When Jamey came to relieve me a little after midnight, I had found the demolition derby track and was sitting in the stands overlooking the snowy dirt circle. A car rusted in the center of the circle—what was left of a car: a banged-up shell that reminded me of Skate State. I tried to imagine the stands around me filled with a cheering crowd, drinking beer and eating popcorn and flushed with the warmth of summer. Where had all those people gone? How many had made it?

Jamey plopped down onto the bench beside me. “This place is huge. I looked fucking everywhere for you.” She scanned the bleachers. A banner, half-ripped or rotting off the grandstand, read: PEP... “Anything useful here?”

“Nothing works,” I said.

She pulled something from her pocket. It was a small pepper, a jalapeño, dried to a husk. “I found it in the barn,” she said. “It’s still got seeds.” She shook the tiny pepper, and it rattled like a baby’s toy. “Thought you could use them, for your collection.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Her breath puffed out. “Thinking about that boy?”

“What boy?”

“Exactly!” Jamey laughed, stretching her legs across the bleachers and crossing her feet at the ankles. The metal stands groaned and shifted, reminding me of high school for a minute, enduring pep rallies and assemblies with Lisbeth. Kids smoked under the stands. I could tell from the scent whether it was Lobo’s weed or not.

“What’s the thing you miss most about spring?” Jamey asked.

It was such a short season. It always had been: a blip that meant more work.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I miss mud.” She laughed again, uncrossing and kicking her heels. The bleachers gave little answering thwacks. “In the thaw, it got everywhere. It was kinda funny, you know, how everybody just gave in to it. Kinda like now, just giving in to the cold. We’re all just dealing. Of course, I liked mud before I moved out to State. Out there, mud just meant more laundry, more shit I had to do.”

I didn’t ask where Jamey’s home was before Skate State. There were only so many places it could be. I knew her parents had kicked her out. She had probably come from one of the villages by the river. Tar paper houses, toys on porches. More stuff in the yard than in the home. Wood smoke and weed smoke, the occasional bitter wind from one of the chemical plants or coal refineries.

She had probably been born there. Jake had probably dealt drugs to the kids at her middle school. I bet that was how she had met him, on the blacktop after school. I could picture him, leaning on a chain-link fence, blowing smoke rings to get her attention.