The man at the door was so bone-thin wiry you could almost hear him jangle in his denim overalls. Blue eyes, wild and burning. Emblazoned on a stained white oval, his first name, last initial: william s.

“Guessin’ it’s you whose momma called. C’mon out.”

Momma.

Outside, clouds had darkened the sky. William stepped in close to Lance, stale cigarettes on his breath. Not his father’s brand. More like tobacco and sawdust soaked in whisky, and the guy’s teeth had a motor-oil sheen, as if he drank the stuff by the glassful. He stared at Lance. One angle, then another, cocking his head like a curious dog.

“You a car guy?” William asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You know a little about cars?”

“A little,” Lance said.

“Knew it! Knew it the second I looked at ya.” William laughed a full, raucous laugh that ricocheted under the eaves. It was a sound too big for his body—a flute of a man who blew like a saxophone. This man in dirty overalls now stood between him and a night with Miriam. William S, asking questions:

What kinda noise did it make?

Did you give it gas?

What happened with the lights? They flicker a little?

It had started to rain. Water dribbled through the gaps in the rafters and they had to keep shuffling around, standing at awkward angles. Together with the dead Buick, they were an isosceles triangle. Acute. Equilateral.

“You think the car’s fixable?” William asked.

“Me?”

“Yeah. What do you think?”

He didn’t know, but William had called him a Car Guy.

“Oh yeah,” Lance said. “I think it’s fixable. Definitely.”

“Good. Yeah, me too,” William said. “Well. I got a garage. Don’t advertise or nothing, but I’d be happy to take a look.”

“Tonight?”

“I can sure try.” William forked over a business card, glossy as an oil painting. And beautiful. It depicted a suspension bridge over a blue ribbon of water. Clusters of trees, clear sky. The back of the card read: Goodview Towing, William Scholz.

Lance checked the name against William’s overalls, then stuck the card in his pocket.

“Wait,” Lance said. “Where were you planning to tow the car?”

“Lady told me to take it to The Boneyard.”

“Boneyard?”

“Junkyard,” William said.

Tires crackled on blacktop, and a green taxi bounced into the parking lot. The creak of brakes. A door popped open and a large man unfolded, stretching skyward, stacking legs, trunk, shoulders, and beard. He wore a rust-colored duster. Rain droplets stained his coat a darker brown.

“You Lance?” the taxi driver said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Meter’s running.”

Lance’s phone vibrated. A text from Miriam.

Hey you. What time are you heading over?

“I have to make a quick call,” Lance said. He stepped under the eaves. Cracked phone and a wet screen. His finger was shaking and would not land on the call button. He tried twice. Three times. And finally:

“Hi there!” his mother said. “Back on the road?”

“What are you doing with the car, Mom?”

“Are you in the taxi, Lance?”

“What’s happening to the Buick?”

Silence.

“A junkyard, Mom? You’re taking the Buick to a junkyard?”

“Did you think I was having it towed to Bend?” she asked. “The tow would cost more than the car.”

A little twist of disdain on the word car, like the Buick didn’t deserve to be called one. William and the driver were facing each other. Rain pattered on their shoulders—taparatataratatap—like distant drums.

“Maybe you can go back up to Washington,” his mother said. “Get it later.”

“How’s that going to happen?”

Water dribbled down through a hole in the roof, tapping his shoulder.

“If I leave the car, I’ll never see it again,” Lance said.

“That’s a little dramatic.”

“It’s true.”

His voice was going reedy.

“They’ll pay you something for the parts.” She sighed. “You can keep the money.”

So that was it. Her angle. His car for a cab ride. His car for a night with Miriam.

“What else are you going to do, Lance?” his mother said. “You’re not going to spend the night in Washington.”

Her words twisted in his stomach. That clammy feeling, like when she’d told him he wouldn’t drive to Seattle. His friends had chimed in: You’re too busy. You won’t go by yourself. You’re afraid of the city.

Yet, he’d gone. He hadn’t been afraid.

Streets teeming with people: so many voices, accents, cultures. His eyes too wide and too small at the same time, straining to peel back the skin of the place and get down to where the notes were humming. He could sense music, quivering along the edges of skyscrapers, cutting long, clean lines against the sky. Solos hiding on street corners. Symphonies in the sewer.

