Highway 19

I had one rule about road trips.

Nobody touched my snacks until they were at least an hour out.

I slap Austin's hand away from the grocery bag without looking. He hasn't even let Michael back out of the loading zone yet and he's already going for the peanut butter crackers like he thinks I won't notice. I always notice. That's the whole point.

"Absolutely not."

"I was checking inventory," he mutters, yanking his hand back like I burned him.

"You were stealing peanut butter crackers."

"Stealing is such an ugly word."

Michael grins behind the wheel, one hand resting at the top of it the way he always drives, like he's been doing this since he was twelve. Which, honestly, he kind of has. "You know the rule, man."

Austin drops back into the rear seat, offended. "You're both unbelievable."

Kelly tucks her hair behind her ear and stares out the window, doing that thing where she's clearly fighting a smile. "You did go for the crackers first."

"I thought you were neutral."

"I'm observant."

I twist around in my seat, clicking my belt. "Did everybody grab chargers? Actual chargers, not just the belief that one will appear if you need it?"

Michael pats the center console. Kelly lifts hers from her lap.

Austin spreads his hands. "I have confidence."

"So that's a no."

"It's a maybe."

"That means no."

"It means I believe in the kindness of others."

"You believe in borrowing my stuff and pretending that counts as planning."

He leans his head back. "Look at that. We haven't even left campus and she's already judging my lifestyle."

Michael finally eases the SUV into reverse. "Can we judge it after we're moving?"

I laugh and turn back around. Campus rolls past the windshield, that loose chaotic energy of break trunks hanging open, girls hugging goodbye in puffer jackets, boys throwing duffels at each other like it's a sport. I love this part. The leaving. I crack my window an inch and let in air with a bite still in it. Not winter, not spring. The in-between.

"Need gas," Michael grunts, swinging us into the BP on Maple before we hit the highway. "Quarter tank. My bad."

"Get me ice," I shoot at him, already reaching for my wallet.

"I'll get my own ice."

"Get me ice or I'm not sharing the crackers."

He pulls up to the pump. I'm out before he's killed the engine, hoodie zipped against the cold that's still hanging on, my Converse slapping the wet pavement.

The fluorescents inside hit weird. That gas station hum that's somehow louder than it should be. I grab a bag of ice from the freezer chest, two waters, and I'm walking up to the counter when the guy behind it looks up and I stop, because I know him. I do not know his name. I know his face. He's two grades up from us, played baseball maybe, has the kind of half-grown beard that says he's trying.

"Whitmore," he muttered, like I'm a class he barely passed.

"Hey."

"Headed home?"

"Yeah. Spring break."

He scans the ice. "You guys driving the new highway?"

"Yeah, the usual way."

He nods. Slides my card. Hands it back. "Good."

Something about the way he says it hits sideways. I'm already turning to leave when he adds it.

"Don't take 19."

I stop. Look back. He's not smiling.

"My cousin's friend, last fall. Her car got found out there off some service road. They never figured out what happened to her." He shrugs, like he's telling me the weather. "Just don't."

The ice is cold against my ribs. My ears get hot. I want to laugh, the way you laugh when somebody says something that's not a joke and you don't know what else to do with your face.

"Yeah," I get out. "Yeah, no, we're good. New highway."

"Cool. Drive safe."

I'm back in the passenger seat before I've fully registered the walk. Michael's twisting the gas cap on. I shove the waters at Kelly, drop the ice between my feet, and I do not say anything about the guy at the counter. I do not know why. Or I do, but I'm not saying it.

Michael slides in. "Good?"

"Good."

We pull out.

Michael reaches for the radio. "Don't," I tell him. "I have something ready."

"This is how dictatorships happen," Austin groans from the back.

"You are welcome to walk."

"I think we both know I'm too pretty for that."

Kelly makes a noise into her coffee that's definitely a laugh.

I plug in my phone and pick the playlist I made two weeks ago when I knew this drive was coming. Upbeat. Easy. Familiar enough that nobody complains for almost a full song, which counts as a win.

The town thins out fast. Strip malls. Apartments. Gas stations. Then long stretches of road where the trees haven't fully greened up yet and the land flattens out the farther we get. Michael settles deeper into the drive. I prop a sneaker on the edge of the seat and let my brain do that road-trip thing where everything gets a little stretchy and stupid.

Austin lasts through song three.

"This playlist sounds like a car commercial."

I don't even turn. "You sound like a personality disorder."

Michael barks out a laugh. Austin looks offended.

"That was rude."

"It was accurate," Kelly murmurs.

I twist around fast. "Oh my God."

Kelly takes another sip of coffee, face almost blank, but there's that little spark in her eyes she gets when she's been waiting to land something.

