They leave in the very beginning of June, four days after school ends, in Lafayette's beat-up blue Honda, when Lafayette is sixteen, Alex is seventeen, and John is eighteen.

They leave early in the morning, before classic New York City traffic can get started, when the sky is still the same color as the insides of the conch shells Alex used to see on Nevis and the light is still early-morning pale.

They leave before there is anybody to tell them no.

In New Jersey, around two in the afternoon, Henry Laurens calls.

John is intensely glad that they're two states away, where Henry can't stop him from leaving, and that's he's moved out, so Henry can't punish him for leaving. "Hey, Dad," he says, not bothering to fake enthusiasm.

"Where are you?" It is not a question. It is, unmistakably, a demand.

"New Jersey. Almost to Delaware." Lafayette and Alex are watching him. On impulse, John adds, "With my boyfriends."

He has no idea where he found the courage to say that, but he hopes it isn't going away any time soon.

"Your boyfriends." Henry is incredulous. If it were anyone but Henry John would laugh.

As it is he glances at Alex, who's smiling encouragingly. "Yes. My boyfriends. Who I am having sex with. Yes, boys. Yes, both of them." (Lafayette isn't, but Henry doesn't need to know that.) "I'll be back in New York sometime in August."

He hangs up before Henry can respond, shuts his phone all the way off, and hands it to Lafayette.

This is what freedom feels like.

By Virginia, they have seen twenty-six cats. Lafayette has taken a picture of every one of them.

They have also seen approximately two gajillion Starbucks. Alex doesn't bother to keep track. It'll only make him angry.

Midway through Virginia, a woman openly stares at Lafayette holding hands with John.

"Don't worry, we aren't gay," Alex says, managing to be completely straight-faced as he puts his hands into Lafayette's back pockets. "We're Boy Scouts."

They wish they could have gotten a picture of the way she blanched.

For obvious reasons, they avoid the Deep South. New Orleans isn't worth it.

The gas station in Tennessee for some reason has large dinosaur statues made out of scrap metal. They are 1000% awesome. Sometimes they move. They take a million pictures.

The St. Louis City Museum is full of giant metal structures to climb around in, a skateboard ramp that takes up an entire room (but no skateboards; you run up it and then slide back down), several hollowed-out trees, and a ten-story spiral slide.

George tries to call Alex halfway through their visit there, but Alex has to cut him off with, "I'm sorry, I need to go. John and Laf are leading small children into battle inside of a giant concrete whale. See you!"

("Best. Museum. Ever," Lafayette says when they leave. Alex and John concur.)

Arkansas is right next to Kansas. It is not pronounced Ar-kansas. It is pronounced Ar-kan-saw. There is no reason for this, as far as any of them can tell.

"Fun fact," Alex announces halfway through the state. "It's illegal to mispronounce the word Arkansas within the state of Arkansas."

They all look at one another. "Ar-kansas," Lafayette says quietly.

"Ar-kansas," John says, at a normal volume.

"Ar-kansas," Alex says, a little louder.

"Ar-kansas!" Lafayette yells.

(This goes on for nearly half an hour before a traffic cop fines them. He's laughing when he does.)

(They bill the fine to Henry Laurens, because they can.)

They hit a thunderstorm in Oklahoma.

Alex is panicking too much to drive, so they pull off the highway and find a hotel, but John thinks it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen; his fingers itch to paint it. The wind beats the clouds into fluffy towers, pink and gold and purple against a sky that's turned a dozen different shades of blue, cracked into pieces by arcs of lightning.

They curl up together in a creaky hotel bed, John holding Alex and Lafayette holding both of them, and watch the sky split in two. The rain sounds like the world is ending.

They are in the lower Midwest. They are surrounded by corn, a wall broken only by the strip of highway and the occasional building, islands in the open ocean.

Lafayette is legitimately frightened by the amount of corn.

There is so much corn. There is too much corn. Who is going to eat all this corn? Why would anyone plant this much corn? What is wrong with America that they need so much corn?

By New Mexico, Lafayette has seen forty-seven cats, and taken pictures of forty-six of them.

From New Mexico to California is eight hours of pale red desert, stretching as far as the eye can see. The sky is so large and such a deep blue that the buildings, the other cars, all look like a child's diorama - small and fragile, placed on an endless pale red table and left to dissolve.

Alex presses his face to the cool glass of the window, memorizes the bands of paler and darker red. He's never seen so much empty space. Even on Nevis, there were always other islands visible from the shore.

It's beautiful, in a way that makes him feel very small.

Las Vegas - "A glistening, wretched hive of scum and villainy," Alex calls it - is the first place they've stayed where Lafayette, with their high heels and short skirts and flawless makeup, has raised no eyebrows.

(It's also the first place where three apparent boys asking for a room with only one bed has raised no eyebrows. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, after all.)

(It's also the first place where they don't have to be quiet. Alex takes the opportunity, moans and begs for them like he'll never get another chance, until John shuts him up the only way he's figured out how.)

