The rails looked moon-polished and slick, but Rocco walked the left one like a balance beam and never once fell. Meebs skipped along the wooden ties. Actually skipped, but no one laughed or even seemed to notice. Mason was up near Dakota. Lance watched their shadows dance closer, farther apart.

His fingertips ached for his horn. The phantom tingle of a lost limb. Lance slowed down, letting Stone and Breanna catch up. He needed to make it up to Stone, for how he’d acted.

“I’ll play ‘Taps’ for you,” Lance said. “As soon as I get my horn back.”

“Sweet,” Stone said.

“Were you in the military or something?” Lance asked.

“Or something,” Breanna said.

Stone’s smile vanished.

“Why do you ask?” Stone said. “Do I look military to you?”

“No,” Lance said. “It’s the ‘Taps’ thing. And you”—he started, too drunk to stop himself—“you kind of look like a soldier in the zombie apocalypse right now. All bandaged up with your lady. Walking toward simpler times.”

Breanna and Stone laughed.

“Simpler times,” Stone echoed.

“Stone has a whole plan for when the zombies come,” Breanna said. “It’s pretty serious.”

“It mostly involves outrunning Mason, whose fat ass could feed a horde of zombies for three days,” Stone said. He mocked Mason screaming. Breanna laughed, this soft, lilting sound that barely seemed like it could live inside her. She looked up at Stone the way she’d looked at him with his guitar. A flicker behind her eyes.

“You’d save me,” she said.

“I am saving you,” he said.

“I know, baby.”

She tucked herself under the wing of his arm, and Lance watched the rail ties beneath his shoes. Made them move faster. He stretched away from Breanna and Stone until an invisible cord snapped and he was in his own orbit, drifting past Meebs and Rocco, toward Dakota. She’d broken free of Mason and her gravity dragged his own stumbling feet forward, and she was slowing down or he was running.

Dakota. The only thing in a world of blue light.

They walked alone.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“Good stars.”

She took a long, deep breath and turned toward him. Eyes open wide. A look as strong as a touch, like she’d cupped his face with her bare hands. Lance’s chest shook. A trembling intake of breath and Dakota smiled.

“Cold?” she asked.

“No. I’m okay.”

“Nervous?”

He shook his head.

“You’re smart, Lance. Valedictorian? Really?”

“Ugh,” he said.

“So you have a good, important brain,” she said. “You sure you want to do this with your good, important brain?”

“Is it dangerous?” he asked.

“Jumping a train? Very dangerous.”

“Oh, good,” he said.

“Will you let me pull you on?” she asked. “When you jump?”

“Of course.”

“Of course.” Nodding, smiling. “Good answer, Wildman.”

Just ahead, Mason was down on all fours. Palms on the rails.

“You feel that?” Mason said. “Right on time.”

“Mason, dude, you can’t feel shit.” Meebs hopped up on a rail, shoes squeaking.

“It’s coming,” Rocco said.

“I’m first up,” Mason said. “Dakota, you want second?”

“I’ll go right before Lance,” Dakota said.

Mason gave her a look like, Didn’t quite catch that.

“I’m out,” Breanna mumbled into Stone’s shoulder.

“I’ll walk the lady back,” Stone said, pulling her close. “She’s about to Humpty Dumpty.”

The train whistled in the distance. A lonely coyote.

Lance’s chest got tight. His thinking narrowed to the rails and how this would work. To his left, about a hundred feet of open space before the forest choked in around a sharp bend in the tracks. The trees crowding the turn had battered branches, raw ends a luminous white. The train had done that. Like pruning with a sledgehammer.

“Two cars to remember,” Rocco said, leaning into Lance, whisky thick on his breath. “Larson’s Lumber. Mandalay Motors. Then, boom! Runrunrunrunrun. Don’t get too close.”

“Suction,” Meebs said, so stoned his eyes looked bloody.

“Right,” Lance said, remembering sophomore physics. “Bernoulli’s principle.”

“Not Bernoulli,” Rocco said. “Mandalay. Mandalay Motors.”

“After Larson’s Lumber—” Meebs started, but someone grabbed Lance by the shoulder, pulled him backward. “Hey, Stone, let go of the Wildman. We’re coaching, man! C’mon!”

