Paper Towns — Chapter no 39

And so we do.

Hour Ten

It is time for our second stop. It is 12:13 in the morning. My fingers do

not feel like they are made of fingers; they feel like they are made of

motion. I am tickling the steering wheel as I drive.

After Radar finds the nearest BP on his handheld, we decide to wake up

Lacey and Ben.

I say, “Hey, guys, we’re about to stop.” No reaction.

Radar turns around and puts a hand on Lacey’s shoulder.

“Lace, time to get up.” Nothing.

I turn on the radio. I find an oldies station. It’s the Beatles. The song is

“Good Morning.” I turn it up some. No response. So Radar turns it up more.

And then more. And then the chorus comes, and he starts singing along.

And then I start singing along. I think it is finally my atonal screeching that

awakes them.

“MAKE IT STOP!” Ben shouts. We turn down the music.

“Ben, we’re stopping. Do you have to pee?”

He pauses, and there’s a kerfuffle in the darkness back there, and I

wonder if he has some physical strategy for checking the fullness of his

bladder. “I think I’m okay, actually,” he says.

“Okay, then you’re on gas.”

“As the only boy who has not yet peed inside this car, I call first

bathroom,” says Radar.

“Shhh,” mumbles Lacey. “Shhh. Everybody stop talking.”

“Lacey, you have to get up and pee,” Radar says. “We’re stopping.”

“You can buy apples,” I tell her.

“Apples,” she mumbles happily in a cute little girl voice. “I likey the

apples.”

“And then after that you get to drive,” Radar says. “So you really gotta

wake up.”

She sits up, and in her regular Lacey voice, she says, “I don’t so much

likey that.”

We take the exit and it’s .9 miles to the BP, which doesn’t seem like

much but Radar says that it’s probably going to cost us four minutes, and

the South Carolina traffic hurt us, so it could be real trouble with the

construction Radar says is an hour ahead of us. But I am not allowed to

worry. Lacey and Ben have now shaken off their sleep well enough to line

up together by the sliding door, just like last time, and when we come to a

stop in front of the pump, everybody flies out, and I flip the keys to Ben,

who catches them in midair.

As Radar and I walk briskly past the white man behind the counter,

Radar stops when he notices the guy is staring. “Yes,” Radar says without

embarrassment. “I’m wearing a HERITAGE NOT HATE shirt over my

graduation gown,” he says. “By the way, do you sell pants here?”

The guy looks nonplussed. “We got some camo pants over by the motor

oil.”

“Excellent,” Radar says. And then he turns to me and says, “Be a dear

and pick me out some camo pants. And maybe a better T-shirt?”