My soul hits my body like a train car collision. I pull my face off the steering wheel, inhaling a cyclone of cold air.

Back to the road . . . back to civilization . . . back to people . . . to trees.

I snatch my hand out of my lap and yank the gearshift back. The wheels rev up, only to roll circles in the dirt.

“Come on, come on,” I’m begging the truck, pushing the pedal to the floor so the vehicle operates at its most extreme power.

It veers into a clumsy backward swerve. I become a jangling dummy between the window and console. The truck wheels screech on the road, and it spins in a noisy circle.

I slam the brakes and stop, fingers wrapped around the wheel. Ahead is a patch of road, black with bright yellow lines. A place you’d catch a deer in the headlights half a second before it demolished your car.

The deep darkness beyond is where I have to go, until I find someone kind enough to help me.

But my hand is just stuck on the gearshift. I never learned to drive in daylight. How am I expected to do it at night?

A freezing air rushes through my lungs and pins me to the back of the seat. My chest punches the steering wheel, and the horn blares like an angry monster.

A vengeful scream tears across my mind.

“AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

Sawyer is not dead yet. Sawyer is back inside my body—

My hand pushes the stick back to park.

—and my body can’t decide who to trust.

My head slams into the window, like it’s on punishment from itself. My fingers curl around the handle and open the door.

I slide off the seat. A SMACK on the asphalt. The door warning is beeping and beeping, cutting through the silence of the woods.

This road, where not a single car is driving, will silence my demise. Not one person will see what happens here tonight. No one will know until morning if this demon rips my body in half.

This road is full of the tiny pieces of rock that didn’t fuse properly with the paving. It cuts me up all over as I crawl forward—toward what, I don’t know. Barf explodes from my mouth, coloring the road’s yellow lines in reddish brown. Up the road, up the road, and I swallow spit, my elbows and knees scraping open little by little.

I detach.

My soul peels up from my body, and then I’m bathed in light, floating inches off the ground, backward and upward. I don’t feel right. My throat is dry, my stomach concave, my vision blurry.

Lower, I command myself, and float down so my feet meet the ground.