I think about dropping hints to Bodie that I need a couch to crash on. Maybe just asking if he knows someone who needs a roommate or where there’s a cheap hotel or rooms for rent. Not coming right out and saying “Can I stay with you?” because that would be needy and gross, but giving him the opportunity to offer. Except every time I get close to Bodie to start a conversation, he nods or winks, or gives me that chin-first smile, and I clam up. I practice what I should say in my head while I wipe down tables, settling on: So, I need a place to crash for a few days while I find new digs. Any idea where to look? I get to the point where I’m pretty sure when I say it out loud, I can make it sound like something I just thought of. But by the time I work up the right resolve and Carly sends me to the kitchen with dirty dishes, Bodie is gone.

Some guy with curly red hair, a backwards baseball cap, and total pizza face is hacking at a head of iceberg lettuce with a cleaver, yelling “Ha!” with every slice, dumping the remains into a bin on the sandwich prep station.

I don’t introduce myself, and he doesn’t bother looking up. I put the dishes on the counter and walk out. As the door closes behind me, I hear the sharp smack of the cleaver against the cutting board again, and he yells, “Take that, motherfucka!”

— Chapter 13 —

Knowing I could be warm on a couch at Adam’s place makes it that much colder at the campground. In elementary school they taught us about stranger danger, but what if hypothermia is a possibility, and the stranger has a warm place to stay?

I start my car and let it run with the heat full blast until it’s so warm I can hardly breathe. Then I turn it off and sleep until I wake up shivering again.

That business card in my bag, tucked in the inside pocket so it won’t get lost—the thought of it makes my teeth itch. At least if I was duct taped to a chair in Adam’s basement I’d be warmer than I am now. I think about calling from the pay phone by the bathrooms. Instead, I start the car again. Soon as the air turns warm, I put my hands in front of the vent. Hold them there until I feel like they might burn.