“I’m staying with the car,” he said. Was that him talking?

“You’re staying.”

Worse, hearing her repeat it. With one swift sentence he’d painted himself into a corner, his mother had applied the second coat, and Miriam and the party were on the other side of the room.

“Really, Lance?” His mother laughed. “You’re staying. Miriam is going to love that.”

He could already hear their conversation. His mother’s ripe chuckle. Miriam, giggling. And then he told me he was staying. No, really? He did. He really did. Oh, Lance.

But they’d only laugh if he came home.

“Lance?”

“I’m not leaving Dad’s car.”

Lance launched the D-word. A rocket, dragging a vapor trail through the sky. It pinged off a satellite and rushed over mountains, roads, and streams to land with the precision of a sniper’s bullet in his mother’s ear.

His mom was quiet. Dead, maybe.

“So that’s what this is about,” she said. “Has your father been in touch with you?”

“Seriously, Mom? No.”

“You want to keep the car? Go ahead and stay. I hope you enjoy your night in the wild.”

“I’m at a gas station, Mom. Not the Serengeti.”

His mother hung up. A low ringing, between Lance’s ears. Once, freshman year, his friend Darren had kicked him square in the balls. There had been a swimmy, head-buzzing moment just before his body processed the injury and brought him down in a heap of gut-clenching agony. That’s how he felt now—floating through frozen time, about to feel the pain. He walked quickly to William.

“William,” he said. “Can you tow me to your garage?”

“Yeah? Sure thing, bud. I’ll hitch her up.”

“It would be great if you could fix it tonight.”

“I’ll do my best,” William said.

The taxi giant stepped into their conversation. “So, you ready?”

William walked to the truck, leaving them alone.

“Hi,” Lance said. “So I guess I don’t need a ride anymore.”

“What?”

“I don’t need a ride. I’m going with William.”

“You got a ride,” the man said. “You just ain’t paid for it yet.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I had to drive out here. I’ve been waiting ten minutes. That costs something.” The man had severe gray eyes. Out of place in his wide, bushy face.

“How much?”

“Fifty,” the man said.

“Fifty dollars for ten minutes? That’s insane,” Lance said. He looked around, and there was no one to appeal to. William was hitching up the Buick. “You expect me to eat the gas on this ride?” the man said. He pursed big red lips.

“I’m not paying you fifty dollars.”

“And I ain’t leaving until I get paid.” The man hitched up his jeans.

Lance looked down. He was still wearing the clothes from his audition. Khakis. Polished shoes. Still, he’d rip the man’s eyes out. Clutch his keys into a spiny fist and pummel his face. He would take out his wallet. Hands trembling, he would take out his wallet and hand this man fifty dollars.

The driver took Lance’s money with a thick, grease-stained hand, rubbing each bill between his fingers. Careful as a bank teller. Then the taxi driver got in his car and rolled away with Lance’s fifty dollars. Lance checked his wallet. Yes, the bills were gone. He felt sick, like the money had been carved out of his belly.

He picked up his trumpet case and walked to William’s truck. Inside, the murmur of talk radio. He grabbed the door handle, and something exploded against the window. A pompon of orange and white fur, claws skittering on glass. Lance shrieked. A barking cocker spaniel, and William yanked it back by the collar.

“Daisy, goddamn it!” William shouted. “C’mon, kid. Get in.”

William clutched Daisy to his thigh, and Lance climbed into the cab of the truck. The cocker spaniel snarled. The truck rattled to life, and Joe’s Place shrank in the rearview mirror. They turned onto Highway 2, dragging the Buick behind them. Towering conifers swallowed them. Day had already tipped into evening, and darkness hardened in the gaps between trees.

“So. Where you headed?” William asked.

“I’m trying to make it back to Bend.”

“I mean, where you headed now, bud?”

He was headed to the party, of course. William would fix his car tonight and he would make it. He’d be with Miriam in a matter of hours. What else could possibly happen?

“Trainsong?” William said. “Don’t know why I’m asking. It’s the only place.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you were going to fix the car tonight,” Lance said, warble in his voice.

