Page 97 of Places We've Never Been

I lay in my bunk, staring at the ceiling, listening to the heavy breathing of sleep echoing through the RV all around me but unable to sleep myself. All sorts of theories about my mom, each worse than the last, were circling in my mind. It was making my head feel heavy. Plus, my throat was dry; all that walking today had left me dehydrated. It didn’t help that Ezra’s phone had buzzed three times in the last five minutes.

I slid down from my bunk and my bare feet landed on the laminate flooring. I gently pulled back Ezra’s curtain. “Silence your phone, idiot,” I whispered. He didn’t answer, apparently asleep while his phone was being a menace.

I reached over him and patted the mattress by his head until my hand hit the cold glass. I picked up his phone and it immediately pulled back, tethered to the wall by a charging cord. The screen lit up with the movement, though, and I saw the preview of the three messages I’d heard from my bunk. They were all from a contact he’d labeledBunny.Two of the messages were just emojis that, out of context, made no sense. But the third was half a sentence:If you hate it so much, then when you get home…

“Couldn’t sleep?” a soft voice said from my right.

I jumped, nearly dropping the phone.

“You scared me,” I whispered in Skyler’s direction.

“Sorry.”

I returned Ezra’s phone, then walked the ten steps past the foldout couch where Skyler lay, hands behind his head, to the fridge. Three night-lights—one on the wall, one shining fromthe open door of the bathroom, and one above the sink—lit my way. I found a cold bottle of water. I opened the bottle and downed half of it.

“Did I wake you up?” I said softly.

“No, I can’t sleep either. Ezra’s phone keeps buzzing.”

“I know. I tried to turn it to sleep mode but it was locked.” I heard Ezra shift in his bed before his breaths became even again so I lowered my voice even more and said, “Hopefully Bunny is done texting.”

“What?” he said.

I sat on the edge of his bed and repeated myself.

“Bunny? Is that her real name?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

His next sentence was too quiet for me to hear.

“What?” I asked, inching closer.

He smiled and pulled me by the hand toward him. I moved onto my side and he adjusted his pillow, offering to share, like we had millions of times in the past.

I shouldn’t, I told myself. I should just go back to my own bunk behind the safety of my own flimsy curtain. But I didn’t. I lowered my head to his pillow. His eyes seemed larger than life now, his lashes close to brushing his eyebrows.

“I said, our neighbors in Ohio have rabbits. Two big ones.”

“Oh.” There was something about the energy radiating between our bodies that made goose bumps form on my arms. “Tell me more about your life in Ohio. What’s school like there?”

“Indoors. Like the hallways between classes are inside instead of outside.”

I smiled. “I know what indoors means.”

“It was weird for me at first. We also have lockers because we live in a small town and there aren’t as many students.”

“Small town, Skyler. Does that mean everyone knows everyone’s business and you can’t rob the corner mart without neighbor Fred telling his cousin Sue who tells her best friend Lisa who tells your mom?”

His eyes lit up. “Yes, it totally ruined the crime spree I wanted to go on.”

“That could make a good video game. Robbing stores without running into a list of characters that are identified at the beginning as being in the nine degrees of separation from you.”

“I forget how much you think in video games.”

“I know. It’s annoying. Willow has banned me from sharing more than one a day.”

“It’s not annoying. It’s you. It’s like how musicians wake up with tunes in their heads and writer’s keep notebooks by their beds. You’re a video game savant.”