“Heather, if it’s facts you want, I have some fun ones about you,” Sawyer said.
I smiled. “That’s a good idea. I’m in a car with four strangers; I’d like to know about all of you.”
“Fine,” Heather said. “We can each share one fact about anyone in this car that is not ourselves.”
“I’ll start,” Wes said, raising his hand. “Sawyer once stole a pack of gum from a homeless man.”
I raised an eyebrow at Sawyer.
He immediately protested, “No, no, that’s not—”
“That’s exactly what happened,” Wes interrupted.
“And what about that time when Sawyer snowboarded in his underwear?” Logan chimed in.
“Um, what?” I asked.
“Those were both dares!” Sawyer exclaimed.
Logan nodded. “Sawyer never backs down from a dare. Another important fact.”
Wes held up his finger. “Except that one time—”
“We are supposed to be sharing facts about everyone in this car,” Sawyer said. “And I wouldn’t exactly call these things facts about me. They are events.”
Heather patted the steering wheel. “Sawyer likes spicy food.”
“There,” Sawyer said. “That’s better.”
“Sawyer once ate two of those really hot peppers and cried,” Wes said.
“And then vomited,” Logan added.
I laughed, but then put on a sympathetic face when I realized that probably wasn’t an appropriate reaction.
“Or remember when Sawyer laced Heather’s burger with hot Cheetos?” Wes asked with a grin.
“Events! These are events!” Sawyer cried. “And not even events. These are things you guys dared me to do. They probably say more about you than they do about me.”
“You laced my burger with hot Cheetos?” Heather asked. “When?”
“It didn’t faze you at all,” Wes said.
“Huh,” Heather muttered. “I knew I shouldn’t trust teenagers around my food.”
“Heather, you are four years older than us,” Sawyer said. “You were a teenager literally two years ago.”
“Sawyer is right,” Heather said. “I’d say these qualify more as stories than ‘getting to know a person’ facts. So dig a little deeper, boys.”
“About other people in this car,” Sawyer said, then added to me, “I’m really not as irresponsible as they’re making me seem.”
“Yes, Sawyer gets straight As,” Logan teased like this was a bad thing. “And he reads too much. For fun.”
“He once won a hot dog eating contest,” Wes said, unable, it seemed, to steer clear of events and focus on personality.
“That’s true,” Sawyer said as if this was the first thing said that he was proud of.
“Then he barfed,” Logan added.
“You seem to throw up a lot,” I said.
“I think it’s my choice in friends.”
“Yes, Sawyer is very loyal,” Heather said. “Regardless of how dumb his friends are.”
“So loyal that he’s had a crush on the same girl since the ninth grade,” Wes said.
“I think that means I’m pathetic,” Sawyer said. “Is it someone else’s turn yet? I have some facts. Wes once ate an entire tube of toothpaste and his mom made them pump his stomach. And Logan plays the guitar like Santana, despite his extra-long limbs, and can solve a Rubik’s Cube in two minutes. And Heather practically raised me.” That last one seemed to catch him off guard. Like he hadn’t meant to say it. He quickly added, “I mean, she’s like a second mom or whatever.”
Heather met his eyes in the rearview mirror and said incredulously, “You’ve had a crush on the same girl since the ninth grade?”
He rolled his eyes. “No.”
“But what about Candice and Paige and what’s her name? That girl you dated sophomore year,” she said.
Lisa. He’d dated Lisa our sophomore year. I didn’t realize I’d remembered her name until that moment. I’d seen them holding hands around campus. I knew Candice too, but I didn’t know Sawyer had dated her. Maybe he’d dated her this year. Or maybe I hadn’t noticed. We ran in different circles, after all.
“Exactly,” Sawyer said. “Wes was exaggerating. Like he always does.”
“It’s called pining,” Wes said. “And your brother is very good at it. Add that to the list of personality traits.”
“Whatever,” Sawyer grumbled.
