The Road to Amazing Read Free Page B

of
them. "Come in, come in!"
    They all entered, eyeing the house,
impressed. We didn't hug, because none of us were huggers (which I
appreciated).
    Gunnar was the kind of guy who sort of
blended into the background, at least at first. He didn't give a
lot of thought to the way he looked or dressed. For example, he was
the only person I knew who combed his hair with an actual pocket
comb.
    But that was only the way
he looked . When
it came to who he actually was, he was the least average person I
knew. There are people who operate on their own wavelength, and
then there are people like Gunnar, who reject the radio spectrum
entirely. A couple of years earlier, he'd even invented an iPhone
app that had made him rich.
    As he walked inside with his bags,
Gunnar was grinning from ear to ear, totally excited. "Did you know
that this place doesn't have gutters?" he said.
    "What?" I said, confused.
    "Outside! It has a rain dispersal
system."
    This didn't make me any less confused.
"A what?"
    "It's a way to get the water off a
roof without using channels and spouts. The rain runs down into
these panels which then sort of flings it out over the yard as
droplets."
    This was exactly the kind of thing I
was talking about. This cool house with that amazing view, and
Gunnar notices the gutters?
    "I can't wait to see how it works in
the rain!" Gunnar said.
    "Well, we're sort of hoping it doesn't
rain this weekend," I said, a little pointedly, "because it's,
like, our wedding?"
    "Oh, yeah, right," Gunnar said, but he
still looked totally excited.
    As he talked, I
thought: Don't tell Gunnar anything about
Amazing, Washington. I could see him
becoming completely obsessed with the mystery of where everyone
went.
    "It's perfect," Min was
saying, and she really did mean the house. "And that is an incredible view."
    Min was sort of the opposite of
Gunnar. She was this small Asian woman who made a huge impression,
right from the beginning. She reminded me of one of those photos
you see of a raccoon taking on a grizzly bear. She was incredibly
smart, but more than anything, she had this air of authority about
her. That was part of the reason why Kevin and I had chosen her to
be the officiant at our wedding on Sunday — that and the fact that
she was one of our closest friends. She'd registered online and
everything, and Kevin and I already had the marriage certificate,
so all we needed was for Min to sign it. We didn't even need to
have an actual ceremony if we didn't want to, although that would
have left us with some pretty annoyed guests on Sunday.
    "Thanks," I said to Min.
"So how are you?"
    "Freaking out about the election, for
one thing. Are people crazy or just stupid? After all this time, is
it really possible that they don't understand what's at
stake?"
    "I've already told her," Ruby said to
me, "no politics this weekend."
    I smiled. "It's fine. She's among
freaked-out friends."
    "Oh!" Min said. "Ruby, this is Russel.
And Kevin! I keep forgetting you guys haven't actually met
yet."
    "Nice to meet you, Ruby," Kevin said
from the other side of the room. "Hi, Min. Hi, Gunnar."
    "Hi," I said to Ruby, shaking her
hand.
    It's probably sexist to describe a
woman as looking like an Amazonian warrior, but that's what I
thought seeing Ruby. It wasn't only that she was tall and athletic
(but she was), or that she had dark skin (Latina?), or that she had
a no-nonsense haircut and wasn't wearing makeup. It was that there
was a fearlessness about her, like she was unconquerable, with also
maybe just the tiniest touch of crazy in her eyes.
    This made me smile. When it came to
who Min was dating, I never knew what to expect.
    I was getting Gunnar, Min, and Ruby
settled into their rooms when the doorbell rang again, and it
occurred to me that this must be part of living on an island:
things happen in waves, because of the coming and going of the
ferries.
    "Nate!" I heard Kevin say. This was
one of Kevin's best friends, his roommate from college. I'd never
met