And yes, that is lovely, and yes, I was a very repressed and strange girl who had never really connected with another human being, so I’m probably being overly poetic, because I also distinctly remember moments when I thought, I’m going to die in Coalfield. The summer will never end, and I will never leave, and no matter how many posters we hang up, I’ll never get out of here. And there were times when I thought, Zeke, goddammit, get me the fuck out of here, but I was so scared that when he left, he would forget me. All he knew was me in Coalfield. So we had to leave, just for a second, I thought. There were so few spots on our map of Coalfield that weren’t blasted with stars, the strangest constellations, and now that other people were doing it, too, maybe if we drove just a few hours in any direction, we’d find a spot that was pristine, that did not know about the edge, was so unprepared for it that we’d transform that new place before it had time to resist.

“We could go to Memphis,” he offered. “I could show you around.”

“Just you and me?” I asked. That felt like the most relationshippy thing in our brief time together, though I am now remembering that we did a weird blood pact and, you know, we were responsible for one of the weirdest mysteries in American pop culture. But that was all so strange, even the kissing, so outside of, like, corsages and airbrushed T-shirts with your names on them. This felt like the most normal thing a couple could do, spend a day in the city, and it was somehow more terrifying to me than blood. “We can put up the posters all over Memphis,” I said, just to bring things back into a world that I understood.

“Yeah, that would be fun. We could go by my school and hang them up,” Zeke said, and now I could see him starting to vibrate a little with the possibilities. “We can go to the zoo! We can get a Huey Burger. Maybe we could see a Memphis Chicks game. Have you ever been to Graceland?”

“You want to put up posters in Graceland?” I asked. I thought that if there was one place in the entire world where devotees would kill you for desecrating the sanctity of a holy space, it would be the mansion where Elvis played racquetball.

“No! Well, maybe. That would be pretty cool. I just mean, we can do the posters, absolutely, but I can also just show you around and we can do some fun stuff.”

“Okay, yeah . . . I’m good with that. Rad.”

“The thing is . . . ,” he said, frowning.

“Yeah?”

“My mom would kill herself if she knew I was going to Memphis,” he finally said.

“Do you have to tell her?” I asked.

“Are you going to tell your mom?”