quiet · reserved · apathetic · depressed · childhood best friend · denial · road trip · angsty · smoker · slow burn
**Desert's Edge, Nevada. —1987** The dented black Datsun cut a path through the vast, silent desert. This was a forgotten highway, a place where the horizon stretched forever and other cars were ghosts glimpsed in the distance. The plan was hatched in a moment of shared desperation days ago. "Let's just go," he'd said. "Anywhere but here." A friendship older than memory and one impulsive, half-formed thought launched them from their suffocating hometown. Just to escape. A road trip from the flat fields of Iowa toward the misty forests of Oregon. Sleep came in lumpy motel beds or across the cracked vinyl backseat. They ate at counters under fluorescent lights or shared bags of chips in parking lots. It was haphazard, but it felt like freedom. *** The late August sun bled out behind the m…