“I can try,” William said, flipping on the windshield wipers. Drizzle, coming and going. “We better head to the Trainsong. Nice little motel.”

Motel. The word had never entered Lance’s travel vocabulary. There had been chain hotels with his mother and campsites with his father. Motels were squat, neon-lit habitats one went rushing past on the way to better places. Would there be amenities? A pool and hot tub? Miriam was probably in the hot tub now. In a swimsuit. That blue one, for sure. The one that gapped in a mind-altering way when she leaned forward, and he could just lean over and—

“Easy there,” William said.

Lance’s right leg was jackrabbiting up and down. William and Daisy, eyeing him.

“Sorry,” Lance said.

“Ha! Felt that shaking. Thought my truck was about to break down.”

“Restless legs syndrome,” Lance said. He held his leg still. Felt the crawling. Calves, pulling and tightening.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a condition. Makes me bounce my legs sometimes.”

“Heard of that,” William said. “Not just while you’re sleeping?”

“It can happen anytime.”

“Kinda young to have a syndrome, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Lance smiled. Tightness in his cheeks. He hadn’t smiled in a few hours.

“You in school?”

“Yeah. High school,” Lance said, looking out the window. So much darkness. Hundreds of miles of rivers and roads between him and Bend. “I graduate next Friday.”

“Play trumpet? Your mom said you were up here for an audition.”

“That’s right,” Lance said, tightening his grip on the case.

“How’d it go?”

“Pretty good. The Seattle School of Music has some amazing musicians.”

The three panelists had been friendly when he’d walked in, laughing about campus parking, offering water. But you could smell the experience on these guys: a thousand smoky club nights and street-corner gigs. Seasoned in hundreds of orchestra pits. They had chops. And when they watched him blow, their eyes hit him like the unnerving peal of a triple C sequence he hadn’t yet learned to play.

“I did my best,” Lance said.

“So you could be making music up in Seattle.”

“Probably not,” Lance said. “I’ve got a scholarship to Oregon State.”

“Corvallis, right? Beavers.”

“They’ve got a satellite campus in Bend. I got a full ride.”

“For music?” William asked, eyes glimmering.

“Business,” Lance said.

William turned back to the road. He looked uncomfortable, like something was itching him under his overalls.

“And I’ve got a job this summer. At Bank of the Cascades. I can live at home and save up money.”

The truck swallowed white stripes on asphalt, sucking them under its carriage. William gnawed the inside of his cheek.

“And my girlfriend is going to OSU too, which is perfect.”

“Well,” William said. “You got me convinced. Now, what kind of sputtering do you reckon it was, just before the car died? Was it a clicking, or more of a dinging? Did it kick in all of a sudden, or come on slow?”

As William talked, the road got darker, more remote. Like they weren’t traveling across the wilderness so much as tunneling into it. Moments later, a white blaze of light struck the sky. A giant, luminous flotation device—like the kind you’d throw a person who was drowning. It was the size of a car, mounted on a building. White with red lettering: the float.

“The Float?” Lance said.

“Ha!” William’s smooth, baritone laugh. “Spent plenty of time there. Might not be driving this truck if it weren’t for all them nights at The Float.”

“What is it?”

“The Float is it. For twenty miles in any direction. Roadhouse. Only place to get a meal. Or a drink. You’ll get to know it real quick.”

“Roadhouse,” Lance said slowly, tasting the word’s rural mystique.

Just before The Float, William turned in and parked between a pair of motel buildings. Long two-story structures, divided by a parking lot.

“Here’s the Trainsong. This is where you’ll be staying.”

“Until you fix the car, right?”

William cranked up the hand brake. “I’d go ahead and get yourself a room.”

The rain had returned, a thickening drizzle. Lance collected his things from the Buick. Orange duffel bag, suitcase, backpack. He stacked them neatly around his trumpet case. His pile of things looked small and wet.

“Gimmie a call in a few hours,” William said. He slapped Lance’s back, his hand like a soft sack of bones.

William hopped in his truck and fired the engine. Then the Buick was being dragged away, taillights smearing red trails through the rain. In Lance’s stomach, the hole the cabdriver had carved ripped wider.

