They Left Me Behind on the Road Trip, So I Got on a Better Ride novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Ours

Brody laughs on speaker and calls the stolen work ours, Frankie refuses Dot's offer to strike him and signs up for the open wall herself, and Sawyer, who swore he'd leave at seven, says he'll drive her to the six-oh-two sunrise.

"That's mine," I said.

Dot didn't ask if I was sure.

She handed me the phone.

I tapped Brody's name, and his portfolio opened.

Twelve pictures.

Mesa Arch.

My mom's hospital break room, with her face cropped out.

The crying groom behind the pillar.

The grain elevator in Loveland at dusk, shot from the roof of my dad's truck the week after his funeral.

All twelve were mine.

Under them was his artist statement.

"The man who taught me to see shot weddings for twenty years. He died when I was sixteen. I still carry his camera. Every frame I make is a conversation with him."

I read it twice.

Then I put the phone down on the bed, very carefully, because I wanted to throw it.

"He doesn't own a camera," I said. "He uses his phone. He takes pictures of his food."

Dot was quiet beside me.

"That's my dad," I said. "He put my dad in it."

"Call him," Dot said. "On speaker. I want to hear the voice."

Brody picked up on the second ring.

There was music behind him and somebody splashing.

"Babe! Finally. Look, I know you're mad about the bus thing."

"You're a finalist for the Abernathy Fellowship."

The music got quieter. He'd walked somewhere.

"Oh. Yeah. I was going to tell you."

"With my pictures."

He laughed.

He actually laughed.

"Frankie, come on. They're ours. I'm the one who picked them. I wrote the statement. You'd never have applied in a million years."

"You told me not to apply. You said they were postcards."

"And look, I was wrong, they're good, see? I'm complimenting you." His voice went soft, the voice he used on my mom at Thanksgiving. "If I win, I'll buy you something nice. Like, really nice."

"You used my dad."

"I used a story. Everybody does that. It's called marketing. You'd know if you took one business class."

Dot's face didn't move. But her fingers had gone tight on the brim of her hat.

"Withdraw it," I said.

"No," he said, as easy as anything. "It's sixty grand, Frankie. Don't be like this. Just say okay."

I hung up.

My hands were shaking now, properly.

Dot set her hat on the bedspread between us.

"I can end this with one phone call," she said. "I founded that fellowship. The director answers when I ring. He'll be off the list by breakfast."

I thought about it.

I thought about it hard.

It would be so easy. Someone else would make it go away.

And Brody would tell everyone I ran crying to an old woman with money.

"No," I said.

Dot raised her eyebrows.

"If you take him off the list, he gets to say it was politics," I said. "He gets to tell the story. He's very good at telling stories."

"He is," she agreed.

"I want to be in the room. I want to stand there and say it's mine, in front of the people he lied to."

Dot looked at me for a long moment.

Then she smiled, slowly, the first real smile I'd seen on her.

"Then I'll tell you about the door I left open."

When she started the fellowship in 1990, she said, the board wanted applications and references and a committee.

She gave them all of it.

Then she added one rule they couldn't take away.

"On showcase day, anyone under thirty can walk in off the street with twelve prints," she said. "Twelve pictures made in the last thirty days. No application, no references. The jurors judge them on the wall right next to the finalists."

"Has anyone ever won that way?"

"Twice. A girl from Gallup in 1994. A boy who drove a beer truck in 2008."

"When's the showcase?"

"May fourteenth. In Denver."

Thirteen days.

Twelve brand new pictures in thirteen days.

None of my old ones would count.

Dot picked up her phone again and typed with one finger, slowly, reading it aloud as she went.

"To the jurors. I am recusing myself from this year's fellowship decision. I have a personal interest in an open-wall entrant. Don't call me about it."

She sent it.

"There," she said. "Now nobody can say I helped you."

"You just gave up your vote."

"I've had thirty-six of them. I can spare one." She tapped the laptop. "Sign up for the wall tonight. Use your own name."

I filled in the form while she watched.

Name. Frankie Bowen.

My cursor blinked in the box for a title.

I typed, "Forty Miles Later."

Dot read it over my shoulder and made a noise that might have been a laugh.

"Cheeky," she said. "Good."

Someone knocked on the wall from the other side.

Three knocks. Polite.

Then Sawyer's voice, muffled through the plaster.

"These walls are very thin."

Dot rolled her eyes.

"He's been listening," she told me. "He listens to everything. He was born taking notes."

A door opened and closed outside.

Then there was a knock on mine.

Sawyer stood in the doorway in his shirtsleeves, his tie gone for the first time, holding his little notebook.

He looked at me, not at his grandmother.

"Your boyfriend," he said.

"Ex."

"Your ex-boyfriend," he corrected himself, and wrote something down. "Entered stolen work, under a fabricated biography, in a juried competition run by a charitable foundation that I represent."

"You're a lawyer?"

"I'm the foundation's lawyer."

"Then you know I'm not letting anybody fix this for me."

"I heard. Through the wall." He closed the notebook. "I said I was leaving at seven tomorrow."

"I remember."

He looked down at the notebook, then back up.

"Sunrise at Capitol Reef is six-oh-two," he said. "I'll drive."

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