Brandon found himself wincing as the small car nudged the curb as it took a sharp turn.

His stepfather was gripping the steering wheel with what seemed to be a mixture of righteousness and terror. He did not drive often. After the last accident — where an SUV had severed the bumper of their other car, narrowly missing doing the same to the passengers — his mother had hidden the keys.

“Bastard.” His stepfather muttered, as a horn blared. He had been clicking his teeth since the trip had begun. This was something he did when nervous, or bored, or when suppressing murderous rage. Brandon tried to ignore the sound, which, in concert with bleats of the car horn, occasional screeching tires, and epithets, was not doing his anxiety any favors.

He stuck his finger into a small tear in the brown vinyl upholstery of the seat. He had done this for years, sometimes to mark the tedium of long car trips. Other times, to transfer the tension in his body into the aging carcass of the family strain wagon. He found himself longing for the tension that he had felt when he was 12, when the duo had been much smaller.

“Go to hell, turkey!” The car swerved. His stepfather had a unique way of making psychosis seem quaint. Turkey.

“I wanted ask you something.”

Brandon looked over. His stepfather had a look of sudden earnestness, and Brandon felt a pang of hope. Would this unnerving jaunt through Queens become a moment of connection? Would the polite distance that they had felt since he and his mother married, with which Brandon had become reluctantly comfortable, abate?

“I was wondering…if you didn’t mind….”

The car darkened as they passed under an elevated train trestle. An N train rumbled above their heads.

“…if I came over once in a while…”

Brandon had regretted renting his apartment — a spare, overpriced space in a newly and hastily constructed building — since setting foot in it. It had been the most concrete of a series of symptoms of the emotional maelstrom of the past year, highlighted by a series of hastily-conceived decisions. And it was lonely.

“…to smoke marijuana.”

Brandon suppressed a laugh. Of course.