There’s a heavy thud of footsteps and then someone is there. She spins to face him.

The driver, a stocky man in his late fifties, stands over her, his stubby fingers gripping her seat in the dark. He gives it a rough shake.

“Better wake up, miss,” he says. “We got a washout. You’ll have to walk.”

Maeve blinks. It’s almost two in the morning, the night and weather outside the bus relentless. But the driver doesn’t move until she pushes herself to her feet.

She peers out at the way ahead: the road has turned to gravel. They are nowhere, the middle of nowhere. The middle of the night. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and pretends to check the time.

One bar.

“Where are we?” Maeve says, moving her thumbs across the screen. She looks up, feigning indifference. “I just have to text my boyfriend.”

The driver glances at the phone, and Maeve wonders if he can read it upside down, if he sees the blank name field and knows she’s lying. She’s so sick of this, all the lies women have to tell to try and protect themselves.

“Only half a mile, miss. Maybe less. We better get on with it.”

Maeve pretends to hit Send all the same.

Outside the bus, the rain is turning into ice pellets, or something worse. She steps down, and her long hair whips against her eyes, instantly soaked. She pulls an elastic off her wrist and ties her hair up high on her head before slinging her pack onto her shoulders. The driver hauls up the cargo door and heaves her duffel bag out and onto the ground, where it lands in the muck. She bends to retrieve it; the bag holds all her dance gear, the whole reason she made this trip in the first place. Two weeks in residence at the High Water Center for the Arts and a dance studio of her very own. Her first real studio time in five years. Her first time away from her children ever.

The bus headlights are still on, casting a slim light out onto the dark road. Up ahead, a sign warns they are in bear country: BE ALERT. ALL WILDLIFE IS DANGEROUS.

Above the words, a bear painted in black and white stares at her head-on, its massive shoulders rising to a hump on its back.

She can’t see anything beyond that.

“Gates are that way,” the driver says, pointing toward the sign. The bus door closes behind her. He’s standing a little too close. They stare at each other.

Then he pulls her duffel out of her hands and heads off into the dark, forcing Maeve to follow, struggling to keep up in the downpour.