“Owww!” I flicked Rhiamon’s fingers away from my arm, knowing the assault would continue if I ignored it. I loved her, I really did, but her habit of pinching me when she thought I wasn’t paying her enough attention drove me bonkers. Fine, to be fair, I wasn’t actually listening to her, but unlike her, this was not my spring break vacation, it was work.

“Are you even listening, Kallie?” Rhiamon’s voice held the fake contempt she used when she wanted to push her point. I gave a sideways glance and my eyes were drawn to her bouncing knee. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t fake contempt as much as it was annoyance. Ugh.

Chances were, I had missed a ramble about her recent encounter with some frat guy. She had the worst taste in guys. She would argue I did, since I had turned down everyone this year. She’d be wrong. I just have my priorities, and they require all of my time and energy. She still thought true love could be found after a drunken make-out session.

“I’m driving.” I let out an exasperated sigh to counter her annoyance. If I immediately apologized, she would milk it for all it was worth and still be upset, but if I came back on equal footing, she seemed to drop it right away. We were so very different, yet at the same time so alike. It was no surprise we had become friends after The Great Roommate Fiasco of Sophomore Year, which had been more of an administrative confusion than a fiasco, but fiasco sounded so much more interesting.

Even so, a tinge of guilt hit me at my dishonest response. I mean, it wasn’t completely dishonest. I was actually driving the car, but my focus wasn’t on the road as it should’ve been. I was too deep in planning mode. I had one week to get an entire semester’s worth of work done, and get it done to beyond perfection. My thesis had to remain my focus. Sadly, that meant I needed every moment to plan, organize, research, and execute, even if it turned me into the world’s worst friend.

It wasn’t as if I had actually invited Rhi. She found out I was going to spend spring break in Castleton, remembered my drunken tale of the one that got away when I was there last summer with my mom, and next thing I knew, she was coming with. Not that I minded. Rhi was a pain in the rump, but she was my pain. Besides, I knew that while her family was much more well-off financially than mine was, something was not happy in Familyville. Rhi never said it outright, but my guess was either one, or both, of her parents were on the abusive side. I never witnessed anything concrete, but more than once I swore I saw fear cross her eyes as the phone rang and she saw it was them.

“Which can include listening.” Her sing-song voice pulled me back to the topic at hand. She always sang the silliest things—what she wanted for breakfast, that I needed to hurry out of the shower, what she was going to wear. Now, ask her to sing karaoke and all of a sudden she was a mute. Silly Rhi. I could feel her eyes giving me her famous “you know I’m right” roll and almost belted out a laugh. Almost.

“Truth,” I admitted not wanting her to realize the intense need I had to ace this thesis. She knew me well enough to know that more was going on than watching for road signs. Rhi didn’t understand my need to earn the Jonathon Johnson Scholarship, which included tuition, books, and fees to law school. Her parents paid full boat for her undergraduate under the condition she actually go to college. I would bet my big toe they would actually pay her to get a graduate degree, but she had zero desire to do so. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

“I was asking if we were almost there yet.”

“Sounds like I was smart to tune you out. What are you, five?” I waited for her to start chanting her question over and over again. It never came.

“Wise ass.” Pinch. I should have seen that coming. “Seriously. I need to pee.”

I was the worst friend ever. In my rush to get started on my work, I had skipped over the polite “Do you need to stop?” as we passed by the infrequent rest areas.

“A forty-two ounce cola tends to do that.” I attempted to lighten the mood more for myself than Rhi. She was much better about going with the flow than I was, and I bet if I told her I would pull over for her to heed nature’s call, she would take it as a challenge and get to it. Heck, she would wear it as a badge of honor.

“A girl needs her sugar and caffeine.” A high pitched squeal that only belonged in a boy band concert assaulted my ears. “Look, there’s a gas station.”

“We only have an hour to go,” I teased.

“Unlike you, I’m a quitter.”

We both laughed, knowing that neither of us were quitters, just focused on different arenas. I was all go and get ‘em with the grades and she was similar, only with loser guys and potential art exhibits.

