“Z?”
I closed my eyes, briefly. It was the end of the world, or at least it felt like that, and yet I could still feel the pang of annoyance rip through me. There was something seriously wrong with me that I couldn’t keep a hold of my perspective. “What, Ash?”
“You should get in the backseat with me.”
I whirled around to face him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
A small smirk appeared on his face. “That’s not what I meant. But I’m interested in seeing where your mind was going with that.” I stared at him for a moment not blinking, and he relented. “I just meant that it’s probably much safer here in the backseat, where there are tinted windows, and you’re not so obvious.”
I squirmed, trying to work through this surprising logic. “Fine,” I said, giving in. “But don’t touch me.” I climbed over the passenger seat, my gun firmly strapped around my waist, and flopped into the seat next to Ash.
There were at least fifteen minutes of silence before Ash spoke up. There was only so long he could stay still. I could already see his knees bouncing up and down, his fingers tapping on his legs. “So what’s the deal with your mom?”
“What do you mean?” I said, looking out the window. I was amazed at the quiet of the forest. You could hear the cars driving by; a very faint sound in the distance but there was no other movement. No animal sounds, nothing. It was very weird.
“You have fought tooth and nail NOT to go to Nebraska, even though it is honestly the safest place for us to be, and I just want to know why.” Ash shrugged, stretching his legs out in front of him and encroaching on what little space I had in front of me.
“Yeah, it’s not really your business, is it?” I said, kicking his legs out of my way. They didn’t budge an inch.
“Come on, Z. We’re stuck in this car, okay? We can’t go anywhere, and we can’t talk to anyone but each other. I don’t want to think about what just happened back home, and I know you don’t want to think about your dad out there alone,” Ash said. “I’m bored, and I’m going out of my mind. I need a distraction.”
I blew out a raspberry, content in the sound that it made echoing in the car. “Agh, all right, fine.” I turned to face him, flinging my outstretched legs over his lap. If he was going to take up this entire car, then so was I. “My parents separated when I was ten years old and were divorced by the time I was eleven.”
“Yeah, I remember that,” Ash said. “That’s not new information.”
“You asked me a question and I’m trying to answer it, okay? Can you maybe not interrupt me?” I said, throwing my hands up.
“Okay, okay, sorry,” he said, calmly, smiling a little.
“As I was saying,” I continued, giving him a pointed look. “My parents separated when I was ten. And I don’t know, they sat me down like they had watched some parenting videos that taught them how to break the news to their kid. It was all staged, nothing like my parents at all. I had kind of known for a while that things weren’t right. After my granddad died when I was about eight, my dad threw himself into work. He was gone all the time, and then my mom started being gone all the time.”
“But I didn’t notice. I was a kid so I just didn’t even see it. I was so wrapped up in my stupid books that I couldn’t look up for a moment to see that there was something wrong. So when they told me they had ‘grown apart’ and that they still ‘loved me very much no matter what,’ I just thought, I don’t know, I thought it was my fault.” I paused for a moment, swallowing hard.
“Zoey, it wasn’t your fault,” he said, scooting closer to me.
I glared at him and continued on. “Then my mom decides that she’s going to move back to Nebraska, back to the house that she grew up in. Her parents had died in a car accident when I was about four, and the house just sat there while she was here in New York. And then began the battle of ‘who gets Zoey.’”
I laughed, but there was no real humor in it. I wasn’t sure when I would laugh again, for real. “And it was a battle, no lie. When they weren’t fighting with me on the merits of Nebraska versus New York or the schools or the neighborhood, they would try to win my favor. My dad would take me to Mets games or take me to the Natural History Museum or buy me ‘real New York pizza.’” I made air quotes sarcastically. “Did you know that’s why I got Bandit? My mom thought New York was a terrible place for a dog, so she tried to convince me that a dog was worth moving to Nebraska. God, it was awful.”