Dakota, on the other side of the console.

Breathing, like it was something people just did.

Normally, he would’ve talked about his plans, logistics, what he needed to do next—the way his mother and Miriam liked to talk—but being with Dakota was like dreaming. Different things mattered in dreams. So he didn’t talk about his plans at all. Words vanished with the click of the car’s locks and the shiver-making smell of her neck.

He just wanted to look at her.

Dakota turned out of Macland’s, heading toward a dark wooded road. The sun was down.

“Hey,” she said. “Is anyone worried about you?”

He took a deep breath. He was worried about him.

“My mom,” he said. “And my girlfriend is freaking out.”

Dakota nodded. “She misses you?”

“Maybe,” Lance said. “I don’t know. More like she’s mad I’m not there.”

“My mom hates it when I’m gone,” Dakota said. “But it’s kind of how you’d hate to lose a good refrigerator. You don’t really love a refrigerator. You just hate it when it breaks.”

Lance laughed and looked at her. “You’re funny.”

“Really?” She smiled a full smile. She turned onto an unmarked road. Pressed on the gas. “That’s so nice. No one here thinks I’m funny.”

“You’re obviously funny,” Lance said. “You’re empirically, scientifically funny.”

“Can we do an experiment to prove this to them? Are marshmallows involved?”

“I wish,” he said. “None of my friends believe I actually jumped a train. Or did a shot at a bar. Or would wear these,” he said, pointing to his jeans.

“They have a lot to learn, Wildman.”

He laughed. Dakota’s mouth was a line. Her eyes somewhere far away.

“I thought Macland’s might fix your car. I was getting ready to never see you again.”

“Yeah,” he said. Her eyes now on him. Not watching the road at all.

“Don’t go to business school, Lance.”

“Really? That’s what you want to tell me?”

“Yes. Don’t land there and die.”

“Don’t land there and die? I’m more afraid I’m going to die right now.” Dakota cranked the wheel into a turn. His hand pawed for a handle above the door—nothing to grab. Her headlights carved out a small pocket of light. Trees hurtled past.

“Relax. I could drive this road in my sleep,” she said.

“Like Breanna?”

“No,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’m the one trying to save your life.”

“And my wardrobe.”

“It’s all related, Lance.”

He smiled at the sound of his name and pressed his hand against the car’s cool window. Trees and sky. The first pinpricks of starlight, threading through his fingers.

“I could be a mechanic,” he said. “William thought I was charmed.”

“You are charmed,” she said. “What do you think about William? What’s his story?”

“I don’t know,” Lance said. “Crazy, right? I can’t stop seeing him under that tree. All that art in his office. Did it look good to you? Was that good art?”

She looked back at him, like she was surprised he’d asked. “Yeah,” she said. “His business card should be hanging at the Frye. And that voice!”

“Totally an opera singer. I wanted him to belt out ‘Moon River’ for me.”

Lance started to sing with William’s voice.

Mooooooon river—

She laughed. “Don’t stop!”

“I’m not a singer.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

He said nothing, because Dakota wouldn’t care about his reasons. Reasons like he’d never done it before and people told him he wasn’t a singer. She wrapped a finger in her dark hair, twirling it over her ear. Her earlobe was not loose and dangling like Miriam’s. It ran straight into a soft curve in her neck. He wondered how it would taste, then she was looking straight at him.

“What?” she said.

“I want to know more about your journal,” he said. “The clues.”

“Oh, man,” she said. Her jaw tightened. He wanted to lean closer. Put his head on her shoulder. Where were these thoughts coming from?

“C’mon,” he said. “What clues did you see today?”

“Really?” she asked. “You want to know?”

“Really.”

Her gaze drifted to the top of the windshield, something building in her eyes. Excitement.

“So many clues, Lance!” She pounded the steering wheel so hard he jolted in his seat. Relief, plain on her face, like she’d been holding her breath for years. “William under the maple was a huge clue, right? The way that little blue bridge looked over the water. I mean, you get it. You actually see things. You’re the first person to ever see that field with me. That was a clue.”

“Yeah,” he said. He locked his teeth together. “But a clue to what?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They’re all the things that wake me up and make me feel alive. That’s what’s important, right? I just can’t figure out how to pull them all together. Or turn them into something real, that people understand. Like a job. Or a degree. Or whatever bullshit thing. And I can’t even talk to anyone about this, because all people want to talk about is my day.”

“Oh, man. I hate talking about my day.”

