Monday, I pretended nothing had happened. For a while that worked, but when I tried to get her to laugh, she seemed to get even more pissed at me - like being able to pretend everything was fine somehow made me a bigger jerk than she already thought I was, even though it's what she said she wanted. But I didn't try to point that out.

By yesterday after school, we were back to her not talking, at all, but she took me to get my money from Mr. Anders anyway, like she promised. She didn't say a word the whole way there, at least not to me - she seemed to be arguing with someone in her head. The whole time I was in with Mr. Anders, I kept wondering if I'd come back out to find she'd left me there, stranded across town, just out of spite. When I got back into the car, she was looking at the map again.

I waved my pay envelope at her.

"So, you're all ready to go?"

Took me a few seconds to answer, because it sounded more like an accusation than a question. "Yeah. Pretty much."

She traced my route across the map. Her finger followed the orange highlighter across the spiderwebs of roads and ghostly state lines, past landmarks and cities, over rivers and mountains, snaking along the bottom of two huge patches of lake blue before pressing down over Madison, Wisconsin, like she could make me forget by hiding the destination.

"What if your dad decides you have to turn it in tomorrow instead of Thursday?"

"He won't. Early day at a site out by Johnstown. He'll be gone early and home late. Hopefully."

Her hand was still on the map, hiding Madison and its star. "You know this sucks, right?"

I didn't try to answer. I knew many things sucked right now, but I wasn't gonna try to figure out exactly which one she meant, especially since I was starting to get a little pissed off myself. Why couldn't she see that I needed to do this alone? But I just let her fume and kept my mouth shut - I'd had enough practice at that with Dad. I needed the car.

Eventually, she slid the map closed and turned in the seat to face me. She held it to her chest and we had a staring contest, but eventually she handed it over.

When she dropped me off, I thought she was gonna say something else. But she didn't. When I reached for the handle to open the door, she laughed, but it was a bitter, awful sound. Made me panic.

I left her two messages last night, but she didn't call back. Until I got her text this morning - I said id be there - I wasn't sure she was gonna show up. I'm still not entirely sure.

It's actually kind of amazing she's still letting me borrow her car. Assuming, of course, that she is, that she shows up this morning and then hands over the keys.

I'm ready to go - as soon as Dad leaves. He should have been long gone by now.

I read Shauna's last text again, for the tenth time, just to be sure. Still pissed.

I hear Dad's footsteps on the stairs from the second floor. Panic burns up my throat. If he calls me upstairs, I could bolt out the side door. But if he comes charging down here, there's nowhere to go.

His feet around the kitchen. The refrigerator door.

I'm a sitting duck.

When I hear his steps near my door, I grab the strap of my backpack, ready to run. But he keeps going. I don't breathe until the front door slams shut. Then I race to get my stuff together.

I wait for the sound of his truck pulling out of the driveway. Picture him turning toward the center of town. Past the gas station. Each likely turn until I'm sure he has to be near the highway. Then I text Shauna.

When she picks me up, we don't even talk. Her eyes are red and puffy, and there's nothing left for me to say.

A block from school, she pulls onto a side street, just as we planned. But instead of turning the car off or unbuckling her seat belt or making any move to get out, she just sits there, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that they look melded to the gray vinyl. Each second she just sits there, I'm more sure she's changed her mind, or that she's already confessed everything to her mom. Something.

"I hate this." She hurtles out of the car.

At least she said "this" and not "you." Unless she really means me.

Outside the car, she hesitates just a few seconds before dropping the keys into my hand. Then she reaches into her backpack and pulls out an envelope. She thrusts is at me, hitting me in the chest.

"Here."

"Huh?"

"Take it."

It's too thick to be a letter. I squeeze it and start shaking my head. Don't need to open it to know it's full of money.

She holds her hands behind her back. "It's only what I had on hand from my birthday and babysitting, so not that much, but there's no way you'd make it back with what you have."

"I'm not taking your money." But even with the words out of my mouth, I know I will. I need it way too much.

"You can pay me back. Later." She looks into my eyes. "You'll pay me back. After you come home."

"I will." I cradle it close. "Thanks. For everything. I mean it. I -"

"You'd better go."

She tries to leave but I grab her arm. "Shauna . . ." I don't know what to say. But I don't want to leave like this.

