‘Of course.’ She hooks a hand in her jeans pocket and sways as the music picks up, and we arrange ourselves behind the nearest dancers. Her dark hair swishes with her. I still remember when it was so short she couldn’t put it in a ponytail. Now, it falls all the way to her waist, the same waist my dumbass can’t keep my eyes off when the first step hits, and we kick with our right leg, then our left. She’ll tell you she’s not a dancer, but when she’s on the floor, her feet tell a different story. Her butterfly-embroidered boot-tips tap the wood floor with sharp clicks that follow the music perfectly.

‘You still remember it?’ she shouts over the bass. ‘City Boy?’

‘Who told you I didn’t?’ I shoot back with a wink.

‘Copperhead Road’ is the dance you grow up doing before you can walk. An easy sixteen steps that are heavily debated from region to region, it’d probably be a sin if I’d forgotten how to do it. New England didn’t screw me up completely.

I match May’s step tap for tap, my unmarked Tecovas boots in sync with her well-worn ones, careful not to kick so hard I aggravate my knee. She grins when she sees me peeking at her shoes. ‘You gotta scuff those up, you know!’

We dance the entire thing by each other’s side till the song comes to an end. We’re hunched over and laughing as the crowd cheers, raising their drinks as the DJ, a teenage guy controlling the AUX, yells that he’s looking for requests for the next dance. May beams as she holds out her hands. ‘Nice goin’, New Haven.’

It’s an unexpected show of amnesty from her, but I accept it happily, knowing how sparing these moments have been. I give her double high-fives, and for a brief moment, our fingers lock, our eyes meet, and something, some unsaid piece of the spark that I know was there in high school returns, an effortless warmth passing between us.

May quickly unlinks her fingers from mine with a sharp clear of her throat. ‘I think I’ll have a drink,’ she says brusquely. She beelines straight towards the bar, and honestly, she leaves me mystified. What the hell just happened … and what the hell am I gonna do about it?

Chapter Eight

American Treasuress

May

The big yellow high-school bus thunders down the dirt road past the ranch, the chattering of teenagers just distantly audible. PROSPERITY HS, the boxy black lettering on its side reads.

The bus, affectionately called Old Yeller, has shuttled all the small-town kids into Prosperity for the past decade. Similarly to the bar we’d been at a week back, it is a relic of Eagle Rock and speaks volumes about just how isolated this place is.