“And I’m stopping.” I flicked on the blinkers. “I was only teasing.”

“You so have to pee, too,” she sang back to me.

“Maybe.” Or more accurately, I was fine until she put the idea in my head and now every second felt like an eternity. Darn the power of suggestion.

“Remind me again why we are going north instead of south for spring break?”

As we turned off the ramp, I passed a “gas one mile to the left” sign. It could’ve been worse. That morning we had turned off for coffee, and coffee was to the right seven miles. We were not in the city anymore.

“I’m going for research on my thesis,” I reminded her for what I had no doubt would be the first of five bazillion times for the week. I could already hear her pleas to go to the bar or the diner, for those were the choices in town. I had warned her multiple times. If she got bored, too bad, so sad. “You’re going because… I have no idea why. Maybe you would miss me too much.” I stuck my tongue out raspberry style just as the gas station came into view. Thank goodness.

“Maybe I wanna meet that sex on a stick guy you met last summer.”

Leave it to Rhi to remember my tales of romantic woe after a night of listening to her latest crash and burn with yet another loser. And met wasn’t an accurate word. No, it was more like stalking. Silly me had thought letting her know that I liked a guy so much I snuck out to follow a guy, only to discover he was at a bar while I was six months too young to enter would lead to laughter and forgetting her current heartbreak. After all, only I could orchestrate a masterfully rebellious escape to wind up back in bed a mere twenty minutes later.

When this trip came up, Rhi was sure he was why. Goodness, I didn’t even know his name; the last thing I would do was plan a trip around him. Although, to be honest, seeing him again had crossed my mind… a few thousand times. Imagine how much she’d hound me if she had half an inkling as to how much he still filled my fantasies.

No, I was coming back to the place my mother had spread my grandmother's ashes, not for my family history, not for some wilderness fun, heck, not even for the hottie. No, I was there to investigate the death of my grandfather with the hopes of cranking out the best future defense attorney’s thesis ever and getting a full ride to law school.

If I was going to work in the public sector as a lawyer, school loans weren’t an albatross I wanted. I wanted to be able to say yes to working in a small town, or even in an overcrowded city office, without money being the deciding factor. The more loans I took out, the greater the chance I’d have to sell out to the more lucrative side of attorney work.

“Maybe I want to take him for a spin,” Rhi continued.

“A spin?” Only Rhi would talk about men the way men talk about women. She’d claim equal rights and all, but I knew it was more for the shock value and I fed into her game every time. Because let’s face it, that’s what friends are for. “Really? He’s a person you know.”

“And I’m a girl. With needs.” We pulled into the driveway, at last. The gas station was far from the “you can buy all things” kind we had near the school, but it looked like it would at the very least house some bad coffee and a semi-clean bathroom. “Besides, if you wanted him, you could’ve had him last summer. I officially call dibs.”

“Whatever.” I found a spot near the door, parked the car, and took out my keys. “And Rhiamon?”

“Yeah?” We were both unbuckling, grateful to be there. It wasn’t the time for me to bring asshat up, but it never was. She needed to know, and now seemed like the time to offer once again. Who knew, maybe it would be the time it actually stuck.

“I know you’re only here to get away from he–who-shall-not-be-named, so if you ever need to talk—”

“You’re my gal.” She cracked open the door. “Got it. See ya inside.” She popped out of the car and ran into the store before I even got out of the car. I crossed my fingers that meant she’d be done before I got inside.

I wasn’t so lucky and started to do the little kid gotta-go dance outside the bathroom door. I had no shame and would’ve been in the men’s room in a heartbeat if the station housed more than one unisex room. Three knocks and a “please hurry” later, I found my relief and was ready to hit the road.

“Ready?” I tapped Rhi on the shoulder at the coffee station.

“Almost. Grabbing some snacks and coffee.” Her hands were full of chips, candy, canned coffee, and nuts.

“You do know we are only an hour away?”