We talk about going home for a while. About whose parents are gonna act like college fundamentally changed them and whose are gonna act like nothing's changed at all. About people from high school we'll probably run into at the diner or the grocery store or the one bar everybody pretends not to miss until they're back in it. Austin claims he is not going to that bar. Michael and I both tell him that's a lie. Kelly says nothing for a beat, then says, "If Tara Lyle is there in that fake fur jacket again, I'm leaving."

I stare at her. "You remember the jacket?"

"It was a lot."

Austin laughs hard enough he has to lean forward. "Mercer, that might be the meanest thing you've ever said."

My phone buzzes in the cup holder. Text from my mom.

What time do you think you'll be in?

Late tonight probably. Michael's driving like a grandfather.

"I know that face," Michael says without looking. "You talking about me?"

"Always."

"As it should be."

I send the text. Open the map without thinking. I just like knowing. How long, how far, what's coming. It's not anxiety. It's information, and there's a difference.

Eight hours, twenty-two minutes.

I make a face.

"What now?" Austin catches it in the mirror.

"Nothing."

"That is not your nothing face."

I angle the phone away. "You don't know my nothing face."

"I absolutely know your nothing face. That's your I-found-something-annoying face."

Michael holds out a hand. "Let me see."

I pass it to him for one second. He glances down at the next rest stop, the time, the alternate routes the map lists in light gray. Hands it back without comment.

"What?" Kelly asks.

"There's a shorter route later," Michael shrugs.

I look at him. "How much shorter?"

"A lot."

"Define a lot."

He nods at my phone. "What's it say?"

I look.

The alternate breaks off ahead in a clean pale line.

Save 6 hr 47 min via Highway 19.

For one second I just stare at the screen, and the buzz of that gas station comes back, and the guy's voice, and the way the ice felt against my ribs.

My stomach drops. Drops, like physical, like falling.

Then I laugh, because of course it's Highway 19.

"Absolutely not," I get out.

"I didn't say we were doing it," Michael clips back.

"Good."

Austin has gone quiet in the back. Austin doesn't go quiet. That's not a thing he does. I clock it the way you clock somebody coughing in a hospital automatic, a little cold up the spine.

"That 19?" he finally goes.

I turn the phone so Kelly can see. She reads it and looks right back out the window like she didn't.

Michael drums his fingers once on the wheel. "It does save almost seven hours."

"And?"

"And that's a lot of hours."

Austin makes a low sound that's not quite a laugh. "Yeah. It is."

The mood shifts. Not enough to ruin it. Just enough that everybody feels it.

Highway 19 isn't some secret. Everybody from our hometown knows that road. Not because people drive it. Because people don't.

The new highway got built years back, cutting a cleaner line east. Safer, wider. Nineteen became the old road after that long, empty, mostly farmland and fields and stretches nobody had reason to take anymore unless they were local, broke, lost, or stubborn.

And then there were the stories.

Parents saying not to take it at night. Cops telling kids not to drive out there alone. Too many abandoned cars over the years. And the one thing people our age always came back to those two kids from our high school. Not close friends. Not in our circle. Just kids we knew. Tyler Brennan, a year older than Michael. Hannah Cole, who I cheered with one season before she quit. Both gone the same spring. Their car found off Highway 19 with no sign of either of them.

After Hannah went missing, somebody decorated her locker with little paper hearts and her name in bubble letters. The hearts stayed up till the end of the year. Saying her name out loud went weird around the school after that. Saying it now still feels weird, sitting in the front seat of Michael's SUV with the heat on and a playlist going.

Kelly says, soft, "My dad still won't drive that way."

I look at her. Kelly's dad is the calmest man on Earth. He drives in blizzards. He drove through a hurricane warning once because he wanted to check on his mom. If Bill Mercer won't drive 19, that's a thing. That's a real thing.

I don't say that out loud either.

I lock my phone and drop it back into the cup holder.

"Still no."

Michael nods like he hadn't expected anything else. "We're not there yet."

"We're not doing it," Austin throws in, but tighter than before.

The sky ahead is wide and pale. The road clean. The day normal.

Michael reaches over and turns the music up a notch, cutting through whatever just settled in the car. "We'll get food first. Figure it out later."

"There's nothing to figure out," Austin mutters.

I almost tell him to drop it. I don't. I don't love the way that road name is sitting in my head either, riding right behind the gas station guy and the ice and they never figured out what happened to her.

So instead I reach into the snack bag, pull out the peanut butter crackers, and hand them over my shoulder without looking.

Austin pauses.

"Wow," he breathes. "Character growth."

"Don't make me regret it."

Kelly laughs outright, quick and bright.

Michael smiles and shakes his head.

Music fills the car again. The road keeps unfolding. Fields widen. A faded sign for a diner up ahead on the right.

Lunch. Then more driving. Then home.

Normal.

I tell myself that twice.

Then I glance one more time at the dark screen of my phone in the cup holder, already knowing that later, when the turnoff comes, somebody is going to bring up Highway 19 again.

And this time, it isn't going to feel like a joke.