Page 97 of Cut Off
I take the on-ramp.
Maddie talks for an hour and forty minutes straight.
I’m not exaggerating. I clocked it because I needed something to do with my brain that wasn’t the other thing my brain wanted to do. Maddie talks about Hunter, how his mother never liked her. Hunter’s dog, which she misses more than Hunter. She talks about how it feels to be furious and relieved at the same time.
“And the worst part,” she says, eating a pretzel out of the bag in her lap, “is that I had this whole future mapped out, you know? We were going to move into that brick building downtown, the one with the windows. And get a cat. And he was going to start his own thing, finally, instead of working for his stupid uncle. And I was going to do my masters. And then he just—nope. Out. Bye. Have a nice life. I’m going to focus on me.”
“He said that?” I ask, even though I’ve heard this story before.
“He said it with a straight face, Zo. I almost asked him what he had been focusing on for eighteen months if it wasn’t himself.”
“Strong question.”
“I didn’t ask it because I was busy crying.”
“Also valid.”
“I cried so hard I gave myself a sinus headache. I was crying and snotting and also kind of laughing because I knew I was going to write about it later.”
She crunches another pretzel. The road unspools in front of us, gray and wet and empty.
“Anyway,” she says, “I’m fine. I’m great. I’m thriving. I am a phoenix rising from the ashes.”
“Big phoenix energy.”
“Huge.”
Clearly, she is not fine. I know it because I’m her sister and because every twelve minutes, she goes quiet for thirty seconds and then starts again on a new topic, like she’s afraid of what will happen if too much air lingers in the car. I let her have it. I get it. I am, technically, doing the exact same thing, just at a lower volume.
Around mile two hundred, somewhere in the lumpy nowhere of southern Washington State, the gas light blinks on.
“Pit stop,” I announce.
“Thank God. I have to pee so bad I’m going to ruin the upholstery.”
The gas station is the kind that has a hand-lettered sign reading WE HAVE WORMS, which I assume refers to bait, but it could be a confession. The coffee comes out of a machine that has not been cleaned since… ever? We get two of them anyway, plus a bag of jerky and a decent banana.
Outside, the wind has teeth. We lean against the side of the car while the pump does its slow chugging thing, two cardboard cups in our hands.
Maddie sips her coffee. Makes a face. Sips again. “This tastes like punishment.”
“Yeah.”
“What did we do?”
“Exist.”
“That tracks.”
Then she says, very casually, “So. Jonah.”
I glance at the pump. The numbers are climbing. “Yeah.”
“What actually happened?”
“I told you.”
“You told me the press release version. I want the long one.”
