The sound seemed to be coming from what looked like an old maintenance road that disappeared into a stand of Arizona white oaks. The corral-style gate was open, but the sign hanging from it read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Zadie knew she probably wasn’t allowed back there, but the music was so strange and entrancing that her curiosity got the better of her. She followed the road into the trees and down a short hill. What she found at the bottom was not a maintenance building. It was an RV park. Two dozen RVs were parked in a horseshoe formation around the perimeter of a large desert lot, but in the center was a shantytown of sorts; saltbox- style shelters with steep asymmetrical roofs that appeared to have been constructed from whatever the residents had lying around, from salvaged wood to corrugated sheet metal, old tires to cinder blocks. No one seemed to live in these structures. It was a gathering place filled with mismatched patio furniture, a fire ring, and long banquet-style tables. String lights swooped from roof to roof, but not the white globes Zadie was used to seeing over restaurant patios. These were black lights, and they cast an eerie purple glow over the camp. It took a minute or so for Zadie’s eyes to adjust, but once they did, she saw a dozen or so people milling around, not at all bothered, it seemed, by the darkness.

The music was still playing. Zadie squinted, trying to find the source, then spotted a woman sitting on a lawn chair using a red headlamp to illuminate the keyboard in her lap. Her fingers glided slowly across the keys, stretching out the notes as if tapping them for sap. Every sixty seconds or so, she’d stop, look up at the sky, then continue playing, occasionally taking breaks to write something down in a notepad sitting on the arm of her chair.

Zadie took a few steps forward to get a closer look at this strange person in this strange place. The woman looked up, this time not at the stars, but directly at her. How can she see me? she wondered before looking down at her own glow-in-the-dark shirt. Above her, hanging from an old signpost, was a black light.

Zadie backed up out of range of the ultraviolet light, but it was futile. The woman had already seen her. She watched Zadie curiously for a few moments as if she were a wild animal, then raised her hand and gestured her over. Something curdled in Zadie’s stomach that at first felt like shame, but as the feeling intensified, she realized it was the beginning of a premonition. She scrambled into the shadows, clamped her eyes shut, and tried to think of a song, any song that would keep her mind in the present and not allow it to be sucked out with the tide that was lapping at her feet.