Page 11 of Places We've Never Been

I could tell my mom was considering his request, which I was dreading had something to do with bringing the Hutton children from their very much separate rolling box into ours. This could not happen. “No,” I said.

Ezra turned, his brows down. “Miss Positivity back there is voting against me?”

“What’s the proposal?”

“You didn’t even know what you were voting against? Nice.”

“I had an idea.”

“I had an idea too,” Ezra said. “A very good one.”

“I’ll think about it,” Mom said.

“Think about what?” I asked.

Ezra pointed at the RV on the road in front of us. Across the back windows was written1-800-im-4-rent. “Mom bus.” Then he pointed at the floor next to him. “Teen bus.”

“No,” I said again. “That’s a horrible idea. We need some alone time or we’ll get sick of each other. We haven’t seen them in years—maybe they’re all super annoying now.”

“Norah!” Mom said, her eyes shooting to mine in the rearview mirror.

“I mean, I’m sure they’re not. I’m just saying.”

“I’ll think about it,” Mom said again.

Great, my argument probably ended up helping Ezra’s cause.

***

For the record,I wanted to announce after a gas station stop, a sidebar with the moms, and a rearranging of passengers,I voted against this!Instead of saying it out loud, I just screamed it in my head as we climbed onto what Ezra had referred to as the teenbus.

“Does anyone else feel like our moms agreed to that way too easily?” Austin asked, which made me realize that he and Ezra had obviously hatched this plan back in our front yard several hours ago and were working the argument from both ends.

“Almost like someone used some cheat codes,” I mumbled, and went to the way back again, onto the large bed. I pulled out my flash cards to study.

Ezra and Austin were, of course, up front, Ezra driving, Austin shotgun. Skyler plopped down on the couch and stared at his phone, his familiar look of concentration coming onto his face.

“Don’t kill us!” I called out to Ezra as he merged onto the freeway.

“Look at this road, Nor. It would take serious skill to killyou.”

The road in front of us was a long black straight line that stretched out endlessly, it seemed, only stopping at the horizon. On either side of the road were miles and miles of flat desert, broken up by dry shrubs and the occasional Joshua tree.

“Is that why you were being so negative about this earlier?” he asked. “You’re scared of my driving?”

Skyler’s eyes popped up and collided with mine, as though suddenly interested in what I had to say.Yeah, that’s right, Skyler. I didn’t want you in our RV. How’s that for a crush?

I was not going to give him the satisfaction of explaining anything. “Yeah, something like that.”

Paisley sat next to Skyler and held up her phone. “Let’s finish our game.”

He smiled at her. “I thought you’d conveniently forget we were playing since I was crushing you so hard.”

“When are you going to learn not to gloat before it’s over?” she asked.

“I guess when you start winning more.”

She shoved his arm and laughed.