Becky’s hands went to her bulge—she refused to call it a baby bump, that was so People magazine—and cradled it lightly. “Here’s another. There once was a woman named Jill, who swallowed an exploding pi—”

“Stop, stop. I overshot you somehow.”

Yup, his voice was now coming from ahead. She turned around again. “Quit goofing, Cal. This is not funny.” Her mouth was dry. She swallowed, and her throat was dry, too. When it made that click sound, you knew you were dry. There was a big bottle of Poland Spring water in the car. Also a couple of Cokes in the backseat. She could see them: red cans, white letters.

“Becky?”

“What?”

“There’s something wrong here.”

“What do you mean?” Thinking, As if I didn’t know.

“Listen to me. Can you jump?”

“Of course I can jump! What do you think?”

“I think you’re going to have a baby this summer, that’s what I think.”

“I can still—Cal, stop walking away!”

“I didn’t move,” he said.

“You did, you must have! You still are!”

“Shut up and listen. I’m going to count to three. On three you put your hands over your head like a ref signaling the field goal’s good and jump just as high as you can. I’ll do the same. You won’t need to get much air for me to see your hands, ’kay? And I’ll come to you.”

“Oh, whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad,” she thought—no idea where it had come from, something else from freshman lit, maybe—but one thing she did know was that he could say he wasn’t moving but he was, he was getting farther away all the time.

“Becky? Beck—”

“All right!” she screamed. “All right, let’s do it!”

“One! Two!—” he cried. “THREE!”

At fifteen Becky DeMuth had weighed eighty-two pounds—her father called her “Stick”—and ran hurdles with the varsity team. At fifteen she could walk from one end of the school to the other on her hands. She wanted to believe she was still that person; some part of her had honestly expected to remain that person for her entire life. Her mind had still not caught up to being nineteen and pregnant—not eighty-two pounds but a hundred and thirty. She wanted to grab air—Houston, we have liftoff—but it was like trying to jump while giving a small child a piggyback (when you thought about it, that was pretty much the case).

Her eyeline only cleared the top of the grass for a moment, affording her the briefest glimpse back the way she’d come. What she saw, though, was enough to make her almost breathless with alarm.

Cal and the road. Cal . . . and the road.