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They didn’t talk in California, stopping only for gas and snacks. Laura drove because Derek barely had his learner’s. And Derek, he wouldn’t open his eyes.
He started crying in Nevada, sobs that wracked his body so hard Laura had to pull over and just hold him. They rocked together on the side of the road, tears mixing with the feeling of utter loneliness. Even though they had each other, they were alone in the world now.
Derek still wouldn’t talk to her in Utah; he didn’t say anything about the radio station that played awful pop music or request bathroom breaks or even ask to stop for dinner. He just sat there staring at his hands in his lap. And Laura’s heart broke even more.
He slept through Colorado, and for that Laura was grateful. She knew he had laid awake in every hotel they stopped at so far.
In Nebraska, he finally started to stare out the window, though there wasn’t much to look at. Laura tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t respond. She thought he might, every so often; but he’d shake his head and remain quiet.
He apologized to her in Iowa. With more tears and shaking and repeating “I’m sorry,” over and over and over. She stopped at a hotel earlier than usual, and they sat together on the floor.
“Why are you sorry, Der?”
“Because it’s my fault,” he replied after biting back a fresh wave of tears. “If I hadn’t let her in. If I hadn’t gone behind m-mom’s back. If I had listened to everyone that told me to stay away from her, they’d all be alive, Laura. I’m the reason they’re all dead.”
“Der. You didn’t set that fire. You’re not to blame. The hunters are. They wanted us to suffer. They would have found a way no matter what.”
She lifted his head, cradling it in the palms of her hands until he met her gaze.
“I’m the one who should be sorry. I abandoned you. I put myself before the pack. I thought that school and my future and my popularity were more important and if I had stopped to see you, to talk to you, to pay attention to you, maybe I could have stopped her from ever taking advantage of you. I failed you. I failed my baby brother.”
“Laur-“
“No, we’re letting it all out here, Derek. We’re letting it out and we’re leaving it here on the floor of this shitty motel in bumfuck Iowa and we’re letting it go. We can’t keep it all in and we can’t let it haunt us. We’re starting new. You and me, bud. We’re all we’ve got and we have to hold on to hope that we’re going to be okay.”
Derek looked so vulnerable to Laura at that moment. She had grown up with him, held him for the first time when mom and dad brought him home from the hospital, and vowed, even at 4 years old, that she would do everything she could to protect him. And now she held him again, promising to do the same.
They told each other secrets in Illinois.
“I stole Ricky Alden’s favorite baseball cap in the third grade and buried it in the woods. I don’t know why. I think because I thought he was cute and then I panicked.”
“I was the one that put mountain ash in Peter’s underwear drawer. I made Cora come with me so he wouldn’t be able to tell.”
“I ran through the boy’s locker room while the lacrosse team was changing just to see them naked.”
“I think I might like guys the same way I like girls.”
“You know I love you no matter what, right Derek? And I’ll take you to your first pride parade and buy you a bi flag if you want.”
For the first time since before the fire, Laura saw her brother smile.
Derek finally got behind the wheel in Indiana. That was the first time Derek had been behind the wheel of their dad’s Camaro.
In Ohio, they sang along to the radio obnoxiously loudly. And in Pennsylvania, they talked about what life in New York might look like for them.
In Pennsylvania, they laid bare their hopes and dreams for the future. Derek wanted to finish high school and then go on to study languages and history in college; Laura wanted to go to the police academy. They both wanted an apartment near Central Park, somewhere where they could look out their window and see grass and trees and pretend for even just a second that they were back home in the Preserve.
As they neared New York City, 2,917 miles from where they once called home, Laura could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, the peace at the end of their suffering. The road to healing was going to be long and hard. But with Derek by her side, she knew they could face it.