Heavy feet, pounding up the steps.

Lance bolts up in a panic. It’s too bright. Sunlight, baking him in his bedsheets.

What time is it? What day is it?

Whoever is coming sounds like they have cinder blocks strapped to the soles of their shoes. Slow, clomping footsteps, like when his father used to play bogeyman. Memories flare up from the night before. A shattering wineglass. Green plastic chairs. Those hands. Dakota’s mouth.

What have I done?

Whoever is coming knows. Miriam knows. Everyone knows. Somehow there are pictures, and everyone has seen them.

Leaping out of bed, he bolts to the bathroom. Checks his face for evidence: lip prints, hickeys. His cheeks and lips are clean. His face says nothing happened last night. He looks at his ears, remembering. His neck, remembering. Oh, his neck. He runs his tongue over the back of his lips.

Evidence!

His lip tissue is pulpy. Tastes like iron. His mouth hadn’t been used so hard since his first kiss with Marcia Buckman in the tree house by Fireman’s Park. They’d mashed faces, trapped as if by electrocution, teeth and tongues banging with desperate violence.

THUMP THUMP THUMP

Pounding on his motel door—a staccato arrangement of fist and wood.

“Lance Hendricks?” A man’s voice.

THUMP THUMP THUMP

Lance drops to his belly. Face to carpet. Breathing odors of mud and cleaning solution. He makes certain promises. He will never kiss Dakota again. Never kiss anyone but Miriam. He’ll marry her, in fact. He will go home immediately, apologize to his mother, and propose to Miriam.

Just as soon as this man goes away.

Creaking wood. Rustling papers and the crackle of a radio. Steps, clomping across the landing, moving downstairs. Lance tiptoes to the window and sneaks a glance through the blinds. A police cruiser is angled in front of Cheri’s office.

“Holy shit,” Lance says.

He freezes. The tabby cats stare, anticipating his next move. There are mysterious, small-town forces at work here. Police involvement. He’s all tangled up with Stone. He’s gone too far with Dakota. She belongs to this town, and this town will have its revenge. He pulls on his thrift shop clothes and stares at the mirror.

He needs to be The Lance Hendricks Machine. The machine that plowed through six AP classes and hundreds of hours of pep-band practice, endless disappointments in Miriam’s basement, lectures from his mother. A machine that gets things done, and runs on a few simple truths:

You are valedictorian.

You are the first-chair trumpet player.

You have a full-ride scholarship.

Miriam Seavers is in love with you.

And nothing is different. Only the days have changed. It’s Tuesday instead of Saturday. His speech is in three days instead of six. This is now a story problem, and all he needs are the right numbers. Phone numbers, road numbers, bus route numbers, dollar numbers.

He will solve this equation for home.

The number 5 bus can drop him on Route 2. It’s a 25-minute ride, then a 10-minute, half-mile walk to Macland’s, X dollars for the repair, 17 miles back to the Trainsong, 400 miles to Bend.

He has the figures, and The Lance Hendricks Machine is moving. He is across the empty parking lot before anyone can see him. He is waiting 17 minutes for the number 5 bus and 47 minutes later he is standing outside Macland’s.

But his car is not there.

Not outside, where it should be. It’s still inside. Behind the Plexiglas, on a lift. No one is working on his car. The smells of popcorn and burnt coffee. The mechanics are wearing the same clothes, drinking the same soda. Only without Dakota, it’s no longer funny. Standing at the counter is the man from yesterday. The one with the purple tongue.

“I’m the owner of the Buick,” Lance tells him.

“Yeah? Lucky you.”

“I really need my car today,” Lance says.

“We’re working as fast as we can, kid.” His mouth makes a tight purple O when he purses his lips. The white badge on his blue uniform reads: clem.

“What’s wrong with the car, Clem?” Lance says.

“Plenty of things,” Clem says. “It won’t start.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Clem’s eyes shift, and Lance can hear it coming. The approaching sentence, like an atmospheric pressure change and then he actually says it:

“We’ve also noticed the check engine light is on.”

Check engine light. The words echo with Clem’s voice. In Lance’s head, the pop of a broken lightbulb.

“You know,” Clem continues. “That little light on the dash.”

Nails dig into Lance’s palms. He has two fists. Targets include Clem’s big jaw and a plastic cup of pens. Lance swings hard and smashes the cup. Pens scatter. The cup does a limp cartwheel across the floor.

“Hey!” Clem says. “Those are our pens!”

“Check engine? The dummy light, Clem? Do I look like a dummy to you?” Lance chokes back the words ACT score. Valedictorian.

Clem shrugs.

“Get my car off the lift. Now.”

Clem mumbles something and walks away. Fifteen minutes later, the Buick is coming down and Clem has an invoice with him, bright yellow paper with perforated sides and a bold black number in a box.

“Five hundred and fifty dollars?” Lance says. “For what? What did you even fix?”

“Your starter.”

“There was nothing wrong with my starter!”

“It was blown. Looked recent, too. Someone had been cranking on it pretty hard.”

Just crank on that real hard.

“You’re kidding me,” Lance says. “Three hundred dollars for diagnostics? I’m not paying that.”

