The nearest Greyhound bus stop is two miles away. We make the walk on foot, and I’m amazed at the sweat wicking capability in our free gym pants. Texas weather in June is not forgiving.

I’d had visions of a fancy bus stop complete with maybe a Starbucks and some leather waiting chairs. Reality is a plastic sign on the wall of a laundromat that says BUS STOP HERE. The only place to sit are in the uncomfortable orange plastic chairs that line the laundry mat and look like they’ve been here since the seventies. The only employee is a middle-aged man who sits in an office behind bulletproof glass reading a porno magazine.

I’m not even joking.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” I say with a sigh as I make my way around a woman’s pile of laundry in grocery bags. Her toddler is on his stomach on the floor wearing only a diaper while he plays with a piece of dried mud. I want to scoop him up and bathe him in antibacterial gel.

“Hello,” I say to the man behind the glass. “Um, we bought tickets online and it said we could print them here?”

He doesn’t even look up at first. Ezra appears next to me. “Oh my god,” he mutters with disgust. He’s probably just seen the man’s reading material. “Lilah, you two go over there,” he says, pointing across the room. “I’ll get our tickets from this perv.”

That makes the man look up, but he doesn’t seem to care one bit that we’ve all seen him doing a very private activity in public.

“Lilah, we’ve never been in Kansas,” Cece says as we sit in the hard chairs. I’m trying not to think of how many germs are on them. How many butts have waited here over the years.

“It was an expression,” I say, although I’m not sure why I’m bothering to explain it to her. “It’s from the Wizard of Oz.”

“I never liked that movie.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Ezra returns with three slips of paper that look like receipts, but are our tickets. The next bus headed north arrives at 11:00 so we have an hour to wait. Even though we’re only three hours from home now, it’ll take four to get there with all the additional bus stops. Ezra slides into the chair next to me, bumping me with his arm.

“I should report him to the police or something,” he mutters, glaring toward the bulletproof window. “That’s freaking disgusting.”

“I don’t think you should be anywhere near the police right now,” I say, leaning my head on his shoulder.

“You’re right. The bastard probably reported me as missing even though I texted him earlier.”

“You did?” I ask, lifting up to look at him. His jaw has a bit of stubble I hadn’t noticed earlier.

He nods. “I told him I’m going out with the guys after work and probably won’t be home until later tonight. Just tried to be all casual about it so he wouldn’t think I took the RV even though he never cares when I’m home or not.”

“Did he reply?”

Ezra presses his cheek to the top of my head. “No.”

“You see any outlets around here?” Cece asks. She’s dug her laptop out of her bag and is looking around. “There’s one. I’ll be over there,” she says to no one in particular. Ezra and I watch her walk to the end of a line of dryers and plug in her laptop cord. She sits on the floor underneath a dryer with a big out of service sign on the door.

Ezra’s lips press to my hair and stay there for a moment. Minutes slowly tick by. My phone is still dead, and when I realize my mother might be frantically trying to reach me, I find an outlet under our chair and plug it in. The moment it powers up I get a string of messages. One is a voicemail from my mother.

“Hi Lilah. It’s Mom. Just checking up on you and making sure things are okay. Going to class soon so call me back! Love you!”

Then I check the two text messages she left.

I called, call me back.

Going into class now, you better not be sleeping!

It’s better than a freak out, I guess. I text back: Sorry, didn’t realize my phone was dead. I’m not sleeping. Love you.

A TV hanging from the wall is on a news channel. The captions are on and they fill up half the screen, but I watch it anyway because there’s nothing else to do. There’s magazines in a rack on the wall but I’m not about to take the chance of contracting the bird flu from touching their worn out, sticky-looking pages.

Ezra sits silently beside me, his head resting on top of mine. I love the feel of his shoulder under my cheek, even if this hour is taking forever to pass and it’s boring as hell sitting here.

“What do you think she’s doing?” Ezra asks, nodding toward Cece.

I watch her, her gaze intently on the screen in front of her. It’s that same look she had when we were at home and she found the red Jeep on an old car sales website. I inhale through my nose and let it out slowly. “She’s looking for her ghost of her brother.”

“She won’t stay mad at you forever,” Ezra says.

I hadn’t been thinking about that, but now I am. “I keep screwing up. I’m not trying to. I’m trying to repair our relationship and I just keep ruining it.”

“You mean well, Lilah. She’ll figure that out.”

I relax into Ezra’s side, my head on his shoulder, and my hands tangled up in his. “I don’t know how we’ll go back home after this. We have monthly therapy sessions with my parents. How are we going to keep all of this a secret? If Cece and I can be friends again, it’ll be obvious that we’re acting different in the sessions. If we act normal, then we’ll never be friends again. There’s no middle here.”

