I stuck my leg out of the open window before slipping the rest of my body from the loan shark’s shack. As I yanked the suitcase out behind me, it busted open, forcing me to clamp it closed against my chest. Fuck. I couldn’t have the bills spilling out all over the place.

Inside the car, I eased the suitcase into the front seat, giving it a loving glance—the only passenger I needed. As I revved the engine and cranked the car back, I smacked into the chain-link fence around the parking lot, making it creak. “Shit,” I murmured. With a burst, I then shot the car forward, driving as fast as I could away from the wreckage, my wheels screaming against the gravel.

The radio blared, telling me the time—just after eight-thirty—and that they’d be playing the greatest hits from the ’90s until midnight. That would put me where? Missouri? I tried to imagine a map of the United States and, with a bizarre clarity, pictured the one that had been on the blackboard in my fourth-grade class, the same year I’d met Aaron.

We’d formed a friendship over copied tests and homework, whispering each other the names of all the capitals. “Montpelier,” Aaron had said to me, ramming his elbow into my ribcage. “For Vermont.”

As I drove away from Kraemer’s loan offices, I felt my eyelids begin to droop. The adrenaline had left me, evaporating from my bloodstream, leaving me exhausted. It was like I hadn’t slept in fucking days. Glancing off the highway, I spotted a sign that read “24-hour Diner” with a large, plastic-looking burger on it.

If there was one thing I’d learned from two months on the road, it was this: 24-hour diners always refilled your coffee at least 12 times before asking you a single question. They didn’t give a fuck who you were or where you were going. You were essentially invisible.

The diner was similar to all the others I’d seen on the road: ultimately forgettable. It was outdated-looking, had a few busted-in cars in the parking lot, and there was a cutesy window on the side where kids could come up and order milkshakes in the summertime. A large mural was painted on the side, featuring a fireman, a cop, a man holding a briefcase, and a woman holding a pie.

The painting was spoiled and dotted with piss stains, and it had probably been done by the kids at the high school. What was it trying to say, anyway? That women were in charge of the pie while the men made the world go round? Maybe that was how it was in Iowa City, but it certainly hadn’t been that way in Detroit.

Before she died, my grandmother had been a force of nature, monitoring our block and hollering at hoodlums, keeping them far from her patch. Robbing from my grandmother had meant you had a death wish. She could handle a gun. She could handle herself.

And she certainly hadn’t made any goddamn pie.

Glancing inside the diner, I scanned the interior for cops. They normally congregated in diners, scarfing down pies and drinking coffees, awaiting calls on their radios. I was grateful to see that the place was more or less abandoned. There was one middle-aged woman wearing an apron and monitoring the coffee machine, a greasy-haired boy in the back dropping some fries into the fryer, and a young, stunning redhead near the back, staring forward and sipping her coffee occasionally, her lips pursed.

Thank God.

I reached for the suitcase, hopeful it wouldn’t burst open the moment I entered, and then stepped out of the car, telling myself I’d remain there for an hour, tops, before getting back on the road.

With a quick glance, I noted that the Mustang wasn’t damaged from the ding into the back fence. It had been scratched and scuffed countless times before on my travels, and didn’t seem any different. Still, it would make sense to rid myself of the car soon, just to get the Seven off my tracks.

But not tonight. Tonight, I’d be out of Iowa City before midnight, passing through whichever state was next until dawn.

I wished that Aaron could show it to me on the map, but I’d have to use my own damn head this time.

Shoving my shoulder into the front door of the diner, the suitcase wrapped tightly in my arms, I entered fresh-baked pie and burnt coffee scented air, grateful for a brief reprieve from the stale smoke smell of the Mustang. It didn’t matter who you were: a murderer, a banker, an ex-member of the Detroit Seven—everyone loved that smell. It made your heart sing.

“Howdy, stranger,” the middle-aged woman said from the counter, stabbing a finger over the coffee machine and brewing another pot. Her voice was raspy, as if she’d smoked thousands of cigarettes in her lifetime. When she flashed a smile, I saw the brown-tinged proof.

“Have a seat wherever you like. We’ve got a special today: burger and fries. Three-fifty, if you can believe it. Best prices in all of Iowa City.”

She leaned across the diner counter, wrinkled breasts pressing against the white top. “But I have to tell you, Bobby back there’s been stoned for the past twelve hours, so I can’t account for much flavor, just a bit of warm food in your belly.” She winked at me, giving a soft shrug.

She reminded me of a great aunt I’d once met, when I’d been maybe nine, who’d smoked like an aging mechanic and chewed at toothpicks, watching horse races on the television while my grandmother refilled my iced tea glass over and over again.

“She’s the most alive person I know,” my grandmother had told me. But she’d looked half-dead.