Emily's house was gross. The walls must have absorbed the aromas of stale beer, pizza and incense over the years. The carpet had all kinds of mysterious stains. I couldn't figure out why a college house would even have carpet, with all those fibers soaking up nefarious filth like a sponge.

I perched on a bar stool, gripping a red Solo cup while observing the crowded room. Eric was deeply and noisily involved in a game of beer pong, bouncing a ping pong ball against the dining room table with intense focus and throwing his hands in the air and cheering when it landed in one of the cups.

The floor buzzed from the speakers playing a mix of eighties music and current radio top forty hits in the basement. Kaitlin was somewhere down there dancing, probably with the girl she was flirting with earlier that night. A few people engaged in conversation on the sunken couches, seemingly in a contest to determine who could be the loudest, the wittiest, and the most intelligent all at once. I feared the winners would never be declared and it would go on all night.

I wondered if nights like this were an essential part of the "college experience" that had been presented to me as a requirement for a full and well-rounded life. Maybe it would be fun if I was drunk, too. And if I wasn't biding my time, waiting for the right opportunity to cut out of there.

I waited for Eric to play enough rounds of beer pong to get sufficiently buzzed before I put my coat on and asked him for his keys.

"You shouldn't be driving," he said dismissively.

"I haven't had a single drink."

He swiped the cup out of my hand and took a sip.

"Vernor's," I said. I watched his forehead wrinkle as he realized that he was drinking ginger ale and not beer.

"Ugh! This stuff reminds me of having a stomach ache."

"In this case, it's preventing a stomach ache."

"Let me smell your breath." He nose-dived toward my face and I leaned back and pushed him away.

"Get out of here! You think you're a human breathalyzer? I'm not drinking. Promise."

"Where do you need to go right now?"

"To visit a friend."

"Why don't you invite your friend over here?"

"There's too many people."

"An antisocial friend. Okay." He tipped his red cup to his mouth, emptied it and set it on the kitchen counter. "I'll go with you."

"I need to go alone."

Eric rolled his eyes. "You're not going alone. Who's your friend, anyway?"

"It's a family friend I promised my mom I'd visit while we're here. Someone I've known forever."

He pointed his finger at my face and twirled it around, while he took his time to decide what to say next. "You're lying. What's going on?"

I sighed. I couldn't get anything past Eric, even when he was mild to moderately intoxicated.

"It's the guy from the summer. I found him. He lived up here."

"He lives up here? He's gotta be like eighty years old. That's, like, deeply fucked up, Nessie." His horrified expression quickly turned grim. "I'm sorry, Ness. Vanessa."

"I have no idea where he is now, but in 1955 he lived a few miles away from here. I have an address. And directions." Inside my coat pocket, I clutched the folded map from Stan. I fidgeted with it, but the sound of my fingers bending the paper seemed too loud and I pulled my hand out of my pocket.

Then Eric reached in, pulled the paper out and unfolded it.

"Don't," I pleaded as I reached for the map.

He held the yellow paper over his head as he studied it. "No way."

He stormed through the kitchen and out of the house and I followed him. The cold took my breath away. The glow from a strand of colored lights in the window turned Eric's face pink. I stood on the back porch steps and watched him kick hardened piles of snow until eventually he whipped around and glared at me.

"Why can't you stay here? And now. What's wrong with here and now? Why isn't it good enough for you?" I didn't answer and he threw his hands in the air. "How about you get someone else involved in your crazy shit? I'm over it. How about Kaitlin? I'm sure she'd think it's great." 

"I'm sorry. I'll leave you out of it from now on, but there's one thing I want to do."

Eric gripped the porch rail and glanced up at me, but quickly looked away in disgust and disappointment. "I thought all this was cool when we talked about how you could change things. To use it for something good. But the one thing you want to do is go see this guy again? What good is that doing for anybody? Besides yourself?"

I'd never seen Eric truly angry and it rattled me. I was also afraid he was right, that my reasons for finding Pete were entirely self-serving. Did I want to clear things up with Pete so I could let myself off the hook for derailing his life? My lip quivered and my eyes filled with tears. I pulled the hood of my coat over my head, walked around to the front of the house and in between the long banks of snow lining the sidewalk.

I stopped in front of a fraternity house and dropped into the snow with a crunch. I hoped nobody would mind if I sat and cried there for a few minutes. Girls probably cried in the front lawns of fraternity houses all the time. Once I pulled myself together, I'd figure out another way to get to Pete's house. I wondered if they had Uber in the Upper Peninsula. I'd even walk there if I had to. I'd come all this way for reasons that Eric didn't understand and I wasn't going to let him stop me.

Then I spotted Eric walking on the sidewalk toward me and I zipped my coat all the way up and shrunk down into the collar. When he sat next to me in the snow bank, I pulled the hood down over the rest of my face.

"You look like a turtle," he observed. "I'm sorry I flipped out."

"I know it seems like I'm being stupid," I said in a muffled voice. "Again."

"Why do you want to go?"

I unzipped just enough to get my words through clearly. "I just found out that he might've thought I didn't make it after that accident and he could be still blaming himself. And when I left he thought I was mad at him and I never got to tell him I was wrong and unless I see him in person there's no way I can-"

"Get closure?"

"Yeah. Closure." 

I didn't like the finality of the word, but maybe it summarized exactly what I needed.

"This is what it's going to take to make you feel better, huh?" he asked.

"I think so."

He dangled his keys in front of me with a resigned sigh. "I've had a bit to drink so you'll have to drive."

I took the keys and grinned. "Will you navigate for me, Skipper?"

As soon as we left the city limits, we drove into darkness like I'd never seen before. I switched on the high beam headlights and they illuminated every stark tree branch and evergreen tree drooping under the weight of snow. The plow trucks had pushed the snow into towering piles on each side of the road, creating a blurred white out in my peripheral vision as I drove. It was lightly snowing and I had to blink hard every few seconds to shake off the hypnotizing effect.

I drove by the driveway twice before finding the right one. It was a long path through the woods before a clearing where the driveway split. I stopped the car and switched off the lights. The side leading to the well-lit house on the right was plowed. The one on the left, where I was going, was still covered in snow and the silhouette of the small A-frame cabin stood out against the snow, which was pale blue in the light of the moon.

"This is a terrible idea," Eric said. "What if someone lives here? They'll probably shoot us. We should come back in the morning."

"Nobody lives here. There are no lights on. There's no car here and there are no tracks in the snow. It's probably a cabin that gets used two times a year."

"Or someone does live here and it's a hermit in the woods kind of person who has no electricity and likes to murder unexpected guests and turn them into jerky."

"Well, I'm not going to knock on the door now." I flipped the visor down to quickly check myself in the mirror. "I'll wait until I know it worked, so it should be fine."

I reached for the door handle and Eric grabbed my arm. "Don't go. I have so many bad feelings about this."

"I'll be okay," I insisted.

"Take me with you."

"I don't think that would go well."

"Take me anyway," he said quietly.

I watched Eric blink slowly as he gradually tipped toward me, with a look on his face like he was suffering somehow. Was he going to puke? I pressed my hand against his shoulder and tried to push him back into an upright position.

"Stay here and sleep off all that beer. I'll be back before you know it," I said with false cheer.

He rested his head against the window and nodded. Suddenly I felt bad for leaving him. If he puked and passed out it was only bad if he was on his back, right? Wasn't that a thing? My friends and I hardly drank and I definitely wasn't used to college-level binge drinking.

"Are you gonna be okay?" I asked.

"I'll be fine," he said as he stared out the window. "Go ahead. Do what you need to do. I'll be waiting here when you get back."