“Then you’re not getting your keys.” Clem lifts his chin a little, as if inviting someone to punch him there. Another blue-suited mechanic walks up behind him. A show of force.

“And we’re gonna need you to pick up those pens,” the other mechanic says.

Lance stares at them, and a sudden coolness washes over him.

“That’s it,” Lance says.

“What?” Clem says.

The red lever. Break glass in case of emergency. Lance withdraws his phone from his pocket.

“What are you doing?” Clem asks.

“I am calling my mother.”

“Oooo,” Clem says. The other mechanic laughs.

Lance will pay the price for pulling The Mom Lever. She interrupts his hello, and her opening salvo has all the words: responsibility, ungrateful, loyalty, disaster, ruined. But he can endure. This is not about words. It’s about numbers. Minutes and dollars. And she will only talk so long before he can explain that her only son is being taken advantage of by cruel small-town mechanics.

“Now what’s going on?” she finally asks.

He tells her.

“So let me get this straight,” she begins softly. She repeats back the details, then Lance stands up and gets ready for the show. Clem does not hear his ringing phone the same way Lance does. Clem even answers with a smirk, as if his world is not about to end. It takes his mom about ten seconds to shatter his smirk all over the floor. Poor Clem’s smirk may never be the same again. It only gets worse. Clem, not knowing Lance’s mother, attempts to speak. He jerks and sputters. He twists his head one direction, then another. He makes the mistake of saying Listen, lady.

Lance flinches, and Clem goes pale. His eyes widen with horror. He looks out the window, over his shoulder. Like someone is coming for him. Lance can’t watch. Quietly, he walks over and picks up the pens.

His mother calls him back with that straight-out-of-combat edge in her voice.

“That’s it for the Buick. I’m having it junked out.”

“Mom—”

“I’ve had it, Lance. Your car is off life support.”

“How am I supposed to get home?”

“I’ve made all the arrangements. Just get yourself back to the hotel.”

“Okay, but—”

“And now I understand there is a police officer looking for you?” She laughs, not a happy sound. “Why didn’t you tell me about the accident?”

“I didn’t really have—”

“You just need to get home. Immediately. That’s what needs to happen. Get yourself to the hotel.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Back at the counter, Clem pushes some papers at him.

“Special lady you got there,” Clem says. “I’d be doing you a favor, keeping you here.”

Lance thinks about this. Stares at the counter. “Is there another mechanic in town?”

“For this car? No.”

“What about—is it Robert? Robert’s Auto Repair?” Lance remembers the bizarre advertisement from the phone book. A REAL MECHANIC.

“Robert!” Clem says, suddenly coming to life. “That guy? Yeah. He’ll take your car as a down payment. If he’ll take your car at all.”

“Is he good?”

“He’s good with problem cars.” Clem chews the inside of his cheek. “He’s the best.”

“Maybe I’ll go see him,” Lance says.

“Your mom had better be rich, kid. And you’d better not pull any of your grade-school b.s. over at Robert’s. He’ll feed you to his fish.”

Outside, the air is quivering with a grass-crackling, sticky-tar-bubble heat. The tow truck his mother called is waiting for him. A bleak shade of green, like something decommissioned from the military. The driver has a wattle chin and nicotine-stained teeth. Instead of hello he says:

“Junkyard?”

His eyes are small and dark, buried in the folds of his face.

“How much to go to Robert’s?” Lance asks, tapping his wallet.

“Robert’s Auto Repair? I got orders to go to the junkyard.”

“How much?” Lance asks, heart pounding.

“How much you got?”

Lance has thirty-three dollars. The man takes the money without counting it and Lance climbs into the cab, which is neat, but rank. Stale fries and wet laundry. No air-conditioning. No identification in the truck. No pictures, no stitched oval name tag. The man says nothing, and turns onto the highway.

Hot pavement stretches out like a quivering blue ribbon. Miles later, the driver twists the truck onto a narrow lane that winds through tall walls of ferns and blackberries. Sun filters down in blobs and the sky has a silver tint, like they’ve traveled into a new layer of atmosphere. A gap opens in the vegetation, and they’re crunching down a gravel road.

The truck idles in front of a two-story cyclone fence. Concertina wire spools around the top. Blades like silver butterflies. The driver stares at Lance.

Small, dark eyes.

“What?” Lance says.

The driver rolls down his window, leans out, and punches a code into a keypad. The tall gate splits, swinging inward without a sound. A flawless mechanism. They pull inside, cresting a hill. An industrial maze sprawls below, a factory that manufactured something, maybe aluminum. They descend and are lost in tight gray corridors. Steel shutters and shop doors. They drive to a dead end, then make a hidden turn.

The driver stops. Stares.

“What?” Lance says.

“End of the line.”

The driver points a meaty index finger. Like a horror movie. Like he might open his mouth wide and scream. Lance jerks back, looks over his shoulder. A small yellow awning over a gray door.

ROBERT’S AUTO REPAIR

Lance exhales.

“What?” the driver says.

“I wasn’t sure where we were going,” Lance says.

“I went where you told me to go.”

“Right,” Lance says. “I’m just glad to be here.”

“Are you?” A hiss, and the Buick’s wheels touch the ground. “That’s because you haven’t met Robert.”