“There is always that,” he says.

“Thanks, Papa Bear.”

“Always.” He pulls away and raises his voice again. “Now get out of here so I can turn your room into an office.”

“You better not touch my stuff,” I warn him. “If I come back and anything is missing, I will burn you to the ground.”

He rolls his eyes, but I see the little smile on his face as he brushes past me. He stands next to Otter, who watches him with a goofy smile on his face, like he’s not fooled by any of this bluster. And he’s probably not.

“What?” Bear snaps at him.

“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all.” He wraps his arm around my brother’s shoulders and pulls him close.

“And on that note,” I say.

It’s weird, really. Driving away. For some reason, as I watch the Green Monstrosity and Bear and Otter shrink in the rearview mirror, I get a little lump in the back of my throat. It feels like I’m driving away for a lot longer than a week. Part of me almost wants to go back and hide behind Bear and Otter. But that’s not what I need.

It’s only a week. Nothing’s going to change during that time. Everything will be the same when I get back. I’ll figure out what to do with this mess of a life then.

Ten minutes later, as I turn the SUV south toward the desert fifteen hundred miles away, Corey starts snoring in the background, and I say what I should have said sometime during the past two weeks, what little I’ve seen him. “Thanks.”

Dominic looks out the passenger window out to the ocean. It looks like a storm is coming in off the water. “For what?”

“Our story.”

A pause. Then, “You’re welcome.”

I can’t find anything else to say.

Yeah. Nothing’s going to change at all.

TWO DAYS later, I’m trying to understand just how it is that people can live in Arizona.

“It’s all flat and boring,” I say morosely, staring out the window as Kori drives through the outskirts of Tucson. Dom’s asleep in the backseat. I’ll have to wake him up soon. “Where the hell are all the trees? I don’t think it’s possible for people to live without close proximity to trees.”

“They’re right there,” she says, pointing out the window.

“That’s a cactus.” A very phallic one at that.

“Same thing.”

“You can’t hug a cactus.”

“You shouldn’t really be hugging trees, either. That’s just weird.”

What a sad woman Kori is. “When are we coming up to the unconstitutional checkpoint where, if I were any darker of skin, I’d probably be detained for being a suspected illegal immigrant even though there’s no proof?”

“I told you already, those aren’t really a real thing.”

“Oh, really?” I scoff at her. “Tell that to Jan Brewer, the evil head witch who runs this barren, treeless place.”

“I think her job title is actually ‘governor,’ not evil head witch.”