Our life in the country, our life with Lobo, had been different: wild and difficult and gritty and magic. I had seen a comet. I heard coyotes every night. It was also a lonely life, and an uncertain one. I don’t think I ever slept soundly, even as a child, especially when the weed was drying in the house: our secret exposed like an exoskeleton. Every crunch of gravel in the driveway woke me, every tread of a raccoon or deer; every rattle of the door meant danger.

The tiny house had been parked well before the big one, in the lower field. If the sheriff—or robbers or men—came up the drive, they would come to me first. Me, who had no dead bolt on the door. Me, who barely had a door. They would see my light burning all night.

I looked at the back seat and realized Jamey was awake.

She met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed over Starla’s head.

“Not your fault,” I said. “Besides, I was getting sick of all the dudes around here.”

Jamey smiled, leaned her forehead against the window, and closed her eyes. Soon, Grayson woke and took over driving for me, stretching his injured leg with the boot out into the passenger side, near Dance, who didn’t move. Grayson drove even slower than the rest of us, partially because of his cast and partially because he was just Grayson: cautious, tapping the brakes every few minutes, checking his mirrors, not speaking except to crack unfunny jokes about carpool lanes and commuting. I scrunched into the back seat with Jamey and Starla.

I woke up when the truck rolled to a slow stop. I stirred, sat up. “What now?” I asked.

Grayson’s eyes flickered to the dashboard. The gas gauge.

I pulled myself close to his seat. “How much do we have?”

“I don’t know. Your truck eats fuel like a monster.”

“Did we pass a gas station? We could go back.”

“Yeah, but nothing was open. I don’t know whether they’re running short, or running away, or what.”

Grayson had pulled off to the gravel on the side of the road, though I saw no other traffic. More and more of the cars we had started passing were abandoned, dead. They had run out of gas or run into snowbanks, stuck in the drifts like burrowing bugs.