She shouldn’t have known anything about what I was working on, but because of who was dead and what I do for a living, it hadn’t been hard for her to deduce how I might be spending my evening.

But as bright as she was, she wasn’t exactly a prodigy at driving a car.

Not having any traffic cones, I’d opted for the pumpkins, a good seasonal choice—and now deeply discounted after Halloween. The day after the holiday, the price dropped in half. Stores only decorate for upcoming holidays, never the ones in the rearview mirror. They build up to a holiday for months and then, the moment it’s over, start advertising for the next one.

People were already looking ahead to Thanksgiving. Always looking ahead. Frantically scrambling forward.

“I promise to be quick and not to squish any more of ’em,” Tessa vowed with one hand raised in an earnest salute. There she sat in the driver’s seat. Inquisitive yet sad eyes. Light on the makeup—apart from the blood-dipped color of her fingernail polish. Dark, night-washed hair.

“You do know what those pumpkins represent, don’t you?”

“Traffic cones.”

“People.”

“If they were people, they’d get outta my way.”

We lived in New York City—not the ideal place to teach a teenager that it’s not supposed to be the job of pedestrians to avoid getting run over.

“We don’t want you smack-whamming the car into anything,” I said, “let alone running over pedestrians.”

She stared at me coolly.

“What?”

“Did you really just say ‘smack-whamming’? Was that you trying to be hip?”

“It’s just what came out. Why? Was it hip?”

“Um. No.”

She’d flattened two of the eight pumpkins so far, and I wasn’t holding my breath about the other six, especially if we went with the figure-eight pattern again rather than just practicing stopping in time without nudging the fruit, which she was a lot better at.

Earlier, I’d made the mistake of referring to the pumpkins as vegetables, but she was quick to correct me, informing me that, of course, they’re fruit, that everybody knows that.

With her off-the-charts IQ, she would undoubtedly ace the written portion of the test, but the behind-the-wheel part was clearly going to be a challenge.

“Alright, let’s see it.” I pointed to her hands. “Remember, ten o’clock and two o’clock.”

“I still can’t believe you’re stuck on analog,” she complained wearily, but she did move her hands to the places I’d shown her earlier on the steering wheel. “It’s so twentieth-century of you. You’re showing your age.”

“I’m thirty-five years old, Tessa.”

“Uh-huh. And your point is?”

I indicated the line of pumpkins. “Let’s see you do it this time all the way through. And watch out for pedestrians.”

“Right.”