But Stone was leading Lance down the slope, away from the others. Breanna was there, hands braced against a tree like a runner stretching after a sprint.

“There’s a metal handle to the left of the door,” Stone said, acting it out. “Right there. Grab that handle.”

“I thought someone would pull me on,” Lance said. Dakota was by the tracks. Mason was wrestling with his backpack.

“Yeah. Thing is, that handle doesn’t move,” Stone said, eyes hard behind his bandages. “Or pull back at the last second.” Shot glasses. That’s what Mason was after, with a chunky black slice on the bottom of each one. Magnets?

This advice was important, but Lance couldn’t stick his thoughts to Stone’s words. His attention kept skipping back to Dakota. Dakota next to Mason, Dakota taking another shot. Lance’s body followed the orbit of his mind, and by the time he realized he’d walked over to her, Stone and Breanna were gone.

“Places!” Mason shouted.

They lined up in the order they would jump: Mason, Meebs, Rocco, Dakota, Lance. The train whistled. Not a coyote. A train. Pressure in the air. Shoes crunched ballast. Whisky on Dakota’s breath. He could taste it. He timed his inhalations, trying to breathe her in.

“C’mon, Mason,” Meebs said. “Shot o’clock.”

Mason snapped the magnets onto the nearest rail. They trembled, tick-tick-ticking on the metal. Whisky boiled in the glasses.

“Get ’em while they’re hot!” Mason shouted.

They leapt up, lined the rail, yanked the glasses up to their mouths. Lance couldn’t unsnap his. When it finally jerked free, he lost half the liquid down the side of his hand. The gulp hammered him in the gut. Too much, too fast. A cold sweat broke out on his back. Someone took his glass away.

“Get ready!” Dakota shouted.

The stars were gone. The train’s headlamp was the sun, dragging a world of steel behind it. Dakota grabbed his arm and pulled him, stumbling, down the slope and into the shrubs. She was saying Remember you need to—and the whistle blared, flattening her words. The roar rattled the hollows of his lungs and caught in his throat like something he could swallow. The beat on the track shook his clothing against his skin, and they were all standing together. A line of pale faces.

The whistle blew past, a smear of dopplered sound, a click-clack thunder.

Cars cleaved through the darkness, gray and rusted, tagged with painted words, puffy and colorful, black and jagged. The yellow flash of a car.

Larson’s Lumber

Dakota grabbed his arm. He bent his knees, trying to breathe away the tickle in his chest. Gray car, gray car, red car, yellow car, brown car. A silver car, coming closer.

Mandalay Motors

“Go!” Mason shouted, his voice swallowed by thunder.

They charged from the ditch. The roar of breath and slip of rocks and a world gone tippy with whisky, then the rocks evened out and he was running along a train, a living thing, unfolding into the darkness—and what a sight! He was laughing, hooting. Pumping his fist.

Mason shambled in the lead, moving off-kilter, like a broken machine. He drew even with an open door in the middle of a boxcar. Everyone was speeding up, shouting at Mason Jump, JUMP! then his pace matched the train and his knees bent and he flashed into the car like a trick of the light.

The car beside Lance was pocked with rust. Filthy. A bad way to die, coming closer, pushing toward him, tilting off the rails! The track, curving. He stumbled sideways. Easy to forget a curving track with all the noise and how running straight would put your ankle between two pieces of steel, suck you in, and grind you like hamburger under a bootheel.

The train gained speed. It tugged at him like a gentle vacuum and yes, Bernoulli’s principle. Because a speeding train pulled the air along with it, and pulled you along with the air.

Bernoulli. Suction. Bernoulli! Suction!

Dakota’s hair, bobbing in long, dark waves. Rocco pulled even with the open car. Mason’s hand flashed out and vacuumed him into darkness. Meebs was going too fast. Half-jumped, stumbled. Something bad. Something terrible, then a hand from the car and he was okay, kicking up inside, and just Dakota now, and he could run beside this train with her forever.

The door became a real thing, with all of its parts. Metal step and a handle. Mason, Rocco, and Meebs all visible inside. Dakota angled her eyes at the step. More like a bar. Small and rounded and slippery looking. Dakota watching it. The bar, her feet, Mason’s outstretched hand.

She was in the air.

