By the time Joy inputted the address in her maps app and memorized the directions, Dylan had fallen asleep, passed out before Joy could remind him to buckle his seat belt. But he’d remembered. She gave his belt a gentle tug, satisfied that he was clipped in.

Dylan slept the entire two-and-a-half-hour drive, only briefly waking up when she’d turned into the bridge’s parking lot. He’d asked her to wake him when a black truck with a DESERT ADVENTURES logo arrived. He also told her to change into something more suitable for what he had planned. Workout clothes would be great, he offered.

Joy changed in the restroom, and when she returned, Dylan gently snored in the passenger seat. There was nothing else for her to do but wait. She rubbed her damp hands together, feeling amped and anxious. What did he have planned? She didn’t like being spontaneous, and it had been years since she was, not since the night she’d planned to meet Taryn at her family’s cabin so that they could hang out with Kevin. And because Judy had been on her mind so much lately, Joy was immediately swept back, drifting through memories of her sister’s last day. Memories she’d replayed in her head countless times, and they always ended the same.

With Judy dead and Joy alive. Sisterless.

This time the memories picked up right where she’d shut them down while waiting for Dylan to get onstage. She was back in the back seat of Judy’s car, hiding under the wool blanket, and trying not to puke as the Plymouth Belvedere lumbered around one hairpin curve after another.

They finally made it without Joy making a mess in the back seat. After Judy had parked her car and left for the party, and after Joy discovered that Taryn’s family never made it to the lake as planned and that she was locked out of their cabin, she realized she had to do something until she could duck back into Judy’s car before she left. She was starving, sticky with dried sweat from hiding under the blanket for almost an hour, and she had to pee. Desperately.

She ran down the street into Kevin’s yard and weaved through a crowd of drunk and stoned graduates. She stole into the house, around a corner, down a hallway, up the stairs, through another hallway, and slipped hopefully unseen into the first unoccupied bathroom she could find.

She peed, applied a fresh coat of guys’ deodorant she found in the medicine cabinet, and had just rinsed her face when someone knocked on the bathroom door.

Startled, Joy stared at her reflection.

“Joy? It’s Kevin.”