Lance was out of clothes.

Heaped in the corner were khaki pants, button-down shirts, a few pairs of underwear, and jeans, baking like compost. He’d woken up with the heater on. His room stank like an old toaster and his tongue was dry. His teeth felt furry.

Lance wanted to be clean like enamel after a mirror-and-scalpel scraping. He rubbed the stubble on his cheeks and chin and smelled the horror of his armpits, then picked through the pile of clothes for something to salvage. The shirt from the accident, splattered with blood. Last night’s jeans stank like beef jerky. He shook out a blue-and-white-striped shirt and a pair of khakis.

He brushed his teeth twice and did the best he could with no razor and no iron. When the steam cleared from the bathroom, he looked like a fair approximation of Lance from Bend. He struck his best pose of respectability in the mirror, but something was missing. He replayed his mantras:

You are valedictorian.

You are the first-chair trumpet player.

You have a full-ride scholarship.

Miriam Seavers—

Miriam. Had he really forgotten to call Miriam? And his trumpet!

A low throb in his skull, carrying a single thought:

GO HOME.

Things were slipping away. Hours, days, mantras. He’d pile everything in this room onto a tarp, drop it over his shoulder and run. He was valedictorian. He could figure this out. But Mason had his trumpet. The cold sweat of panic and Lance was pulling on shoes, out the door. Walking across the parking lot, there was only The Float and his horn. And a voice that said:

“Hey you.”

Dakota, on her front patio. Kicking back in a green chair.

He mumbled something back. Too early for Dakota. Too early to be a person. He hadn’t digested all their memories from last night, and here she was again, piling them on.

“You’re in a hurry,” she said.

“I need to get my horn.”

“Mason won’t be up,” Dakota said, glancing at The Float. “I wouldn’t go over there. He’s not good in the morning.”

How did she know Mason wasn’t good in the morning? Lance kept looking from Dakota to The Float, trying to make his brain do something. According to his phone, it was 10:26 a.m. The backs of his eyes ached. Hollow stomach. An incoming hangover, getting worse by the minute.

“Wow,” Dakota said, looking him up and down.

“What?”

“Are those clothes serious?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you seriously wearing them?”

Lance looked down.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Those are pleated khakis.”

“They’re wrinkled.”

“Wrinkled and pleated.”

“What the hell is a pleat?” he said.

Dakota pinched a fold just above his knee. His skin tingled. A lightning bolt, skittering up his thigh. He stepped back and looked down at the crease.

“What’s wrong with pleats?”

“Nothing. If you weigh four hundred pounds or have grandbabies.”

Lance sighed. He did not understand pants. He didn’t understand what made them cool and what made them uncool. He was unclear how a bootcut differed from a straight fit and how a guy’s ass was supposed to look in jeans. He’d look over his shoulder in the mirror, but his ass remained cryptic. Beyond comprehension.

“My mom buys my pants,” he said.

“Yes. That is obvious. You need a new wardrobe consultant,” she said. “You have a reputation to uphold, Wildman. C’mon.”

Dakota’s car relaxed him. Her scent dropped his shoulders below his ears, and he sank into the car. The hug of a seatbelt and he was breathing, wind whipping through the windows, making his head less sticky.

“I could just do laundry,” Lance said.

“There’s no Laundromat for twenty-five miles.”

“How do people get clean clothes?”

“That’s what thrift shops are for.”

“Oh, man. I need my car.” Lance pressed his palms to his eyes. “I need my horn.”

“There will be time.” Fifteen miles away, Last Chance Thrift was the only operational business in a withering strip mall. Hollowed-out storefronts: A Stitch in Time, Buzzers, Pridays—windows dark and plastered with advertisements, posters, lost-pet flyers. But plenty of cars in the parking lot.

Apparently Last Chance Thrift was a happening spot.

Dakota led Lance through a crowd of elderly clothes-pickers to a back corner of the store labeled vintage threadz. The place smelled somewhere between an antique bookstore and a day-old bakery outlet.

“Vintage Threadz. With a Z?” Lance asked.

“Oh yeah.”

Dakota rifled through the racks, plucking shirts and jeans from their hangers, each with a single, clean jerk, like a seasoned fruit-picker. In under a minute, her right arm was a bolt of denim and fitted T-shirts.

“Those look nothing like me,” Lance said, pointing at her arm.

“No,” Dakota said, pointing to his pleats. “That looks nothing like you.”

Lance could not come out of the fitting room. The jeans rode low on his hips. Torn at the knees, ostensibly on purpose. The gray-and-black T-shirt flared at the shoulders and narrowed at his waist, like a V. Or maybe his body did that. The material hugged his chest so he could see the outlines of his pecs. Man boobs. But they didn’t look bad. Or maybe they did.

“Weird,” he said.

He took a breath and stepped out of the dressing room.

Dakota spun. Her eyes widened.

“Holy shit,” she said.

Lance leapt back and slammed the door.

“Hey, hey,” she said, tapping at the door. “Open up.”

“What,” he said, cracking the door. She wedged her hand inside, pulled it open.

“You look great,” she said. Her eyes were sparkling. A new kind of smile. “Damn, boy.”

“I’m changing back.”

“Don’t you dare put those pants back on,” she said. “I’ll make you walk home.”

“You won’t.”

“Don’t test me.”

His rumpled khakis and stripes lay in the corner of the dressing room, like he was a snake who had just molted. He gathered everything up and stepped out into the shopping area. People were staring. One graying woman with a plume of purple hair looked him up and down like a piece of furniture she wanted to take home and sit on.

“What do you think?” Dakota asked her.

“Mmm-hmm, girl,” she said, and winked. “You’d better get him home.”

“Oh my god,” Lance said. He stalked straight out through the front door and stood waiting beside Dakota’s car. No sign of her. Two minutes. Three minutes. She finally came outside, grinning.

“What took you so long?” he asked.

“You forgot to pay for your clothes, Wildman. You a shoplifter now, too?”

“Oh man,” he said. He searched his jeans for a wallet, then burrowed into his khakis.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

In Dakota’s car, Lance didn’t know what to say. His new clothes were tight and squeezing him in strange places. Thankfully, she had stopped looking him up and down. He didn’t know how he’d react, and these jeans couldn’t keep a secret. He could plainly see the rectangular outline of his phone bulging up from his thigh.

When the phone started buzzing, he couldn’t get it out of his pants.

“Ah, jeans!”

He twisted and arched his back, writhing against the seat. He had to turn himself sideways to get the right angle. Dakota was still laughing, crying apparently, by the time he finally answered.

“Hi, William,” Lance said, out of breath. “How do things look?”

“Hey, Lance. Why don’t you just come on by.”

“What? Come on by where?”

“The shop.”

“Can’t you just tell me what’s happening?”

“I’d rather show you, if it’s all the same.”

William gave directions, Lance repeated them back, then hung up. Dakota pulled onto the shoulder.

“So?” she asked.

“He wants me to come to the shop. He won’t explain why.”

“Sounds like a trap,” Dakota said, looking at her phone. “His shop is way out on Deathmurder Lane.”

“He killed my car,” Lance said. “I’m next.”

Dakota pulled a U-turn and hit the gas.

“You’re taking me?”

“Oh yeah. Horror movie rule number one. Never split up.”

“Right,” Lance said. “What are the other rules?”

“No smoking. No going in basements. Virgins tend to live until the end.”

She looked at him. Lance kept his legs still, and his mouth shut.