“What are they going to do?” Kayla asks, around a breathy laugh. “Make it stop snowing?”

“We wish,” I say.

“In normal circumstances, they’d provide an alternate vehicle,” Josh says.

Brecken snorts. “Not happening.”

“I need to report the wreck at least,” Harper says. “I’m not even sure we should drive this.”

Brecken sighs. “Unless we want to jog across the Poconos, I think we’re stuck with it.”

I don’t have anything to add, because I’m pretty sure Brecken is right. No one is going to be available, and there isn’t a magic wand that’s going to poof us onto safe, dry roads. We took our chances and now we’re paying for it.

Regardless, Harper is insistent about the call. She keeps her phone to her ear, grumbling about a twenty-minute wait for the customer service rep.

Not half a mile down from the highway, a gas station appears, but it is not the gleaming, neon-encased complex I hoped for. Four pumps line the front of a run-down service station. The building is bigger than most stations, making me wonder if there was a garage component at some point in the past. Now, the whole thing looks like a store, though I can’t be sure because most of the large front windows are cluttered with marketing posters for beer and cigarettes and signs advertising live bait and camping supplies.

My confidence in clean bathrooms isn’t high, but whatever. It’s a gas station and it’s open. It could offer an outhouse in the back of the lot, and I’d have zero complaints.

It’s also hopping. There are at least twelve cars parked in the unplowed lot and more at the pumps. There are people everywhere—travelers in puffy coats assessing cars, making calls, doling out snacks to bored-looking kids of every age. Most of the cars are sporting some kind of damage. It runs the gamut, from scraped bumpers to a Ford with the entire right side smashed in. One has lost the front and back bumpers entirely. A few fortunate travelers are dealing with more mundane issues like iced windshield wipers and empty washer fluid compartments. Gauging from the maps and phone navigation systems I see around, others are just trying to figure out how to get wherever they’re going.

I stare at a wrecked Toyota near the entrance to the lot, its side-view mirror dangling like a sad earring.

“How bad are these roads?” I ask. I try for a search on my phone, but I have zero service.

“Record-breaking,” Josh says, then he hands me his phone. “According to the news reports, there are two pileups on I-80. One is thirty-two cars, the other is twenty-one.”