She shakes free and wraps her arm around her middle. "Look, whatever happens, or . . . whatever you decide to do, just call me, OK? Every day? Because I'm going to worry, and probably be grounded, and it's going to suck and . . ." Her hard eyes scare me. "Just promise, OK?"

"Yeah." I barely gasp the word out. My chest feels tight.

"Every day."

I cover my heart with my hand.

She lets out a long, shaky breath and then moves away from the car, not even looking at me.

"Shaun."

When she turns back, her eyes are already filling up. "Just go."

And then she's gone. Walking away. I turn to get in the car, but she grabs me from the side in a quick, awkward hug, too quick for me to even get my arms around her to hug back. She makes this sound in the back of her throat. Then she's gone again. This time I watch her until she rounds the corner out of sight. She never looks back.

Flying up the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I swallow over and over, trying not to puke. Acid churns around the rocks in my gut.

Every dark truck in the rearview mirror is Dad, racing after me. Every state trooper, a trap waiting to grab me. I'm driving like a maniac, practically begging to get caught.

The panic evaporates as soon as I hit I-80 and actually start heading west. My shoulders and arms lose the steel tension that made me cling to the steering wheel. I pull my fingers off the sweat-slick wheel, and shake and flex them in turn until they work again. Even the burning in my gut starts to cool. When I finally sink back into the seat, my shirt is soaked, but I can relax and just drive.

Crossing over the Susquehanna River feels like the last drop on the big coaster at Dorney Park. I've never been this far away by myself. I give the Williamsburg exit my very best one-fingered salute and pick up speed.

Just outside DuBois, I take my first break, mainly because I've got to piss so bad my eyeballs are floating.

The wall-size map next to the bathroom shows I'm already more than halfway to Ohio. I-80 stretches out to the left until it runs out of Pennsylvania and off the map. Long day ahead, but just a couple more hours and Pennsylvania will be behind me.

Before heading back to the car, I splurge on provisions: a huge-ass soda, two kinds of chips, a couple of candy bars, and two hot dogs. There's been no call yet from Dad, not surprising since Pendergrast probably doesn't even know yet that I'm not gonna show. About another twenty minutes, at most, and Ms. Tine will send a note to the office. Toss up of whether Pendergrast will call Dad right away or wait. But eventually someone will ask Shauna. She'll withstand Pendergrast, but she'll crack wide open in a wave of guilt with just one long look from her mom.

I chow down, leaning against the car. Driving through mountains, as opposed to over or around them, always amazes me, ever since I was little. And I always wonder the same thing: Exactly when did people start thinking of going through mountains? Did the first guy to suggest it get laughed at? Did they give him any credit at all when they finally tried it?

As soon as the second hot dog is gone, I push the question aside and climb back into the car. It's a long way to go before Madison. Time to gas up and drive on.

Back on I-80 and safely coasting in the center lane, I picture the road stretching out in front of me, like on the map. I lean back and drive.

The next time I stop, I switch iPods. Had to get one of those wall chargers. Couldn't figure out how to sync it with my computer without messing it up, at least not yet. T.J.'s trusty blue was playing on shuffle, and it was fun at first to have a little bit of surprise with every new song, but too many of them were weird, or songs I couldn't even recognize.

Just from scrolling through the playlists, I know the bigger one has more songs I already know, some I can already hear in my head. I pick "Top 25 Most Played," knowing this is pretty much my only chance to hear what T.J. listened to the most, before my replays and skips start messing with it.

I can't kid myself, even for one moment, into feeling like T.J. is here with me. But with his music playing, I pull back onto I-80, feeling better than when I pulled into the stop.

Dave Matthews Band's "Ants Marching" pours out of Shauna's crappy speakers as I merge back into the flow of traffic. The summer I was seven was pretty much Dave Matthews 24/7, until Dad threatened to toss the stereo out the window if T.J. didn't give it a rest. Before that summer, T.J. had been all about Bruce Springsteen, and even after that summer, he played a lot of Bruce and the posters stayed on the wall. But that summer was Dave Matthews all the time.

Three more DMB songs, and then Bruce wails about the need to run. It feels like a good omen, and I can't help but smile. I can almost hear T.J.'s scratchy voice in my head.

The song pulls me back to lying on the floor of my room, elbows on the floor, face braced on my palms, listening to T.J. and his best friend, Dan, and the music drifting across the hall. I would close my eyes and pretend I was a part of it. All I wanted was to be in there with them.

