Backseat Diplomacy

The invisible line ran straight down the middle of the backseat. Emily hadn't drawn it, and neither had her brother Mark, but they both knew exactly where it was. It had been there for as long as Emily could remember, a border as real to them as any on her father's dog-eared atlas.

"Your elbow is over," Mark said without looking up from his handheld game, thumbs working frantically as tinny music leaked from his headphones.

Emily didn't move her arm. "No it's not." She could feel the rough fabric of the seat against her skin, the slight depression where the cushions met. This was contested territory.

"It is." Mark paused his game and turned to her, his face serious with the gravity that only a nine-year-old could muster for such matters.

"It's on the line," Emily insisted, studying the precise position of her elbow. The afternoon sun through the window cast her shadow over the disputed boundary.

"The line belongs to both sides," Mark said. He was two years older than Emily, and had recently discovered the concept of international borders in school. "Like the DMZ."

"The what?" Emily tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her plastic butterfly clip sliding loose. She pushed it back into place with her free hand, careful not to concede an inch of her position.

"Demilitarized zone. It's neutral territory." Mark pronounced each syllable with deliberate precision, the way his teacher Mrs. Peterson did when introducing new vocabulary. "In Korea, there's this strip of land between North and South where nobody's allowed to go. It keeps them from fighting."

Their father's hands adjusted on the steering wheel, knuckles whitening slightly before relaxing. Emily noticed how his wedding ring caught the light as he shifted. The highway stretched ahead, another three hours to Grandma's house according to the last road sign. Their mother was asleep in the passenger seat, her head tilted against the window, mouth slightly open, her reading glasses still perched on the end of her nose.

Emily's pink backpack sat between them, bulging with what she called "travel essentials" - three stuffed animals, a coloring book with most of the best pages already filled, her yellow plastic binoculars, and a half-eaten package of Double Stuf Oreos she'd been saving since morning. She nudged the backpack slightly toward Mark's side, watching his face for a reaction.

"Your bag is over," Mark said immediately, as if he'd been waiting for exactly this maneuver.

"It's not a part of me." Emily traced a circle on the window with her finger, leaving a smudge on the glass.

"It's your territory. Your responsibility." Mark had started using words like "responsibility" since joining the Wilderness Scouts last fall. He wore the badges on his green vest like medals of honor.

Emily looked out the window at the flat landscape. Fields stretched to the horizon, broken occasionally by clusters of trees or distant farmhouses. A silo gleamed silver in the afternoon sun. "I need more territory. You're bigger." She measured him with her eyes. "You take up more space."

"That's not how it works," Mark said, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. "The border is fixed. It's like... a constitution."

"What's a constipation?" Emily asked, purposefully mangling the word. Her father's shoulders shook slightly with silent laughter.

"Con-sti-TU-tion," Mark corrected with exaggerated patience. "It means rules that don't change."

The car hit a pothole, jostling them both. A water bottle rolled from somewhere under the front seat. When they settled, Mark's leg was definitely on Emily's side.

"Now you're over," she said triumphantly, pointing at the offending knee.

"That doesn't count. It was the road." He shifted his leg back but not before Emily had mentally registered the victory.

Emily frowned, her lower lip protruding slightly. "If the road can move you over, why can't I put my backpack over?"

Mark considered this, tapping his chin in the way their father did when thinking through a problem at dinner. His eyes narrowed behind his new glasses, the ones he'd picked himself last month. "Temporary violations due to external forces are permitted. Intentional violations are acts of aggression."

"What's aggression?" Emily asked, though she had a pretty good idea. It was what their mother called it when Mr. Whiskers attacked shoelaces.

"When you try to take something that isn't yours." Mark's definition came quickly, rehearsed from playground disputes.

Their father coughed. Emily thought she detected a small smile on his face, reflected in the rearview mirror, but he kept his eyes on the road. The car drifted past an eighteen-wheeler, and for a moment the cabin darkened in its shadow.

"I'm not taking anything," Emily said, adjusting her position so her shoes wouldn't scuff the back of her father's seat. "I'm just putting my backpack where it fits."

"It fits on your side." Mark gestured to the space between Emily and the door.

"Not with me and Mr. Whiskers." She pulled a ragged stuffed cat from the backpack and set it on her lap. The gray fabric was worn smooth in patches, and one of its button eyes hung by a thread. Emily had carried it everywhere since her third birthday.

Mark glanced at the stuffed animal, his expression softening almost imperceptibly. "That thing is falling apart."

"He's not a thing. And Grandma's going to fix his eye." Emily ran her thumb over the loose button, feeling its cool plastic surface.