“I know, right? It’s just a stupid list. I woke up. I ate breakfast. I vacuumed. I drove from here to here. And then—I’ll see something just perfect. Like, a droplet of rain rolling down the window. Or I’ll be driving and suddenly the air will smell like being seven years old at my grandmother’s farm. Or the sunrise hits a tree and makes it look golden and perfect. Like the only tree in the world.”

“God waving,” Lance said.

She chewed her lower lip. Those lips.

“What do you mean?”

“My dad. He had this thing about God waving. He’d always point out leaves in the late afternoon and how the sun hit them. When they were bright and flashing he’d say There it is. God waving. Better pay attention. He’d always drag me outside to see the sunset, or watch morning fog roll in. He was good about that stuff.”

“So where did he go?” Dakota asked.

Another curve. She took it slow.

“North.” Lance stared out the window.

“That’s a story,” she said. “Will you tell me?”

This pocket of time. It was okay. This was barely real.

“He used to take me camping all the time. He taught me the difference between true north and magnetic north. Do you know?”

She shook her head.

“So, most people navigate by magnetic north,” Lance said. “That’s how compasses work. But magnetic north isn’t a fixed thing. And it’s changing all the time. As much as forty miles a year. It’ll be over a Canadian island one year, then Russia the next. Every once in a while it flips poles completely. So your compass would point north but you’d be walking the exact opposite direction.”

“Crazy.”

“I know, right? But true north never changes. It’s always right under Polaris. So when the sky was clear, my dad would always say Make sure you’re navigating by true north, Lance. He’d say it in this really annoying way, and I kept using the compass, because I didn’t get what he meant. One night he kept repeating his stupid true-north line and I snapped. I said What the hell do you mean, true north? And he grabbed my chin and pointed it up at the sky and said Your eyes, Lance. Trust your own damn eyes.”

“That’s intense. So can you find it?”

“After that little episode? Oh yeah. It’s the last star on the handle of the Little Dipper. If it’s clear enough, I could show you.” He bent his head, trying to see out the window. “Anyway, that’s where he said he was going. To find true north.”

When he turned back, she was looking at him the same way she had when he’d stepped out of the changing room, wearing new clothes.

“Wow,” she said. “But how do you just leave your kid like that?”

“I don’t know,” Lance said. “Can’t really ask him.”

She nodded.

“It sucks when they go,” she said.

“What’s the story with your dad?” Lance asked.

“Oh. He took his car with him.”

Pines closed in on the road, swallowing the shoulder.

“That’s the problem,” Dakota said. “He left. But he’s still the same. Another wife who looks like my mom. She drinks the same damn soda, Lance. He’ll just have to run away again. He never figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“The clues,” Dakota said. She ran a hand through her hair, bringing it down. Just a nose now. A sliver of cheek. “What they mean.”

“And you haven’t either?”

“No,” she said. “That’s why I’m still here.”

He sat up straight. “But you can’t just wait around at The Float, right? What if it takes your whole life to figure it all out?”

“I don’t need to figure it all out,” she said. “Just one true thing.”

“One true thing,” he repeated.

“One thing in your life that makes you stop and say This! This! No doubts. No wondering. Isn’t that how music is for you?”

“Maybe,” he said, but the real answer was almost. Music could be real, but wasn’t yet. The notes had been sneaking out in Seattle. A kind of music he’d never played before. Notes that he had been hiding from Jonathan and Miriam and his mother. The kind of music that never felt closer than it did beside this girl, when she looked at him that way.

“I can’t talk to anyone like this,” he said.

“Me neither.”

And now Dakota was watching the road. And so was he.

“I can tell you anything, you know?” he said. “Because it doesn’t really matter.”

The comment didn’t land how he expected. Dakota tightened her lips. A hard silence. The forest darkened. Trees turned to brittle shadows and the car took a quick bend in the road, skirting the edge of a rushing river. Froth churned a luminous white.

“You know what I mean,” Lance said.

“Yeah,” Dakota said. “You mean knowing me won’t have an impact on your real life.”

“That’s not it,” he said. “This whole thing just feels like a dream, you know?”

She smiled a little, and the acoustics straightened out. Lance wanted the drive to never end. He wanted to keep the windows up and seal in the moonlight. The look and feel of a small, tight place with Dakota inside. But they were already in the Trainsong parking lot. Their hands were opening car doors, because that’s what hands did when cars stopped, and when they stepped outside, the magic of the ride washed out around their ankles.

They stared at each other across the hood of a Ford Focus, and Lance felt like he’d just woken up.

“Oh damn,” he said. “My horn is still at The Float.”

“Should we head over now? Or would you prefer to change into something pleated?”

“I’m ready now, thanks.”

“Okay, Wildman,” Dakota said. “Let’s roll.”