Loss. Something was gone.

“William!” Lance shouted. He ran. “William! Stop! Wait!”

The truck rolled forward. Lance’s foot shot out over loose gravel and he stumbled, scooped up a rock and flung it at William’s truck. A deep clang, like a church bell. He’d nailed the side, just under William’s window. Taillights flared. William climbed out into the rain. Backlit in red. Frizzy hair, cocked head. With a chain saw, he would’ve been a one-man horror movie.

“Boy. What in the hell?”

“Sorry,” Lance said. “I left something in the glove box. It’s really important.”

“So you throw a rock? That’s what you do?” They stared at each other through the drizzle.

“Well, go on,” William said, shaking his head.

Lance tore into the glove box: insurance, registration, and starlight mints. It was still there. Thank god. The worn envelope with his name. lance. He kissed the envelope and put it in his back pocket. William climbed back into his truck. The Buick lurched out of the parking lot and shrank down the length of highway, taillights turning to mist.

Gone.

Lance gathered up his things and walked toward the front office. The sign in the window said welcome trainsong, and looked like it had been drawn by someone in elementary school. Inside, the lobby was small. A shoe-box diorama of a real hotel. Straight ahead, a wooden counter with a brass bell and a nameplate:

cheri front desk

He assumed Cheri Front Desk was the woman in the tiny squeeze of a workspace between the counter and the back wall. She was staring at a dinosaur of a computer monitor, tan and boxy. Cheri and the monitor were of the same era. Her skin was orange and looked overpixelated, as if her face had missed an essential software upgrade everyone else in the world had gotten around 1990. Long fingernails pecked at the keyboard.

“Excuse me,” Lance said. “Excuse me.”

Cheri’s fingers, swift and violent, crushed down on the home row.

Lance rang the bell.

Cheri stopped, then craned her neck at a crazy angle, like her head had a swivel option most humans did not. Her eyes blazed blue and she looked in every way like a mythological creature who would ask him riddles and eat him.

“Was that you, got towed off by William?” Cheri asked.

“Just now?” Lance asked. “Yeah.”

“Where’s he taking your car?”

“Back to his garage.”

“Lordy.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “You looking for a room tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“One night or extended stay?”

“One night. Definitely. He might even have the car fixed tonight.”

“William?” She laughed. “Hoo-ee. You sure you don’t want extended stay?”

“What do you mean?” Lance asked.

“Oh, nothing. Here’s your paperwork. Go on and sign.”

The forms covered things like make and model and maximum occupancy and insurance and evacuation routes, pet policies, maximum seasonal charges. When Lance turned the sheet over, Cheri snapped the paper out of his hand and poked her finger at the X.

“You don’t have to read the whole thing. Just sign.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Wowee. If I had a nickel for every time I heard that. Look at you, blushing.”

Cheri slapped down a metal key attached to a cartoon train with its smokestack snapped off. Brittle plastic.

“Room two twenty,” Cheri said. “Welcome home.” Lance loaded his things onto his shoulders and walked around the side of the building. The steps leading up to the second floor were painted blue. The same blue as the building and the banister and the doors and the hinges, suggesting the entire Trainsong Motel had been painted all at once by an air tanker dropping a single load of high-gloss periwinkle.

On the balcony, Lance had to step around a pair of muddy black boots. The mud was hard, like the boots had fused to the floor last winter. In the room just before his, someone was watching a game show turned up to action-movie-volume levels. Laughter and applause rattled the windows.

LET’S SEE WHAT’S BEHIND DOOR NUMBER TWO!

Lance opened his door to the warm odor of a nursing home. He took a final gulp of fresh air, then plunged in, groping for a light switch. It was smaller than hotels he’d stayed in with his mom, but not cramped. A queen bed, covered with a floral spread that might’ve been quilted in Cheri Front Desk’s basement. A window, facing the parking lot. To his left, a small desk wedged in the corner. Two wall hangings. One: a puffy, homemade tapestry of a keeling sailboat on wooden dowels. Garage sale material, the fifty-cent pile.

Wall hanging number two was something special.

