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“No thanks. I’m good, really.”

Shrugging, I climbed in behind the wheel. Finn slid in and put his cup of lemonade into the center cup holder. A glance at the sky indicated the clouds were thickening, and there was an unmistakable smell of moisture in the air. The weather wasn’t necessarily my biggest concern this week, but it added to the oppressive feeling. Elvis, perhaps sensing a shift in our mood, tried to perk us up.

“Hey, Lexi, heard any good jokes lately?” he asked.

I considered and then remembered the one I’d overheard one of my interns, Wally, telling Gwen’s younger sister, Angel.

“Actually, I have,” I said as I pulled out of the restaurant parking lot. “Schrödinger and Heisenberg get pulled over by a cop for speeding. The cop asks, ‘Do you know how fast you were going?’ Heisenberg replies, ‘No, because we knew exactly where we were.’ Thinking this was suspicious the cop searches the car and then asks them to pop the trunk. He returns to the window and says, ‘Did you know that you have a dead cat in your trunk?’ Schrödinger replies, ‘Well, we couldn’t be sure until someone looked.’ They were both promptly arrested.”

There was a moment of silence, and then several groans and some laughter. I grinned, pleased with the response. Finn, whose sunglasses were hooked on the front of his shirt, gave me a significantly pained look, which made me even happier.

Then Basia started to giggle in the back seat. She made little giggles at first, which soon turned into a big, gulping snorts until suddenly she was laughing so hard, she was gasping for air. Gwen and Elvis started laughing at her.

“It wasn’tthatfunny Basia,” Elvis said, smacking her on the arm.

“Oh yes it was. I have no idea what it even means, but watching you guys chortle at something only three percent of the population might get is the most hilarious thing I’ve seen in a long, long time.”

Something about the look on Elvis’s or Gwen’s face must have set Basia off again as she laughed even harder until she suddenly rasped, “Oh. No. I think I’m going to throw up.”

“What?” I exclaimed from the front seat. “My joke made you sick?”

Alarmed, I looked for a spot to pull over, but there was absolutely no shoulder on the rural road. There were cars behind me, and vehicles in the oncoming lane. I just couldn’t stop.

“I think there’s a plastic tote I used for shopping yesterday on the floor back there, Elvis. See if you can find it.” I opened all the windows in the car, hoping a blast of fresh air might help Basia feel better.

It didn’t work.

“Hurry,” Basia rasped. “I’m going to be sick. I mean it.”

Elvis frantically rustled around in the back seat. “Here it is.”

Basia yanked the bag out of his hands just in time to hurl into it. I’m not talking about a lightweight barf—this was industrial-strength projectile vomit—combined with subsequent gagging noises.

Some people say sympathetic vomiting is psychological, but I disagree. There is strong scientific evidence that while sympathetic vomiting may be a physiological response to one of the most foul-smelling scents in the world, other scientists believe sympathetic vomiting developed as a survival trait in primates. When one primate got sick, possibly from eating something poisonous, the entire group started vomiting since they probably ate it, too. I believed my sympathetic vomiting was a deep-seated instinct rooted in evolution. At least that was my story, and I was sticking to it.

As Basia vomited into the bag, my hands began to shake as my stomach squeezed uncomfortably. We were still about five minutes out from Bluff House. There was still no place for me to pull off and there was no way I was going to make it without hurling in tandem with her.

Finn must have been looking at my face and intuited my internal struggle. “Focus, Lexi. Just think about the driving and ignore what’s happening in the back seat.”

Was that possible? The sounds of Basia retching again were now accompanied by Gwen gasping. “Give me that bag!” Gwen rasped and added another bass voice to the thoracic choir.

That was the final straw. I began to gag when Finn abruptly picked up his cup of lemonade and tossed it into my lap. I yelped as icy liquid hit me and almost lost control of the car. By the time I had regained control of the car and my wits, the retching moment had passed. For the moment.

“You’re welcome,” Finn said, leaning his own head out the window.

“Thanks,” I offered weakly as Elvis grabbed the bag in the back seat and promptly made his contribution.

The stench was horrific. I barely managed to hold it together until the police checkpoint came into view. In the back seat, I could hear Basia and Gwen giggling and gagging.

Had they completely lost it?

I pulled to a stop. Two cops, one on each side of us, bent down to look inside the front windows.

At that exact moment, Finn said something like “urrp,” leaned out the window, and tossed his crab cakes on the ground, likely splashing the boots of the astonished policeman, who jumped back in horror.

“I see we started the partying a little early today.” The cop outside my window had safely stepped back and looked at us with a frown of disapproval.

That elicited howls of laughter from Gwen and Basia. I tried to reassure the officer, but it wasn’t looking good, especially given I was driving a car full of sick people and the two girls in the back were laughing themselves silly again.