But I have an answer for you, mon ami. I have a very good reason not to have googled it because, you see, I am a very practical person and the logic goes like this: I have to stay there all summer, no matter what. That’s the job. And the job is the only way I have to pay my freshman year room and board. So, if I don’t stay there, then I can’t go to college. And if I don’t go to college, then I have to go back to Nebraska.

And that is not acceptable.

Then I certainly will hurl myself off the nearest bridge.

Two women in pastel-flower prints gab away about one of their grandchildren and his insistence on playing hours and hours of Roblox and how her daughter is a fool to let her son turn his brain into oatmeal like that. This continues through all the dreaded video games that are corroding the minds of our youth. Minecraft. Roblox. Fortnite. Fortnite really seems to be the one freaking them out.

I pretend to study the menu up behind the counter in chalk on a black chalkboard. I guess they must change it every day. I see they’re out of split pea soup. That one is scribbled off.

I have never studied a menu so meticulously before.

Eggs. Scrambled. Hearty breakfast plate. Orange juice. Waffles. Pancakes. Flapjacks. What’s the difference between a flapjack and a pancake, anyway? Under the “Healthy Options” banner: Egg white scramble. Cottage cheese and fruit. Blech.

I notice something strange on the menu and let out a small laugh.

Frogs’ legs.

I know, I know, it’s absurd. Yes, there is a tiny piece of my brain that is wondering if the frog could have somehow, magically, been taken out of the jar back at the house, and is now on the menu. But that’s ridiculous.

I feel like I’m losing my mind. The waitress is chatting away with a not-so-bad-looking guy in a trucker hat. I mean, he’s not like a supermodel or anything . . . but for here . . . this place . . . pretty good.

That’s a funny thing I noticed, on the train out here from my sweet little hick town to the outskirts of Philadelphia . . . the looks get progressively less ruddy as you go east. The faces get more sallow, the noses get thinner, and the circles under the eyes get purple. I know it seems an odd thing, but there are a lot of people back home with parents from all those cold climes up north in the Old World. Names of my old classmates . . . things like Hesse, Krauss, Meier. First names like Lars, Svan, and Uli. I guess that’s just where they went to. Iowa. Wisconsin. Nebraska. Minnesota.

Maybe somehow those cold, punishing, below-zero winters and piles of snow felt like home to them. While everyone else scattered to sunnier climes.

And so everyone from Lincoln, Palmyra, and Kearney look sort of like extras in The Sound of Music. Von Trapp children. Von Trapp people. And now, getting closer to the east side of this continent, everyone looks more like the people you see on TV. Or in film. Not everyone has blond hair and a name like Lars.