For once in his life, Alex sleeps in the next morning.

One of the guidebooks describes California as being twelve hours long. It must be a misprint, they think. Nobody describes distances that way.

John asks one of the locals at a diner in San Diego. Apparently it is not a misprint. Apparently it takes twelve hours to drive up California. Apparently that is how they describe distance here. Apparently it is weird that East Coasters do not describe distance this way.

The three of them look at one another in horror. "Californians are weird," Lafayette decides. They aren't wrong.

Los Angeles might be the most humongous city any of them have ever seen.

Not in terms of how busy it is, just in pure area. They've been driving in it for an hour, and not even like in New York where they'd get caught in traffic - they've actually been moving the entire time.

(John has always thought that In & Out was an urban legend. It's not like he'd ever actually seen one, before today. They are not an urban legend, and it turns out they make delicious milkshakes.)

"Californians are weird," Lafayette repeats.

San Francisco is not as bedecked with rainbows as the three of them had imagined.

("That's because our reference point was pictures of the Castro during Pride," John points out when Alex mentions this. That doesn't explain why the entire city is shrouded in fog, but it does help somewhat.)

Alex and Lafayette still kiss in front of the Ferry Plaza. John takes a picture and sends it to all their friends. Alex nearly tackles him when he finds out.

(At the Exploratorium, John buys a stuffed animal of a mad cow disease microbe and gives it to Alex, who promptly names it Jeffy and refuses to explain why.)

In southern Oregon there is a dog that will not let John pet it.

This is the low point of the trip.

Portland, Oregon has A) an overabundance of hipsters, B) the best donuts any of them have ever eaten, and C) a giant bookstore - giant on the order of it takes up an entire city block and is five stories tall.

Alex buys a stack of books so high that he can't see over them. John gets two books on biology and one on architecture. Lafayette gets a novel called This Book is Full of Spiders.

All told, the place is basically Alex's wet dream. The others indulge him.

They wind up in Seattle for the Fourth of July.

Lafayette and Alex are always excited, every year. John is less than impressed with the state of affairs in America, but he still likes the fireworks.

They stay the evening in Gasworks Park, climb on the gears until the sun goes down and then lay out a blanket. After half an hour they give up on watching the fireworks and start enjoying one another instead; Lafayette and Alex are more beautiful than the fireworks anyway.

(At least, John thinks so.)

The small black birds are subtly different in every state. Back in Virginia they had gold eyes; in Arizona they were a little iridescent; in Idaho they're solid, glossy black from toe to beak. The sparrows they compete with for crumbs are exactly the same, no matter where they are.

In Montana, they eat at what must be the world's most depressing restaurant.

Their server's name is Maria, and she has a voice like violins and a plastered-on smile that is redder than cherries. The food is terrible, and the music is terrible, and Alex wants to tell her Come with us, we have a car, we can get you away from this godforsaken town that you can't escape on your own, for God's sake please get in.

He doesn't. That would be rude. Maybe she has family here. Maybe she even likes it here.

(Maria slips him a piece of paper with her phone number written on it along with the check. Alex keeps it, though he doesn't call.)

(Five years later Alex will find the slip of paper in the inside pocket of his jacket. In a moment of weakness, he will call her. It will be a bad idea. Her voice will still be beautiful, and when she asks he will not say no - but that's another story.)

In Yellowstone National Park, there's a traffic jam due to the bison standing in the road.

None of them never thought they would say this about a traffic jam, but it's awesome.

The Taco Bell they get lunch at in South Dakota has ketchup on the tables.

The resulting rant from Alex about the fucking gringos that steal Hispanic culture and then ruin it gets them all thrown out of the restaurant. John could point out that Tex-Mex is already ruined, with or without ketchup, but he doesn't feel the need.

The wall of their motel in Iowa has a painting of a sailboat. They're about as far away from the ocean as it gets, but it's still there.

It catches John's eye when he's putting his stuff on the bed, and for a moment he wonders why it's there. Why run a motel in the Midwest, only to taunt visitors with the ocean they're nowhere near?

Then Alex sinks to his knees in front of him, and the painted sailboat is the very last thing on John's mind.

The water is gorgeous, Alex thinks. Bright blue to match the summer sky, Alex thinks, the same color as the Caribbean ocean. It can't be that cold.

As soon as he says this out loud, John shoves him into Lake Michigan.

Alex is forced to concede that point.

There is a Hawaii licence plate in Ohio. John doesn't know how they get the cars across the ocean. He doesn't know why anyone would bring a car all the way across an ocean and half the way across a continent. He doesn't know why anyone would leave Hawaii for Ohio. He doesn't know why anyone lives in Ohio at all.

By Indiana, Lafayette has seen fifty-eight cats, and taken pictures of fifty-six of them.

On the fifth of August they get back to New York City late at night, when the buildings are all lit up and the cars look like dots of light from far away.

It feels almost surreal, coming home again.