Bob Dylan is playing on one of the presets. It’s Lay, Lady, Lay, and I laugh because it just seems too appropriate. Matty says, “No really, it’s like the best burger I’ve ever had, and it’s like free from nature.” When Bob gets to the part where he sings about not waiting for your life to start, just having cake and eating it now, I know what he means is pretty much the exact opposite, but I start to feel like I’m a million years older than Matty and maybe even from another planet. I start to feel like Matty is the opposite of cake.

We’re stuck in our own stale breath and it’s fogging up the windows. “I have to go,” I say, sitting up, grabbing my jeans.

Matty tries to pull me back into his armpit.

I twist away. “No, really.” I kind of shout it. “My dad doesn’t know I have the truck. I have to go.” I pull my jeans on and lean back to do the button and the zipper. My shirt rides up. There’s a wet spot on the seat.

“Oh, okay,” Matty says, giving me that broken Tonka truck look again.

I rub at the wet spot with my hand behind my back, trying to pretend like my panic is about my dad getting mad and not the life Matty is spreading out ahead of us. “My dad just—he got laid off and he’s all pissy and Irene doesn’t know…” The clock says it’s 4:23, and pretending I’m panicking about my dad starts to make me actually panic about my dad. He probably isn’t sleeping anymore.

Matty says, “See you tomorrow,” but then he tries to stretch it out by kissing me more. He moans gently, like he thinks he can work me into going at it again.

I rub my hand down his leg until I get to his knee, then I reach over and hand him his backpack. “I gotta go.”

He’s walking funny again. I stay to make sure he didn’t lock his keys in the house when he went to get the condom. As soon as he opens the door, I honk twice and drive away like my tail’s on fire, kicking up a trail of dust. Rocks hit the underside of the truck like a barrage of bullets from one of those boring war movies my dad used to watch on Sunday afternoons before Irene made him spend the day at church.