CHAPTER 1

‘You haven’t booked the tickets yet, have you?’

I winced, hastily turning down the volume on my computer as Lee Flynn, frantic and frowning, popped up on FaceTime. I looked from him to the Google Chrome window on my computer screen. Two seats to JFK, baggage included, one for Mr Lee Flynn, one for Miss Rochelle Evans.

‘Dude, you don’t have to yell. I’m literally doing it right now. I’m just picking our seats. You’re getting the aisle seat. I know you said you like the window, but you’ll be getting up to pee, like, all the time, and I just can’t deal. You know it’s costing about twenty dollars extra each to add –’

‘Abort mission, Shelly,’ my best friend since forever shouted at me. Lee leaned closer to his phone until I could just see the top half of his face, his forehead creased and his eyebrows knitted together. His dark brown hair was stuck up at odd angles and his blue eyes pierced right through the screen. ‘Do not book the flights.’

‘What? But …’

My mind rattled. Why didn’t he want me to book the flights? We’d been planning this trip for weeks. Spring break was coming up and we’d decided to mark the occasion with a trip across the country. It was our senior year of high school, we had been working our butts off to get good grades for college, and we deserved the break.

Plus, Noah, my boyfriend and Lee’s older brother, was currently in his first year of college in Boston on the other side of the country, which I had to admit was a big factor in me wanting to visit the East Coast. I wasn’t entirely selfish, though: Lee’s girlfriend of about a year, Rachel, had just been accepted to Brown, which was only an hour’s drive from Harvard. Rachel and her parents were going out to take a look around the campus. While I spent time with Noah, Lee would head down to Rhode Island to meet up with Rachel.

The plan had been to fly into JFK in New York and to drive to Boston from there, but not before spending a day in New York to visit a few of the tourist traps. I was so excited to see the Statue of Liberty. I’d never been to New York before. Actually, I hadn’t really left California much before.

We had it all planned: an epic trip to celebrate our senior year.

And suddenly Lee was yelling at me to ‘abort mission’?

‘Did you and Noah have a fight?’ I demanded, scowling at him. Lee and his brother had an unshakable bond – but they didn’t always see eye to eye. I should know. I’d watched them grow up together, and I knew both of them well. Lee and I were the same age (to the day) and we’d been best friends our entire lives. Our moms had been good friends, too, until my mom passed away in a car accident when I was younger.

Lee and Noah never had big fights, though. The only time I’d really seen them fight properly was last summer, when Lee found out that Noah and I had been secretly dating. (I still felt guilty about not telling Lee, even though he’d forgiven me. It was the only time I’d ever lied to him.)

‘No, we didn’t.’ Lee hesitated.

‘Did you and Rachel have a fight? Lee, what the hell is –’

‘I screwed up,’ he blurted, holding his phone further away so I could see his whole face. I was hit with the full force of his puppy-dog expression – which didn’t always work on me. ‘You know how I was gonna sort out the car rental?’

‘Yeah?’

‘So, it turns out nobody will rent to us because we’re not eighteen.’

I groaned and leaned over my desk, pressing my hands to my face. The news shouldn’t have surprised me. I was usually the more organized of the two of us (something I attributed to having looked after my little brother, Brad, a lot). Lee could be much more spur-of-the-moment. Of course he hadn’t noticed the age restriction until the very last second.

Exasperated, I cried, ‘Lee! You said you checked it all out!’

‘Well, yeah, I thought I did! You know, I googled and it said there were extra fees if you’re under twenty-five sometimes, but that’s fine. But … then I thought maybe I could rent it in Noah’s name –’

‘Lee!’

‘But my mom overheard me asking him about it on the phone –’

‘Oh my God,’ I huffed. I loved my best friend more than anything, but sometimes he could get a little too carried away. ‘Please tell me you weren’t actually planning on doing that. I’m pretty sure it’s, like, a crime.’