The songs flow past like old friends. The sounds of the year before T.J. left for Basic, and many of the times he'd been home since. And all those long nights when Dad was MIA, the music floating across the hall, or through my open bedroom window from the garage or the back porch or, later, Dan's beat-up truck in the driveway.

I'm slapping out the beat on the steering wheel with my fingers, and in an instant it's like last spring, like being back in the truck with T.J., driving west toward Raccoon Creek State Park, all the way on the other side of Pittsburgh.

After all of T.J.'s revelations on the side of the road, we were both pretty quiet. I was nervous to drive - I'd only had my permit for a few weeks - but T.J. insisted. With everything T.J. had said swirling around my head, and needing to concentrate on what I was doing, I didn't really feel like talking. Seemed to suit T.J. just fine. He turned the music up and started singing along. Everything melted away until it was just us and the music and the road.

That first afternoon, we hiked an easy warm-up trail. The ball of dread inside me loosened with every step. And as the days wore on, I started to believe that anything was possible. I started to trust that when T.J. came home for good, we'd have a real life. Together. Maybe start a business. I pictured us, someday, like Dad and Uncle Mac, poker nights and fixing the trucks and being together, like friends. Picnics with our wives and kids. Fishing out at the lake. I thought we'd have time for all kinds of stuff.

All that week, even when he had to take it easy on me or when I puked twice the first full day of hiking, I'd never felt stronger or better than standing there next to him after each hard climb. He laughed when I puked, and when I lost my footing or tripped or stepped in the creek, but every time he was laughing, his smile was so big, his laughter so easy, I didn't care. I finally felt like T.J.'s brother, instead of a lesser human who happened to share his last name.

Sometimes he moved us at a vicious pace. But other times, when we stopped for a break, it was like he went somewhere else entirely for however long we stayed still. Most of the time he would come out of it fast and jump up ready to hike on, but a few times he came back slowly, quietly, and his eyes focused in on me for a long, charged moment before he moved.

In the dark of the tent, T.J. talked about towns and buildings and mosques, about the kids he saw and the landscape, about mountains and deserts. He talked about some of the guys in his unit. He talked about sand. And about thirst. But he didn't talk at all about what it was really like, what he did over there. When I tried to ask about war stuff - about suicide bombers, IEDs and ambushes, about what he'd seen and what he'd done - he shut down, with just a look in the fading light of the fire. And in the pitch-dark of the tent, just the angle of his face and his rough-drawn breath was enough to tell me I'd gone too far.

I had never spent that many days in a row alone with T.J., but even for him, he seemed quiet and tense. That last night in the tent, the quiet stretched between us, and I think I talked for hours just to chase it away.

When my cell plays Shauna's ringtone, I jump and swerve, and realize I was barely paying attention. I scramble for my phone on the passenger seat while trying to stay in my lane.

"Hey." I brace for her mood after the scene this morning.

"Hey, where are you?" Tight, but no tears.

"About thirty miles from Ohio." I can't help but be a little proud at that. Like I had something to do with making Ohio appear in front of the car, as if I'm about to conquer Cleveland or something.

"Wow," she says, and I can hear her moving around. "You're moving fast."

"Yeah. I'm making good time." Dad's said that a hundred times; makes me grin.

"Well, that's good, because I just got out of Pendergrast's office. He knows you didn't show. He wanted me to tell him where you are so that he could try to avoid, as he put it, 'getting you into a world of hurt.'" I can hear Shauna's air quotes. "He suggested that I call you, using the cell phone I'm not supposed to use at school, I might add, and try to convince you to get your butt here and to his office, pronto." Her imitation of Pendergrast is right on. "He said if you don't get here fast, he'll be left with no choice but to call your dad. So, here I am, calling. I think he really doesn't want to have to call your dad."

Probably doesn't. "Thanks, Shaun."

"I'll hold off on giving any of it away as long as possible, but we both know Mom'll notice the car gone tonight, and then I'm done."

"Wait," she says to someone else. Then I can't really hear anything, muffled sounds. Did she cover the phone? "Great."

"Gotta go," she says to me. All bright and chipper.

"What's up?"

"What do you care?" And there's the edge again. "Look, they're waiting. And since it'll probably be my last social outing for a few weeks, you know, with the impending grounding and all . . ."

"Yeah. No. Sure."

"So, just drive safe, and call when you get there."

She cuts the call. And I'm left wondering who "they" are. If "they" were Trish or Kara or whatever, she'd have said so and not bothered to cover the phone. Terrific.

