I didn’t know if she would answer, but she spoke right away. It was a simple answer, the simplest answer in the world: “I got pregnant and my folks kicked me out. I didn’t know where to go. They were nice to me at Skate State. I didn’t have to work, be on my feet all day. Jake gave us a roof and fed us.”

I thought of the shack where Kaylee lay on a dirty mattress on the floor. “That wasn’t much of a roof.”

Jamey took another drag on her cigarette. “Things got worse when it got cold.”

I watched her smoke blend with the air and our breath, becoming just another cloud in a low white sky.

“What’s your story?” Jamey asked. “You’ve got a ton of cash, a house, and a gun in your pocket.” She sucked on the cigarette. “Yeah, I know.”

I could feel the heaviness, without even feeling for it, weighing down my coat. Dance and Grayson knew about the gun. Now Jamey knew.

“It was my mama’s boyfriend’s.”

“The gun?”

“The gun, the money. They left it for me. He and my mama.”

“He do something bad?”

“He grew weed.”

Jamey took a drag. “That’s not too bad.”

Dance waved to us. He had replaced the pump, screwed on the cap of the last gas can.

“He’s done,” I said. I stood up from the curb and dusted snow off my coveralls. “We better get Starla and Grayson and get back on the road.”

“Do you really think you’ll make it?” Jamey asked. “All the way to California?”

“Sure. Why not.” I noticed she had said you, not we. I held out my hand to her, to help her off the ground. “Do you want to drive for a while?”

Jamey ground out her cigarette and stood. “I don’t know how. I’m only fifteen.”

12

When the afternoon shadows grew long across the road, and the clouds laced the sky, low, like a storm, we started looking for a place to spend the night.

We passed a chemical plant. The towers and ladders, low buildings and chutes, usually glittered like a city. But this plant was quiet, as still as the snowbanks. I realized why the plant looked strange. The gas flare, which always burned, a tear of orange fire in the darkness, had been extinguished. The stacks of the factory looked as dark and bare as trees, only taller.

We approached a state park, and I made a decision and turned the truck in. Dusk was falling. I expected a gate, a fence we might have to park behind, a lock Jamey could apparently pick. But the tiny gatehouse sat empty, the window shade rolled down. The road into the park was open and clear. It was as though the rangers had left the park for anyone, thrown wide the gate, and ran.

“Where is everybody?” Grayson asked.