Chapter 13: WESTWARD BOUND
The Camaro hit the Arizona state line at 6:47 AM, and Max was already fighting me for the radio.
"Van Halen again? Seriously?" She reached for the dial. I blocked her hand without looking away from the road.
"Driver picks the music. Shotgun shuts their cakehole."
"That's not a rule."
"It is now."
She slumped back in her seat, arms crossed, glaring at me with the kind of theatrical disgust only a thirteen-year-old could muster. Behind us, somewhere on the highway, Neil and Susan followed in the rental truck carrying everything the Hargrove-Mayfield family owned. I'd volunteered to take Max in the Camaro before anyone could suggest different arrangements.
Three days. That's how long this drive would take. Three days of highway, diners, and motel rooms. Three days to solidify whatever sibling relationship we'd been building over the past month.
Three days before Hawkins.
"Fine." Max's hand shot out and spun the dial before I could stop her. Static, country music, static again—then something that made her pause. Cyndi Lauper, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."
"This," she announced, "is acceptable."
"It's garbage."
"You're garbage."
But she was smiling when she said it, and I found myself smiling back. This was new—the easy insults, the comfortable antagonism that felt like affection rather than war. In California, every interaction between Billy and Max had been loaded with genuine hostility. Now we were just siblings giving each other shit.
Progress.
The desert scrolled past the windows, red rock and scrub brush under a sky so blue it looked fake. I'd driven through Arizona in my old life, once—a business trip to Phoenix that had involved too much drinking and not enough actual work. The landscape hadn't changed. The perspective had.
"How long until we stop?" Max asked.
"Few hours. Flagstaff for gas, then push on to New Mexico."
"I need to pee."
"You should have gone before we left."
"I did go. I need to go again." She shifted in her seat. "Are you going to be weird about this the whole trip?"
"Probably."
Twenty minutes later, I pulled off at a rest stop. Max bolted for the bathroom while I stretched my legs and checked the Camaro's fluids. Everything looked good—I'd done a full service before leaving, courtesy of skills learned at Martinez Auto.
Martinez. The thought brought a small pang of something. Regret, maybe. Or just the recognition that I'd left behind the first person who'd treated me like I was worth investing in.
Don't waste it on anger, he'd said. Sound advice. Hard to follow sometimes.
Max came back from the bathroom with two bottles of soda and a bag of chips. "For the road," she said, tossing me a Coke. "You're welcome."
I caught it one-handed. "I didn't ask for this."
"And yet, you're keeping it. Weird how that works."
We got back on the road. The radio found a compromise station—classic rock mixed with newer stuff, neither of us completely happy and therefore both of us satisfied. The miles unwound behind us like a spool of thread, America revealing itself in pieces through the windshield.
Flagstaff came and went. Gas station, quick stop for real food, back on the highway. Max had grabbed a bag of beef jerky and a Snickers bar alongside my usual—two burgers, fries, a shake. She'd noticed my eating habits. Filed them away. Brought them up casually.
"You eat like you're training for the Olympics," she observed, watching me demolish the first burger before we'd even left the parking lot.
"Fast metabolism."
"That's not a metabolism. That's a black hole."
I considered telling her the truth. The fire needed fuel. Every time I trained, every time I used the power, the energy came from somewhere. My body converted calories to flame, and if I didn't replenish constantly, I'd collapse the way I had that first day at the warehouse.
But that was too much. Too complicated. Too many questions I couldn't answer.
"Just hungry," I said instead. "Long drive."
Max accepted it with a shrug. Probably didn't believe me, but wasn't pushing. We'd developed that rhythm—questions asked, partial answers given, space left for later.
The afternoon stretched. Arizona gave way to New Mexico, flat desert shifting to something with more elevation. The air changed through the windows, cooling as we climbed. Max put her feet on the dashboard despite my protests.
"It's bad for the vinyl."
"The vinyl's already shot. Look at those cracks."
"Those cracks have character."
"Those cracks have tetanus."
I let her keep her feet up. Some battles weren't worth fighting.
"I never got to do road trips," Max said, somewhere around Gallup. Her voice had gone quieter, the joking edge replaced by something more honest. "My real dad didn't take us anywhere. Just sat in his chair and drank and yelled when things weren't exactly how he wanted them."
I kept my eyes on the road. This felt important—the kind of confession that could spook if I responded wrong.
"Sounds familiar," I said eventually.
"Yeah. I guess it does." She was looking out the window, watching the desert blur past. "When Mom said she was leaving him, I thought—finally, you know? Fresh start. And then Neil happened."
"Out of the frying pan."
"Right into another frying pan. Mom's not great at picking men."
"She's getting better."
Max turned to look at me. Something in her expression I couldn't read. "Is she?"
I thought about Susan. The way she'd relaxed over the past month. The humming I'd heard through the walls. The first genuine smiles I'd seen on her face since transmigration.
"Yeah," I said. "I think so."
Silence. Comfortable. The radio played something by Fleetwood Mac, and neither of us changed it.
We stopped for the night in Albuquerque. Cheap motel off the highway, two rooms—one for Neil and Susan, one for Max and me. The attached diner served decent burgers and better pie. Max stole three of my fries before I could stop her.
"Those were mine."
"They're communal now." She ate another one, maintaining eye contact the whole time. "This is the new rule."
"Since when?"
"Since now."
I let her have the fries. The meal cost less than I'd expected, leaving my wallet heavier than projected. Small victory. Every dollar saved was a dollar available for emergencies.
Back in the motel room, Max claimed the bed closest to the bathroom and was asleep within minutes. The sound of her breathing filled the small space, steady and even.
I lay in the other bed, staring at the ceiling. Different ceiling, different state, same borrowed body.
Hawkins was maybe two days away now. Two days until I'd be standing on ground that hid a gateway to another dimension. Two days until the game really started.
My hands warmed against the sheets. The fire was restless tonight, stirring without permission. It had been doing that more lately—responding to emotions I wasn't consciously feeling, alerting me to things I hadn't yet processed.
Right now, it was telling me something was coming. Something important.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
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