Josh follows the cord to the charger in the front and hands the phone back to her. She presses the screen. Tries again, turning it faceup to activate. The phone remains dark, and Harper coughs out a noise that isn’t quite a laugh.

“It’s dead,” she says.

“What do you mean?” Josh asks, taking his own phone off the second cord. His voice is soft and confused. “What the hell?”

Cold wind gusts from the open driver’s door, where Brecken is still hunched out of view, spitting into the snow.

Harper’s voice goes high and shrill. “I charged it for the last hour and it’s totally dead!”

“Mine too,” Josh says, frowning at his own phone while the open-door alarm ding-ding-dings.

“What the hell is going on?” I ask, checking the cords. I take Harper’s phone from her and try plugging it in. Unplugging it. Then Josh’s. I unbuckle and lean forward between the front seats to check all the connections, jiggling every potential weakness. The charging indicator refuses to light. The charger is broken. It was working fine in San Diego.

Josh tries them himself. He does all the wiggle, tighten, unplug-replug tricks. We try switching the cords. Nothing works.

Josh pulls the charger out and fingers the connection to the car. “Something’s chipped here. Did it get kicked?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

Brecken leans back into the car, slumping in his seat. I catch a glimpse of his eyes in the rearview mirror. They’re red-rimmed and swollen.

“Brecken.” Harper holds her hand out. “We need your phone.”

He doesn’t ask anything, just checks his pockets for his phone and lights the screen to unlock it. He frowns. “It’s at two percent. It won’t call out on that.”

“Damn it. Something’s wrong with the charging port.”

“Plug it in the back,” Brecken says.

I find the port and pull open the flap, but the metal is busted. A fresh-looking gouge mars the plastic and a chunk of the metal inside is broken off. “It’s broken.”

I touch the scrape in the plastic, which is still sharp. Jagged. Was it like this before? Wouldn’t I have noticed this earlier?

“Are you kidding me?” Josh asks, sounding desperate.

“The whole outlet is busted,” I say. “I don’t think it’s going to work with anything. It looks like it’s been tampered with.”

Josh leans forward, and I suspect he’s checking his own outlet again. He’s quiet for a second. And then he swears softly. “One of the metal things is pried off,” he says. “Was it like this when you plugged it in?”

“I didn’t inspect it or anything, but it seemed fine,” I say.

Harper shifts in her seat. “Okay, we need a phone. What about you?”