I stood waiting on Tunnel Road, eyes watering, feeling tight and drawn, as though I’d survived a great ordeal. I didn’t even have the money for gas station chocolate.

A man was standing next to me at the bus stop. He didn’t have any bags so I guessed he was waiting for someone. I didn’t look much at his face to begin with. He had long wide scars running the length of both of his arms, from elbow to wrist, evidence of what could have been mortal wounds.

I remembered Isaac telling me that the right way to cut was “down the lane, not across the street.” Isaac’s gruesome knowledge gave him power, and I loved to feel like there were alternate uses for arms and knives, like the world was full of objects that, reimagined, could tip us away from safety. I liked glitter in an envelope as a prank and I liked a pinhole in a shoebox as a camera lens. I liked the way a rope tied high above the quarry could become a terrifying swing, or an arm pushed against a door frame could start to feel weightless and rise of its own accord. I liked high-jumping so high that mistakes badly hurt, and taking my mother’s food to Isaac’s squat, and, at the animal shelter where I volunteered, petting the death-row dogs I was supposed to ignore.

As I looked, the stranger tried to hide the scars, which made him seem good.

“Let me guess, Greyhound girl,” he said. I started. He was talking to me. He had some kind of accent. “Heading home, but you don’t want to.” It was a Southern voice, a mountain voice.

I gazed at him. I was sad to be so easily legible.

“I bet your dad left home when you were younger. No”—he sized me up, and I couldn’t help smiling—“your mom.”

I shrugged. He had a busted-looking face and gentle canine eyes. “It wasn’t really a home,” I said. The first words I spoke to him were all he needed to build a connection so strong it seemed magical.

“I like to hear people’s stories,” he said. We stood smiling at each other. He gave me a piece of chocolate with a pink candy coating. “Want another?” he said. I nodded, but he waited a minute before he handed me the bag.

He told me his name was Bay.

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

“Rest assured, dads don’t like me.” He laughed. I felt like I was in a scene I’d often noticed in parks, a squirrel looking down at a dog, the dumb communion of animals, their mismatched understanding.

“These are good,” I said, even though the chocolate tasted like oil. I swept a horsefly from his shoulder. He shook my hand off, and I stepped back.