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“He didn’t put it like that.”
“That is exactly what he did.”
The pump clicks off. I don’t move. “Yeah,” I say. “Well.”
Maddie doesn’t say anything for a full minute. Which is, for Maddie, a record. She drinks her terrible coffee and looks at the side of my face that’s getting wind burn.
Finally, she says, “He’s an ass.”
A laugh comes out of me. A sharp, broken one, the kind that wasn’t supposed to make it past my teeth. And then, before I can put the lid back on, my eyes are full, and my throat is closing, and a hot wet line streams down my cheek at a gas station parking lot in the middle of Washington state with a sign that says WE HAVE WORMS.
Maddie reaches over and takes my hand, the one that isn’t holding the coffee. She just holds it. Tight. “Yeah,” she says, after a minute. “I’m sorry.”
I wipe my face with my hoodie sleeve, which is gross, and I don’t care. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
I nod. She squeezes my hand, then pulls me into a hug. The pump beeps at me, but we just stand in the wind for another minute, holding each other.
Back on the road, the country goes from brown to green in a long gradient. Pine trees start showing up again. Then more pine trees.
Maddie puts her feet up on the dashboard, which she knows I hate, and I don’t say anything about it, which she knows means I love her.
“Remember the fort?” she says after a while.
“The summer one. With the sheets.”
“Three days, Zoe. We refused to come inside for three days. We made Mom bring us peanut butter sandwiches on a tray.”
“We had a rope.”
“We had a rope! We pulled the tray in with the rope!”
“And then you spilled the lemonade and Mom said no more tray service.”
“Tyranny.”
“I think about that fort a lot, actually. Like, structurally. It was an impressive build.”
“It was the best fort. I’m telling you. We peaked. We were six and nine, and we peaked.”
I laugh, and it’s the kind that uses my whole stomach.
“Do you remember the bracelet?” she says, after a beat.
“Maddie.”
“I was eight, Zo.”
“You hid the broken pieces in a shoebox. For two years.”
“I was scared!”
“You CONFESSED in the church parking lot.”
“I had a religious experience! I felt guilty!”
“You felt guilty because Mom was about to find the shoebox, and you knew it.”
