The concrete monstrosities of the city were manufactured, man-made structures that could not compete with the threatening brilliance of nature. I had never seen a mountain, let alone looked down from one. I was overwhelmed and overcome with my own smallness in the middle of sky-high trees and steadily rising altitudes. People fell quickly out of project windows; way up here I wouldn’t do anything but flutter, giving me extra minutes I didn’t need to think about what was going to happen when I finally hit the ground. Rasul was just as jolted as I was, but there was no way he was going to show it. Especially not after the show he had thought he put on that night. He was the first to suggest we stop, for cigarettes no less. I didn’t want anything but to get to NYC. I put in my favorite CD—What’s the 411—but even that couldn’t calm my nerves.

“I think we should get a hotel room again tonight,” I suggested, as the snow picked up. It wasn’t until we needed the windshield wipers that we figured out they weren’t working. Rasul had to pull over a couple of times to wipe the windows with a T-shirt he had gotten from the trunk. I had noticed a furrow of worry in his brow, but last night had him pumped up and feeling like a man.

“Naw, ’cause that’s gonna be another hundred dollars when you add in the bribe,” he said. “We gonna need that dough when we get to New York.”

I decided to let him be the man and get the last word.

“I think we can make it tonight. Maybe round midnight, but we gonna get there.”

I shook my head, but I knew I wasn’t going to sleep no matter how much my head pounded or my eyes strained.

LOOKING BACK, SEEING the first deer should have made us pull over. The hotels and rest stops were scarce now, not at all like on the Midwestern interstate. Around eight we had gone an hour without seeing one bathroom, and I had to go so bad I was squirming and almost got my butt out on the side of the road.

“Damn, this shit like The Shining,” Rasul had joked, referring to the wooded surroundings that appeared eerily within minutes after leaving Ohio behind. It seemed like even the cars had disappeared. But I wasn’t in the mood to giggle about these strange, surreal surroundings. I was a city girl. I was out of my element. I figured we were now closer to New York than Chicago, so I wasn’t about to turn around. But I would definitely stop. Aunt Jewel wouldn’t leave us stranded in the middle of Pennsylvania. She would come get us if we couldn’t make it out of this maze.