Her foot tapped the step, stuck like a magnet. Mason grabbed her forearm. Maybe she didn’t need him, but he grabbed and flung her backward, hard. The car swallowed her.

Hurry! Mason mouthed over the roar. Hurry!

Mason’s hand, outstretched where Dakota’s should’ve been. Beside it, the handle Stone mentioned, fused to the door with bubbling rust. Mason screaming. Mouth screaming, but eyes so dull. Reaching out a meaty paw.

Lance leapt.

No decision, he starfished his limbs. One hand shot for the handle, the other for Mason, feet for the step. Something had to stick. Mason’s hand sealed on his like a firm handshake, gave him a quick squeeze.

Then tore away.

The violence of the move spun Lance sideways. Feet scrabbling, he grabbed fistfuls of air. A palm banged into metal, two fingers twisted around the handle. Toes mashed the rounded bar, pedaling its frozen-pond surface. The train shuddered, everything gone. Nothing to hold. Falling through the pond. Then a flock of hands grabbing his shirt and pants and neck, and he was in the air, then grounded. A bone-shaking hug from the car’s wooden floor.

He took a breath.

The beginning of his second life was a dusty landscape of plastic soda bottles and a gray penny. He tapped his hands and feet on the wood, ensuring they were there. One, two, three, four. Okay. He loved that gray penny. He wanted to kiss it. Swallow it.

Around him, an argument.

“I was supposed to pull him in,” Dakota said.

“Whatever. You were busy falling on your ass,” Mason said.

Lance stood, shaking with the shuddering train. Everyone looked at him, like it was his turn to talk.

Ca-LACK, Ca-LACK, Ca-LACK

“Why did you let me go?” Lance asked Mason.

“What?”

A sudden stillness.

“You grabbed my hand,” Lance said. “Then you pulled away.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Mason said. “If I’d let you go your ass would be in the ditch.”

“You made it, man,” Rocco slurred, shouldering into him. “S’cool.”

“Yeah,” Mason said. “You made your train, Wildman!” He was smiling a true smile. Then everyone was cheering and slapping his back and of course Mason had tried to pull him in.

Why had he said that to Mason?

Blue light flooded the car. Lance’s heart bobbed in his chest, trying to find a rhythm in a flood of adrenaline and whisky, the ca-LACK pounding in his belly. Then Dakota was touching him. Pinching his middle finger and dragging him toward the boxcar’s open door. Trees, a blue-black flicker. The scent of damp wood. Summer air was alive and raking through his hair and brushing every strand from Dakota’s face so she was unhidden, eyes and lips.

She leaned close, then grabbed his chin. Turned his head and put her mouth to his ear. Her breath was warm and said:

Moonflowers.

The trees shrank back and away, melted into tall grass. A meadow. Perfect and wide in a way that made Lance want to jump and fly and run and run until he tumbled down into soft blue grass. The sharp clack of the train struck out like a bell, and flashes of the white flowers speckled the earth, building in number, mottling the field like raindrops on a clean sidewalk. There were hundreds of them.

Dakota held him by a fingertip. Time was rushing, slowing. He could not tell.

The flower droplets evaporated, then someone said Sugarville and the train shuddered and slowed. Dakota let him go when Mason, Rocco, and Meebs squeezed into the door. They would have to jump, of course. He wondered how he should tuck his body when they leapt and tossed themselves into the field like dice. Should he protect his head? His kidneys?

Brakes squealed. Couplers braced. A tin-shed rattle, and the train was still.

All they had to do was step down.

Lance’s legs were still rubbery. He almost slipped when he dropped onto the ballast. They walked into the weeds, then the woods. Empty bottles and cans lined the single-file path like mile markers. The air felt flat without the rush and beat of the train. Mason led the group—the only one still drinking—taking big pulls from a fifth, haphazardly whacking branches with the bottle.

Dakota was walking close to Mason. Lance’s arms were swinging freely at his sides. Hands empty.

“When do you think I can get my horn, Mason?” Lance asked.

“What horn?” Mason called back.

The group laughed.

“Better watch it, man,” Rocco said. “Wildman will knock you down.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“You didn’t see him at the accident,” Meebs said. “He’s a kung fu fighter.”

“Yeah,” Mason said. “I heard he knocked down a girl.”

