Sam studied the road. Since the age of seven he’d been riding around on sidewalks and city plazas with his friends, but he couldn’t remember ever riding on anything like Truman Avenue: two-lane blacktop with no sidewalks, just gravel shoulders flanked by deep, weed-choked runoff ditches. A road with a speed limit of fifty-five miles per hour, and drivers who probably didn’t obey it. On the plus side, there hardly seemed to be any drivers. Right now there were none in either direction. And when they did come along, they’d be visible a mile away. It wouldn’t be hard to watch for them.

Dani pedaled out onto the road, south toward downtown. Sam followed. A moment later they had passed the entirety of the subdivision and were riding side by side, picking up momentum down the long slope between the suburb and the little town below.

Out away from the shaded residential streets, the afternoon was bright and hazy, the flatlands running away to vague horizons maybe twenty miles out. The sky was full of tall, billowy clouds cut off flat on the bottoms. Those cloud bottoms made their own sort of landscape, upside-down, planing away to their own horizon out in the haze.

Ahead was the town, a few low-slung blocks hugging the terrain. It swam in the heat ripples coming up off the pavement. So far, Sam had only seen the town up close from his dad’s car while passing through—a trip that took about twenty seconds. He really hadn’t gotten a good look at the place yet.

“Is that where the riddle is?” Sam asked. “Downtown?”

Dani shook her head. “It’s way out past it on the other side. Southwest, out in the country.”

They rode for a while without saying more. After a minute they reached the edge of town. Truman Avenue served as Main Street. They passed the first buildings—a general store on one side, and some kind of grain storage on the other: a round, two-story structure made of corrugated metal, with a domed roof and a small funnel at the top. Tractors and huge rolling bins were parked around it.

They passed other storefronts along the main drag. A sandwich shop with an old woman behind the counter and no customers. A hardware store that didn’t look much busier. A post office whose clerk was sitting out front on a bench, sipping a glass of lemonade. She waved as Sam and Dani went past. Sam couldn’t tell what the rest of the buildings were. Farming-related places, he imagined.