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even really like trees, you know. Unless they have Christmas lights on them.”
    Our waitress comes to clear away the dishes and top off our coffee. She smiles at the map spread out on the table in front of us. “Are you on a trip?” she says.
    Kat nods. “Excuse me,” she says, “but if I asked you where a person could look to find God, what would be the first thing that comes to mind, for you?”
    The waitress shakes her head a little, her brown ponytail flipping back and forth merrily. She bites her lip. “Well, gosh, I guess I’d have to say old people.”
    “Old people?”
    She smiles. “Yeah, like, you know. I volunteer at a nursing home in the summers. I go in and read and talk to them, play cards, learn how to crochet, you know. Just be a friend. And every time I go there, I learn so much about life. Old people are all full of God, I think.” She laughs. “More coffee? I can get your check, but I’m not trying to rush you out of here or anything. Take all the time you want.”
    Kat nods. “Thanks. Old people. Cool.” She turns to me. “Write that down.”
    I write it down, but I really don’t see the point of any of this. I mean, so we go looking for God in all these places, but really, it’s not like we’re going to prove anything. It’s not like people haven’t spent entire lifetimes looking for divinity. And sure, some of them claim to have found it, but they can’t prove they’re right. I go back to studying the map.
    Kat snaps her fingers. “Hey! Let’s let Jack tell us where we should go next,” she says. “What if we just, like, flip through the book and stick our finger in it to see where we should go next?”
    I nod. “Bibliomancy.”
    “What?”
    “It’s when you use a book to divine the future. Usually you use a sacred book, I think, like the Bible maybe.”
    Kat laughs. “And Anna sucks the whimsical right out of my idea.”
    “I’m gifted like that.” She’s teasing, but she’s right. I haven’t been very much fun this year. But I’m trying. I mean, I’m here, aren’t I? I pull The Dharma Bums out of my backpack and study the faded cover. I can’t quite imagine Kat’s dad reading a book like this, even in college. He’s so practical, so solid and secular—the complete opposite of this mystical, Buddhist poet guy.
    “Okay, just point to something,” says Kat, grabbing the book out of my hands. The pages fan back and forth between her fingers.
    I stick my finger into the book and squint at the words I’m touching. “What if it’s not a place?” I’m pointing to one of those long exuberant passages about enlightenment or something. The kind that makes Kat squeal and me roll my eyes. This book is full of them.
    “Read it anyway. Maybe it will tell us what to do.”
    “Well, okay.” I’m still doubtful. “It says, ‘What does it mean that I am in this endless universe, thinking that I’m a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of the earth, but actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything? It means that I’m empty and awake, that I know I’m empty, awake, and that there’s no difference between me and anything else.’”
    I sip my coffee, tasting the silence that follows. In my reluctant head, thoughts hum like mosquitoes.
    “Well, I guess the meaning of that is obvious,” says Kat.
    “It is?”
    “Well, I mean, what it’s telling us to do is obvious.”
    “Oh?” I hold Katy’s gaze, the sparkle of her deep blue eyes. “Would you care to enlighten me?”
    “It’s zen. I can’t give you the answer.”
    “Yeah, because once again, you’re full of shit.” I slap at the mosquito-thoughts with an impatient movement of my hand, which I try to disguise by smoothing out the map. “I am empty and awake.” For an instant the words fall into place—for a moment I am empty and awake. A laugh bubbles up.
    I’m about to speak, to tell Katy everything I now understand with perfect clarity, but of course it