They’d been traveling for more than two days and were only moving farther away from civilization. As the truck sped along, the mismatched tires thumped in rhythm. Cheer up, cheer up, cheer up.

Nola turned to Ming-Ji. “Will you teach me a Chinese nursery rhyme I can sing to Lulu?”

Ming-Ji had a gentle, clear singing voice, different from her low, authoritative speaking voice. “Yi er san si wu liu qi, wo de peng-you zai na li? Wo de peng-you zai zhe li.” The musical half-notes of the song were strange and beautiful, monotonous even as they climbed to the higher end of the scale. Nola caught onto the music, but her pronunciation caused Ming-Ji fits of laughter.

“What does the song mean?” Nola asked.

“‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, where is my friend? My friend is here.’ ”

My friend is here. Nola held Lulu close, singing her newly acquired song, and Lulu, perhaps familiar with it, rested her head in the crook of Nola's neck. The truck’s clanging and clunking became white noise as a burst of happiness radiated through Nola's body. For that instant, she knew what rapture was.

She kept holding Lulu, humming the strange words, savoring the feel of this borrowed love, until half an hour later, as night fell, a series of hills squeezed the road into sharp turns, each threatening to overturn the truck. She placed Lulu back in her basket.

Unlike the ride out of Shanghai, this one took place in the dark, the mountains were higher, and the road more pitted. One headlight beamed too high, the other too low, neither illuminating the road ahead. With each new gaping gorge, the road curved sharply and the truck swerved with such force that its body creaked and tilted, ready to tip over.

This was a roller coaster without the benefit of tracks, Nola thought. Time and again, her breath got trapped in her lungs while her body lurched forward into the windshield or sideways onto the driver or Ming-Ji. Tied in her basket, Lulu shrieked, oblivious to Nola's attempts to coo words of comfort. This was suicide. In the panic that seized Nola, the blood hammered in her ears, and her throat was parched. By the time the truck began a downhill glide on a steep, curving road, she found herself hyperventilating. Ming-Ji suggested she close her eyes, as she herself did. Nola imitated her, powerless against Lulu's cries and the groans of the truck’s rusty parts.

Her body was too battered and her spirit too depleted to register at first that the road straightened. A familiar, pleasantly salty odor brought her back to reality.

“I think I smell the ocean.” Nola rubbed her sticky arms and licked her dry lips, then mumbled, “I’ve been exposed to more smells in China than in any other country.”