“I won’t.”

“Cool. Peace out girl.”

“Peace out mama,” Nakesha said, with a giggle on the end. I walked back to the car smiling wide, relieved to have my sister back in my corner.

THAT LAST MORNING had begun with us both on a high from the previous night. I wasn’t worried once we left Clearville. Seemed like the stretch of road was one big movie screen—and I was the star. How imagination filled the sky of open road. Yet our destination wasn’t my subject. Instead, I thought of the peaceful times: Grandma dressing me in bright yellow for Easter Sundays, Ma and Daddy in his cab, me and Nakesha walking home from school on a sunny day when no fights broke out. And Jewel—any time I had of her was enough. My thoughts merged with the open road until they became as tangible as the horizon now seemed, my extant memories persisted as day gave way to a night that would be thick with fog.

No one had told us about Pennsylvania, because we hadn’t asked. We hadn’t planned, we hadn’t thought, we hadn’t read, we hadn’t consulted others who had taken the trip before. We hadn’t taken the time to interpret the color gradations and sinewy lines on the maps, signs that would have alerted us to a thing or two about its geography. We hadn’t checked the weather. We didn’t know about the fog that would haunt us for a hundred miles before a windy snowstorm took its place. Like most people chasing dreams, we had just taken off without forethought or pretense. Raised betwixt Midwest plains, we knew nothing of hills and mountains so curvaceous we felt our stomachs plummet mile after mile. As soon as we crossed the Pennsylvania state line, we found ourselves at the peak of hills we didn’t even know we were on until we started going down, or looked to our side and saw jagged cliffs below. The weight of reality was an avalanche.