You are Allen Fletcher, and you're 19. You are now more than a day's drive out from Kansas City with your best friend, Roy Angelo, and you just checked out of a West Virginia hotel off of I-64. You're driving.

Now approaching the Virginia border, or so the map suggested when Roy last checked, the mountains have been giving way to more mountains. You're keeping track of exits as you go. The smell of drying rainfall is hot in your nose.

There's a real gorgeous view up ahead, and getting prettier by the mile marker. Clouds paving way for early morning sunbeams. Ghost-adjacent mist along the freeway. A rainbow? You squint in the distance, over the mountains. Not just one - two, barely visible, but definitely two.

You don't want to be alone for this.

You half-mumble,

"Roy,"

to no response.

And again, with force, "Roy!"

He jolts awake, comically pushing the map off his face, glasses askew.

"Wha.. What's up," he states.

"Take a gander up ahead, man."

You glance at him, feel warmth in your chest, and fix your eyes back on the road. "Fuckin' gorgeous, right?"

He looks, and he laughs tiredly, eyes soften as he smiles, and he says,

"Yeah.. Fuckin' gorgeous."