She’s looking at Kayla, who, of course, doesn’t answer. Harper reaches over me and nudges her. She isn’t gentle about it and Kayla’s eyes fly open. Her eyes roll, and something white crusts the corner of her mouth. She looks pale. Sick.

No. I remind myself that she isn’t sick. She’s on something.

“We need your phone,” Harper says.

“I don’t have a phone,” Kayla slurs.

“What do you mean you don’t have a phone?” Harper and Brecken ask at the exact same time.

“That’s bullshit!” Brecken adds.

“You went through my bag yourself, Richie Rich,” Kayla says, head lolling.

“What the hell is wrong with you, you little piece of—”

“Okay, stop.” Josh holds up his hands in a T for time-out “Everybody stop.”

“Let’s find a place to pull over,” I say. “We’ll see if any of our chargers will work. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Fine by me,” Brecken says, putting the car into drive and easing forward. “Somebody get that map out of the glove box. See if we can figure out where the hell we are. We can compare the highway numbers or whatever. Just get an idea.”

Josh opens the glove compartment, reaching for the map. His laugh is hollow. “You’ve got to be shitting me. It’s gone.”

Brecken reaches over, checking it himself. He swears. Then slams his palm against the dash.

“It was in there,” I say. “It has to be in there.”

“It’s not in there now,” Josh says.

I unbuckle and stand up, leaning between them to check for myself. Because I saw that map. I pulled it out and put it back and I know it was in there. I feel the top of the compartment, the places where the plastic is joined. The soft vinyl area in the back that allows it to open and shut.

“It’s gone.” I croak out the words.

I sit back down and I can tell I’m close to tears. My heart is going too fast. Thumping in a way I don’t like. This won’t stop. Why won’t this stop? Everyone starts yelling, and I cross my arms over my chest rocking gently back and forth in my seat.

I see a flash of my mother in the hospital doing this exact thing. We sat side by side in scratchy waiting room chairs while doctors delivered a litany of terrible news about Phoebe. Lesions. Nodules. Tumors. No longer singular, these terrible word bullets ended in s now. Plural versions of a tragedy. And my mother sat the way I’m sitting right now, stony-faced and rocking, her arms crossed tight over her middle. Like maybe she could hold in her insides as her universe blew apart.