“I’m staying with my original vote,” Brecken says. “She’s not a poor terminally ill girl. Or if she is, she’s a poor, terminally ill junkie girl.”

“How would you know?” I ask.

“My whole family is full of doctors. Both of my parents. My uncles and older brother. He runs a recovery clinic for addicts, so he talks about it a lot.”

“Wow, I didn’t know you could learn medicine through osmosis,” Josh says, quiet but with a touch of bite to his tone.

“He said he’s studying medicine,” Harper defends.

“Can we talk about something else?” I ask. “Where are we?”

“On some bullshit county road that no one gives two craps about,” Brecken says. “I don’t know where the hell I’m going. Here, Mira, can you help?”

He thrusts his phone at me and I take it, ignoring the critically low battery warning. Our signal isn’t good, and the map loads one miserably slow inch at a time.

“I need a bigger road,” he says.

I nod. “I’m working on it. And your phone isn’t going to last.”

I trace the routes with my eyes, but there isn’t much that doesn’t snake us miles into the mountains before moving back to I-80 maybe only an exit or two from where they closed it. I shake my head. “Our best bet is to double back to Route 53, I think. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“So we double back,” Brecken says.

I cock my head. “Uh, except that gas station was on 53.”

Brecken shrugs. “They’re probably long gone.”

Josh clucks his tongue. “It feels risky.”

“That gas station had a sign that the clerk is armed,” I add. “I don’t want to be anywhere near that place again.”

“Stop being hysterical,” Brecken says. “Every backwoods gas station has a sign like that. And they’ve probably been home for the last hour. They’re likely a couple of beers in.”

Anger taps, white hot, at the center of my chest. “I’m not being hysterical,” I say. “The man ran to his truck and chased us.”

“I don’t want anyone feeling unsafe,” Harper says. “If Mira doesn’t want to go back, we don’t go back.”

Brecken stops in the middle of the road. I turn, but the headlights I spotted before are nowhere in sight. We’re alone for now.

“Why are you stopping?” Harper asks.

“I’m waiting for you to tell me what to do,” Brecken says. “If this snow gets much deeper, I’m not going to be able to see the road. We could end up driving off the side of a mountain.”

“We need a plowed road,” Harper says.

“Which means a major road,” Brecken replies. “All of these back roads are going to be slow going. Like ten miles an hour slow going.”