“I’m starving,” Matt interrupted from the far bed. “Can’t we go somewhere and eat?”

Teresa glanced at the boy, then pointed toward the television. “Do you have eyes? It’s deadly out there. We’re staying right here until this passes over.” She looked back at Roy. “You’ve got to get out of those clothes.”

“I don’t have any other clothes to put on,” he snapped, crossing the room. “Should I walk around naked?”

“Not really,” Matt said.

“Sure,” Joe said from the opposite bed. “Let’s streak.”

Frankie had resumed his post next to the fishbowl. He glanced around the room as if he’d missed some instruction and wanted to keep up. “Are we taking our clothes off?”

Something was missing from this volley of bees, and Roy realized it was Karen. She was sitting with her back against the wall, watching him. There was no evidence in her face of having been yelled at for the past half hour; it was as if whatever had gone on in the bathroom had had nothing to do with her. She was reading his thoughts, he imagined. She was about to send a lamp through the air and crash it into his skull with her newfound pubescent telekinesis. He had crossed the room only for the sake of moving, too irritated to stand in one place, but there was nothing to cross the room to; there was nowhere to sit, no other spot to occupy except for the toilet. He looked at his reflection in the mirror over the sink and dragged a hand across his eyes, his nose, his mouth, running a desperate diagnostic of the instruments set into the melting control panel that used to be his face.

Teresa had been digging through a grocery bag next to her purse, and when she straightened up, she had a pair of his pants, a shirt, and underwear neatly folded and stacked in her hands. “I packed a change of clothes for everyone.”

He looked at her, feeling both impressed and irritated. “Thanks.” To the rest of them, he said, “There’s food in the ice chest.”

“Not real food,” Joe said.

“Eat it.” He accepted the clothes from Teresa’s hands, and, like a rat in a pipe, took the next and only turn there was to take: into the bathroom. “Just stay away from the ground beef,” he said, and shut the door.

He sat on the toilet lid and stirred the skin over his forehead with his fingertips. Teresa was right, a chill was setting in, and after turning the doorknob lock, he stripped down and got into the shower and stood under its warm spray. He put on the dry clothes she’d packed. He was pressing another towel against his face when the door opened and Frankie stuck his head in.

“How did you unlock that door?”

“I didn’t,” the boy said. “It just opened.”