The Way Back to You by Michelle Andreani

mimicking what he thinks smiling looks like from having seen other people do it. “A douche is something girls put up their hoo-hahs, right? So I should take it as a compliment?”
    “You really shouldn’t.” Cloudy smiles extra sweetly. “They’re considered unnecessary and harmful to women. Just like you. Now what do you want?”
    “To get some grub before me and Quincy head up to the mountain.” He stares into my backseat. “But since I saw you here, I thought I’d congratulate you on your big-deal magazine interview. Lita won’t stop blabbing about it. It’s great that hopping around in short skirts is finally getting you girls the recognition you deserve.”
    Cloudy ditches her fake smile in an instant.
    I have no clue what magazine interview he’s talking about, but Cloudy’s likely to explode at any second. She owns a T-shirt that reads, “Not a Sport? Meet Me at the Mat” to shut down anyone who says cheerleaders aren’t real athletes.
    “Did you learn nothing last weekend?” Cloudy asks him.“Because if half a bottle of maple syrup didn’t do it”—she holds her drink up high and takes a step toward him—“this time I’m happy to pour an entire latte in your hair.”
    “Always so violent,” Jacob mutters.
    Matty told me about Cloudy’s revenge when Jacob sexually harassed one of the other cheerleaders at last week’s pancake breakfast fund-raiser. Cloudy can always hold her own against him (against anyone, really), but she shouldn’t have to. “Just back off, Tamsin,” I say. “Cloudy, are you ready to go?”
    “Definitely.”
    I open the passenger’s-side door and she leans in to set her drink in a cup holder.
    “Hey, what up, K.O.,” Jacob says, as if he’s just noticed me. “Glad you have it in you to finally crawl out of your cave, since you couldn’t be bothered last night to do it for your team.”
    And with that, he ambles off.
    THE MUSIC’S PLAYING on random and the heat’s on high. I’ve been driving, not long. (Fifteen minutes.) I’ve been speaking, not much. (Three sentences.) I’ve been eating, nonstop. (Breakfast sandwich first, then Junior Mints.)
    With every passing mile marker, the snow on the side of the highway is getting thicker and thicker, and I’m becoming more and more pissed at my cousin. Obviously, Matty went back to the bowling alley with Tyrell last night and complained to everyone about me.
    In the passenger seat, Cloudy’s been quiet while spooning up her oatmeal with berries, but as she turns the music all theway down, I sense our nonconversing time is about to come to an end. Silently, I beg: Don’t speak, don’t speak, don’t speak.
    “I’m so hungry, I could eat an antler!” she announces.
    “Um, okay? I brought beef jerky and—”
    “You haven’t heard of Eat the Alphabet? It’s a road-trip game Zoë and I have played for years. We take turns. Letter by letter. I did A . Antler. Now you could say, ‘I’m so hungry, I could eat an antler and a battery.’ Or whatever you want that starts with B . Then I’ll be like, ‘I’m so hungry, I could eat an antler, a battery, and a chrysanthemum.’ We have to memorize and say the words in order until we get to Z .”
    “Okay.” I don’t especially want to play a game or talk or do anything other than drive while music plays, but I need to snap out of my bad mood. “I’m so hungry, I could eat an antler, a battery, a chrysanthemum, and a . . . douchey ball player.”
    Cloudy laughs. “God. Jacob is the worst . I don’t know how Lita can stand sharing DNA with him.”
    “Yeah.”
    It comes out exactly how I didn’t want it to: sulky.
    “What’s wrong? You’re not letting him get to you, are you?”
    “No,” I say. “I don’t care about Jacob. It just sucks that Matty was complaining about me to him.”
    “He didn’t. Matty would never do that.”
    Cloudy doesn’t even know what happened, but she sure is quick to defend him.
    “I know he did. I was supposed to