I relax a little. I’d been worried about this. I probably have nineteen dollars in my account right now, so unless I break out Mom’s emergency credit card, and God knows this qualifies, I can’t pay for much. And if I use the emergency card, she’ll know exactly where I am. I can just imagine the level of panic that will descend on Beltzhoover if she finds out I’m near I-80, land of today’s record-breaking pileups. I flip through my wallet and realize I do have a little cash. Not that sixteen dollars is going to change the world, but it’s something.

I would have asked Dad for more cash, except I thought this would be a one-layover flight home. I check my watch with a sigh. It’s going to be dark soon. By now I should be landed, home, and settled at the table with a giant bowl of noodles and ham. Of course this year there won’t be noodles. Daniel made the noodles.

Hell, who cares. Even the divorce is just a thing to move past. Worse things have happened in our world than a couple splitting up. It would be okay if I could just get home.

At the least, we could sit and watch the Thanksgiving Day parade. Mom always records it, and it feels a little silly watching it on Christmas Eve, but since I usually spend Thanksgiving out with Dad, she keeps it every year for me. And we get around to watching it when we’re fed up with cheesy Christmas movies. Maybe we’d be planning some of our other traditions. The bowling trip. Christmas lights and hot cocoa. An all-nighter of baking and board games. We used to do so much with Phoebe. It’s all different now.

I’m not sure what we’ll do when I get there. The only thing that’s certain is standing in this nasty gas station in the middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, makes me desperate to be home for Christmas morning.

Kayla barrels down another aisle, not even looking up at me. She heads outside, but Harper stops her at the door. From my angle, I can still see Kayla’s red-rimmed eyes and limp hair.

“I really hope she’s not sick,” I tell Josh. “She’s been shaky and sweaty most of the trip.”

“She’s probably just catching up on sleep,” he says. “She seems okay. A little tired, I guess.”

“A little?”

I laugh and he half-smiles, his eyes fixed on me in a way that I might like if I wasn’t an anxious wreck, trapped in the middle of a snowstorm. If he was a little nicer, I could easily stumble into a temporary crush.

“Something on your mind?” he asks, smiling like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.