“And you do know snacks will be helpful for more than just the trip?” She snatched a bag of snack mix from the shelf behind me. I kept waiting for the pile in her arms to topple over, but they stayed put. Impressive.

She was probably right. I planned to stop at the local grocery store when we arrived to save money. I decided to grab a couple of things in case the drive had me too tired to do anything but sleep before my marathon of academic prowess. “I’m going to look around and see if anything catches my fancy.”

And catch my fancy something did, but it wasn’t the coffee, the snacks, or even the very odd assortment of “souvenirs,” it was a small display of statues. No, that wasn’t the word. They were more like recycled sculptures in the form of animals, for the most part. Well, animals and a dragon, but mostly animals. Birds seemed to be the muse of choice and was the predominant theme of more than half of the items on display.

I stood mesmerized. Someone had taken old kitchen utensils, tools, and from my best guess, used car parts and turned them into magnificent pieces. The ones on display were not much larger than a house cat or a small dog, but the flier beside them showed pieces much larger. And if the pictures were any indication, they were just as beautiful as the pieces in front of me. How someone could look at this random junk unassembled and see it as the birds, foxes, and dogs before me fascinated me to no end.

I picked up the dragon and tried to identify all of the components. Scissors, some bolts, and a couple of spoons was as far as I got before Rhi caught up to me.

“Ohh, that’s pretty stinking awesome.” She reached out, touching the nose which was made of some sort of glass, probably an old florist’s marble melted with a torch, given the other items used in construction. “Are you going to buy it?”

Was I? I hadn’t even thought about it, but the idea of putting it down didn’t feel right. Somehow it felt like it was mine.

“I doubt I can afford it.” That was a perpetual problem of mine, one Rhi failed to understand and one that led to more of our fights than anything else. She always wanted to do things that cost money. Lots of money. I wanted to do things that were fun and didn’t cause financial stress. The first year she roomed with me, she thought I was trying to thwart our friendship because I wanted my old roomie back. Truth be told, my old roomie was less than ideal so that hadn’t crossed my mind once. Eventually she figured out it was just me being frugal and she let it go.

“Doubt?” Rhi flipped the tag in my direction. “It’s only thirty bucks. If you don’t get it, I’m getting it.”

How the heck was it only thirty dollars? I went to enough gallery exhibits with Rhi in her quest to become a famous artist to know that the going rate of art this amazing was far outside my budget. Then again, this was a gas station and not a gallery, so maybe it was a mark-up?

“Mine.” I clutched it close as she attempted to retrieve it from me after my non-response to her comment. She didn’t want it, or so I assumed. Didn’t matter because I needed it. The thought of putting it down, no matter the cost, was too unsavory.

“Possessive much?”

“I meant I’m buying it, weirdo.” Not that her assessment was less than accurate. I was oddly possessive of the dragon in my hands. “Of course it’s not mine... yet.” I made a mental calculation of where the spare dollars would come from. Soup for lunch while on break it was. So worth it.

I didn’t really have thirty bucks to spare, but something snapped in me when she threatened to buy it. Which was insane. It was official, a year of all school, all the time was getting to me. Only one project and half a semester to go and I could, and would, take some well-earned and much needed time off.

We checked out without any more discussion of the matter. I think my weird freak out was disconcerting to my roommate of two plus years. I was always the level headed one, and she wasn’t, so to see me in all my non-normal self-glory this trip probably had her second guessing her decision to come. It wasn’t like she could even escape to shop. There was no mall anywhere close by. My guess was she was going to be taking pictures, reading on her e-reader, or one-clicking online the entire trip.

As I settled into the car for the last hour of our journey, I felt remarkably not guilty for buying the frivolous piece of art. It felt right to have it, almost as if it was meant to be mine.

“You know, that dragon you got is really beautifully designed. All of those sculptures were. They should really be in a gallery and not a gas station.”

“Alongside your pieces?” Actually, hers really should be. She had a way of seeing things no one else did. Her camera wasn’t just clicked at random. It had a focus that showed the world differently, and once she took that piece and collaged it into her multimedia masterpieces… impressive. Now if she could convince a gallery to take a chance on her.

