Lord, send my people into Egypt land. Lord, strike down Pharaoh and set them free.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jesse said, and Mira agreed, following him to his car.

XVI.

MIRA DIDN’T ASK where Jesse was driving her. He said it wouldn’t take long. She sat in the passenger’s seat as his car bumped along over the potholes in the road. She closed her eyes and let the breeze from the open window cool her face. Jesse didn’t talk as he drove, nor did he turn on the radio, and Mira didn’t ask him to, preferring quiet. After the commotion at the Woodsman Plantation, it was nice to listen to the silence; she hoped it would calm her for whatever was to come.

In the silence, the memories she’d collected of him flooded back to her, like a strong current she couldn’t keep at bay. School bus drives as he told jokes to distract her from the other boys’ teasing. Birthday ice-cream sandwiches using money they’d saved and pooled together to celebrate on one single day for them all. Jesse’s idea since Celine’s father never cared about her birthday and Celine refused to tell them the date. Jesse with his hair pick in his constant attempt to grow out his Afro. His barely there freckles. His always skinned, sometimes ashy knees. The way he dreamed of his life, as if what he wanted could be possible if he loved it enough. She looked at this boy, now a man, and wondered how much of her memory of him had remained.

Jesse drummed his fingers along the steering wheel, a nervous tic to pass the time as he drove, and Mira glanced at his hands. Thick calluses had formed on his knuckles. A jagged scar was etched in the skin of one of them and she wondered if it was from when he’d broken the window, but she was too afraid to ask. His nails were stubs, bitten down to the quick. Rough and tanned, his hands gave away the signs of years of his work outside in the sun, aging him far beyond his years.

The marks of the world are on us, Mira thought. It’s often as simple as looking at a person’s hands to know who and all of what we’ve been.

Jesse’s car slowed. The woods outside the window seemed like the same expanse of woods she’d seen when they’d left. It looked like they’d gone nowhere. “Where are we?” she asked.

“I have spare boots in the back. Grab those and put them on,” he said after he’d parked the car and got out. “We got a little bit of walking to do.”