“There aren’t any flames,” I said.
Austin and Ezra rushed out the door as if they wouldsomehow know what a smoking engine meant. I went to find the fire extinguisher, just in case.
Out the front window, there was no sign of the rental RV. “Where did the moms go?” I asked, twisting the knob on the glove box. It fell open with a heavy clunking sound.
“I’m calling them,” Skyler said. He already had his phone to his ear. After a moment he pulled it away and looked at it. “There’s no service.”
“Of course there isn’t, because this is the first time we actually need it,” I said. I lifted a stack of papers and pulled the extinguisher out of the bottom of the deep compartment. “This is your fault, Ezra!” I said as he came back inside the RV, obviously not having magically fixed it.
“Mine? Why?”
“Because you were complaining that we didn’t have an overnight stop in between Yellowstone and Spokane. You put that in the universe. It granted your wish.”
“If the universe is going to start granting my wishes, I want a million dollars and a girlfriend.”
“In that order?” Austin asked.
“You could ask for anything in the world and you only asked for a million dollars?” Paisley said. “That’s why you don’t have a girlfriend.”
Ezra chased Paisley around the RV while she laughed and screamed. He caught her and he and Skyler smooshed her into a hug.
“Stop it! You both stink!” she yelled.
They laughed and let her go.
“So do we need this?” I held up the fire extinguisher.
“No, it was just smoke,” Austin said.
I replaced the compact-sized extinguisher back in the glove box, and as I went to shut the door, the paper on top caught my eye. It was a reservation receipt for one of the RV parks we stayed at. The whole stack was, I realized, as I flipped through the papers. That wouldn’t have surprised me at all if I didn’t see that on every single page, representing every single place we’d stayed or would stay, the booking date was three weeks ago, not six months ago, which was when my mom had claimed this trip was planned and paid for.