Jackie took the hoe and, with her good arm, awkwardly leaned it on the trash can next to her. She opened the box. Inside was the mangled body of a tarantula. It had been hacked over and over until most of its body had detached from itself, a jigsaw puzzle way past solving. She looked out the door and watched the lights of Catharine’s car diminish into the highway distance. Jackie tossed the box in the trash, wincing as she did.

The lights and voices out in the desert were gone. She sat alone in the dark pawnshop, looking at nothing in particular, thinking about nothing in particular. Somewhere, Catharine felt better. Nowhere, the tarantula felt nothing at all.

36

Diane bought a bus ticket to King City. It was as easy at that.

The bus left at 7:00 A.M. She brought a small suitcase and a little bit of cash. She boarded the bus, which was a standard bus, flint gray, with a long, rectangular body, two flat front windows, seven wheels, and several narrow viewing slots along the sides, so that the passengers could have a heavily obstructed view of the outside world.

The bus pulled out of the station and onto the highway. Diane tried texting and calling Josh again. It was painful, emotionally and physically, to do so, but she kept doing it anyway. She wished Jackie were with her. It would be easier with another person on her side, someone so steady and fearless, as young as she was, but Jackie was on her own painful journey, and Diane would have to do this alone.

The man sitting across the aisle from her was asleep moments into the ride. He was wearing overalls and a wooden hat. He had only one arm, which he kept folded behind his head. There was a tattoo along his tricep of a head of Boston lettuce crawling with ants. From between the broad leaves came two bare human legs, and below it all was a banner that read, CORAZÓN.

She listened to him breathe. His inhale was long and pinched, a thread of breath pulled taut into his sinuses. His exhale began with a muffled pop, like the sound of a freezer door opening, and spiraled out to a wheeze.

Diane closed her eyes. She tried to breathe synchronously with the man across the aisle. She put one arm behind her head, and breathed intentionally.

Yesterday, she had called the Sheriff’s Secret Police and reported her car and her son missing. When asked for a description of the car, she described colors and shapes. This matched the police’s understanding of what a missing burgundy Ford hatchback looked like. When asked for a description of Josh, she cried. This matched their understanding of what a missing teenage son looked like.