Aisha sighs. “I would not watch that show.”

“Aw, come on. Scabies of the foot? Pinky toe rot?”

“Oh my God, Carson,” she says, raising her voice a bit. “Am I actually going to have to murder you in the first hour of our road trip?”

“You want to kill me over pinky toe rot?” I ask, blowing air against the window and then wiping up the mist that forms.

We drive on in silence, and I find several spots on the window to breathe against and then wipe up. When we are ten miles outside of Belfry, the sun comes up on the left, and the buttes begin to illuminate on the right.

“Nice butte,” I say, and Aisha says nothing.

“I like big buttes and I cannot lie,” I mock-rap.

Aisha groans. “Everything is a joke with you.”

“Whoa,” I say. “Where did that come from?”

“I’m serious. Why can’t you just not make a joke once in a while? Silence. It’s golden.”

“So silence is a color now? When did this happen?”

“Just — shut up, Carson. Shut up.”

I stare out the side window at the blur of pine trees. I imagine each of those tree branches slapping me in the nose, my stupid, annoying nose.

“You just … Why can’t you talk about what’s up?” she asks. “With your dad, I mean. Like say something real for once, and not hide behind some stupid joke.”

“So you’re a psychologist now?”

“It doesn’t take a psychologist,” she says.

I close my eyes. Am I this bad now? Am I being psychoanalyzed by homeless chicks? I feel like the anger could just bubble out of my mouth, like the acid could ooze out and smoke could billow from my ears and I wouldn’t be able to stop until there was nothing left inside me anymore.

“Yeah, you’re nothing like that,” I say finally. My voice doesn’t really sound like mine. “It’s not like the first time I met you, you said the tiger was at the zoo because his father kicked him out for being gay. It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure that one out either, looking back. Thank God you don’t use humor as a shield.”

I hear her inhale. But she just keeps driving, and we say nothing.

“So now you’re not talking to me? Great. Real mature,” I say.

She turns up the rap song that’s playing. Then she turns it up louder, and the thumping bass starts to rattle my brain. It’s one thing to be angry, but giving me hearing loss seems a little aggressive.

Aisha turns down the music when it starts to bug her too, I guess. She mutters, “Fuck. You know what the worst thing about car fights is?”

When I don’t reply, she says, “You can’t leave.”

I feel something that is way too big for a Dodge Neon boiling in my bloodstream. I don’t need this shit. I don’t need my fucking crazy family, and my mom and her psycho-fucking-babble and my lame-ass dad and his dying and my one friend of the moment and her bullshit.

Maybe my dad had it right all along. A glass of whiskey. Beats people.

The miles slip by, and my anger washes over me in waves. I play the conversation over and over in my mind, and I think of other things to say, meaner things, smarter things. Aisha slaps a button and the music goes from soft to off. I steal a quick glance at her face and her eyebrows are arched high in much the same way as when she’s excited. The only way I can tell she’s angry from her face is the tightness of her lips.

Then something inside me shifts, and I remember that when she’s not being a total B-word, she’s my best friend. In under a week, Aisha has become the best friend I’ve ever had, and maybe I wouldn’t say that to her, because it’s undeniably pathetic, but it’s also true.

So I take out my phone and text her.

im sorry

I put my phone away so she won’t see me holding it when hers buzzes. She gets the buzz, pulls her phone out of her pocket, and glances down to read it.

She starts to text back.

“Texting while driving?” I ask. “Really? Why don’t you just steer us directly into a tree?”

She gives me an annoyed look, but then she does something that surprises me. She slows and pulls over to the side of the two-lane highway.

I’m sorry too, she writes.

i didn’t mean to bug you

and i didn’t mean to piss u off

I was being a bitch.

no comment. me too. a male version of a bitch

Bastard.

hey watch the name-calling

Let’s be nice to each other. I’m sorry. Upset about Kayla today.

you’re too good for her

I guess.

do u think it says something bad about us

that we are texting our apologies?

It’s not a great sign.

i kinda love u, u know

I know. Love you too kinda.

We hit the road again. We’re quiet, but at least the tension is gone.

“You text in full sentences, and you use punctuation and capitalization,” I say.

“Does it take that much longer to hit shift?”

“I think I’ll start doing that,” I say. “I mean, with all the many friends I text.”

That makes her laugh. That. Not all the awesome ideas I came up with earlier, but the sad fact that I haven’t had a textual transmission in a week except what she’s sent me. And she must know it, because we’re together all the time.

And then I realize: Her too. I’ve never seen her text either. I laugh back.

“We are quite the popular duo,” I say, and she shrugs.

“Maybe not, but hey. Today I’m on a road trip with a friend. That’s better than I was doing a week ago.”

I don’t want to admit it, but yeah. So am I. “Ditto,” I say.

I CHEER AS we pass the WELCOME TO THERMOPOLIS billboard, which alerts us to the fact that the world’s largest mineral hot spring is here. There’s a picture of two kids on a waterslide, and it says SWIM, SOAK, SLIDE, STAY.

We follow Google’s directions to a deserted, treeless dirt road, and for a moment I think we’re lost. But then we come across a rickety green-and-white wooden sign swaying in the wind: FOUR PEAKS MOBILE HOME PARK.

Aisha and I look at each other. “Here goes nothing,” she says.

I’ve never been to a mobile home park before. The homes are marked with numbers, and we keep our eyes peeled for the Leffs’ place.

What we find is a small, narrow trailer with a covered parking spot out front, a dilapidated, olive-colored Chevy under it. In the front yard, a squat old man in work boots is standing over a foldout table, painting a piece of pottery.

We stop the car but keep the engine running. The man looks up from his painting and gives a half wave, clearly trying to figure out if he knows us. Aisha cuts the engine, and we both get out of the Neon.

“Hi,” I say, taking the lead.

He nods. “Can I help you?”

He’s old, chubby, and has a silver mustache, with round, rosy cheeks. He looks like what the captain of the football team at my school would look like if he were melted down for a bunch of decades and then artificially inflated with air.

“Are you Thomas Leff?”

“That’s what my driver’s license says.”

“We’re sorry to bug you. I just have some questions about my grandfather. Apparently he stayed with you a million years ago. Russ Smith?”