“Tell me about these therapy sessions,” Ezra says. I think he’s being sarcastic at first, but then he slides his thumb across my palm while he waits for my answer.

“They’re awful. Our therapist, Dr. Tess, has this insufferable voice, and the thing is, she thinks it’s calming. She talks like a yoga instructor during the cool down session. I’m like, just talk normal.”

He chuckles. I sigh. “We have to talk about our feelings, things that bother us. How we’ve adjusted since having such a huge family loss. It was fine at first, but after five years, you go on with your life and stop thinking about it.

Then we always go into talking about Cece being bipolar. I feel bad about that part, because it’s like the whole family has to talk about how well she’s been doing.” I look over at her, knowing she can’t hear us. Still, talking about her makes my skin crawl just like it does in therapy. “It’s like my parents and Dr. Tess treat her like a child. Someone who will just up and choke on a Barbie doll shoe if you’re not watching her like a hawk. I know she hates it and I quit participating a long time ago. But the worst part is that there’s a little truth to it. She can blow up at any moment. That’s how bipolar disorder works.”

“I’m still not sure treating her like a child will help the inevitable blow up,” he says, his lips pressed into a thin line. “But I’m not a therapist.”

“Therapy was good at first,” I say, unable to take my eyes off Cece. “It helped us cope with the loss of Cece’s parents. But then it just got too much. When I tell my mom we should stop going she just freaks out. “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Lilah,” I say, imitating her voice.

“Maybe you and Cece could come together as a united front and put a stop to the therapy sessions.”

I actually snort out loud at that comment. “You don’t know my mom.”

“I do. I just haven’t seen her in a while.”

Talking about the past only brings up memories of things I’d rather not think about. “Let’s change the subject,” I say as I inhale the slightly stale detergent but still good scent of him.

“What do you want to talk about?”

Since we’re almost home, I guess I’m feeling more ballsy than usual. I sit up and turn toward him, a swivel movement in these ugly bucket seats. My knees knock into his. “We can talk about what this is,” I say, gesturing to our entwined hands.

“Too fast too soon?” He starts to pull his hand away but I squeeze my fingers to keep him where he is.

“No, just… what is it?”

His eyebrow quirks. “Is that a trick question?”

“I’ve just never had this happen.”

“You’ve never held hands with a guy?” he says, this teasing smile on his lips.

“You know what I mean. I’ve never liked a guy only to have him like me back without, like, fifty tons of drama heaped on top. I didn’t have to jump through any hoops with you.”

His lips pull into a smirk. “That’s a good thing, right?”

I shrug. “Is it because we’re here? When we get home, will it all go back to normal?”

“Only if you want it to,” he says, leaning into me.

I meet his gaze, see the sparkle behind his eyes. I’ve never been so sure of anything before. I don’t have to second guess anything with Ezra. I don’t have to change my clothing style or pretend to be super into some band I don’t like. It’s easy with him. I’m about to tell him all of this when a shadow rolls across the windows. The hiss-pop of a bus jolting to a stop makes us both look back.

Our bus is here. Relief consumes me because in four hours we’ll finally be home. I can work through my problems with Cece and figure out this new thing with Ezra, all from the security of my own bedroom in my own house in my own hometown. I’m so nervous it hurts, but there’s still a small possibility that Cece won’t tell my parents what we’ve been up to this week.

People unload from the bus, looking disheveled and mostly bored. Our schedule says the bus leaves at 11:15 so we have plenty of time to get on it.

“Cece,” I call out to get her attention. She doesn’t look up, her brows furrowed as she stares at her computer screen. I roll my eyes at Ezra and stand, feeling the weight of his absence the moment our hands slip apart.

“Hey,” I say, stopping in front of her feet. “The bus is here. We need to go.”

A few seconds pass and I’m about to repeat myself. Then Cece drags her gaze from the computer up to me. Her green eyes widen, and it makes my stomach twist into a knot. I’ve seen that look before.

“We need to go,” I say. “Pack up.”

She shakes her head slowly, like she’s in a daze. “We can’t go right now. We can’t leave this town.”

My heart sinks into my stomach. We are so close to being home. I’m not above wrapping her feet together with her computer’s charge cord and dragging her onto the bus. And something tells me no one in this shit hole of a laundromat will care. “Why the hell not, Cece?”

She points to her screen and smiles like it’s Christmas morning and we’re still five years old, unaware of the pain of life.

“I found him. He’s just an hour away.”