She has a state map spread out on the bed between us and it has lines on it that mean interstates and highways and I trace the lines with my eyes going up and going into other states and disappearing off the edge of the map and I look up at her and she puts her forehead against mine and stares into my eyes and I can smell her breath and it smells like bits of turkey torn off from the sides of her sandwich that she packed in her lunch.
“All the time?” I ask.
“Yeah. All the time.”
“I don’t want you doing that anymore.”
“Why?”
“It’s dangerous.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s not like anything ever happens.”
Her eyes don’t say that I should believe her.
“I don’t want you doing that anymore,” I say.
She pulls away and sits back and doesn’t look at me and I look at the TV, which is on but the volume’s turned way down so you can’t hear it, and I think about her lips really close to mine and I wonder if there was anything I could’ve said right. I look back again and she’s looking at me, but only for a second, and then she looks away again.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“What are you sorry for?”
“Nothing.”
She looks at me and her forehead’s all crinkly and she suddenly looks very tired and I feel, suddenly, very tired and I lay down on top of the covers and I think about closing my eyes but she’s still looking at me and she says, “Don’t be weird, okay?”
“But you said that…”
“Don’t be weird.”
Then we don’t say anything else and I think I fall asleep first and when I wake up in the morning the TV’s off and the covers are up around my neck and Sara Elizabeth’s just a bump next to me and I watch her move as she breathes and I close my eyes again and try to go back to sleep but I keep thinking of her sleeping next to me.
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