Blue line of mountains flat against the sky straight ahead. You can pretend that this is all there is but you know there is a golf course a mile to the east, bigger than this patch of woods, and Jo’s father owns part of it. Xie has never asked what it’s like for her, to have the same last name as the one on the billboards, her father’s big grin looming over the freeway. A kiss of wind against Xie’s face. Kicking up the dust of the dead leaves. You know Nova used to come here all the time, she writes about this exact place in her book, Jo says. How she came out here after her dad literally disowned her. A branch whips against Leni’s head, knocking her monocle from her eye. He disowned her? That’s fucked up, she says, fumbling for the monocle in a patch of ferns. Where is she now? Xie asks. Is she coming back? Jo grins, mock-spooky voice: Nobody knows. Seriously? Yeah, seriously. After the meeting she kind of disappeared. She’s probably in Guatemala kicking some corporation’s ass and the fewer people who know about it the better. Xie thinks of the way Nova looked before she left the church, both freer and more trapped than anything he had ever seen. They stop at a clearing, a few charred trunks marking the bald spot made by an old fire. Sit in a circle. Eat hard candy from Leni’s pockets. It’s so crazy about that skeleton that got stolen, Leni says, stroking the sleeve of Xie’s costume. I’ve lived here my whole life and I didn’t even know that thing was there. Did you? Xie rolls a stone beneath his shoe. No. Nobody did. Yeah, except the guy who stole it, Jo says. Do you think it was Satanists like they said? Leni asks. If there were any Satanists around here we’d definitely know who they were, Jo says. It was probably some weirdo who actually goes to church. They’re the ones who put him there in the first place. Like how can you call Satanists weirdos if you’re the one going around digging up bodies and dressing them up in crazy shit? Leni tips her head back, dried blood stuck in black gems all down her throat. I think it looked kind of cool. If I was a skeleton I’d want to look like that. But they locked it away, right? Yeah, because they knew it was fucked up. Jo cracking a lollipop between her teeth. Xie rubs his arms. These woods not like his, thicker, darker, more fragrant, denser canopy means denser decay, so much rot all around. Half of the woods in the county cleared in the last thirty years, and in his lifetime almost all the rest will join what has vanished. Life cut down and down. Leni taps Xie’s shoulder with her stick of dynamite. You always smell so good. Quality vegan diet, he says, and she shakes her pink hair.