I spot two steaming cups in the console between us. I didn’t hear him stop to get them, but with the lack of sleep we got last night between finding a suitable hiding place and then waking every couple of hours to run the heat, I’m not surprised I slept through it.

“Yes, yes it will,” I say, gratefully clasping the warm cup in my hand.

Ash steals a look at me. “I take it prom is a good thing?” he asks.

For a moment I just stare at him, shocked that Ash, who seems to know everything about everything, doesn’t know what prom is. But then I realize that of course he doesn’t. He never went to a normal school, didn’t have normal friends, and probably never watched TV shows. Plus, I think it’s mostly an American thing.

“It’s a formal dance,” I say, taking a small sip of the delightfully hot coffee. “You get all decked out in fancy gowns and tuxes, rent a limo with your friends, and then dance to super-predictable songs in some themed venue. There’s always pictures beforehand in someone’s backyard with your parents telling you to stand near your date and then there’s a rager afterward where someone sneaks in alcohol and at least one person winds up puking in the bushes.”

Ash listens, amused by my description. I can’t help but think it probably sounds like nonsense to him. “I always wondered what regular school was like,” he says, and I give him a questioning look.

“You did?”

“Of course,” he says, and takes a sip of his coffee.

It baffles me that this confident, model-esque expert strategist ever gave a second thought to something as mundane as high school. “Mostly it’s painfully early classes and a bunch of teens taking their angst out on each other. You’re not missing much.”

“I’ve also never been to the movies,” he says.

“Never ever?” I say with a heaping of dramatic shock.

Ash shakes his head.

“Oh man. Emily would have a field day with you,” I say, and realize this is the first conversation in a long time where I feel somewhat like my old self. I look at Ash. “You know what? When this is all over, we’re having movie night, and we’ll watch all the high school classics. When the night is over, you’ll know more about American high school than you ever wanted to.” I pause. “So you didn’t go to the movies and you didn’t go to a regular school—what did you do?”