Two miles off the highway, stands the LaGuardia airport, with its miles of runways specked with lights, curved around the sprawling mass of terminals, gates, and the hundreds of waiting rooms filled with raccoon-ringed eyes and 50 cent lipstick smeared over bitter coffee cups. The Toyota sidles past a mini-golf ranch, and she barely has time to catch a glimpse of the brittle plastic grass and the slashed metal sign that reads, “LaGuardia Airport PURGATORY Up Ahead.”
“Hahah, that’s funny,” she says.
“What is?” The curly-haired boy driving ship is busy hitting the blinker lights and dodging an extreme biker wearing fish goggles.
“You are,” she snipes.
His eyes dart to the girl’s small pale face, but she’s looking away, picking at a scab shaped like Australia on her knee.
“Hey, watch the road!” she yelps, as he squeezes past a truck bearing Aquafina waters with five inches to spare. Screech.
“I never really liked Aquafina anyway, I heard they use tap water. So much for that fresh from the mountain spring nonsense.”
“Okay, whatever, park here.”
The airport smell smacks them over the head. Inky plastic, dust, SPF 40 evaporating from a lady’s arm, and the scent of leaving.
His fingers slip in and out of his rumpled back pocket, locking and unlocking his phone, the fullness of helium crowding out his intestines and heart and kidneys and liver.
“Here, let me hold that for you,” he says, gesturing to her suitcase.
“I’m good. Seriously,” she adds, and her lips still curl themselves upwards, as they have every day since she was five and Mrs. Dobrev told her you want to make friends? Smile. And so she has, ever since.
She checks in. They’re walking down a sleek Star Trek hallway plastered with blown-up photographs of couples and families with little girls in pigtails and boys blasting baseballs, all in possession of blinding white teeth.
“All these photos have blonde people, come on. What happened to diversity?” the girl groans.
He smiles simply, but the corners of his eyes are red. He downs his black coffee in a single whoosh, licking his lips. “Let me hold that for you.”
“I said I was fine.”
They walk and walk and walk. Then they walk some more.
She steps out of her purple Vans mangled with the blood of Sharpies, sticks them in a bin. Her socked feet shuffle across the room, her ankles are thin.
“This is all I seem to do. Take people places, watch them leave, then go home and change the water in Jessie’s bowl. That dog never thanks me,” he murmurs.
She’s in his face, her nose moments away from his lips, almond gray eyes taking in the glowing halo of his curls. “Say it.”
“I want you to – I want you to –” warm air from his mouth shrouds her nose. Mint and coffee, hint of bananas.
“I told them,” he says.
“You told them what?”
“I told them. I told them about your…” he whispers, gesturing at her stomach.
The smile almost slides off her chin, but she catches it dripping in her hands. “Why?”
Why?
“I wanted you to – They were gonna make you stay –”
“Come with me! Why don’t you come with me, why don’t you leave Jessie with her bowl, get one of those self-filling pet bowls they sell at Target, why don’t you leave with me now, I’ll never see anyone again, only you!”
He can. He can’t.
The 99 cent eyeliner paints highways down her cheeks. She restitches her smile and forces her toes into the shoes.
He can’t speak. So, he slips his fingers in and out of his rumpled back pocket, locking and unlocking his phone.
They walk and walk and walk. Then they walk some more.
“Fifteen minutes till boarding at Gate C,” the intercom says.
This is it, she’s downing her motion sickness pills and they disappear into the blackness of her throat, this it.
She takes a tissue from a mustard yellow packet, and erases those highways on her cheeks. They’re gone, and the helium within the boy’s innards begins to leak from his ears, mouth, eyes, nostrils. 
“Are you okay?” he says.
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” It’s a dry embrace. He can feel that she’s not breathing.
“I’m fine. I’m fine.”