“A tollbooth collector cop?” I whisper so as not to alarm Milton. “Is that really possible?”

“What do you think, Lucas?” Robin answers harshly. She swivels to face forward but angles the rearview mirror so she can continue to scrutinize the traffic behind us.

What do I think? I think butterflies were originally called flutterbys until someone with dyslexia got involved. But what if she’s right? Said toll collector’s skin did look plastic. Is he, at this very moment, issuing an all-points bulletin? Attention, units! Be on lookout for suspected dope fiend. Glassy-eyed. Straight brown hair past shoulders. Last seen headed west on Mass Pike in brightly painted psychedelic microbus!

We’d be hard to miss.

Arms crossed tightly, Robin peers into the rearview mirror for a convoy of flashing cherry tops. This is bad. What if I’ve done something that will jeopardize her future? Idiot. Idiot. IDIOT! Unlike me, her life has direction, purpose, a goal. She starts at Middlebury in the fall, plans to major in environmental studies and international relations. I’ve never heard of either, but they sound important.

If you look at your surroundings,

Is that environmental studies?

If you have cousins in France,

Are they international relations?

“See anything?” I ask.

No answer. My queen is royally ticked.

Moron. Moron. MORON! You only have a few hours left with her, and look what you’ve done. What if she’s right and we get pulled over? What if they ask me to walk in a straight line? Even worse, what if they ask me to think in a straight line?

Time to engage in emergency fence mending: “I . . . I love you so much. And I know I’m not always right about things, but . . . he really didn’t strike me as a cop, babe.”

Robin’s eyes leave the rearview mirror. Her face softens. She sighs with exasperation. “Oh, Lucas, like you could really tell anything right now.”

Out in the distance, the famous presidents have given way to pulsating purplish jellyfish clouds with long gray and blue tendrils. So far, no sirens have wailed, nor lights flashed, in pursuit of Captain Lucas and crew. No plastic-faced tollbooth narcotroopers have parachuted out of Lockheed C-130s overhead. In the back, Milton’s snores sound like a turboprop struggling to gain altitude. When they picked him up back in Cambridge, he said he’d been awake for the past thirty-six hours writing a paper on the impact of microprocessor chipsets on the future of space travel. (Say what?) In the seat beside Captain Lucas, Robin tilts her head back and gazes upward, where, next to the dome light, is taped an R. Crumb cartoon of Mr. Natural saying, “The whole universe is completely insane.”

“Lucas, can I ask you a question?” she asks.

Uh-oh, sounds like trouble. “I’m an open book.”

“A stranger comes out of nowhere and offers you LSD and you just take it?”