Stardust

     July used to fantasize about road trips often.

     Her mom hadn’t owned a car, of course. Living in New York wasn’t accommodating to the car-owning lifestyle. Around when she first began to read novels, July fixated heavily on any mention of a road trip—she was fascinated by the idea of traveling across the country, of seeing the landscape shift from biome to biome and of visiting strange, new, exciting places. She loved the idea of packing up her stuff and letting June drive them both somewhere entirely unexpected.

     The two of them kept a running list of landmarks they wanted to visit once they were old enough to drive, mostly sourced from June’s extensive collection of Weird US books that took up over half of the bookshelf in their shared bedroom. Their list lived on the fridge, pinned up by a magnet advertising another anarchist bookstore in Boston, and June periodically added to it in cramped lines of red pen.

     The reality, given all of this buildup, was disappointing.

     Her forehead pressed against the cool glass of the passenger-side window. The glass fogged up in waves as she breathed; July didn’t mind much, since there wasn’t anything interesting to see. They were taking back roads, now that they’d left the city, and there was only so much you could find interesting about endless rows of trees lit only by headlight beams.

     It also hadn’t taken long for the life-or-death adrenaline to wear off. July felt vaguely irritated with the dried blood crusting on her forehead, and desperately wished she could change her clothes, but her nervous system returned to equilibrium approximately ten minutes after the engine roared to life and Cass emerged from under the car hood wielding a screwdriver and a shit-eating grin.

     “I need someone to keep me awake,” Cass said, startling July out of her bored reverie.

     She looked over at the driver’s side; Cass’s body was crumpled over the steering wheel like the front end of a car wreck, all bleeding edges and collapsed planes. Her eyes, sleep-drunk and puffy, focused on the road with an intense fervor that reminded July of a mountain lion bearing down on an unsuspecting hiker. The vein in her forehead twitched.

     “I could drive,” July said.

     “Fuck off.” Her tone was lighthearted.

     July hoisted her feet up and plunked them on the dashboard, boots shedding stray flakes of dried mud onto the vinyl. “Why do you know how to drive anyway?”

     “Captain Testa taught me.”

     “We could play a game,” Jasper said suddenly. She had almost forgotten the boys were in the backseat.

     “A game,” Cass repeated, as if it was a slur.

     The headlights cut across a mile marker half-covered by a fallen branch; July fell into the autopilot she’d developed over the last hour and a half, where she opened the map she’d found earlier in the glove box, turned on her flashlight, and began double-checking their route as the other three chatted. The map’s font was tiny. She had to bring it up to the tip of her nose to read the road labels, and the whole process involved quite a bit of back-and-forth between the key and the confusing spaghetti-mess of symbols and colored lines.

     After a couple of minutes, July re-folded the map carefully. “Fifty miles til your turnoff,” she told Cass.

     “Got it.” Cass’s nose was wrinkled as if she smelled something horrible. “We’re going to play twenty-one questions. The rules are painfully axiomatic.”

     “Sorry that I want to get to know the people I’m on the run from the government with.” Whatever exchange they’d had while July was focused on the map, it left Jasper sounding hopelessly defensive.

     “A reasonable desire, to be clear.” She glanced away from the rode, very briefly, to toss a quick eyebrow-wiggle July’s way before continuing with her explanation. “We each get twenty-one questions total. You receive a point for answering a question directed to you, and a point is taken from you and given to your questioner if you pass.”

     July grabbed a pen from the cupholder—there was what seemed to be an entire pack of glitter gel pens floating around various crannies in the center console—and began scribbling on the folded back of the map. It was immediately obvious that her knowledge of Cass’s insecurities and sensitivities would be an unfair advantage in this game. She began to chew thoughtfully on the pink gel grip of the pen.

     A single finger drifted over the soft flesh of the underside of her knee, followed by the familiar sound of girlish giggling from under the passenger-side dash. July clenched her leg muscles painfully tight, forcing herself not to jerk in surprise. She couldn’t bring herself to feel frustrated. It was lucky that June had been absent until that moment.

