When I wake up, the campground man, with his flappy hat and ruddy beard, is watching me through a clear spot the sun melted in the ice on the windshield. My heart jolts. I reach over to make sure the door is locked. The guy taps the window, his finger cracked and yellowed. With his other hand, he slaps a piece of paper on the glass, writing side down, so I can read what it says: Car out 9 AM.

His eyes are the exact same grey-blue as the sky behind him.

I nod.

He crumples the paper, jams it in the pocket of his jeans as he walks away.

It’s too cold to even think about using that shower. I run to the bathroom to pee, brush my hair and teeth, and change my bandage. The cut across my knuckles is starting to scab, but it’s still pretty grisly. At least it’s not red and puffy. According to Margo, when she used to check my scraped-up knees, that’s the sign of infection you have to watch for. She knows all that stuff because her mother was a nurse.

I don’t have anything to pack up from the campground, because I’ve slept in my car the whole time, but it’s strange to just go. I feel like I should take something or leave something. Like this was my first home away from the motorhome and there should be a gesture about that. I choose a stone from the fire ring. It’s smooth and grey, charred on one side. It smells like a campfire, and I wish I’d made one while I was here. I drop the stone in the well of the car door and drive away.

About a mile from downtown, I park my car on a side street, outside a house with a rainbow flag hanging from the front porch. I scoped it out the day before and all the parking spaces close to downtown are pay ones, or else there’s a time limit. But here it’s free, I just have to move to the other side of the street before morning.

Sometimes I get words stuck in my head, circling until they sort themselves out and play in my mind like a song. On the walk into work, I think, Where you gonna stay, where you gonna stay, where you gonna stay whereyougonnastay, over and over in time with my footsteps. I try not to think it, but the second I stop fighting to keep the words from my brain, they sneak back.