"She doesn't sew anymore. Her hands shake." Mark's voice was matter-of-fact, but gentler than before.

Emily hugged Mr. Whiskers closer, breathing in his familiar smell of fabric softener and the cinnamon gum she'd once accidentally left in the backpack. "She promised."

"When? Christmas? That was six months ago." The air conditioning hummed, blowing cool air that made Emily's bangs flutter.

Emily didn't answer. She looked down at the cat, then out the window again. They passed a field of cows, brown and white spots motionless in the heat. The car's tires made a rhythmic sound against the pavement—a lullaby that had nearly put her to sleep on countless trips before.

The silence stretched between them like the highway ahead. Their father turned the radio on low, some station playing old songs neither of them recognized. The melody was sweet and sad, something about leaving and coming home again.

Outside, the landscape began to change. The flat fields gave way to rolling hills. Emily recognized a crooked oak tree that meant they were getting closer to the halfway point, a rest stop with vending machines that dispensed hot chocolate even in summer.

"I could fix it," Mark finally said, his voice breaking the silence. "If you want."

Emily looked at him, surprised. A patch of sunlight illuminated the freckles across his nose. "You don't know how to sew."

"Mom showed me when I fixed my scout badge." He shrugged, a casual gesture that didn't quite hide his eagerness to help. "It wouldn't be perfect."

Emily considered this, studying her brother's face. Last week, he'd told her to get lost when she'd asked to play video games with him. Now he was offering to fix Mr. Whiskers. "Would you make him look scary?"

"No. Just regular." Mark's voice held the seriousness of a solemn vow.

She nodded slowly, decision made. "Okay."

Mark reached over—clearly crossing the invisible boundary—and gently took Mr. Whiskers. His hands were careful, respectful of the toy's importance. He examined the loose eye, turning the stuffed cat in a shaft of sunlight that streamed through the window.

"I'll need black thread," he said thoughtfully. "And a needle. Grandma probably has those."

"Even if her hands shake?" Emily watched him handle her most precious possession.

"She can tell me where they are." Mark handed Mr. Whiskers back, his fingers brushing against Emily's. "I'm good at finding things."

Emily shifted in her seat, then deliberately moved her elbow over the invisible line. Mark didn't say anything about it. He picked up his game again but didn't turn it on, just held it in his lap. Emily tucked Mr. Whiskers into the backpack, which now straddled the border between their territories like a bridge between countries.

Their mother stirred in the front seat, mumbling something about grocery lists before settling back into sleep. A strand of her hair had come loose from her clip, and it fluttered with each breath. Emily watched her father reach over and gently tuck it behind her ear without taking his eyes off the road.

"Can I have an Oreo?" Mark asked, his voice soft enough not to wake their mother.

Emily retrieved the package from her backpack and opened it carefully to avoid crinkling the wrapper too loudly. Three cookies remained, their white filling gleaming in the afternoon light. She handed him one, the largest of the three, took one herself, and left the third in the package.

"For later," she said, setting the package on the seat between them, directly on the invisible line. A peace offering.

"Neutral territory," Mark agreed, a slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

He twisted his cookie apart, as he always did, licking the filling first. Emily took small bites around the edges of hers, saving the middle for last. They had been eating Oreos this way since before Emily could remember.

Their father glanced at them in the rearview mirror, then back at the road. Two and a half more hours to Grandma's. Outside, a billboard advertised a local diner: "Best pie in three counties." Emily made a mental note to ask about stopping there on the way back.

The invisible line remained, but for the moment, neither of them seemed too concerned about enforcing it. Emily looked at Mark's hands, imagining them carefully sewing Mr. Whiskers' eye, the same hands that had helped her up last week when she'd fallen off her bike and scraped her knee.

Mark caught her looking and gave her a half-smile, then pointed out his window at a dog hanging its head out of a passing car, tongue lolling, ears flapping in the wind like small flags of surrender.

Emily laughed, the sound bright in the quiet car. Their mother stirred, turning slightly in her seat but not waking. The dog and its car disappeared behind them, becoming another memory of the journey.

The highway continued to unspool before them, drawing them toward their grandmother's house mile by mile. Through the windshield, Emily could see heat waves rising from the asphalt, distorting the horizon. The backseat diplomacy had reached a temporary détente, fragile perhaps, but holding for now.

In the front seat, their father began to hum along with the radio, a tune Emily almost recognized. Mark's foot tapped in time against the floor mat. The last Oreo waited in its package on the neutral territory between them, a shared future promise as the car carried them all forward together.