The drive from Texas to Minnesota is a winding pattern of dust and an aura of lifelessness to  ethereal trees and ethereal lakes, the green spinning into her unfocused eyes. She hangs her arm right out of the backseat window and feels the air and movement on her skin. Life is like this: a fast-moving car, trapping in and strapping down its passengers, until the crash.

Kav is a good kid, mostly. She does her homework. She eats her vegetables. She is kind to animals, the elderly, and even her own sister. She doesn’t stay out past curfew.

What did she do to deserve this?

The crash, of course, is a metaphor for death, and Kav has seen it: the wreckage of the car in the aftermath, the shattered window glass, the parts scattered on the ground, the dents and the leaks and the fire. It burns a striking image in the mind.

This time around it is her grandmother. Kidney failure. A painless way to go.

For the deceased, that is. Her mother sunk to the floor, flowing and boundless, upon hearing the news, bruised her knees all up. She doesn’t talk much, now; it has been three weeks and Kav was forced to walk to school, when school was in session. Her mother stopped driving. She’d sit in Economics, swiping back and forth on her phone with her mind grass-stained, her mind sitting next to a grave, running its fingers over the headstone and feeling the cool slate. She is a good kid. She is a good student. Her mother stopped doing most things, and now they are here, adhered to the Minnesota border. Waiting.

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It’s like that when someone dies. It’s just like that. People react in a spectrum of ways; some sink to the floor and some swallow down the grief, a magical act of sword-swallowing, pricking the internal, endless sleep. Some act flat, as if it never happened and their loved one will come home and press themselves into the couch, fall asleep on the sofa and wake up bright-eyed in the morning, alive. Alive.

Kav reacted inappropriately. She doesn’t care. She tells herself that she doesn’t care, that she’s better off dead than suffering anyway, that her grandmother’s hatred tainted them, but even Eve cried. Even Eve. She doesn’t care. It doesn’t bother her, and she is a good person, despite the sour pit stuck in her throat, she is a good person.

She was given her grandmother’s name sixteen years ago - Kavya Velox - and shortened it to the harsh sound of Kav at the age of ten after a disagreement. It hurts now, stings and tingles against her memory. Was it worth it? Is she proud of herself? Is she always going to be this selfish? She ripped out love with her tiny hands, and now her grandmother is a frail bone-thing, buried underground.

Kavya does not care.

A hand grasps the back of her sweater and pulls her back into the car, arm resting at her side now. She looks over; it is Eve, holding her black eyeliner in one hand and Kav’s very white outfit in the other, in bright, bright contrast. Then the window rolls up, and there’s a scoff from the front seat.

“Kavs, that’s not safe,” her sister says. Eve releases her grip. “Mom told you two hours ago to quit.”

She wants to roll her eyes, wants to sigh and ignore and sink into the car’s leather seats. But she’s a good kid, and a good sister, and good people don’t do things like that; good people do kind things, and she is, above all, a good person. So she apologizes, and goes back to watching the depths of green, the beauty of the ultimate surrounding, with her head pressed up against the glass of the window.

“We’re stopping for gas soon,” her mother yells, needlessly loud. “Just a little bit longer, and then we can rest.”

Just a little bit longer. The biggest question: can she ever rest?