“It’s ten forty-five. We need to leave in fifteen minutes. I have to get Murphy’s dog food and toys. He likes the squeaky cheeseburger,” Flynn went on. We had been lucky to find a hotel that allowed pets because Flynn refused to put Murphy in a kennel.

“I’ve already gotten everything together. His food, his bowls, and his favorite toys. His blanket is already on the back seat of the car,” I told him. Of course Flynn still went through the bag of dog supplies five times before he was satisfied we hadn’t forgotten anything.

We went through the house, making sure lights were turned off, and windows were locked. Ten minutes later we were dragging our suitcases out to the car.

Flynn had a system of stacking the suitcases that was more akin to Tetris. So I left him to it. I put Murphy in the car and got him situated on the back seat.

“You ready to go to the beach?” I asked the dog, kissing the top of his head. He licked my cheek and I laughed.

Flynn got into the driver’s side and pulled out a sheet of paper, placing it on the center console. Sandbridge Beach is three hundred and forty-three miles away. It will take us five hours and fifteen minutes,” Flynn said.

“Depending on traffic,” I interjected.

Flynn frowned but otherwise ignored my comment.

“We will stop in one hour and fifty-one minutes in Lexington, Virginia to get something to eat,” Flynn continued.

“Okay, sounds good. Let’s do this!” I clapped my hands together and Flynn finally smiled.

“Okay. Let’s go,” he said and started driving down the hill toward the road. Flynn loved to drive. He was a horrible passenger so it was easier letting him behind the wheel. Sure, he drove like he was a seventy year old granddad, but it was a small price to pay to see his smile.

He would listen to his music over and over again. Even though it drove me a little nuts listening to The Cure on repeat, he enjoyed it so I never said anything. It kept him calm. So I’d suck up my Cure aversion and deal with it.

Murphy laid happily on the back seat as Flynn navigated us through town and toward the highway. He had planned our route down to the smallest detail. He knew exactly how many miles until we hit different points on our journey. He also gave me an expected weather report for Sandbridge Beach. Apparently it was going to be sunny in in the low fifties both days. Not exactly suitable beach weather, but nothing could dampen my excitement.

“We’re going to the beach,” Flynn said happily after he had gotten onto the highway, albeit slowly. I had never seen him drive on the interstate before and I was more than a little worried at how he would handle the chaotic drivers and loud tractor-trailers. But he handled it better than I did. By this point I would have flipped off the driver behind me and yelled obscenities at the biker who had screamed passed us.

I grinned. “We’re going to the beach,” I repeated, hardly able to believe it.

We passed the time alternating between comfortable silence and random conversation. We discussed the many alternating story lines on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which he still watched obsessively, until we drove into Virginia.

My stomach did a backflip. My entire life had been spent within the boundaries of West Virginia. I had only traveled outside the Wellsburg city limits when I had been taken to Mt. Hope after being remanded to the juvenile detention facility there.

I held my breath until we drove passed the Welcome to Virginia sign as though any moment I’d wake up and this would all have been a dream. I was terrified that I’d find myself shivering under my thin blankets in my crappy apartment. Flynn, the beach, college, everything, would be an elaborate fantasy created in my delusional subconscious.

“Why are you making that noise?” Flynn asked me, interrupting my mildly insane thoughts.

I laughed. “I wasn’t aware I was making a noise,” I said.

“Yeah, it sounds like humming.”

I looked out the window as cars and trees and farms flashed in and out of view. Virginia didn’t look a whole lot different than West Virginia so far. Which was both comforting and disappointing.

“I guess I do that sometimes,” I answered.

“You used to do that in English class. I hated it,” Flynn informed me.

If anyone else had said something like that to me, I would have been insulted. I would have gotten angry. I would have made sure that they regretted saying anything at all.

But Flynn didn’t mean to be rude. He didn’t think twice before voicing a thought after it entered his head. He had absolutely no filter. He didn’t know how to. It was exhilarating to be around someone who had no trouble saying what everyone else thought but was too scared to say.

“I won’t do it then,” I said.

“I don’t mind you doing it now. It doesn’t bother me. It bothered me then. But you weren’t very nice a lot of the time,” Flynn responded. I looked over at him, sitting rigid in his seat, his hands curled tightly around the steering wheel, his eyes trained on the road ahead of him.

I sighed. “No I wasn’t. I was pretty awful,” I agreed.

“Why were you like that? You were my friend. You would come to my house and watch television and eat my mom’s banana bread. You said you liked me. Then you would call me names at school. You let your friends hit me. You watched them when they pushed me in the stream. It sucked.” His voice was deceptively flat. I knew that those particular memories had to make him angry.

Hell, they made me angry. Angry with the person I had been and the things I had done and allowed to be done to him.