“And you’ve never told me about this?” Heather asked Sawyer. “No wonder nothing has happened. You’ve had these idiots giving you advice. It’s your lucky car trip, brother, you have two women in this car who are about to impart all their wisdom upon you. Right, Amalie?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“What have you done so far to win this girl’s heart?” Heather asked as we inched forward on the highway.
“A lot of pining,” Wes said. “And he talked to her at school a couple times, and at a party once.”
I laughed. “Have you asked her out?”
Sawyer shook his head. “I’m just supposed to march up to her and say, ‘do you want to go out with me?’”
“Yes,” I said. “If you can snowboard in your underwear, this shouldn’t be that hard. Wait … did this snowboarding event happen this last weekend?”
Wes whooped.
“You see what I’ve been dealing with?” Heather asked me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“This is different than a stupid dare,” Sawyer said. “This is …”
“The risk of rejection?” Heather offered.
“For starters.”
“I think most girls just want a guy who is straightforward and honest,” I said.
“But,” Heather said, “if that’s too hard for my apparently wimpy brother, there’s nothing wrong with easing into it. A few casual conversations.”
“It’s not like I see her all the time,” Sawyer argued. “And now it’s winter break.”
“That’s it!” I said, shaking his shoulder. “Christmas.”
“What about Christmas?”
“Get her a gift. Take it to her. I know that’s more than a casual conversation but it’s less than asking her out. It’s just an ‘I’ve been thinking about you.’”
“‘For the last three years,’” Wes added. “‘Please don’t find me creepy.’”
I waved off Wes. “Don’t listen to him. It’s cute. It’s thoughtful. She’ll like it.”
“I agree,” Heather said. “It’s innocent enough that you can talk your way out of it if it’s obvious she doesn’t like you back, and forward enough that you’ll be able to tell if she does.”
Sawyer nodded slowly. “I guess I can try that. And for the record, I have not been thinking about her for the last three years. Just occasionally, when I see her.”
Wes cleared his throat as if about to protest but didn’t.
“Good,” Logan said. “That’s solved. Now, we’ve been in here for four hours. Can we make a pit stop? Or I might have to pee out the window.”
Heather grunted. “I have no doubt you would, but yes, I’ll stop at the next gas station.”
DECEMBER 22, 10:42 P.M.
“We’ve gone eighty miles,” Heather said when she pulled into a parking space at the gas station. “Over a thousand to go.”
When I climbed out of the car and the cold air bit at my cheeks, I reached back inside and grabbed Sawyer’s ski jacket.
“Italy’s a lot warmer than this?” Sawyer asked as we walked into the well-lit and nearly empty food mart.
A clerk stood at the counter and glared at us as the doors opened, like we had just filled his store with piles of snow.
My mind wandered back to walking the streets of Milan: the amazing architecture, the art, the food, the sun on my face. “It is warmer,” I answered, feeling a wave of sadness. I would miss it there. But not enough to want to go back.
Logan ran straight for the bathroom and the rest of us headed toward the food ai
sle. On the way, Heather was distracted by the souvenir aisle. She held up a Breckenridge, Colorado, T-shirt.
“Maybe you should buy your crush some gas station gifts,” she said to Sawyer with a smirk. “It might be all you have time to get before Christmas.”
I started to laugh but then said, “Wait, that’s not a bad idea!” I glanced at Sawyer. “It can be like a little story of your journey. You get something at each stop. Then you can tell her all about your trip home.”
Heather put her hand on her heart. “Your journey to her.”
“I sense you are both now mocking me,” Sawyer said.
“You just now sensed that?” Wes asked.
“We’re not mocking you,” I said, holding up a snow globe of Denver and giving it a shake. “Well, not a lot.”
“I vote for this fake gold medal.” Wes held it up. “It’s like you’re saying, you won … me.”
Sawyer cursed us all under his breath but then walked farther into the souvenir aisle.
I tried not to laugh and put the snow globe back on the shelf. I watched as the tiny white flakes settled around the buildings. “My dad used to bring me home snow globes from wherever he went,” I said to Heather, who was digging through a basket of pins.
