“Well, there you go. You’re hired.” She laughs and it’s this weird little cackle that reminds me of stepping on dry leaves. “Everyone and their roommate will be out of town that whole fucking week. If you can work through break, I’ll train you myself.”

“Thank you,” I say, trying not to smile too wide.

“Can you start tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“Come in after the morning rush. Ten thirty. Half pay for training. Once I don’t have to hold your hand, it’s five fifty an hour, shift meals, and your cut of the tip jar at the end of the week. Okay?”

I nod.

Carly hands me a piece of paper. “Fill this out and give it to Bodie when you’re done,” she says, pointing to the blond guy.

“Thank you.”

“Ten thirty,” she says, and walks into the back room without saying goodbye.

I can’t fill out half the form. I don’t have an address. I don’t have a phone. I don’t even know which street the campground is on. I write my name, and then, under work experience, I write Waitress, Margo’s Diner, Little River, NY, 1990–94. It’s the only thing about me that’s still true.

— Chapter 9 —

There are two more nights before the campground closes. I think maybe I should pull a few numbers from the roommate ads on the bulletin board, but who’s going to take in some girl with nothing but a car full of crap and a dwindling wad of crumpled dollar bills to her name?

I wander around town looking in store windows, hoping an answer will come to me. Just outside The Commons there’s a tall brick building that reminds me of my high school and would seem just as menacing, except there’s a guitar store on the first floor with a big shiny window to show off the beautiful curves of rows of guitars hanging on the walls.

I’m not used to seeing stores for just one specific thing you wouldn’t starve without. Even the auto parts store in Little River sells livestock feed and canned goods too. It feels like I’m starving without a guitar. If I still had mine, I wouldn’t notice the cold in the campground and I wouldn’t feel hungry right now. I could play until my fingers throbbed and then walk around with fresh indents in my calluses to help me remember that the world can disappear and I can float in sound and breath and nothing else has to matter.