HONDA CRV:

A young woman, bleached yellow bangs and a septum piercing, munches on a pizza crust. She rubs at her face with the back of her pizza-holding hand furiously. I think I see tears in her eyes. She’s talking or singing. I can’t tell.

We pass her and I crane my sore neck to check on her one last time. Her chin wobbles before she takes another watery bite.

It’s a crisp fall afternoon in Wisconsin. Whatever’s making her sad as she eats her pizza makes me sad too. Me, who is pizza-less, and on my way to Minnesota for a hockey tournament. Sad on a perfectly good Thursday because Honda CRV woman is sad.

“She’s eating a Personal Pan Pizza,” I say aloud.

“Huh,” my brother says. He doesn’t seem as upset as me at thinking about someone eating pizza meant for one.

FREIGHT LINER TRUCK:

“Is it dinnertime?” I ask as we pass a truck and I look up until I catch a glimpse of sunlight glint off the bald driver inside. He adjusts his big glasses on his flat nose.

“Not even close,” my dad says. I regret not packing extra snacks just for me to sneak before we stop to eat at that indeterminable time set by the car’s gas can.

When I look back out my window, the truck driver pops something soft, white, and round into his mouth—a piece of sandwich? A vanilla mochi? A whole mushroom?—and chews. He smiles a little, like the taste has surprised him. Or maybe reminded him. Or maybe just hit the spot for a truck driver an hour out from the Minnesota state boarder.

The back of his truck said “How’s my driving?” and my brain for a moment thinks, Call and tell them that he’s driving great! He looks like a pro! I’d like to cheers his snack and tell him he’s great at what he does!

Instead, I rummage until I’m sure I didn’t bring any snacks and drink a swig of lukewarm water from my water bottle.

TOYOTA SIENNA:

When we pass the Toyota with someone eating a chicken sandwich all wrapped up in white paper, I throw up my hands.

“Is the whole Midwest eating something but us?”

Dad and my brother laugh. But I feel that feeling like in church when you’re all in your head about your shortcomings right before communion? And you rejoin the conscious world as everyone else has already eaten their bread? And yours is sitting in your palm? And you have to hustle to eat it slightly less reverently because you missed the cue of “This do, in remembrance of me.”

That feeling.

OUR CAR:

I make my brother fork over some Sunchips from the stash of pregame hockey snacks in the back of the car.

I’m spoiling my dinner! I’m cheers-ing my fellow travelers! I eat a Sunchip and I remember I don’t even like them! I want to eat with all these people!

It’s a visceral response that even makes my stomach grumble. Food is my first and best response to every problem and occasion. New job? We need to get ice cream to celebrate! Bad day? A good dinner will fix it. Distracted? Drinking tea is like hitting a reset button.

Once, on our way to a hockey tournament, my mom packed a whole chicken noodle casserole for us to eat, including real ceramic dinnerware. I’d never eaten a casserole on the road before. It tasted different eaten in such close quarters, stuck in rows shoulder to shoulder with my siblings and hockey sticks stuck between us like that magic trick with the swords and the box and the distressed assistant. We’ve never referred to it as chicken noodle casserole since. It will forever be “The Car Casserole.” I can’t eat the leftovers now; it doesn’t taste the same unless I’m with my family.

I eat another Sunchip because my dad and brother eat one. Still don’t like them. Sad Honda Lady and Smirking Truck Driver and Chicken Sandwich Guy, alone in the car—this do in remembrance of them, eating all alone.

When our car eats dinner, we stink the whole car up with our burrito bowls—with no beans, because we have to share a car together for a long night still.

We joke about how I get car sick, and how I’m out of road trip shape.

“I’m almost never a passenger anymore,” I say in my defense, and think of all of the drives I take alone. And I don’t get sad, not like the Honda Lady, but I do get a whiff of familiar loneliness I feel when I’m alone in the driver’s seat of my own car. It’s just strong enough to get through the smell of burrito.

I bury the fork in the cold rice, put the top on my takeout.

“Welcome to Minnesota,” dad says, in time with the GPS’s alert.

We celebrate accordingly: a Halloween bag of skittles split three ways. Which equals, like, three skittles each, and fills each tooth like that tiny piece of communion bread does.

Gabrielle Eisma

Gabrielle Eisma graduated Calvin with a BFA in studio art and writing in 2022. She’s from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she now works as a writer and illustrator for books for (mostly) children and middle grade readers.