“Quite possibly.” Rhi sounded far away. She got that way when her dreams seemed unattainable. She’d been rejected twice in the month before we left, and I guessed that seeing artwork as unique as hers, even if in very different ways, at a gas station was a slap in the face of her aspirations.

“They made some money, so maybe the gas station was the perfect place. I’m sure people saw the flier and purchased much bigger pieces,” I offered, hoping she’d see it as a business model and not as the best the artist could do.

“Advertising?” The long pause that followed told me all I needed to know. My premise had her thinking in a more positive way. A quick rebuttal followed any of my ideas that Rhi considered craptastic. “Hmmm. I didn’t think of it that way. Do you think my pieces would sell in a gas station?”

“I think your work would sell anywhere.” They truly were magnificent, they just needed to be seen by people and not in her closet, waiting for a showing.

“Says not one of the galleries I attempted to show at.”

“They’re blind and snooty.” She had showed them to Art Alley, and in a city like ours that meant pretentious row, and that was one thing Rhi never came across as… pretentious. “You capture nature as it is and then show all its promise. People will love that. I love that.” I wasn’t one for blowing smoke up people’s asses. I loved her work and looked forward to saying “I knew her when…” after she got famous. The only thing standing in Rhi’s way was her self-confidence, which always seemed to come around full circle to her parents.

“The galleries say it is nothing they can’t find elsewhere.”

“I call bullshit.” A sign for our destination came into view. Only thirty miles, which on the slow road we were taking could mean forty-five minutes, but still very close. We would reach there by nightfall, which had been my goal.

“Because you are the best roommate ever.” She squeezed my shoulder, her emotions too close to the surface.

“Or because I wanted to cuss.”

“Well, there is that.” She chuckled at her sad little joke. For some reason, Rhi found it odd I cussed so infrequently, although to be fair, much more now than when we met.

“Seriously though, your eye catches things the average person misses as they wander through the woods or sit in their own backyard. That makes them far from ordinary. Sure, anyone can look around and find a lady bug. That’s not what you do. You manage to capture, on film, a moment in time where the ladybug and the flower work in perfect harmony, and then you build around it so that others can see it as clearly as you do.”

“You saw that?” Her voice filled with wonder at one observation. I shook my head, pissed at all the professors, gallery owners, and family members who failed to support her all these years. She wasn’t high maintenance on this. With boys, clothes, and a boatload of other things, yes, but not on her art. She just needed words of affirmation from time to time and not all from me, her loner roomie.

“Not really,” I admitted. Left to my own devices, I saw nature hardly at all. I was so focused on my goals that nothing got in the way. Part of the reason I knew her art was so good. It got me to stop and see. “Your picture showed me that. You have a gift. Ignore the galleries. You are the best.”

“I do have my moments.”

I didn’t need to turn my head to know she was blushing at the compliment and that the conversation was officially over.

“Castleton or bust,” I chanted a few times waiting for her to join in, which she failed to do.

“I vote not bust.”

I chose to ignore her serious tone. This was a week away for her and a week of work for me. Who knew? Maybe I could get my research done easy peasy and we could spend some time at the bar. Not that I was of age. Not that I would be looking for that guy. Heck, he probably wasn’t local, and if he was, some girl surely scooped his yummy arse up by now.

“Yeah, me too.”

Fifteen miles. The sign was like a beacon of awesome. This week was going to be a life changer. I felt it in my core.

“Since we have a ways to go, you might as well tell me about sex on a stick guy again.”

“Fifteen miles is not a ways.” I turned on the radio and hit seek until a familiar song filled the car. “You could tell me about asshat instead.” Holding in whatever crushed her so couldn’t be good for her. That didn’t mean she was going to openly share either, but a girl has to try.

“Or we could sing loudly, proudly, and poorly along with the radio.”

“Ding ding ding.” I cranked the radio up as a familiar refrain began. “We have a winner.” and with that the car became a very loud, very out of tune place for the last leg of our journey.