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We can stop on the way home, she told me, but I knew she wouldn’t want to stop. She hated stopping once we got going. She didn’t like pauses in the action, or diversions from the path, or moments that weren’t scheduled into the plan. She liked plans. I just nodded and pretended for a moment that maybe we would stop, and I could get some water and go to the bathroom and stretch my legs for a minute before the doors were closed again and we were rolling onwards. I didn’t remember what my body felt like when it wasn’t moving and wasn’t held by the car seat. I didn’t remember what it felt like for my eyes to look at something still, something unmoving, something at rest. My right hand was molded to the armrest and my left hand clung to my leg just above the knee where my shorts stopped and the skin was sticky from sitting all day long in the sun that never seemed to rise or set, it just hung tightly to the middle of the sky where it would be sure to hit me without ceasing. I wasn’t usually allowed to drive. But I was expected to keep the soundtrack going and supply water and food when asked. Technically I wasn’t allowed to drive since I had never gotten my license, so it was fair that I was never asked to take the wheel. But I still sort of resented the fact that I had one seat to sit in for three thousand miles and I couldn’t even ask for a stop unless it was at a scheduled mealtime.

I don’t mean to make it sound like it was all bad though. We laughed a lot, the two of us; we shared stories and ideas. We sang along with Abbey Road and Graceland and an occasional chance U2 song on the radio. And the long stretches of road ahead of us started to feel comforting and familiar, even as the landscaped changed and I saw deserts and mountains I had never seen before. It all felt like home, like the whole country was my home. Passing through towns I saw people walking along sidewalks, so at home. Passing by truckers with cigarettes hanging from hands held out the window, they seemed so at home in their cabins pulling loads behind them. The sky was over all of our heads, holding us in close to home, a blanket so blue across our laps. I was a stranger to stillness, to familiar beds, to home cooked meals. I missed these things sometimes, but at the same time I couldn’t imagine what I would be like to not have a different view out of my window every day. It was a transitioning world out there, and I was just flying on by right through it, something static in a fading countryside. The seat of my shorts would wear thin but they would never be washed in the same washer twice. That was comforting to me. At least in those few weeks. Until it would stop on the other side.