“Let’s not talk about Queen’s private life.” He arrived at a paved road and turned. “Queen has done many bad things,” he said. He let this sit. He drove with just one hand lightly at the bottom of the wheel. He rolled down the windows and the air came swirling in, over my lips, eyelids, scalp. I missed my hair. “She tried to run away, right before the direct action,” he said. “She and a friend of hers. That’s why we didn’t bring her with us. The friend was named. . .” He trailed off.

“She said she didn’t want to go hungry,” I said.

“She’s a terrific liar,” Dice said.

I could feel my eyes twitching to keep up with the blur of trees, following, then snapping forward, over and over. I wasn’t used to speed.

“Cassie,” he said. “That was her friend’s name.”

“Where is Cassie now?” I said.

“Queen told us Cassie went to find the train, but we found her body there by the river,” Dice said. My heart beat hard.

“The fake world doesn’t sit right,” Dice said, “after you’ve been in the real world. We think she wasn’t paying attention. Maybe snakebite.” My chest felt tight again, that nut-cracking feeling. I wondered if he was telling the truth. I told myself I’d ask Queen later. She, at least, was honest with me.

We were speeding past mailboxes, cheaply built houses, fallow fields, yellow signs warning of leaping deer, though we were in their space and not the other way around. Dice didn’t have to tell me that the fake world was deadly; I could see it with my own eyes. “Poor Cassie,” I said. “Poor Queen.”

Dice looked over at me. “A little too generous of a spirit, Harmony,” he said. “Did you know that before Queen came here, she was in jail?”

Jail didn’t seem like a big deal. I could imagine her shoplifting, even robbing. I was a troublemaker, she’d said. “I don’t want to know about Queen’s past,” I said. This seemed like the kind of answer that he was looking for.

“You need to know this,” Dice said. “The charge was death by vehicle.” The cars that passed us made a high-pitched roar as they approached. “She drove up on the sidewalk and killed her mother,” he said.

“An accident?” I said.

“She says so,” he said. The story had the feel of truth. I remembered Queen saying that the family was the end of the line for her. The road spun out below the tires. I felt myself slipping.

“Don’t tell her you know,” he said. “She’ll deny it, anyway.” I shook my head. My loose farm clothes seemed to be crawling with mites.