     “Cass,” Jasper was saying. “What was your mom’s name?”

     The line of Cass’s lips tightened visibly. “Destiny.”

     Something in July’s gut started to do queasy little flips. She hadn’t known that.

     “Lake,” Cass said. “You’re being awfully quiet.”

     “I literally don’t care about this at all.”

     This drew a cackle out of July. Just as soon as she started laughing, June began to giggle along. She stopped.

     Even Cass softened somewhat at that, the corners of her mouth drawing up and the line of her jaw ever-so-slightly relaxing. “When did you meet Jasper?”

     “About four years ago.” His normal drawl, with its rounded-out vowels and softened edges, sounded strange and clipped. “July.”

     She contorted her torso around her seat, twisting around bodily to look at Lake, who was hunched over in the backseat with his long legs crammed into the foot well at awkward angles. “That answer was lame.”

     “Maybe Cass should have formulated her question better,” he said, voice languid and comfortable again. His craggy face was difficult to make out in the three-AM darkness, but his voice conveyed his smirk just as effectively as a facial expression. It made July want to strip her jacket off, hand it to Cass, and invite him to step outside and say that again. “What’s your current deal with this Axel dude?”

     Fingers grasped at her thighs. Her legs were currently thrown sidelong and twisted at the hips; June used them to cantilever herself into a sitting position against the passenger-side door and began tracing patterns along July’s calves. She gritted her teeth and very, very carefully did not turn back to look.

     “What do you mean?” she managed through her clenched jaw.

     “I mean what’s your deal,” he said. It didn’t seem like he was going to elaborate, until Jasper punched him on the arm; Lake sighed heavily, rubbing at where the punch landed. “Y’all have been arguing about this guy in front of me since I met you, but I still don’t know a single thing about him or what you’re arguing about. I’m curious.”

     June’s incessant giggling grated on the inside of her skull. In a burst of savage frustration, she wiggled back around to face front, heels firmly pressing into the dash once again, and slapped her hand over June’s mouth. Under the cover of darkness, the boys didn’t seem to notice, but Cass gave her a sidelong look. July stuck her tongue out at her.

     “You can always pass,” Jasper said. She shook her head, unsure if they would even see it from the backseat.

     Letting her eyes drift idly along the pitch-black darkness just beyond the edge of their headlights, July took a long, deep breath before she answered. “Axel is my boyfriend. We’ve been dating since I was fourteen. Cass thinks he’s a dick to me.”

     “You fight quite a lot,” Cass noted. “And he disrespects the both of us, flagrantly and frequently.”

     The cut on July’s temple began to throb violently. “He’s doing his best, he just has… problems.”

     “While we’re being honest, he kowtows to the general as if—“

     “What else is he supposed to do?” she snapped. “We’re not exactly in a great fucking situation, Cass. I don’t like Tyler any more than you, but what am I supposed to do? Mutiny?”

     Cass’s lips pressed back into a thin line. She stared at the road ahead, silent and intent.

     July craned her neck back around toward the backseat. “We had a fight before he left, he was an asshole to me, the end. My turn?”

     Lake’s voice was thoughtful. He didn’t seem intimidated or anxious at all, which surprised July, given that if she was in his position, she’d feel vaguely like she was overhearing her superior officers fighting in the bathroom while she sat in a stall. “Sure.”

     “Cass.” She didn’t even bother squinting at the notes she’d scribbled on the back of the map. “How did your brother die?”

     The car went silent for a few agonizing, drawn-out moments. Even June was silent; July cast a quick glance down to check on her, and she was still there, staring up over July’s hand with big teary green eyes. She looked back at the road hastily.

     Finally, Jasper made a hissing noise, like he was pulling a sharp breath in through his teeth. “Brutal. Pass?”

     “No,” Cass said icily.

