Our bus is practically brand new. With shiny navy blue paint, on the outside it could pass for a rock star’s tour bus—well, except for the greyhound on the side. I wonder if the driver ever drove a real tour bus for someone famous; if they’re embarrassed to stop at the laundromat which isn’t even a real bus stop, but more like a kiosk in the crappy part of a small town.

When we climb aboard, it’s pretty obvious the driver doesn’t mind. She’s a short thin woman with ridiculously bright red hair, the kind of color that can only be obtained from a box. There’s a curly script tattoo on her forearm, but I can’t make out what it says without being overly nosy. She smiles at us as we board the bus, which smells like leather and that wondrous new car smell. Ezra, Cece, and I are the last ones to get on with five minutes to spare.

“Welcome, welcome!” Our driver says, her voice booming through the bus. Cece takes the lead and walks us all the way to the back, where there’s three seats together in a row next to the bathroom. The rest of the bus is divided into two seats on each side of the aisle, so this is the only place we can all sit together.

“I’m Tamara,” the bus driver says as we settle into the black leather seats. “I’ll be your driver today. My goal is to keep you safe and happy, so no I won’t speed because you’re running late, but yes I can adjust the temperature or music if everyone agrees. Sound good? Let’s get going. Everyone buckle up. If you need to use the restroom, do so with caution, as a sudden stop will have you flying to the floor and most likely emptying your bladder in the process.”

People laugh at this. I tug my seatbelt on under my backpack, which I’m keeping safely in my lap instead of in the overhead bins. The seats are wide enough that I can be squished in the middle of Cece and Ezra without being too suffocated. Luckily, I don’t mind being pressed against these two. Some of the other people on the bus don’t seem to pleased at their seating arrangements.

Ezra checks his phone three times before the bus drives away. Each time the screen is empty. There’s a different vibe around him now, an air of uncertainty and fear. This whole trip he’s been our sage companion, working magic between the rifts in my relationship with Cece and keeping us on track. Now he’s the lost one, when Cece and I are finally on our way to something worthwhile.

I reach over and take his hand. His eyes are soft, his smile sad, but he lets me hold onto him.

To my left, my cousin is quiet, her gaze darting around the bus as she takes in each passenger, thinking whatever it is she thinks about strangers. She’s always been one to notice the small details about things everyone else glosses over. After a few minutes, we’re out of town and pulling onto Interstate 45, the long highway that goes from the top of Texas down to the coast. We used to drive this road when we went to the beach in the summers as a family. Those trips stopped after Thomas died.

Or went missing. I’m still not sure which one I believe. Maybe I don’t need to believe in theories right now. I just need to believe in Cece.

The overhead speaker cracks and Tamara’s voice talks straight down from the ceiling. “Our next stop will be at The Woodlands. Arrival time is estimated at an hour and a half.”

Cece presses her fingers to the window next to her. “I’m coming for you, Thomas.”

“How are we going to get from the bus stop to the apartment complex?” I say.

“Uber,” Cece wiggles her eyebrows. “It’s what all the cool kids are using. I downloaded the app at the laundromat.”

“I guess that works,” I say. “I’ve had enough random walking for this week.”

Cece gazes back out of her window. “I figure Thomas can just take us home. Or if he’s busy or something, he could take us back to the bus stop.”

My chest tightens. This is the part in the conversation where I’m supposed to deflect and distract her. Prepare her for the inevitable heartbreak, not let her run away with these wild ideas in her head. But I’m along for the ride now. None of that distraction shit from therapy has really worked in the past, besides serving to make Cece hate me more. We’re on the mend now, Cece and I. I close my eyes and pretend to data dump everything I’ve ever learned in therapy.

“Maybe he’ll let us stay with him for a while,” I suggest even though it’s completely irrational. I can feel Ezra’s questioning gaze boring into the side of my head, so I don’t look at him.

Cece grins. “I wonder what he’s been up to all this time? I still like my amnesia theory. It could have made him forget certain things. That would explain why he didn’t remember to come home but he remembered he loved Jeeps.”

“And that video game,” Ezra adds.

And his old house, I think. That’s the one link that debunks the amnesia idea.

