“Gross. Don’t say urine.”
“Urine.”
A single, deep laugh bounces around the car.
“You’re right, though,” he admits. “I do need to go. I was just waiting for you to break first.” He smirks. “Which you did.”
I shove his shoulder.
He laughs darkly. “Okay, fine, we’ll stop.”
“Stop where?” I magnify the map on Brandon’s phone and find nothing. I zoom out. Still nothing. Panic sloshes in my bladder. “Stopwhere?” I repeat.
Brandon glances toward his phone and sighs. “We must be pretty remote. We’ll either have to use creepy Tom’s bathroom or ‘side of the road-it.’”
“Side of thewhat-it?” My eyes bug out of my head.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never gone outside before.”
“I have.” I snap.Once. At sleepaway camp with Liza.
“Then let’s stop here.” He pulls beside a snow-covered outcrop as I stutter my protest.
“I–I don’t have any toilet paper.”
His arm slides across me as he clicks open the glove box.
“Tissues.” He plops the box into my lap.
Brandon strides into the snow before I can even move.
I unclick my seatbelt and scramble out of the car. “Brandon, wait for me?—”
“This isn’t a group project, Kate,” he calls as he walks toward a thicket of trees. “And keep your eyes on the road.”
My small laugh is swallowed by the silent gray sky. But then a horrified thought occurs to me that if it’sthisquiet, I might hear Brandon’s pee.
I whip around to the car, plug my ears, and begin humming a nonsense tune. A few seconds in, I realize the song I’m making up is kind of a bop. My bladder pulses in time to it, and I shift in my wiggly way to distract myself from the looming task ahead.
The skeletal treeline across the road seems to stretch for miles. Finger-like branches scrape like nails against the sky as a shallow mist swirls across the roots. The undulating cloud is opaque enough that it could maybe conceal small animals.
Or axe murderers.
A few minutes pass before a tap on my shoulder sends me scream-spinning around and sending a right hook flying. My fist connects with Brandon’s jaw, and it snaps to the side.
“Ow!” He cradles his jaw as his wild eyes find mine. “What the hell, Kate?”
I clutch my aching fist as a panicked dribble of pee threatens my leggings. I pinch my thighs together in a weird squat and massage my hand.
“Ohmygosh, I’m so sorry,” I say, breathing hard. “You scared me.”
“So you punched me?” His voice is incredulous.
“Yeah. Maybe the boxing lessons are working?”
The threatening dribble of pee turns into a torrential current, straining against the crumbling dam that is my inner thighs. I whip around, snatch the box of tissues, and barrel toward the thicket of trees.
“There’s no time to explain!” I cry.
