Page 37 of Here We Go Again

Rosemary huffs and shoves the dog’s leash in Logan’s face. At least one of them had the sense to pack a roadside emergency kit. She hunts around for the bright yellow jack, along with one of those bolt remover things the internet said she would need in this situation.

“Okay. Step one!” Joe tries to explain blindly. “You need to get the car up on the jack.”

Rosemary’s patience is already frayed, so she pulls out her phone to google how to change a tire, and that’s when she notices the weather widget on her home screen. It’s ninety-two degrees in Kanab, Utah.

But that…

That can’t be right.

Her phone also says it’s a little after two in the afternoon, which means they shouldn’t be in Utah anymore. They should have entered Wyoming hours ago. Joe is shouting directions at Logan, who is hunched down in the gravel trying to position the car jack while holding the dog leash and shouting things back, but Rosemary tunes them both out. She finally takes in the full picture oftheir surroundings. The freeway is bracketed by plateaus of red rock, stretches of scrub brush fields, desert.

They’re in the fucking desert.

It’s true she’s never been to Wyoming before, but she’s pretty sure it doesn’t look like Mars. Logan does a triumphant dance once she gets the car raised on the jack. “Where are we?” Rosemary demands, and the dance quickly desists. Logan’s expression is unreadable from behind her sunglasses.

She clenches her teeth and speaks through the jaw pain. “Where. The fuck. Are we?”

Logan stands up and wipes her dirty hands on the front of her tropical shirt. “Don’t freak out,” Logan starts, “but we took a little detour.”

“You didwhat?”

Logan’s arm flails toward the van. “It was Joe’s idea!”

“Oh, very classy,” Joe calls back. “Throw the dying man under the Gay Mobile!”

Rosemary spins around and sees Joe looking fake innocent beneath his Pendleton blanket. “Joseph Miguel Delgado,” she hisses. “Where are we going?”

He coughs into his handkerchief like he’s trying to remind her he’s enfeebled. “The Grand Canyon.”

She has no problem yelling at an enfeebled man. “The Grand Canyon inArizona?”

“Pretty sure there’s only one,” Logan pipes in.

Rosemary’s jaw is about to crack from clenching it so tightly. “That is not a detour. That’s a thousand miles in thewrong direction!”

Logan tries to insert herself between Rosemary and Joe. “Come on, Hale. He’s never seen the Grand Canyon before, and he wants to see some cool shit before he dies. I mean, look at that face.”

Joe quickly arranges his features into something both pitiful and angelic.

“How could I say no to that face?”

“Because the Grand Canyon issouth, and we’re supposed to be drivingeast! We’re supposed to be in Wyoming! I made a binder! I mapped out our entire journey!”

“I think there’s a lesson to be learned here about overpreparing.”

Rosemary is going to strangle Logan. For real this time.

She lunges, but Odysseus thinks it’s a game, so he leaps up onto her, paws landing painfully against her chest so he can lick her face. She screams on the side of the road in Kanab, Utah.

“No fighting while we’re driving!” Logan tells her when she stops.

“We’re not driving! Because you got a flat tire!”

Logan grimaces. “Yes, okay. Fair point. But come on, Hale. It’s an adventure!”

“Turn us around. We’re going to Cheyenne.”

Logan pushes her sunglasses up into her bun and has the audacity to say, “No. No, we’re not turning around.”