Dance came out of the convenience store with his arms full of maps. Steam had clouded the store windows. Someone had laid flattened cardboard down in front of the door to catch the drips of boots. But nothing was melting, nothing was dripping. I saw a shape move at the window. Someone turned the Open sign over to Closed.

The people in line were getting out of their cars. Those still at the pumps replaced the nozzles or shook them as if that would make the gas come out. People were starting to shout, as if that ever did anything, turning to look at the store.

We left quickly. Grayson woke up, grumpy and rubbing his leg. Dance offered to drive while I slept, so Grayson and I changed places, but I didn’t want to sleep. I was too wired, too worried. My tiny house bounced behind the truck. The headlights of the cars passing in the other lane fizzed in the snow. I was not sure I trusted Dance to handle the truck on the icy roads, or Grayson to keep him under control. It would be just like a man to tag along, to tell me how to do things I already knew, like how to drive and navigate, to do them poorly himself.

But I must have slept. The last thing I remembered was Dance asking Grayson if he knew how to read a damn map. Then there was light. It was morning, and I smelled fire.

7

I stumbled out of the back seat. The truck had been parked inexpertly off to the side of the road, in a ditch that might hang us up later. I took a wide step over the ditch. The driver-side door dangled open, and in the grass before me, I saw a dead robin. Its beak was tucked into its body, the size of a shoe, head lolling. Its red breast looked almost obscene. Color in the white snow. I knew if I picked it up, it would feel weightless: the magic of its hollow bones. I walked carefully around it.

Dance and Grayson stood in the road.

As I slept, the highway had turned into a rural route again, narrowing to a single lane. Hills rose on either side. We had stopped before a side road, a turnoff to the right.

But we couldn’t go forward: an accident stopped us. Two crashed cars had been abandoned in the middle of the main road. Their smashed noses met on the center line. The cars had burned. One was still smoking a little—that was what I smelled, the chemical melt of plastic. The cars had no glass in their windows anymore, no bodies that I could see. Whatever mistake or tragedy this had been, it was over.

Someone had spray-painted in red on the burned cars: PREPARE TO PAY. The sentence ran across the two cars, linking them like a banner.