She tore on. “Kenny, don’t you see? It’s Munson! There is something in the air here, a kind of pressure. Don’t you feel it? The way folks look at you, judging, when you walk by. The way they stare, then criticize! You know how no one wants to be the first one to go outside in the morning? And why do they say ‘Choose well,’ instead of a simple ‘Goodbye’?”

“Oh,” Kenny waved her off. “That’s just a few older folks. Timeworn customs aren’t bad, Frances. They help teach us things that are true.”

Frances was familiar with this remark, having heard it in her childhood many times. “But Kenny, what can we learn that’s so true? In other towns, things are different.”

“I doubt it. Listen, we are just a small, harmless village where folks work hard. Watch what you say, Frances! Munson is your home.”

“Kenny,” she clipped his shoulder angrily. “People are frightened here! But of what?”

He thought, shaking his head.

“The way they peek out their windows in their pajamas! On the street, folks whisper negative sorts of judgments about me and my life, I know it! Oh, something’s going to burst in me! I can’t sleep. Something’s got to change.”

Exhaustion unwound inside her, and she looked to the ground, with its profusion of mudworms. “Kenny, d’you think a town can slowly smash a girl by dismantling her personality in dozens of small ways?”

The sound of her voice strained into the dank air, seeming to become part of the massive precipice of night. Frances waited, looking around, wondering momentarily how any two entities, such as molecules or atoms, could endure the experience of fusion without shock.

“Well, I never thought about that,” Kenny answered at last. “Frances, I’m sorry about your scar.”

She pressed her gaze into him, now holding his arm in its blue sweater, an act that gave her sparse comfort, and Frances was unable to stop the impulse to look at Kenny pleadingly. Far off, she heard a mild crunching or squeaking, the sound of insects or bees closing in—it was certainly possible, she imagined—on something of great value.

“At the station, you know, Frances, we have our Captain, Tod Maria,” he said. “Tod’s not a bad sort. He’s cheerful.”

Frances smirked.

“Once, though,” Kenny went on, “during evening circle, Maria sounded the way you sound tonight. A little worried, you might say. A little wild in the mind. That night, he told me he was afraid he would split in two!”

“Split in two?” She breathed in wonder. “But why?”

“Because of problems,” Kenny replied promptly.

“Oh, dammit!” she turned and spat. “Don’t you see? This town makes a mess of people! Why don’t folks understand? They get so mixed-up here. Kenny, why shouldn’t I leave?”

“It wouldn’t be worth it,” Kenny pointed out. “Munson’s part of you. And it’s not so different from the rest of the world as you’d like to believe.”