Maybe, even worse than always being on guard like me, like Jamey, Starla never would be. She had not learned to flinch and to listen, to trust her gut, to be alert, to brace a door. She went with Jake. She went with Mica, with Grayson, or with me. Grateful for any arms, even a stranger’s, able to sleep in any of them. I worried about what that meant.

The light dipped behind a brown mountain and Grayson rolled the truck to a stop. “Any farther and we’re out of gas,” he said.

There was no other car on the road. There had not been one for miles. Woods alongside of us, woods behind. Mountains before us, craggy and spiked with more trees.

“How far are we to the Tennessee border?” I said.

“I don’t know anymore. We’ve taken so many detours. Maybe we’re close.”

“We’ve been driving forever,” Jamey said.

“What—” I tapped my finger on the windshield “—is that?”

Orange flared in the trees along the left side of the road, a wink in the drab landscape. It flickered, bright, then dim, then bright again. A lantern? A chemical plant?

“Some other idiot got his house blowed up,” she said.

“No, it’s too small.” I was already pulling on my gloves. “Stay here. I’ll check it out.”

“Wil?” Grayson said.

“Maybe they have fuel. I have the gun,” I said.

I had my knife, too. I tucked the ends of my hair into my scarf and went out, sucking in the shock of air. Cold settled into the folds of my arms and legs.

It felt like it was getting worse. The snowfall the night we had been robbed hadn’t ever melted. Nothing had melted, and more snow was coming all the time.

Grayson, Jamey, and Starla all crowded into the front seat of the truck and watched me, their breath steaming the glass. Grayson had left the headlights on to light my way down the road, but the orange light came to me.

Out of the trees, it came, growing and bobbing over the gravel and salt on the side of the road, to where I stood. Grayson flashed the lights. I turned and he blinded me, flicking on and off the brights, some signal I wasn’t getting. I turned back around.

A boy stood in front of me.

Eight or nine? I was no good at children’s ages. He carried something, and I took a step back, feeling for my pocket.

A gun. I thought he carried a gun. Like me.

But it was a toy. Oversized, with buttons and fluorescent levers that did not belong on a real gun, details that might have been meant to protect him in the world before the lost spring, but maybe would not have. It was plastic. The barrel held a burning wad of cloth. He was using the toy gun as a torch.