The Way Back to You

Gr 8 Up—After 16-year-old Ashlyn Montel dies in a bicycle accident, her best friend Claudia (Cloudy) Marlowe and her boyfriend Kyle Ocie both have problems moving on. But while Cloudy internalizes her grief, Kyle just falls apart. They're not even friends anymore, so they suffer separately. Then Cloudy finds out that Ashlyn's organs were donated after her death, and stumbles upon printouts of emails from some of the recipients. She impulsively grabs the emails and decides that she needs to visit these people, none of whom live closer than a seven-hour drive from her home in Bend, OR. Realizing that she shouldn't do the trip on her own (and not just because her rattletrap car couldn't manage it), she convinces Kyle to accompany her. Of course he's reluctant at first but finally agrees, thinking they're only going to Sacramento, CA, and back. As the journey progresses through California to Arizona and then Nevada, the two former friends begin to come to terms with their grief.