I toss my phone back onto the seat. My stomach roils with all the junk I've eaten.

I wish she would've talked to me - more than just grunt the bare minimum - sometime in the last three days. I've replayed Saturday night over in my head, over and over. There was no way it was gonna go well. Sure, I could have not wimped out and kissed her, and then I think there would have been a whole lot of kissing, and maybe more. But eventually she would have asked to come with me, and I would have said no. And somehow I think it would've been even worse if we made out and then I said no. But maybe now she's come to her senses. Remembered I'm not really boyfriend material. Maybe all I've done is shove her faster and harder toward Michael. Maybe he'll round the bases while I'm gone. Shit. Fine. Whatever.

I grip the steering wheel and try to just focus on the road. But I keep hearing that muffled part of the call, trying to decipher the muffles. Maybe it was just Trish or the team, and she's just trying to get back at me? Would be like her, when she's in proving-someone-wrong mode.

And Pendergrast . . . she said he didn't want to call Dad. I don't blame him. I wish I could call and explain, but he probably wouldn't care anyway. I skipped my finals and broke the contract thing they made me sign to stay out of trouble. And even if he would understand, it's too much to risk. Dad won't call the cops, but Pendergrast just might.

Better to just turn up the music and drive.

There's a rhythm to the driving: the sound of the road and passing cars adding to the music. Rivers and cities, bridges, houses, animals, all give me something to look out at, when the thinking gets to be too much. I pass farms and stores and schools, and wonder what it's like to live there.

Mostly, and despite every effort not to, I think about T.J., and the fact that he didn't trust me enough to tell me any of the important stuff.

I pass a sign for 79 South. My foot hits the brake and the car slows, swerves. I recover and look in the mirror. Everyone slowing. My bad. I pass the actual exit. Just another reminder that T.J.'s gone. When he got home, we were gonna spend a few days at McConnells Mill State Park, about a half hour south down 79 - wicked hikes, rafting, good fishing. No overnight camping, but enough places nearby to make it work. A great warm-up to some serious climbs. He was gonna teach me to climb. Now we'll never do it. Any of it.

For most of Ohio, I think about all the things T.J.'ll never get to do. And I can't stop seeing Zoe's face in my head. I've stared at the pictures of her for hours, reread all the letters. She has to be his. I'm sure of it. Well, as sure as I can be with the what-ifs that keep creeping in.

Shauna went through the rest of the letters last week, pointing out all the places where Celia talked about Zoe like she was theirs. And I reread Missy's, just to be sure. Nothing. At least nothing that says she's not T.J. and Celia's. But there's this little voice in the back of my head, reminding me of the obvious - that she never actually said daughter, or father, or anything like that. Shauna had a point, that if they know Zoe's their kid, then they don't have to say it. And the picture - the picture he had of just them, just Celia and Zoe. Cut so that it showed just Celia and Zoe. Why would she send him that unless they were T.J.'s family? With that picture, nothing makes sense except for her being his daughter. She has to be his.

When I see her, will I know? Just know for sure? Will she look even more like him in person? Or do something just like T.J.? Like in this one picture of them, the way she made her mouth just like his - and the one with the ice cream, her head tilted, both hands on the cone. In both she looked just like T.J., like the way he would do those things. I just have to believe. Believe that she's his. And when I know for sure, I'll tell Zoe about him. She'll never know him, not really, but I'll tell her stories, the good ones, not the crappy times.

A groaning truck horn jolts me. My car is straddling the line, half in the left lane. Cars and trucks are passing blurs to the right. The truck horn blares again, closer behind me, and then the grinding brakes kick in. I swing the car to the right and barely miss a minivan shifting into the center lane to pass a clunker crawling along in the right. The truck driver glares as he accelerates past. Time for more caffeine.

I pull to a careful stop in the parking spot closest to the rest-area building. My hands are shaking. Well across Ohio, spitting distance from Indiana. Got to keep going.

Splashing cold water on my face wakes me all the way up. Not taking any chances on running out, I get a huge coffee and a bottle of soda, though the kid who sold it to me called it pop. I stretch my back against the car and sip at the coffee, waiting for it to cool enough to gulp.

And as if on cue, my cell plays Dad's ringtone. For a second it's like he's here, and I have to clutch the cup to keep from dropping it. But once I've caught the panic, I climb into the car and open the phone.

"Hi, Dad."