     July’s throat felt very tight and her head began to spin. She opened her mouth to say no, don’t, she meant for her to pass, but Cass was already talking, much to July’s horror.

     “Avery was on an extracurricular trip to DC during the bombings,” she said, her voice level. Almost robotic, except for the slight rough edge. “It was for our middle school debate team—he competed at the national level. I had been interested, but once he signed up, I refused to join out of pure sibling mulishness. We were twins, I felt he trounced me in every matter of skill, that sort of thing. When the bombs dropped on DC… I knew. I didn’t hear the news, but something inside me changed. I could feel his fear. And then it was gone.”

     Silence hung heavily over the car. July felt like she was about to puke.

     “I didn’t have long to process, of course, as they started dropping on New York just a few minutes later,” Cass added, almost jovially. “I realize it sounds a bit like spiritual nonsense, but we had always been able to feel each other’s emotions—I knew when he skinned his knee, when he’d had a bad day at school, that sort of thing. At one point, our mother read those silly Internet articles about twin bonds and asked us if we could read each other’s minds—all nonsense, of course.”

     July opened her mouth again to start a strangled “I’m sor—“

     “Jasper,” Cass said lightly. “What’s your favorite color?”

     It took him a moment to answer. “… Black.”

     “A respectable choice.”

     The cut on her head began to pound. July withdrew her hand from June’s mouth and tenderly prodded it with the pads of her fingers. It pulsed harder in response; she hissed in pain quietly.

     June’s giggling started to fill the car again, drowning out the conversation as it continued without July. Before she could stop herself, a low whine escaped from her throat.

     A hand pressed into her shoulder from the backseat. It felt firm, warm—burning, even through her bulky jacket. July sucked in a sharp breath of air. Her heart raced.

     “You alright?” Lake’s low, gentle drawl was directly by her ear. It swirled around her head, surrounding her in a dizzying, warm fog. She wasn’t sure whether she should punch him or grab his hand in thanks.

     June wouldn’t quit it with the fucking giggling.

     Suddenly, July drew her knees up to her chest, then brought them down onto the floor violently. Her boots hit something wet and solid that crunched; June shrieked once, piercing July’s eardrums painfully, and then everything was quiet and the car filled with the thick smell of rotting meat. July gagged.

     Lake’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “Do you need us to pull over?”

     “July.” Cass’s voice wasn’t quite as icy this time. In fact, it had an edge of concern that made July want to throw herself out of the car bodily. “Are you seeing things?”

     “Pass,” July gasped, clenching her eyes shut with all her might.

     “Don’t do that.” Cass’s scolding kicked her heartrate up another notch. Sweat began to bead on her chest and neck. “This isn’t part of the game. Are you seeing something?”

     The stench was cloying, filling July’s nose like cotton balls and stopping her breath. Her lips parted to let her breathe through her mouth in short, shallow gasps; the sickly taste of rot and death coated her tongue in a nasty film. She dry-heaved once.

     “Yeah,” July admitted, weakly.

     In the back of her head, she wondered if Lake was ever going to take his hand away from her shoulder. It seemed like it was too late for him to go back on whatever he’d committed to, though; a second hand pressed to her other shoulder, followed by his thumbs rubbing in gentle circles. They were nice circles, to be fair. Her head slowly stopped spinning, the circles in her brain traveling down to make their homes in the circuits of his thumbs.

     “We’ll pull over soon,” Cass was saying, and July didn’t even bother to respond, too afraid she’d puke if she opened her mouth again.

###

     They swapped cars about an hour later—Cass drove the sedan into the woods and they set off toward a twenty-four-hour rest stop a few miles away, but not before July stuffed her pockets with maps, pens, and wet wipes from the glove box.

     In the parking lot of the rest stop, while July watched the sky fill with gaping mouths speaking soundlessly, Cass once again fiddled around under the hood of a beat-up old sedan, this time getting the engine running in less than two minutes. After a rushed scramble to pile in the seats, a slam of the good, and a “Go, go, go,” from Jasper, they were back on the road again.

