"By the way, Ryder's picking me up and taking me to school. He should be here about seven-thirty," I said to my mom as I finished packing my lunch.

"Okay, but I really wish you would tell me these things earlier."

I sighed and continued to get ready as the morning chaos magnified. Mackenzie couldn't find her soccer cleats, and Jacob appeared to have lost his math homework. Usually, the Vargas family household wasn't like this; even with three kids the insanity was kept to a minimum, but I supposed everything was changing lately.

To top it all off, snow had fallen for the first time. The ground was blanketed with white, gleaming powder in a surprisingly peaceful early December kickoff to winter. Retreating back into my bedroom after finishing my lunch, I put on an olive green henley and a pair of skinny jeans; I didn't even bother to look in the mirror as I haphazardly threw my binder into my backpack.

"Kace, have you seen my-" asked Jacob.

I saw Ryder pull up into the driveway, his tires crunching along the gravel. "Bye! Love you!" I called to my parents as I left, glad to enter the sanctuary of my boyfriend's car.

"Hey," I saisliding into the passenger's seat.

"Hey, sweetheart." He leaned in for a quick kiss and I blushed, feeling the familiar radiance of his affection wash over me.

"Want to go the long way? We have time, it's only six-thirty," he asked. I loved long car rides, and Ryder knew it. He knew everything about me, come to think of it, which felt amazing. I liked how he understood every little thing about me.

"Yeah, sounds great." I said. He backed out of the driveway and off we went, his tires shaking on the hard, unpaved gravel of the side roads.

Ryder didn't seem awkward or out of place in the rougher areas of my route at all, masterfully navigating the terrain while makimg casual conversation.

"So I know I won't understand any of this, but what are you working on in Robotics lately? Whatever it is, I'll see you through the window sometimes and it looks pretty damn complicated."

I laughed, happy that he was making an effort to understand something that was such a big part of my world.

"Basically, the project we're doing right now is entirely navigational. We have to be able to correctly get a bot from point A to point B via remote from another location."

"Oh, that sounds really hard. Are you working with a group, or by yourselves?"

As we rolled through the hills, I felt slightly nervous to tell him about Scott. I didn't know why such a bright spot in my day would make him angry at me, but the nerves were still there. I decided, though I felt guilty, to lie.

"By ourselves."

"Okay, just checking," Ryder said, smirking at me.

Suddenly, his car started to jerk and hitch, finally settling on stopping with smoke coming
out of the back after a couple minutes of uncontrollable shaking. Ryder cursed as the engine sputtered and gave out, opened the door, and kicked his feet up onto the dash. The road was basically empty— it was six-thirty on a West Virginia morning, after all. I knew we weren't in any danger, so I didn't care that much in the long run, but Ryder was obsessed with his car and I braced myself for his reaction.

"What the hell was that?" I asked Ryder, climbing out of the vehicle and walking towards the back to check out what was wrong with it.

"How old is this car, anyways? It doesn't look like it should be having problems yet," I asked.

"Only a couple years, I don't know what happened either. I should have known better than to name it Jasmin, you know. The name's bad luck."

I figured it would be best to wait until later to grill him on what exactly had happened with Jasmin, and turned my attention to figuring out what we should do to actually get to school.

"So...what exactly are we going to do? I'm pretty sure it's too late to catch the bus, and my parents will kill me if I skip."

Before I could finish my thought, Ryder started violently kicking at the car while placing his head in his hands on the top of it.

"Fucking stupid car!" he half-shouted, as I stepped away from him.

I laughed uneasily, hoping to stop him from descending any further into his rage. "Dude, calm down. We'll figure it out, okay?"

"Look, Kace, I don't need any of your shit right now. We're basically stranded in the middle of nowhere with no goddamn way to get home. Unless you magically happen to have a cell phone with you? Mine's dead." he said.

I shook my head, Ryder knew I didn't have a cell phone. We really were lost, about six or seven miles from either of our houses. He continued his assault on the car while I sat down on the shoulder of the road and wondered what we were going to do.