Now she has control over the dial. Control of her life, her daughter. The sun is bright, the sky almost painfully blue. Even in the traffic, Annie can’t help but smile. She hopes every single person in every single car on I-80 feels as good as she does, knows in which direction they’re going as well as she does. And she truly does. She’d studied the map for so long that, though she has it propped up on the console, she hardly needs to glance at it.

They stop along the way for potty breaks and watch the landscape flatten. Annie gets Suzy a Happy Meal, glances at her in the rearview mirror as she inspects the toy, a little blue boat with Captain Hook sitting inside it.

By ten, they are in Dayton, Ohio, and Suzy starts to cry after dropping Lolly. “I want Lolly!” She kicks her feet against the car seat, screams so loud that Annie hears a tinny echo between the sobs. “Lolly! I’m sleepy.” Annie sighs. They’re not in Indiana yet, and stopping now will only delay their journey.

“You need to stop that,” Annie says, turning the radio down. She digs around the console for a Raffi cassette, one hand on the wheel, and pushes the tape into the player.

But even “Six Little Ducks” only makes Suzy cry harder, faster, wailing like a police siren. Annie can’t even hear the whoosh of the other cars’ tires. She rolls down her window. A horn blasts at her. She realizes she’s been slowing down, and the sound of the horn only makes her accelerate so jarringly quickly that Suzy’s screams become even louder, until it sounds like she’s scorched her throat.

Then, as she’s switching lanes, Annie feels a rubber sole come into contact with her ear, and for an eternal moment, her head is wobbling on her neck, spinning. The universe’s epidermal layer is being peeled off, like dried skin, the piercing noise puncturing the air so evenly that Annie wonders if it’s all in her mind, whether Suzy threw her shoe hours ago and the little girl’s sounds are her own tinnitus.

She turns off Raffi and pulls to the side of the road. As the vertigo subsides, the screeching resumes.

“Shhh, baby. Just a couple more hours, okay?” Annie says, and she turns her head toward the back seat. But Suzy is red-faced. She’s somehow unclasped the bracelet, the one Annie gave her for her birthday months ago, and thrown it on the floor. She bats Annie’s hand away aggressively. Her noise, trapped in the car, is like a chainsaw coming for Annie’s head. She sees spots in front of her eyes as the roaring continues, the sound forming into black curls of smoke, tendrils snaking around Annie’s temples.