The backseat was cold. Rhoswen sat up.

“Where is this?”

The Jeep wobbled, the way it drove. The way Rilla always drove. The engine rumble buried deep down inside her belly.

“Salt flats. Utah.”

 Some old-timey folk song played over the radio. Rhoswen twisted around to see out the window. White dust. Broken ground. It went for miles, all around.

…

Country roads

Just follow the country roads

Anywhere is home

Along these country roads

Static crackled like a campfire, lighting up the night. The radio was busted, the tunes grainy and sandpaper-sounding. But that was all they had.  

The trunk still held the stifling heat of the day, a dull invisible haze hanging in the air, even as an indigo dusk settled over the miles of cracked earth and warm sand. Rhoswen sat on the tailgate, swinging her legs, dusty jeans and dusty converse with dusty cuffs and dusty laces. 

A cool breeze drifted through the doorless jeep, going right through it as if it wasn’t even there. As if it was just another mirage. A trick of the light and of what should’ve been there but wasn’t. What could’ve been there.

Just follow these old country roads

Country roads…

Her sister sat in the backseat, tuning the old guitar. Played in and in desperate need of a restring, but they didn’t have any strings. Gas stations didn’t carry them. They just carried candy and soda. Sickly sweet candy and soda. 

“Rilla, when can I go back to school?”

“Soon, when we get to the next town.” She barely glanced up from the tuning pegs, the sleek fretboard. She sounded so sure of herself. Not like the twangy strings she plucked. Off-key and buzzing.

“Rilla.”

“I want to go home, Rilla.”

Her sister lightly handed the instrument over, as if to make up for her lack of response. Rhoswen played a couple of chords in no particular order. No pattern. No predictable sequence. 

“Hold it away from your face,” Rilla used to tell her when she was little, when Rhoswen would bend over the guitar when she played it. “The strings can break.” And she was right. The strings could snap at any moment.

“Like this,” she would say, and she would show her how to rest the instrument against her, facing away. So Rhoswen always knew that strings could break, even the strings that tied a heart together. Even the tightest stitches and most complicated knots. Anything could be undone. Anything.

“We’ll go home when we do.” Her sister’s voice drifted over to her, breaking into her thoughts, so Rhoswen knew she’d been thinking about it too.

Rilla settled next to her, the two of them sitting side by side. The empty bag of chips crinkled in the breeze. The empty bottle of strawberry soda rolled around on the floor of the jeep.

Off in the distance, the dunes shifted. Some melted and some rose up like mountains, some flattened out and some stood up taller. The wind changed them. It picked up the sand, pouring it and raining it down, the grains falling and fading in and out. Swooping and diving like clusters of starlings, making shapes in the sky, golden and glimmering in the ebbing sunlight.  

Country roads

Just follow the country roads

Anywhere is home

Along these country roads

Anywhere is home,

Anywhere is home…

At Rhoswen’s breathy sigh, her sister smoothed her hair, brushed it behind her ear. 

“We’ll make it,” Rilla said. “We’ll get there.”

Rhoswen turned to face her.

“When?”

“Rose…”

“I want to know when.” There was so much defiance in her voice. Trembling. Tears. Everything she was holding back and everything she wasn’t anymore.

“I don’t know when, okay? I don’t know.” Now all the sureness was gone. The look in her sister’s eyes was a desperate one. Even she didn’t know.

Rhoswen pushed off the tailgate, dropped down onto the shattered ground, and walked away. She would cross every dune on foot if she had to. To get home. 

Even if her home had been right there with her all along. 

And even if she could never go back there.