The way he’s looking at me hurts. It hurts so much that my eyes sting with tears. He’s so angry. So hurt. So filled with hatred—toward me.
“I know it won’t change anything,” I say. “But you told me if I ever needed to talk about anything, you’d listen. Remember?”
Those cold hard stones flinch, his face softening for the briefest of moments, then his expression hardens again. “So did you. And I’m pretty fucking sure anything we said to each other before is all null and void now.”
He spins around and marches off to the car.
I wait a second and follow along behind him. When we get to the Blazer, we find about two inches of snow and ice on the windshield. Ethan turns the engine on and gets the defroster and wiper blades going.
I find a scraper in the trunk and start scraping ice from the windows. “You really think everything we said is null and void now?” I look over at Ethan as he helps clear snow off the Blazer with his gloved hands.
He rolls his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.” I stop scraping for a minute. “Answer the question. Do you really thinkeverythingwe said is null and void now?”
He doesn’t answer me. He gets into the driver’s seat and shuts the door. I finish scraping, toss the scraper back in the trunk, and I get into the passenger seat. Ethan puts the Blazer in reverse and begins backing out of the parking spot.
I put on my seatbelt. “You’re not answering me because you know it’s not true.”
“Shut up.”
“Come on, Ethan. Just listen to me. For five minutes. Please.”
Ethan shakes his head, agitated. He gets out a cigarette, and I see his hand is shaking.
I start to feel bad. I soften my tone. “You sure you don’t want me to drive? Are you feeling okay?”
He lights the cigarette as he drives us out of the rest stop and onto the highway. “I’m fine,” he says through an exhale.
“Maybe we should wait till the snow stops,” I say. “Or check the weather forecast?” I turn on the radio and spin the dial.
“We grew up in fucking upstate New York,” Ethan retorts. “What the fuck would we wait for?”
I grab the map and see we’re supposed to get on Interstate 81 next. But the snow is getting heavier, slowing traffic all around us. Ethan curses at the car in front of us, and switches into the left lane to pass them.
“Don’t drive so fast,” I mutter to him, remembering the promise I made to his dad.
He glares over at me, but he slows down. A little.
After driving a couple of miles, slowly through the traffic, I glance over at him. He’s laser-focused on the road, then his eyes dart over to me for a second then back to the road. “What?”
“Does it still make you sad that stars die?” I say it softly, intimately, remembering the first time he said that to me. It made me think. It made me think about something that wasreal.Something that was beyond me. Something completely out of my control—or anyone’s for that matter.
There’s a moment where I see Ethan’s expression softening. He must be remembering that night too. Then it hardens again. “It’s not really true. Mr. Carver was wrong.”
“I still think about that. Wrong or not, it really made me think when you said it.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, but his eyes stay glued to the road.
After merging onto I-81, the snow is still thick and heavy, and traffic has moved to a crawl. Pellets of ice click against the windows. Even though neither of us are strangers to heavy snowfall and blizzards, growing up in the land of Lake Effect Snow, and rarely getting school canceled because of it, I’m worried about it now. I didn’t think to check the forecast for our route, and I’m not sure if he did either.
“Maybe we should find another rest stop,” I suggest. “Or a motel or something?”
He glares at me again.
“I’m just saying. Traffic is slowing down, and I’d rather we stop somewhere than get stuck out here.”
He shuts his eyes for a second, opens them. “Fine.” He nods to the map. “Can you find the next exit?”
