Three periods later, the end of the day was in sight but impossible to touch. I was taking a test in reading comprehension, filling in endless little ovals, and I got up and walked out. The teacher was busy at her desk and she probably thought I would come right back. Maybe I mumbled something about needing the bathroom. If I said anything, I didn’t remember it two seconds later. Another set of double doors, and then I was out of the building, headed over the front lawn and the insincerely green soccer field, to the crest of the highway. I stood at the edge of the road, not sticking out my thumb. I just stared at the pavement like it owed me something. A car stumbled to a stop.

The woman driving the car powered her window down. She looked old enough to solidly be called an adult, but other than that, I couldn’t tell her age. Was she in her late twenties? Thirties? It wasn’t cold, but she wore a wool jacket, the long sleeves rolled above her spiky wrists. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. That wasn’t true, though. Something inside of me knew. It just wasn’t the part that made words. “As far as you can take me?”

She gave me a wincing smile, like that answer made sense to her, and she wasn’t happy about it. Something in my brain told me that I was supposed to be afraid of anyone who would stop at the side of the road and pick up a girl hitchhiking in plain sight of the high school, and something else in my brain pounced on that thought and muffled it.

“I’m Jackie,” she said, waiting for my name. When I said I was Danny, she nodded, like knowing that made what we were doing marginally okay.

She pushed a button, and the automatic locks clicked open.

I climbed in. Her car smelled like cigarettes and orange peels, though I couldn’t see any stubbed-out ends or flaking rinds. We drove for at least five silent minutes before she looked at me, a few glances. Maybe she was trying to stay focused on the road. Or she didn’t want to see too deep into whatever my trouble was.

“You shouldn’t get in cars with strangers,” she said. “You know that, right?”

We passed the turnoff for my house, a long, curved section of road just past the tiny regional airport. I must have looked at my neighborhood with a certain kind of need on my face.

“Do you want me to drop you off at home?” Jackie asked.

I thought about my house and the blankets waiting at the foot of my bed, the way I had to take three painkillers at a time to get my legs to stop slashing the sheets. “I want absolutely everything except that.”