I look long and hard out the window. It’s easy to forget what winter means in Pennsylvania. Bad roads can do much worse than slow us down. And I’ve got several hundred miles of bad road to go.

Chapter Six

Zari: How goes it?

Me: How I’d imagine riding shotgun with Satan in the 9th level of hell.

Zari: That good?

Me: Keeps getting better.

Zari: Yikes.

Me: It’s fine. I just need to get home. Mom needs me.

Zari: We’ve all needed you.

I hesitate because my chest tightens up whenever Zari goes here. That’s the thing about moving across the country. You’re not there to fix the big blowout. And you’re not there for the new outfits or the is-this-flirting or the painful breakups. It’s just a weird, slow fade, and after a year and a half of so-so art school friends, I miss Zari. I miss having a best friend.

It’s making my stomach hurt, or maybe that’s the drive. Brecken changes lanes more than Harper, and it’s making me nauseous. I need to reply to Zari before I’m too sick to look at my phone at all.

Me: I have to go. Be home soon.

I pocket my phone and watch the snowy road slowly slip by. I could paint this. Some part of me wants to—all the blue-gray shadows and headlights glinting off silvery snow. And my focal point? Easy. Any one of the cars wedged into the ditches, flashers blinking and drivers cold and likely in for a long wait.

To his credit, Brecken is a good driver. He handles the road conditions with quiet, calm determination. We slide a couple of times, but Brecken’s focus and the car’s seemingly endless safety features keep us on track. Given the number of cars I’ve seen in ditches, I think we’re lucky.

I don’t know, maybe they’re right about the storm. It does look pretty bad here. But when is it ever better in the mountains? Daniel used to tell me all the time, when it gets bad in Pennsylvania, stay as far away from I-80 as you can.

Then again, Daniel used to tell me that he’d always be here for Mom and me, so what does he know?

When we get off the highway, the roads are much worse, slush spraying under our tires and the wipers bumping over a ridge of snow building up at the bottom of the windshield again. Brecken follows the signs through town to I-80, and every stop and start rolls through my middle unpleasantly. I’m getting carsick.