“Oh yeah? What does your dad do?” Heather asked.
“Ag stuff. He teaches farming seminars. What does your dad do?”
“He’s a pilot. It’s actually how we got to fly to Colorado. And how we knew that we’d all be trapped at the airport for days.”
I ran my hand over another snow globe. “I better find the bathroom before we go.”
When I came out of the bathroom, I searched for some food that was cheap, yet filling. If this trip was going to take us more than a couple days, I needed to conserve my money. I found a pastry and the cheapest bottle of water and made my way to the register.
Sawyer’s stuff was being bagged and Wes, Logan, and Heather were getting ready to head out.
“What did you end up getting?” I asked Sawyer.
“None of you deserve to know that because of all your mocking,” he said loudly for everyone to hear. He swiped the bag off the counter, gave me a wink, and followed the others out the door.
The thought of picking up cheesy Christmas gifts at each of our stops sounded so fun to me that I wished I had more money. As it was, I was going home empty-handed. It would be the first year in a while that I hadn’t gotten my parents or younger brother something for Christmas. I felt terrible. I would be showing up present-less, having left my exchange year early. My family might be happy to see me for a minute, but then I’d probably end up ruining Christmas.
I took my bag and walked outside. Wes was holding a big garbage can lid and pointing to a snowy hill behind the gas station.
“What’s going on?” I asked as Sawyer grabbed the lid and took off running.
“Some sort of dare,” Heather said with a sigh.
The two of us stood and watched as Sawyer stretched out across the garbage can lid and slid down the hill of snow headfirst. Logan and Wes whooped.
“Good for you!” Heather shouted. “Now come on!”
DECEMBER 23, 1:03 A.M.
“We should stop for the night,” Sawyer said.
It was one in the morning, and it was obvious that Heather was having trouble staying awake. She’d downed a Mountain Dew after we left the gas station but she was fading fast.
The snow was coming down harder than before and we’d been following another semi for the last three hours. The truck had colorful lights strung along its tailgate, which seemed to be telling me that this was how I was going to spend my Christmas.
“The whole point of leaving the airport was to get ahead of the storm,” Heather said. “If we stop now, we might as well have stayed. The snow will catch up with us.”
Sawyer was staring at his phone and since he didn’t argue with her, I assumed what Heather had said was right—we needed to keep going. “Amalie agreed to sing us some songs to keep you awake, then,” he finally said.
My heart seemed to stop in my chest even though I knew he was kidding. I managed to cough out a little laugh, hoping that would be enough to get the subject dropped.
“That’s right!” Heather exclaimed. “You said something about being a singer earlier.”
I had? I guess I’d mentioned it when I was talking to Sawyer.
“And Italy,” Heather said. “Is that why you were in Italy? For singing?”
The answer to that question was yes. My voice had been my ticket to Italy; I’d been accepted to a school for developing singers.
“It was just one of those exchange programs. Lots of people do them,” I said as my answer. I hadn’t even told my parents that I’d left, let alone why I’d left. I wasn’t telling this car first.
“When do you have to go back?” Sawyer asked. He was digging through his bag from the gas station. He pulled out a package of trail mix and opened it.
“Back?” I asked.
He nodded, his mouth full of mixed nuts. “For the rest of your exchange year. You’re just home for the holidays, right?”
“Oh … um … I don’t remember the exact date.” What was the exact date of never?
“If I can change the radio station, I will sing anything you want, Heather,” Wes said.
“Is that a promise or a threat?” Heather asked.
Wes switched the station away from the news and started singing Pearl Jam at the top of his lungs. Heather joined in on the chorus and soon the whole car was singing badly, even though no one but Wes knew the lyrics.
I mouthed along, hoping Sawyer wouldn’t call me out.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t sing at all now. It was only when people were paying attention that my throat seemed to freeze up, as cold as the air outside. Back in Italy, I had seen the school doctor and the school therapist and had analyzed myself extensively. It came down to the pressure of being away from home and the intense competition of the program.
