My concern shifts quickly from the road and the black sky and the gas cans to the girl with the mask who has just admonished me for not paying attention and answering her question. I somehow pull the question from my immediate memory. Something about the mask and her voice . . . I take an educated guess.

“It sounds just fine to me,” I say. She looks at me through the side mirror with folded eyes and I imagine her whole face is in a scowl.

So I smile. A big, warm smile through lips that tremble from the cold and now, also, from the realization that I am locked inside a truck with strangers.

“What’s your name?” I ask. I try to be friendly. I just need a ride to town.

The girl looks at the man before answering. He nods and says, “Go ahead! Don’t be shy,” which is strange because she seems anything but shy to me.

She spins all the way around this time, smiling so wide I can see the creases of her cheeks poking out from the sides of the mask.

“Alice!” she says. I take a moment because the name sounds out something else in my mind. She says Alice but I hear Annie. And my heart skips just one long beat.

Alice again turns back to face the road, this time with a little bounce and the man tousles her hair. It’s playful but awkward, like he doesn’t do this often.

The truck slows.

I look through the windshield to where the headlights are shining and see storefronts with boarded windows. As we pass, they fade back into the darkness.

The truck rolls down the street. The man keeps his eyes ahead.

“Is that the town?” I ask.

We pass a building that looks like a diner from the shape of the gray silhouette and the large sheets of plywood that cover a row of windows. Beside it I see a sign on a lawn. It’s merely a flash as our lights pass. It says The Hastings Inn.

“Maybe there—at the inn. You could just drop me . . .”

The man looks carefully out the window, scanning the street.

“Looks like it’s closed. Everything’s boarded up . . . and gosh—looks like the whole town’s lost power.”

My voice cracks as I ask the next question. “Can we go back to my car? Maybe I can use some of the gas you have here? Even just a gallon. There’s another station about half an hour away—at the casino, right? I saw a sign for it on Route 7 . . .”