“You didn’t sound like you remembered.”

“Well, I did.”

“Then you shouldn’t have said what you just said.”

She didn’t bother to respond a third time. Her brother always needed the last word. It drove her crazy.

“Were you able to get any sleep at all?” her mom asked.

“Until you hit that pothole. Thanks for that, by the way. My head practically went through the glass.”

Her mom’s gaze remained fixed on the road. “I’m glad to see your nap put you in a better mood.”

Ronnie snapped her gum. Her mom hated that, which was the main reason she’d done it pretty much nonstop as they’d driven down I-95. The interstate, in her humble opinion, was just about the most boring stretch of roadway ever conceived. Unless someone was particularly fond of greasy fast food, disgusting rest-stop bathrooms, and zillions of pine trees, it could lull a person to sleep with its hypnotically ugly monotony.

She’d said those exact words to her mother in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, but Mom had ignored the comments every time. Aside from trying to make nice on the trip since it was the last time they’d see each other for a while, Mom wasn’t one for conversation in the car. She wasn’t all that comfortable driving, which wasn’t surprising since they either rode the subways or took cabs when they needed to get somewhere. In the apartment, though… that was a different story. Mom had no qualms about getting into things there, and the building super had come by twice in the last couple of months to ask them to keep it down. Mom probably believed that the louder she yelled about Ronnie’s grades, or Ronnie’s friends, or the fact that Ronnie continually ignored her curfew, or the Incident-especially the Incident-the more likely it would be that Ronnie would care.

Okay, she wasn’t the worst mom. She really wasn’t. And when she was feeling generous, Ronnie might even admit that she was pretty good as far as moms went. It was just that her mom was stuck in some weird time warp in which kids never grew up, and Ronnie wished for the hundredth time that she’d been born in May instead of August. That was when she’d turn eighteen, and her mom wouldn’t be able to force her to do anything. Legally, she’d be old enough to make her own decisions, and let’s just say that coming down here wasn’t on her to-do list.