‘Spare me the lecture. My mom already yelled at me over it. I told her I was joking, but … it’s not like Noah was even going to go along with it, as it turns out. I mean, seriously. He was the resident bad boy at school, always getting into fights and skipping class. He used to smoke. A few months at Harvard and suddenly he’s Mr Goody Two-Shoes?’

I rolled my eyes. Annoyed as I was that Lee had actually been considering that as our next-best option, I couldn’t help breaking into a smile as he talked about Noah like that. Despite being our high school’s resident bad boy, as Lee had put it, Noah had changed a lot since going to college. Everyone else used to find him totally intimidating, but Lee and I had known him better. I’d harbored a helpless crush on Noah since I was, like, twelve. It turned out to be not-so-helpless when we ended up dating last year, after making out at the charity kissing booth Lee and I had run at our school’s Spring Carnival.

College might have tempered some of Noah’s bad-boy attitude, but he was still our Noah.

Still my Noah, I thought, my stomach fizzing and warmth spreading through me.

As soon as it crossed my mind, the worry started to seep in. I hadn’t seen Noah since Christmas break, and, well, he had changed a lot since going to college … I hoped he was still my Noah …

I shook the thought away quickly. Everything would be just as it always was between us. It had to be.

‘Anyway,’ Lee said suddenly, tearing me away from thinking about my boyfriend. He had a bright smile on his face that I hadn’t been expecting. ‘Don’t book the flights. We’ll just drive the whole way instead!’

‘What?’

‘Well, it was hardly a road trip, was it, Shelly?’ he wheedled, raising his eyebrows at me. ‘Just New York to Boston?’

‘It was five hours, Lee.’

‘Exactly. You couldn’t get out of Texas in five hours.’

‘Just how long is the drive from here to Boston?’ I asked, opening a new tab to look it up. I hadn’t even been driving for a year and I definitely hadn’t done a long drive – let alone cross-country.

‘Like two days,’ Lee told me so quickly I almost missed it. ‘And if we take turns driving and nap on the road, we’ll be there in no time. Plus, school’s shut for an extra week, because they have to fix all those busted pipes, remember, and get all the electrics fixed and stuff? We’d have plenty of time to drive there and back, and still hang out once we get there.’

A sensible voice in the back of my head told me this was completely ridiculous. Even if we did take turns driving and napping, it’d probably take us a week to get there. It was a crazy suggestion. We should just fly to Boston because, duh, of course that was the easiest thing to do.

But Lee and I didn’t do easy.

We did, however, do crazy.

My dad would probably sigh and rub his eyes and ask us if we’d really thought this through. Noah would laugh at us and tell us we’d barely make it out of California before giving up, turning round and jumping on a plane. Lee’s parents would probably roll their eyes and throw their hands in the air, knowing they couldn’t talk us out of it, and give us plenty of gas money, and Lee’s mom would insist that we text at regular intervals so she’d know we were safe.

As I ran it through in my head, the nagging, sensible voice got quieter and quieter until it disappeared entirely and Lee’s voice took over.

He hadn’t noticed my wandering thoughts. He was too busy telling me he didn’t even mind me driving his precious ’65 Mustang convertible, how much more fun the whole thing would be than flying, and didn’t I want to drive cross-country? And we’d be doing the bucket-list item, the thing everyone wanted to do some day. We’d be free of our parents and responsibilities, and it’d just be us and the open road. It would be, like, a rite of passage. And totally grown-up – going all the way across the country to spend some time with our other halves and to hang out at college, no less. We could still go to New York, Lee promised, even if it was just to drive through …

‘Come on,’ Lee pleaded. ‘This is our senior year, Elle. This was supposed to be our year. Remember? Our grand finale to high school. This could be our last great adventure before the rest of our lives!’

He finally stopped to draw breath. His eyes glittered and his mouth split into a beaming smile as he waited expectantly for my decision.

‘Lee,’ I said gravely.

I heard him gulp, waiting to be shot down.

‘Pick me up in ten. We’ve got road trip snacks to buy.’