More laughter. Lance was glad for the distance between him and Mason.

“What happened to Stone?” Meebs said. “Where’d Stone go?”

“You’re just noticing this,” Rocco said.

“He’d better be on time tomorrow,” Mason said. “Or his ass is going to be unemployed.”

“C’mon, man. Dude’s brain was bleeding,” Rocco said. “Yesterday.”

“How can something bleed,” Mason said, “when it doesn’t…even…exist?”

Meebs burst out laughing.

“Stone’s not the one who left the fryer on last week,” Dakota said. “I’m just saying.”

“Oh, that’s true,” Rocco said.

“He poisoned my thinking,” Mason said.

“Oh yeah? Is that why you banged Mandi on Friday night?” Rocco asked. “Hooo.”

“Yeah!” Meebs said. “Now you got a poisoned dick.”

Dakota laughed, then Mason’s bottle exploded against the trunk of a maple. Everyone stopped. Mason kept walking. He gripped the stem, holding jagged glass in front of him like a torch. Everyone walked behind him and was quiet.

The group shook free of the trees and passed the fire pit, embers still glowing a candied orange. Mason finally dropped his bottle on a stack of empties. They made it back to The Float’s parking lot and everyone was just kind of loose there, under a streetlight. Except Mason was cornering Dakota. If there had been a wall, he would’ve been leaning on it, but there wasn’t so he was just looming. Talking too low for Lance to hear.

Dakota was shaking her head, smiling. Shaking her head again.

Lance’s leg was a jackhammer, pounding a hole in the pavement. He stared at Mason and Dakota, trying to pry them apart with his eyes.

“Got any weed left?” Meebs asked no one in particular.

“Aren’t you assholes going home?” Mason said. “Last call was seven hours ago.”

“I’m out,” Rocco said, walking toward Meebs’s car. “Meebs.”

“Meebs can give you a ride,” Mason told Lance.

“The motel’s right there.” Lance pointed across the field.

“Meebs. Give him a ride.”

“Yeah. Meebs, give him a ride. Always driving bitches,” Meebs said, shuffling off.

Dakota, Mason, and Lance watched one another.

“I’ll walk,” Lance said.

“We can walk, Mason,” Dakota said. “It’s right there.”

“I know you can walk.” Mason’s eyes went glassy. “Lance. Tonight’s it, right? You’re off to Bend tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “It’s been great, though.”

“So great.” Mason gave Lance’s hand a single pump. “Nice knowing you.”

“See you, Wildman!” Rocco called.

“Yeah buddy,” Meebs said. “Look us up next time you’re in the middle of fucking nowhere!”

Dakota was leaving, so Lance followed her into the field. The walk happened too fast, breezing past, and he was suddenly back in the Trainsong parking lot with cars as still as stones and curtained windows and Dakota.

“So, how was it?” she said.

“What?”

“You know,” she said. “This part of your life.”

“Fun,” he said.

“Yeah?” She laughed. “Fun.”

“Also, I think this might be the best night of my life.”

She laughed. “Yeah! It felt big, didn’t it?”

“Totally big. The biggest.”

“Thank you for seeing the field with me.”

“Of course. I can’t believe you can see that field whenever you want.”

“Tonight was the first time I really saw it,” she said.

There was a question he should ask, only he did not know how to ask it, then she reached out and cupped his cheeks with her hands. Actual hands! How could they be so warm? How could they be touching him? Then those hands dropped and they were hugging like they were in an airport—like when you won’t see someone for a year, or ever again. She turned her face into his neck. The tip of her nose. A brush of lips. She breathed in, inhaling him.

“Goodnight, Lance,” she said.

“Goodnight.”

He was shaking so hard. He twisted away from her and crossed the parking lot. Walked up painted blue steps.

He hadn’t done anything wrong. A hug. A pinched finger. He was trying to open his door, key pecking the knob like a nervous bird. He could not look back. It was so dangerous to look back, so he went inside and turned up the heat and lay on his bed and closed his eyes, trying to tighten his grip on the memory of tonight. Hold it close. Her smell, her skin.

Already slipping, but two words he could keep.

Goodnight, Lance.

His name, like a word that had been invented for tonight.

A word he’d never really heard before.