Cece nods. Either she’s forgotten the visit to her old house that kicked off this journey, or she’s ignoring it. “Those are just weird things that can be embedded in the back of your mind and surface randomly. I bet he forgot who he really is, and those things came back to him. Eventually we’ll come back to him, too. He just hasn’t had enough time.”

I have zero idea if that type of amnesia is a real thing. A year after we buried an empty casket at Thomas’s funeral, there was this news story that a man had appeared at a gas station in Phoenix not knowing who he was. He was all beat up, with dirty clothes like a homeless guy, and he had no wallet or identification. He couldn’t remember anything at all, so the police had searched all of the missing persons on file to see which one was him. Turns out there were no middle-aged men fitting his description that had gone missing within the last decade. His fingerprints didn’t match up anywhere and neither did his DNA. We only heard about it when the Phoenix police department made a nationwide plea to help identify the poor man.

When the story came on the news, my mom had shaken her head and frowned. “What a sad life he must have if not a single person from his past recognizes him.”

It was around that time that Cece started saying Thomas probably hit his head on that bridge and got amnesia. He probably fell over the railing and the river carried him into another town and he just didn’t know who he was.

The thing is, sixteen-year-old guys with a sophomore education and no money at all simply can’t start over in a new town. Someone would have noticed him. Someone would have turned him in and his family would have been found, maybe by a news broadcast like they’d done for that anonymous man.

Thomas wasn’t like that man. He wasn’t alone in this world. We would have recognized him and brought him home.

“Will you be upset if Thomas sees you and doesn’t remember you?” I ask, because screw logical conversations. I’m just going with it now.

“Of course not,” Cece says quickly. “He’s alive and that’s all I care about. We can take him home and show him pictures and he’ll remember who he was. I mean, he’s already remembering some of it because he went to our old house.” She looks back out the window. “I can’t wait to tell him I’m sorry we weren’t there. He probably thinks we all forgot about him. Maybe he’s happy he has a new life because he thinks we all suck.” A muscle in her jaw flexes. “I never gave up on him, and I hope he believes that.”

“He will,” I say.

Cece leans forward, peering past me. “Hey Ezra, what are you going to tell Thomas?”

He startles, like he wasn’t expecting to need to make up any lies right now. “I guess I’d tell him I missed him.”

“Lilah?” Cece says.

I can’t meet her eyes right now. I loved Thomas like any eighth grader loves their annoying older cousin. He was great at killing bugs but terrible at sharing the television. Sometimes I thought he and Ezra made it their life’s mission to torment Cece and me, which is exactly why we decided the boys had cooties back when we were little. But he was family and I loved him. When he died, I hurt most for Cece, who had lost everything.

“I don’t know,” I tell her after a moment. I know full well that we won’t find Thomas at the end of this obstacle course, but I’m not about to admit it. “I guess I’ll just wing it.”

An hour and fifteen minutes later, the bus pulls off the highway and into a wooded area that surrounds a mall. You can easily see why this town is called The Woodlands; it’s like they built a town with stores and roads and then planted a forest in every open space between them. There’s a covered bus stop area at the edge of a parking lot and that’s where the bus lets us off. Only one other person, a man in business attire that doesn’t quite fit him right, gets off at our stop. There’s a car waiting for him, but no one waiting for us.

“Time to work your Uber magic,” I say, hitching my backpack up on my shoulders. “Unless you want to visit the mall for a little bit. I could use some normalcy right about now.”

“Funny.” Cece laughs sarcastically while messing with her phone. “Zander in a black Ford Escort will be here in a few minutes. Keep an eye out.”

We wait under the shaded awning of the bus stop. Ezra checks his phone again, but this time he doesn’t seem as jaded about it as the other million times he checked it. “It’ll be okay,” I tell him, hoping he doesn’t see my words as an empty promise. I bump into his shoulder with mine, and give him an encouraging smile. “Even if your dad is mad now, it’ll work out in the end.”

He peers down at me and returns the shoulder bump. “Maybe I’ll ask Thomas for advice,” he says with a wink.

“That’s a really great idea,” Cece says. “Thomas is smart. He’ll find a way to fix things with your dad.”

“Maybe,” Ezra says, glancing over at me.

“Maybe he will,” I agree.