Before my father died, I remember singing.

When morning arrives, I depart the hotel and make my way back to the interstate. Right as I merge onto I-5 on my way out of Eugene, I see a shooting range off the highway, with a billboard towering above it asking, “Do you have defensible space around your home?”

Like anyone born between 1973 and 1989, my decision-making skills were heavily influenced by Oregon Trail, an educational video game in which the player leads his family of five on the titular journey westward in 1848. I spent days in my elementary school’s computer lab, absorbing all the knowledge the game had to impart, but […]

The phone in my hotel room rings just before 11 a.m., and the front desk agent on the other end informs me that Maurice awaits my presence. As I scramble down to the lobby, it occurs to me that I have no idea if I’ll recognize Maurice Newman, Esq., whom I haven’t seen since a […]

On January 15th, U.S. Air Flight 1549 left New York’s LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, with continuing service to Seattle. Famously, that flight failed to reach either of its destinations—that flight didn’t even successfully leave New York City. Moments after takeoff, it struck a flock of geese, destroying both of the plane’s engines. With […]

I have a little secret to confess, and now seems like as good a time as any: I am going to die.

The roadside signs in rural Texas read “Speed Limit: ‘We don’t care,’” or at least, that’s how I interpret them. Officially, signs declare a maximum of 80 miles per hour, but this strikes me as an arbitrarily large number put there because the signs can’t actually declare indifference.

“Bop-bah! This is the sound of settling! Bop-bah! Bop-bah!”

The last time I visited my uncle Steve, my father was still alive.

Two days ago, I received a series of texts from an uncle on my mom’s side of the family asking me to swing through Memphis on this next leg of my journey. I will not be swinging through Memphis.

Yesterday, my car’s odometer ticked past the 3,000 mile mark on this trip, which means it needs an oil change. Fortunately, I am in a major American city, where getting my car’s oil changed should simply require locating the nearest chain car maintenance location. Unfortunately, I am in a major American city in the South […]

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck, I think, far too early in the morning for this sort of thing. My car is going to explode.

The drive out of Atlanta begins on the proverbial heels of a Honda Accord from Shelby County, Tennessee, the county in which Memphis resides, and I wonder to myself if I’d know the owner of the car. It seems unlikely, but in my experience, that actually makes it probable.

Yesterday, Kathy spoke of how her husband’s murder brought her back to her faith, how she found solace in the church and felt a debt to it afterwards. While I suppose this is a common sentiment—my understanding of the appeal of religion is that it allows people to confront the scarier elements of the world—I’ve […]

A short metro ride carries me from my hotel to Arlington National Cemetery, our nation’s most hallowed ground. A military graveyard built on Robert E. Lee’s estate in the aftermath of the Civil War, Arlington marks the final resting place for more than 300,000 people who served our country, including Presidents Kennedy and Taft, and […]

My friends and I have spent an inordinate amount of time debating the qualifications for someone saying they have visited a place—I come down firmly in the “airports don’t count” camp. As such, I have never previously visited Michigan.

Yesterday afternoon, after I reached Ann Arbor, I received an email from a woman named Teresa Smith confirming that she could speak today about her sister, Pamela, which means that this detour was not in vain. My morning drive takes me westward once more.

Since Austin, I have suspected that this road trip may be too long. Granted, it’s basically the length I always expected it to be—I’m surprised that I’m exactly on schedule so far—but I didn’t anticipate the effects that it’s had on me: the exhaustion, the aching right leg, the mental meandering. This whole time, I’ve […]

Syracuse, New York never mattered to me. I lived far away from this Rust Belt town, knowing little about it aside from the tragedy that its namesake university and I shared. This place never registered for me, with the exception of maybe a week of my senior year of high school, when I considered applying […]

My present situation, in three words: Scott awaiting Scot.

Twenty years ago, this story began in a New Jersey town called Morristown, where today will end.

I spend more time than I should probably admit thinking about alternate universes.

Many people have that former significant other whom they broke up with not for one big reason, but a thousand little ones. Time passes, and despite knowing that the relationship was far from perfect, they place it on a pedestal as their romantic ideal. Whenever their current relationship sours, they go back and think Oh, […]

Three weeks ago, my father’s best friend told me how he knew another man on the same plane as my dad, a cruel twist of fate. The odds seem slim enough for any two people I know, who don’t know each other, to be on the same plane at all. To be murdered in that […]

I was a precocious child, even if I didn’t know the word: I read my first book before my second birthday, learned Chess from my father soon after, and, over the course of several family visits to New York’s museums, decided that Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night was my favorite painting. And I loved the […]

Four months have passed since I last set foot in a synagogue, a streak which I would prefer was far longer. Every time I leave a house of worship, I hope that it will be the last time I ever set foot in one, and so far, every time I have thought that, my hopes […]

Morning brings good tidings, a rare experience for a night owl like myself. When I awaken in my 18th hotel room of this trip, I discover that a) floor tickets for tonight’s Bruce Springsteen show at TD Banknorth Garden are selling for below face value, and b) the Red Sox just released a batch of […]

I was born on September 17th, 1983. I first crossed paths with death three days later.

Intellectually, I know that Marcia and Bill Scanlon have not always resided on Cedar Street in Wakefield, Massachusetts. I know that Aunt Marcia, my father’s older sister, grew up in the same home on Richardson that my father did, but I’ve seen no evidence of this. For the entirety of my lifetime, every visit to […]

I do not believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in the supernatural, in vampires or poltergeists or sasquatches. I don’t believe that things exist unless I have some evidence that they do, and this includes ghosts. But there are ghosts in Boston.

Before my hotel room’s phone rings with a wake-up call, I’m already conscious and exhausted. It took hours for me to fall asleep last night, as the euphoria of the Red Sox walk-off win hung in the air long after I returned to my hotel room and exchanged Facebook messages with the friend who’s gotten […]

A couple hours after I left my father’s grave, I pulled off the highway in Connecticut and into the parking lot of a roadside diner. Something happened in there. I don’t remember what. After lunch, I walked back out to the Pacifica, climbed into the front seat, and reached into a cup holder for the […]