The U.S. Gas is four pumps under a cockeyed red, white, and blue roof. It’s a dingy convenience store surrounded by a parking lot cracked and cratered as if peppered by tiny meteorites. Above, tinny speakers play some new country music—not old-school country music, but rather the kind that’s basically just earworm pop crap sung by some rich kid who will never know true grief in her heart.

Atlanta slides into the phone booth, finds a phone book dangling by a red lacquered chain. What was Chomp-Chomp’s last name again? Burkholder. Right. Only one set of Burkholders in the book, blessedly—unusual for a town where families breed like lusty rabbits (everywhere you go you meet a Troxell; those thick-witted bastards are like dandelions sprouting up and blowing their seed). She dials the number.

A man answers. Gurgles. Snorts. “. . . the hell is this?”

“Steven, please.” She tries to be polite about it.

“It’s two thirty in the morning.” Another gurgle-snort.

More politeness made all the easier by her own Southern accent. “I understand and apologize, sir, but I’m a classmate of his, and I really need to talk to him.”

The phone clunks and thumps as the person on the other end sets it down.

Atlanta tries not to listen to the awful Nashville pop, instead focusing on the crickets beyond and the buzz of the lights overhead, lights surrounded by little clouds of gnats and skeeters. Eventually someone picks up.

“Got it,” comes Cho—er, Steven’s voice.

Someone—the father—grunts and hangs up the phone.

“Hello?” Steven asks. Not groggy. Not gurgle-snorty. In the background: a TV with the volume turned down.

“Doesn’t sound like I woke you,” she says.

“I wasn’t sleeping. I, uh, don’t sleep much.” Pause. “Atlanta?”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“Hi. Wh . . . uhh. What’s up?”

“Think I found the dog killers. Had one of ’em on the ropes and . . .” She neglects to mention the crotch kick because it seems unladylike, even for her. “She got the better of me. We went to school with her. Got a name like Vanessa or Tessa or something. She’s dumpy, listens to that dopey clown-rapper duo—”

“ICP. I like ICP.”

“Ick, whatever. She’s covered in tattoos—like, I think her shoulder is covered in a . . . a . . . a fishing net or something.”

“A spiderweb?”

“Oh.” Blink. Blink. “Yeah, I guess that makes more sense. A spiderweb, then.”

“That’s Tressa Kucharski.”

Oh, snap. She has to laugh. She didn’t make the connection. “Tressa ‘the Cooch’ Kucharski?”

“Yeah, I guess they call her that sometimes.”

They also say that having sex with her is like throwing a hot dog down a hallway. Or for the regional variation, waggling a kielbasa in a coffee can. “You know her?”