The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith Page A

way.”
    Dad smiled wearily. “I was the one who should have reminded you.”
    “You were sick.”
    “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You couldn’t possibly know how to do something like that. It was my job and my responsibility. So it’s my fault.”
    “Yeah, but—”
    “Hey,” he said, looking up sharply. “It’s fine. We’re going to be fine.”
    Owen said nothing, only watched as Dad pushed himself off the wall, walking over to the kitchen, where he opened one of the drawers and pulled out the box of cigarettes. He held it for a moment, just looking at it, then opened the lid with great care. But when he saw there was only one left, he set it gently back in the drawer.
    He glanced over at Owen, who was hovering in the doorway, and his face was entirely expressionless. “I’m gonna go lie down for a bit,” he said. “We’ll figure it out later, okay? Wake me when you’re ready for dinner.…”
    Owen nodded, then retreated back down the hallway to his own room, where he sifted through an overgrown pile of laundry, fishing out the pair of shorts he’d been wearing a week ago, the day the lights had gone out. He reached into one pocket, then the other, then turned each oneinside out. But the cigarette—his mother’s cigarette—was no longer there.
    Sitting on the edge of the bed, he felt a great weariness wash over him, and rather than fight it, he let it carry him out to sea. He curled up and closed his eyes, and he knew then that he wouldn’t wake his father later, that he’d let him sleep, and that he’d sleep, too, and with any luck, tomorrow would be better.
    In the morning, when the column of sun reached in through his tiny window, he hauled himself out of bed and back down the hallway, where he found his dad bent over a map at the kitchen counter. It was faded and curling at the corners, and there were small rips along the seams.
    “How old is that thing?” Owen asked, stifling a yawn.
    “Older than you,” Dad said without looking up. He was tracing a finger along a thread of highway, and when Owen leaned in, he could see the direction it was moving: west.
    “Was California even a state then?” he joked, and Dad shot him a look, but there was something good-natured about it, something almost joyful, and Owen sensed that some curtain had been lifted since last night, some weight they’d both been carrying.
    “I was thinking we might take a little drive.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “Yeah,” he said with a grin. “I was thinking we’d head out on the road, see how far we get.”
    Owen tried to hide his smile but failed completely. “That sounds like a pretty good plan.”
    “You’d be fine with it then?” Dad asked. “Not staying here, not going back?”
    “Yes,” he said with a decisive nod, and the word echoed through his head:
Yes, yes, yes
. His chest felt light and expansive, his heart lifting at the thought, and it seemed so sensible, so obvious—that they would go west, that they would move forward, because where else was there to go?—that it almost felt like a trick, like at any moment, Dad might tell him it was all some terrible joke.
    But he didn’t. Instead, he folded up the map, giving Owen a searching look. “You’d be missing some school.…”
    “I’ll survive,” Owen said, nodding at the map. “You can use that thing to teach me geography.”
    “Seriously,” he said. “I don’t want you falling behind because of this.”
    “I have enough credits to graduate now, if I wanted to,” Owen said. “And I can do my applications on the road. It won’t be a problem. Really.”
    Dad smiled, but it didn’t make it all the way up to his eyes, which remained solemn. “So we’re doing this.”
    Owen nodded. “We’re doing this.”
    “Okay,” Dad said, and he lifted his coffee mug, nudging another toward Owen. They raised them at the same time, the clink of the ceramic ringing out through the drab kitchen and along the halls of the little apartment.
    Owen