed and a determined bead of sweat over her brow, a part of Scott wished he had a shotgun and a padlock.

"Dad," Scout began, clenching her fists because her fingers were trembling. "I'm leaving with Skylar."

Scott could feel his temples pulsating. His fists clenched just like Scout's. They were mirror images of each other; all the determination and aggravation amplified by the sweltering sunlight flooding the bedroom.

"I can see that," Scott said. His voice was steady but everything else was not.

Silence blanketed the room. Scout expected her father to immediately begin yelling, and when he hadn't, she was at a loss for words. She carefully picked up a couple of T-shirts and place them in the duffel bag as if they'd fall apart if she moved any faster. Really, she was afraid that making any sudden movements would jar any patience Scott had left and she would never get out of the shit-hole she described Santan Valley as.

After awhile, Scout cleared her throat.

"Well," she said, "you know how badly I've wanted to travel. I love this town that you raised me in, but I also hate it just as much. Maybe I wouldn't if I'd seen anything else in the eighteen years I've been alive, but I haven't. Now is the time."

Scott wanted to yell. He wanted to yell so loud that Georgia would hear him from down the street and come running to help him set Scout straight. Dad's weren't very good with these things. Girl things. More specifically, girl things that involved boys who may not be good for them. Scott thought he lucked out with Scout. She was a tomboy as a child, after all. He didn't ever anticipate boys being an issue, hence the lack of shotgun shells and doors that needed keys. He honestly thought Scout may have turned out like Bo, and he would never have to worry about wayward boys and birth control. Then Antonio came along and Scott swore he had a headache for the whole year and a half that that boy was around. Once Antonio was out of the picture, Scott thought he was in the clear again. Now, however, his luck had run out entirely and all those years when he had no worries about Scout and boys were all catching up to him.

"We're supposed to be looking into colleges, Scout," Scott said. He sounded sadder than Scout could ever remember. "I'm supposed to be helping you apply for scholarships and tag along on your college campus tours. I'm not supposed to be watching you pack your things for some dead-end trip with a boy that neither one of us know well enough."

Scout placed a pair of shorts in the bag beside a pair of sweat pants. She wasn't sure where they were going or if the weather would be agreeable, so she wanted to be prepared.

"I don't even know how long we'll be gone," Scout said. "So, we can still do those things when I get back."

Scott's fingernails were carving crescent moons into his palms.

"College isn't something you want to put on hold," he said through gritted teeth.

College on the line or not, Scott hated the thought of watching his only child leave from the only place he could protect her. He wished she was still just a wild-haired kid with freckles like flecks of gold and a smile that matched his own, but Scout was also her mother's child. Virginia had a wanderlust strong enough to make a mother leave her child. If Scout got nothing else from that woman, she at least got the eagerness to leave familiar places. Scott would never say it, but Scout was more like her mother than she would ever care to know.

"This can be my gap-year," Scout said, shrugging slightly.

"Is there anything I can say to make you stay?"

Scott was grasping at straws at the same time he was grappling to restrain whatever outburst he wanted to have. He wasn't sure if he wanted to wring Skylar's neck or set the building on fire so Scout would have to stay and help him rebuild. Either one were tangible options.

Scout closed the distance between herself and her dad. She placed a hand on his prickly cheek. He sighed. He never had a reason before to look at her as crestfallen as he had then, and it broke her heart. Guilt trips easily charted in the top 20 of things she hated the most, but when it came to Scott, she felt more pained than she did annoyed. He was the only person who never let her down. She hated the idea of being his greatest disappointment, but Life was calling and she couldn't miss the opportunity.

"I promise to text you every day and call as much as I can," Scout whispered, as if that were the only way to speak.

Scott leaned into the hand on his cheek. He couldn't rob the chance to experience more to life from the greatest thing that ever happened to him. Scott knew, as much as he didn't want to let her go, that she wasn't one of those girls to make her mark, leave and never come back. She was one of the good ones, and she was his, and she was coming back eventually.

"Get out before I rip the transmission out of Skylar's car," Scott said. He had a small smile.

Scott moved Scout's hand from his cheek, kissed the back of it, and stepped out of the middle of the doorway.

Scout grabbed the duffel bag from the middle of the floor and hoisted the strap over her shoulder. She got halfway through the door before she stopped. She placed a hand on her father's chest, patted the spot, and smiled brightly at him.

"I promise not to come back pregnant or strung-out."

☀ ☀ ☀

The car ride out of Santan Valley was quiet. Skylar had his right wrist resting on the steering wheel and his other arm in the breeze of the open driver-side window. Scout was laid back in the passenger seat, watching the cacti and rust-colored rock faces shoot passed them. It was tranquil, if not a little awkward between the two of them, until Scout's phone rang. Upon answering it, the space inside the Chevelle filled with a shrill scream that Skylar recognized as none other than Bodhi Benson.

"YOU LEFT WITHOUT ME?!"

Scout cringed. "Bo, it was spur-"

"SPUR OF THE MOMENT MY BROWN ASS!"

Skylar shook his head, staring straight into road that unraveled farther and farther before them.

"Bo, will you stop ye-"

"I SHOULD SUMMON SOME MEDIEVAL, VIKING GOD TO DRAG YOUR ASS BACK HERE AND EXPLAIN THIS TO ME IN PERSON."

"I'd be able to explain if you stopped yelling," Scout sighed.

Bo went silent.

Skylar thought she hung up.

Scout waited patiently, knowing fully well that Bo was meditating.

"Well," Bo said after a while, "now that I've gotten that out of my system, I'd like to be the first to say congratulations."

Scout raised a brow. "For what?"

"Duh," Bo said with a smile that Scout could practically hear. "Obviously you're eloping. Shotgun wedding, perhaps?"

Scout glared from deep within her soul. She said, "I hate you," through gritted teeth, and even though that was a lie, it didn't stop her from picturing her hands around Bo's throat.

"You love me," Bo laughed. "I did call for a good reason, though."

Scout thought for certain that the next thing Bo would say would be for her to "use condoms," or to "only do drugs that won't kill you, like weed," or "don't forget to do your kegels." Bo wasn't the sentimental type. She was a sarcastic, witty, spiritual shit-head, as Scout liked to call her. So, when the next few sentences tumbled out of Bo's mouth and up passed the phone lines and cell towers just to fall on Scout's ears, Scout had to bite her lip to keep from being even more grossly sentimental.

"On a serious note," Bo began, "I know how much you've wanted to get out of this shitty town, and even though you abandoned me for God-only-knows how long with that damn pretty boy, I forgive you and I love you and send me loads of pictures and commentary while you're looking for yourself out there. I'm just a phone call away."

That meant more to Scout than she'd ever like to admit, and so she told Bo to "stop being a sensitive bitch," which Bo knew to be the equivalent of "I love you, too." They bid their goodbyes for now, and Scout discarded her phone in the backseat.

"So," Skylar began, still focused on the pavement and the heat waves radiating over it ahead of them. "Where to?"

Scout thought about it for awhile. She reclined even farther back in the passenger seat, hanging her tennis shoe-covered foot out of the window. She wanted to go everywhere. She wanted to see everything there was to see, and meet interesting people, and find out personally if you could overdose on sunshine and culture. Once, years ago, she remembered her dad saying New Mexico had plenty of each of those things , and so she figured that would be as good a place as any to start.

She was still disappointed that he'd left the first time, but when Scout looked over at Skylar, she almost fell in love with the way the sunlight made him look like he'd been painted golden. It was then that she knew, with absolute certainty, that she wanted to follow the sun and bask in it as much as they could.

"Santa Fe."