“Which leaves us,” she said, squinting as she attempted to do the math for a second before giving up, “entirely too long before she gets normal again.”

“Three weeks,” I said.

“Exactly.” She sighed, checking her reflection in the mirror. “Anyway, so listen. This party is in Lakeview. Take a right on Hillcrest, left on Willow, house at the end of the cul-de-sac. We’ll see you guys there. Hey, and Macy?”

“Yeah?”

She leaned farther out the window, as if we were sharing a confidence, even though there was a fair amount of space, not to mention Wes, between us. “I have it on good authority,” she said, her voice low, “that there will be extraordinary boys there. You know what I mean?”

Wes, beside me, was fiddling with his visor. “Um, no,” I said.

“Don’t worry.” She put her car in gear, then pointed at me. “By the end of the night, you will. See you there!” And then, in a cloud of dust, the radio blasting, she was gone, hardly slowing for the stop sign at the end of the road.

“Well,” Wes said, as we pulled out of the driveway with slightly less velocity, “to the party, then. Right?”

“Sure.”

I tried, for the first five minutes or so of the drive, to come up with a witty conversation starter. Topics, from the inane to slightly promising, flitted through my brain as we moved along the quiet, mostly deserted country roads. Finally, when I couldn’t stand the silence anymore, I opened my mouth, not even knowing what I was going to say.

“So,” I began, but that was as far as I got. And, as it turned out, as far as we got.

The engine, which had been humming along merrily up until that point, suddenly began to cough. Then lurch. Then moan. And then: nothing. We were stopped dead in the middle of the road.

For a second, neither of us said anything. A bird flew by overhead, its shadow moving across the windshield.

“So,” Wes said, as if picking up where I’d left off, “that’s what Delia forgot.”

I looked at him. “What?”

He lifted his finger, pointing at the gas gauge, which was flat on the E. Empty. “Gas,” he said.

“Gas,” I repeated, and in my mind, I could hear Delia’s voice, echoing this, finally remembering with a palm slapped to her forehead. Gas.

Wes already had his door open and was getting out, letting it fall shut behind him. I did the same, then walked around the van to the deserted road, looking both ways.

I’d heard people talk about being in the middle of nowhere, but it had always been an exaggeration. Now, though, as I took in the flat pastureland on either side of us, it seemed completely appropriate. No cars were in sight. I couldn’t even see any houses anywhere nearby. The only light was from the moon, full and yellow, halfway up the sky.

“How far,” I said, “would you say it is to the nearest gas station?”

Wes squinted back the way we’d come, then turned and looked ahead, as if gathering facts for a scientific guess. “No idea,” he said finally. “Guess we’ll find out, though.”

We pushed the van over to the side of the road, then rolled up the windows and locked it. Everything sounded loud in the quiet: our footsteps, the door shutting, the owl that hooted overhead, making me jump. I stood in the middle of the road while Wes did a last check of the van, then walked over, his hands in his pockets, to join me.

“Okay,” he said, “now we decide. Left or right?”

I looked one way, then the other. “Left,” I said, and we started walking.

“Green beans,” Wes said.

“Spaghetti,” I replied.

He thought for a second, and in the quiet, all I could hear was our footsteps. “Ice cream,” he said.

“Manicotti.”

“What’s with all the I words?” he said, tipping his head back and staring up at the sky. “God.”

“I told you,” I said. “I’ve played this game before.”

He was quiet for a minute, thinking. We’d been walking for about twenty minutes, and not one car had passed. I had my cell phone with me, but Kristy wasn’t picking up, Bert wasn’t home, and my mother was at a meeting, so we were pretty much on our own, at least for the time being. After going along in silence for a little while, Wes had suggested that we play a game, if only to make the time pass faster. It was too dark for I Spy, so I suggested Last Letter, First Letter, which he’d never heard of. I even let him pick the category, food, but he was still struggling.

“Instant breakfast,” he said finally.

“That’s not food.”

“Sure it is.”

“Nope. It’s a drink.”

He looked at me. “Are you seriously getting competitive about this?”

“No,” I said, sliding my hands in my pockets. A breeze blew over us, and I heard the leaves on the trees nearby rustling. “But it is a drink, not a food. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You’re a rule person,” he said.

“My sister was a cheater. It sort of became necessary.”

“She cheated at this game?”

“She cheated at everything,” I said. “When we played Monopoly, she always insisted on being banker, then helped herself to multiple loans and ‘service fees’ for every real estate transaction. I was, like, ten or eleven before I played at someone else’s house and they told me you couldn’t do that.”