I had thought I was stronger than that. My whole future, the one I’d dreamt of for the last five years, was gone. Who would hire an opera singer who couldn’t hold up under pressure?
DECEMBER 23, 7:17 A.M.
As the morning sun crept over the mountains, we pulled into Grand Junction, Colorado. We still had nine hundred miles to go, but according to Sawyer’s weather app, we’d passed the worst of the storm.
“Let’s stop here for six hours,” Heather said. “We’ll leave after lunch. You can all find something to do because I am sleeping in this car alone.”
“You want us to find something to do for six hours?” Sawyer asked.
“Did you sleep last night, Sawyer?”
“Yes, Heather,” he said, humbled. We had all taken turns sleeping the night before. Except Heather. She deserved six hours of sleep alone in a car.
She drove into a parking lot in a small downtown area, parked, and turned off the car. “Come wake me up at noon.” When none of us moved she added, “Run along and play, children.”
I pulled on Sawyer’s ski jacket, and we followed Logan and Wes out of the car. Snow crunched beneath our feet but nothing was falling from the sky at the moment.
The locks on the SUV clunked into place. When we all glanced back at Heather, she just waved and reclined her seat.
“Okay,” Sawyer said, turning a full circle. “What should we do?”
Wes pointed. “Diner. Breakfast.”
Nobody objected—except for the thirteen dollars and change in my pocket and the nineteen hours (assuming there was perfect weather and zero stops) it would take to get home from here. The guys just trudged forward. I lingered behind.
Sawyer turned and walked backward. “You coming?”
“I’ll meet up with you guys later. I’m just going to look around.”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
Starving. “I’m okay.” I wondered if there was a grocery store somewhere close. My money would go further there.
Sawyer shrugged and caught up with the others. I pulled out my phone and searched for a nearby grocery store. The closest one was over three miles away. Not helpful. My next search was for a McDonald’s. I could get two Egg McMuffins for three bucks. My phone showed me that was even farther.
I looked one way down the street and then the other, then zipped up my overly large jacket. I’d find something.
The store windows were decorated for the holidays, with colorful scenes painted on the glass or wintertime displays. Christmas music drifted out of doors as people entered and exited. I found myself humming familiar tunes as I walked.
My Converse were not made for snow. They were made for airports and airplanes and Italy and … Fresno. By the time I’d walked several blocks, my socks were soaked through, but no good food options had presented themselves. This was a place full of specialty shops and boutiques, small candy stores, and ice cream parlors. It wasn’t a place for a budget-conscious tourist.
I turned around and headed back toward the diner. I could find something cheap to eat there. On my way, I noticed a small shop full of Christmas decorations. I couldn’t help myself; I stepped inside.
The warm air made my numb cheeks sting. The smell of cinnamon and pine and oranges filled the entire shop, and an intense bout of homesickness nearly knocked me off my feet. This was what Christmas smelled like in our home. My mom would simmer cinnamon sticks and sliced oranges on the stove, and the scent seeped into every corner of the house. We always got a freshly cut pine tree that we’d decorate together the day after Thanksgiving. Every year, we’d each pick out one new ornament to add to the tree.
This was the first year I’d missed that. I walked slowly around the store, taking everything in. I wanted to pick out an ornament, give it to my mom for Christmas, but the cheapest one I could find was fifteen dollars.
The woman behind the counter smiled at me as I passed her. “Can I help you find anything?” she asked.
“Just looking. It smells so good in here.”
“Thank you.” She pointed to a bin of square envelopes by the register. “They’re little potpourri packs. Five dollars each if you’re interested.”
I picked one up and smelled it, again hit by a wave of nostalgia. “Five dollars.” I ran my hand over the pocket of my jeans, bit my lip, and then nodded. “Sure. I’ll take one.” My mom would love this because it represented tradition. She’d see I’d been paying attention.
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