Cody said all the right things, but the words sounded false. Nate knew he was lying. He knew something was wrong. The only part of the conversation that rang true was at the end.
“I love you,” Cody said, his voice so quiet, Nate assumed he was trying to keep his mom from hearing. “I really do.”
Nate closed his eyes, hanging on the words, glad to know that this at least hadn’t changed. “I’ll see you in July, right?”
“I hope so,” was the only answer he got.
Any time he had a day off and Cora didn’t need her car, he drove to Iowa City, and finally, early in June, it all paid off. He found a job at a video store, and put down a deposit on a one-bedroom apartment. He worried he was doing it all for nothing—that Cody would never join him after all—but he tried to hang on to hope.
And that very same day, he received a letter from Cody.
It was the first one in two months, and Nate’s heart burst into gear. His hands shook as he tore open the envelope. He was thrilled to finally hear from Cody, but he dreaded reading what he said. He had a sinking feeling it contained bad news.
Nate,
I suck at this long-distance thing, I know. I’m sorry. I think about you all the time, but every time I try to write, I realize I have nothing good to say. You send me happiness, and I hate the idea of sending you anything less than that, but there isn’t much of it here to go around.
Our phone doesn’t work anymore. I thought you should know that. The number for the pay phone at the gas station is 307-798-6543. I know you can’t call very often, but I’ll be there every night at seven just in case. Seven my time, I mean. I think that’s eight for you.
I know you’re probably mad at me for not writing more often, but keep sending the letters, please. I miss you like crazy. It’s just hard to hang on to hope in a place like this.
Cody
Nate breathed a sigh of relief. Cody still loved him, then, but something was obviously wrong. It was time Nate found out what it was.
For two wonderful weeks after Nate’s departure, Cody thought maybe the world was finally cutting him some slack.
He had a plan. Shortly after Nate’s dad shipped him off to Chicago, Cody fed the gas station pay phone two dollars and called the Greyhound depot in Rawlins to check on prices and schedules.
He almost had enough for the ticket. All he had to do was keep saving money, finish high school, then have his mom drive him to the bus depot.
It seemed so simple.
He quit smoking altogether, even though the cravings at lunch were almost enough to drive him mad. He picked up every shift the Tomahawk could give him, and even started working a few hours in the kitchen, plating up salads and chopping vegetables. The staff dwindled as more people moved away from Warren. Business waned. The entire establishment felt doomed, but Cody only had to make it to June.
People at school had mostly gone back to ignoring him, with the exception of Jimmy, Amy, and Christine, but he didn’t mind that one bit. Christine asked about the ring on his finger once, but if anybody else noticed, they kept their opinions to themselves.
Cody was counting the days to May thirtieth, keeping his eye on the prize. Several times a week, he dreamed that he showed up at graduation in his cap and gown, only to be told there’d been a mistake and he had to do his senior year all over again. The anxiety made him more dedicated to his schoolwork than he’d ever been in the past.
He wasn’t about to let a bad grade in English come between him and Nate.
But for better or worse, he was still in Warren, Wyoming, where nothing good could last.
Early in April, as a warm wind from the south brought promise of summer, the Tomahawk closed its doors for good. Logan’s uncle explained in a quiet monotone what they’d all known: business had been waning for too long. Cody knew it was true, but he was also pretty sure the real issue was that Logan’s parents couldn’t bear to stay in Warren now that both of their children were gone. Five days later, they’d already packed up and left. A For Sale sign in the front yard of their Orange Grove home was the only thing left to prove Logan and Shelley Robertson had ever lived there.
And just like that, Cody was out of a job.
Four days later, as his mom drove home from the truck stop in the wee hours of the morning, her car sputtered to a stop on the shoulder of I-80. She walked half of the fifteen miles back to Warren before somebody from town recognized her and gave her a ride the rest of the way, at which point she plopped down on the couch, looking tired and wrinkled and far older than she had when she’d left.
“What the hell are we going to do?” she asked. “I can’t afford to have it towed, let alone fixed, and I sure as hell can’t afford to buy a new one.”