After such a successful mission, she resolved to return to the library soon to learn everything she could, and she walked back to the car lot in high spirits. Feeling passion again toward anything at all was like a tonic to her veins.

Climbing over the fence to the car lot, she felt happy to see that Taylor had arrived there first. He was sitting in the front seat of the Land Cruiser, looking through the black and white mesh of words in a local newspaper. She opened the back door to get inside. “You would never guess what I found,” she said. “There are plants growing all around the city that you can just eat. It’s so cool.”

Taylor smiled at her, more enthusiastic about the uplift of her attitude than he was about the actual subject matter responsible for that uplift.

She had brought him back a sprig of purslane to try. She handed it to him. Taylor put it in his mouth skeptically, twisting it around with his tongue and scrunching up his nose in disapproval of the taste.

“Oh my God, stop it. It’s good,” she said in response to the faces he was making and they both started giggling.

“Hey, do you know why these things were on the hood of the car?” Taylor asked nonchalantly, lifting a small collection of items from the area beside his feet. He expected Aria to give him an obvious answer. He handed them to Aria. “These newspapers were on the car too,” he added. Aria examined the items; a bottle of sunscreen, a pack of feminine hygiene pads, two juice packets and a gift card to the fast-food restaurant that was closest to them, which just so happened to be a Subway sandwich store.

“I literally have no fucking idea,” Aria said.

“Seriously? Hm. Maybe Luke put them there,” Taylor said, throwing the paper down to go ask him.

Aria watched him walk over to Luke’s tent and crouch down to pet Palin, while he asked Luke about the items. The confused look on his face did not dissipate. He came back to the car. “Nope. He’s got no idea either. But he saw ’em there before I did and was about to tell us how dumb it was to keep our stuff there out in the open for everyone to see.”