Northward to the Moon by Polly Horvath Read Free Book Online Page B

Ned what all the double-wides with names like Cat House were and he explained it at the next rest stop. Maya is furious with Ned for not telling her and I want to but it would mean having to explain so much else.
    Finally, when she won’t leave me alone, I just say to her, “It’s for ladies of the night, okay?”
    “Oh,” she snorts. “Ladies who only come out at night. More fairy tales.” She and Mrs. Gunderson are having a good snort over that.
    For no reason I can figure out this makes me furious. That she can be so contentedly wrong because she has such preconceived notions about everything.
    “You know, you’d better stop having such a closed mind, Maya,” I say. “You’d better stop assuming you know everything or you’ll be ignorant your whole life.”
    “Then tell me what a lady of the night is,” says Maya.
    We go round and round with this all the way to Las Vegas and I wish I had kept my mouth shut. Meanwhile my mother keeps spotting burros, always with the thrill of the first time, and Hershel wants to know if the military installations are alien camps. Ned has made the mistake of telling him that this highway is called the Extraterrestrial Highway because so many UFOs are seen here. Max wants to know if there are Viking bones. Nedsays no, but probably Indian bones and wild mustang bones and maybe even extraterrestrial bones. Max says he’s only interested in Vikings.
    “Outlaw bones!” suggests Ned, but it has the ring of desperation.
    “Give it up,” I advise, and settle back to take a nap. These days sleep is the only privacy I get.

    When we get to Las Vegas we stay in a crummy motel with a swimming pool, on the outskirts of town. My mother elects to hang out with Hershel and Maya and Max around the pool all day while Ned and I go into town and look for John the Amazing.
    “This is a good adventure,” I say to Ned when we arrive downtown. “It’s like a treasure hunt. Or being detectives.”
    “Um-hmm,” says Ned as we drive down the Strip. He doesn’t look as excited about it as I am. We are looking to see if we can find anything indicating where John the Amazing is working but of course we can’t. He is small potatoes, says Ned.Who would put his name up on a billboard? We will have to park and get a newspaper.
    But after we park we are ravenous. We go into one of the casino buffets for lunch. I have never seen so much food in my life. It is a football field of food. It is dark and cavernous and disorienting like the casinos but instead of taking your money they take your hunger. Instead of want want want, it is too much too much too much. Maybe it is supposed to balance out, all the food they shove into you, all the money they take out of you. Maybe they want to fill you so full of food that in a stupor you will wander upstairs and throw all your quarters into the nearest slot, unable to stagger to the next casino down the road.
    We eat until we are ready to fall over, as designed, but foil their little plan by going right past the slots and into the bright light of midday.
    “Now all I want to do is nap,” says Ned as we waddle out.
    “Me too,” I say. “And we still haven’t found John.”
    We pick up a newspaper but can’t find any ads for him so Ned suggests we walk around and checkout casinos and see if anyone has heard of him. We do this for a while but it is hot and crowded and everyone is having a good time but us, and finally it is getting close to dinner.
    “I don’t have a clue what to do now,” says Ned. He sounds so dispirited and disappointed that I feel bad for him. Is he sad because he wants to get rid of this money or because he wants to see his brother? It’s hard to get a fix on how Ned feels about his family. He never talks about them.
    We get into the car and start to head back to the motel but there is a traffic jam and so Ned swears in his newly minted language, “Oh shuckserooni.” However, he puts enough venom into such a horrible corny word