“Please be good to yourself,” Ayanna said, hoping somehow it would reach Opal. “Tell Olivia I miss her.” Then, Ayanna got the guards to let her out. She looked at the bald one and suddenly realized he was her dad’s old friend, Malik. He saw the look of recognition on her face and smiled at her. She realized why he had let them be. No one asked what had happened to Opal.

“What will happen here?” Ayanna asked.

He sighed. “We’ll lock it down further. When things get calmer, some scientists will be allowed to come.” Malik looked around. “Some rich guy has already offered a lot of money to go through. Everything that happened before, it will probably happen again.”

Ayanna slowly walked to her car. Let each step be its own farewell. The crowd was heavy again, but now with people calling the door “Satan’s evil, a disgusting temptation.” She listened to the sounds of people, lawn mowers, her feet on the gravel. She wanted to never come here again, even though it was still beautiful to her. There would always be a part of her, Ayanna felt, that was these roads and trees. Always pointing up toward the wide open sky and big white clouds. Her rental car was covered in bird shit and dented from hail. She fished out her pajamas, changed into them, not caring if anyone saw, then got in. Ayanna bought a plane ticket out of Detroit for this evening and began the long trip downstate, stopping once to nap in a Walmart parking lot, and a second time to slam an energy drink in a gas station where a few of the dead were misting around the beef jerky and corn chip aisle. She bought another bag, took it outside, tore it open, and dumped it onto the hot parking lot asphalt. They devoured it and one even said gracias.

When Ayanna’s phone had charged, it buzzed with texts and alerts, even a missed call from her dad. It was the day before Jane’s forget-baby-showers-I-want-a-vacation. There would be time to talk for days. Ayanna slept briefly in an airport hotel room, took a shower, then slept deeply on the airplane as she had never done before in her entire life.

When the plane landed, Ayanna bought more toiletries and a sundress from an airport shop. It was so clean and quiet that she felt like buying everything and giving each cashier a compliment on how soothing the stores were. After about thirty minutes of puttering around and wheeling her suitcase, Ayanna tired of picking things up and then deciding not to buy them. In the last store, a Muzak version of her and Olivia’s favorite Bone Thugs-N-Harmony song played, and she lingered near the speaker.