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then got in. I ducked into the passenger side, mentally thanking the owner for leaving the doors unlocked.
    From his backpack Robinson removed a small cordless drill and aimed it at the keyhole. I watched as glittering flecks of metal fell onto the seat.
    He packed a drill?
I thought.
    A grizzled surfer was looking right at us. I smiled and waved.
    “Hurry up,” I hissed at Robinson.
    He produced his screwdriver and inserted it into the mangled keyhole. “One more minute.”
    The adrenaline tingle was growing more intense. Painful, even.
    “I had to break the lock pins,” Robinson explained.
    As if I cared! I just wanted the engine to turn on. I sucked in a deep breath. Any moment we were going to be racing out of town, and everything would return to normal—my
new
normal, that is.
    That was when two people came out of the Coast Café—and began heading toward their silver Pontiac. I met the woman’s eyes, saw her jaw drop open. The man started running. “Hey,” he shouted.
“Hey!”
    His arms flew forward, and he was just inches from us when the engine suddenly roared to life. Robinson slammed the car into reverse and we shot backward into the street. A moment later we were blazing out of town, going fifty in a twenty-five zone.
    “I’m going to miss Charley,” I said, my heart pounding.
    Robinson nodded. “Me too.”
    “But not Bolinas,” I added.
    “That was
your
idea,” Robinson reminded me with a smirk.
    I shrugged and let out a deep sigh of relief. The sun was flashing deep vermilion over the blue ocean, calming me as I watched it slip lower and then vanish before my heart rate had even returned to normal.
    Amazing how beauty can be so fleeting.

10
    W E DROVE ACROSS THE G OLDEN G ATE Bridge that night, gliding over a dark San Francisco Bay into the narrow streets of the Presidio. Since the car offered a solid roof over our heads—and since cops apparently frown on urban camping—we decided to spend the night in the Pontiac.
    I curled up in the backseat, and Robinson folded himself, with difficulty, into the front. There was no question of us touching (or, as the case may be, not touching) with all that upholstery in the way. A tiny part of me felt relieved, but a larger part of me longed for the so-cozy-it’s-claustrophobic tent.
    That was my realization for the night: I was capable of missing Robinson when he was less than two feet away from me.
    I was starting to develop a theory about missing things in general. It had started when we left Charley the Harley behind,and I hadn’t stopped thinking about it the rest of the drive. If I practiced missing small things—like the rumbling ride of a motorcycle, or the faint murmur of my dad talking in his sleep, or now sleeping right next to Robinson—maybe I could get used to missing things. Then, when it came time to miss something really important, maybe I could survive it.
    We listened to the radio for a while, Robinson humming along and me keeping my tuneless mouth shut until we drifted off. In the morning, fog rolling in from the bay blurred the streetlights into soft orange halos. I peered over the seat at Robinson’s tangled limbs.
    “Rise and shine,” I sang. He opened one eye and gave me the finger.
    Not everyone is a morning person.
    “There’s someone I want you to meet,” I told him.
    “Now?” Robinson asked. But I simply handed him his shoes.
    There was one book I’d gotten Robinson to read in the last six months.
The Winding Road
was a memoir about growing up as the daughter of an alcoholic father (I could seriously relate) and a beauty-queen mother (ditto) in a small town in southern Oregon. The author, Matthea North, could have been me, which is maybe why I found her story so fascinating. A couple of years ago, I wrote her a fan letter. She wrote me back, and an epistolary friendship—I guess you could call it that—was born.
    (
Epistolary:
a word I’m not going to use in front of Robinson.)
    You must stop by for a visit