     None of them said anything else about July’s hallucinations. Not directly, at least. Before she popped the hood on the new car, Cass had gently touched her shoulder and said she thought it would be best if July sat in the backseat, which almost made July spontaneously combust. She went along with it, though. It was the least she could do for Cass.

     Jasper took the passenger seat in her stead. There was an occasional passing car, now that they were closer to civilization, and the headlight beams illuminated flashes of him grinning sardonically at Cass as they spoke in undertones. July swallowed back another bout of nausea.

     “We shouldn’t drive during the day.” Jasper’s baritone finally hit the audible range. He sounded irritated—brisk and clipped and without any of his usual good-natured clownery. “Cass needs sleep, and we need to avoid being seen.”

     “We can sleep in the car,” July said. Something tapped on the window by her head.

     “Four of us?” Cass said, at the same time as Lake said “Where, on the side of the road?”

     She did not have answers for either of these, so she just pressed her forehead against the chilly glass of the window and stayed stubbornly silent. The tapping continued.

     “I think we should try one of those old suburbs,” Jasper was saying. “See if we can squat.”

     Cass made a curious noise in the back of her throat. “What do you mean?”

     “What?”

     “Which suburbs?”

     “Any of them.” His darkened silhouette shifted; he gestured vaguely with one hand. “Damn, you really haven’t been outside in years.”

     Cass and July scoffed in unison.

     Lake cut in. “Most of the suburbs are abandoned now. He means we could probably find an empty house to crash in where the utilities are still connected.”

     “July,” Cass started, but July had already switched her flashlight on and started examining the maps—she had four of them now, the new car having a whole stash of them in the glove box. The new car also stank of something vaguely spicy and plantlike, and it had a stained-glass flower dangling from the rearview mirror. She guessed this was what people were referring to when they said something “had character.”

     The tapping on the window evolved into solid, heavy knocks. She attempted to ignore this and focus entirely on the maps—one of them was of New Jersey, one was Maryland, one was Pennsylvania, and one was DC itself. How these pieces fit together escaped her at the moment.

     One single, loud thunk hit right beside her ear, loud enough to make her jump in her seat.

     “Hey,” Lake said quietly.

     Even though it was too dark to make anything out, she quickly unfolded the map of New Jersey and held it in front of her face.

     “You’ll want to be looking at Maryland,” he said. Her ears burned. “Scoot over here.”

     “What? No.” She said that much too loudly. Over the top edge of the map, she saw Jasper turn to look at her, then look away just as quickly, seemingly disinterested.

     She sat there, ears on fire, the tapping continuing beside her with a fury, as Lake breathed a heavy sigh and went silent. Then, with more than a little irritation creeping into his voice: “I don’t want to play games. You need grounding. I need grounding. Do me a favor and go along with it.”

     This meant absolutely jack shit to July. Despite that, another tooth-jarring bone-rattling bang! on the window shook her enough for her to unbuckle her seatbelt and scoot into the middle seat.

     Warmth radiated off Lake like a space heater. Her skin prickled all along the side closest to him. He unashamedly (the nerve! The nerve!) grabbed her hand and leaned his shoulder up against hers; this set every single one of July’s nerve endings on fire and triggered a screaming klaxon in her head.

     He was probably saying something, but she had no idea what it was. His hand gripped hers firmly. One of his thumbs began rubbing circles against her knuckle. Slowly, with each circle, her hearing began to return.

     There wasn’t any tapping. July blinked down at the maps. Maryland. That made sense. She began awkwardly unfolding it with her left hand.

     “Better?” Lake asked.

     In lieu of a response, July handed the flashlight over to him. “Hold this. I’ve only got so many hands.”

     He did so without comment. He also continued to circle her thumb with his own without comment. The only comments he made, in fact, were to point at different back roads and suburbs, and to compliment July’s ability to trace routes with a pen left-handed.

     She stayed in the middle seat for the entire ride.