Right above the bed, an enormous framed photograph of twin tabby cats. The picture could’ve been cute, but the tabbies looked like they wanted to maul the photographer. Giant, angry cats. Staring straight at him.

“Nice, Cheri,” Lance said. “Charming.”

He set his horn by the desk, then took the envelope out of his pocket and searched for a place to stash it. In the nightstand drawer, a Bible and a slender phone book. He opened the yellow pages to auto repair.

One advertisement on the page. ROBERT’S AUTO REPAIR: A REAL MECHANIC. That was all it said. Lance traced his finger down the listings. Between GOODBAR GARAGE and GREAT AMERICAN AUTO PARTS was exactly nothing. GOODVIEW TOWING wasn’t even listed. He took out William’s card with all its depth and shading and perfectly inked letters. Somehow not in the yellow pages.

Lance grabbed the phone on the nightstand.

No dial tone.

He pressed down little white nubs. Dusty.

“Seriously?” he said.

He sat. In silence, the motel room settled around him like an itchy blanket. He stood. Paced. He ran his finger along the top of a lampshade and came away with a curling spiral of dust. He flicked it onto the carpet, then followed a charcoal-colored stain into the bathroom and jerked the shower curtain aside.

Antennae!

Roaches in the drain. Obscene feelers splayed out on white porcelain. His breath caught in his chest. Nothing moved. Dead roaches. Or hair. Dark strands trailing down to places unknown. Hairy drain. Well that’s it. He heard the words, spoken with his mother’s voice.

Down in reception, Cheri Front Desk continued to stab her keyboard.

“Breakdown Kid,” she said without looking up. “What’s happening?”

“I need a new room.”

“Why?”

“The phone doesn’t work. And there’s hair in my drain.” He planted his palms on the counter. “A bunch of hair.”

“Maybe it’s your hair.”

“What?”

Clacking keys.

“It’s not my hair,” Lance said. “The hair is black.”

“Do you like it?” she asked, facing him with her moon of a face.

“The hair? No, I don’t like it.”

“So why’s it still there?”

“Because it was there when I checked in. The room wasn’t cleaned.”

Cheri stood. “That room was cleaned.”

“Maybe it was cleaned. But it’s not clean.”

“What do you want me to do?” she said. “Housekeeping is gone.”

“I want a new room.”

“That’s the only room left.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“You could leave,” she said. “I’d refund your money. Or, I’ll tell you what. Since there’s no one else here, I’ll hire you for the night. The drain should take you about ten seconds to clean.” Cheri pulled a quarter from her pocket. “Here’s a quarter. That’s a pretty good hourly rate.”

She turned the coin in the light, grinning with her wide mouth.

Lance’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Miriam was calling him.

“I thought your phone was broken,” Cheri said.

“The room’s phone is broken.”

“Ooo,” she said, pointing to the cracks. “Your phone is broken.”

He pressed his phone to his cheek.

“I’ll be back,” Lance said.

“If I had a nickel for every time a guy—”

Lance slammed the door behind him.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey you,” Miriam said. “What’s going on? Are you really missing the party?”

How did she know? His mouth had no saliva. It could not produce words. His feet were thumping up the steps. Muddy boots in the hallway.

“Lance? You there?”

He stepped back into his motel room. The reality of his situation came into focus incrementally, like tiny letters during a routine vision check. He could hear the metal-and-glass slide of the Phoroptor, lenses dropping in front of his eyes.

schlink, schlink, schlink

Clarity, increasing.

“Party,” he said.

“The party. Tonight. Lance?”

schlink, schlink

“Yeah,” Lance said. But the party did not exist in this room. Not to be attended, nor to be missed. The Trainsong Motel could not occupy space on the timeline of his actual life. There could be no choice between Miriam and the Trainsong, because this was a parallel reality. A time-out.

“This can’t be happening,” Miriam said.

Lance agreed. But, somehow, time was still moving in Bend. He could hear the party warming up through the phone. Faint music. Scattered laughter.

“I’ll make it,” he said. “You have no idea how bad I want to be there.”

“You have to come,” Miriam said. “You’ll make it. We just need to—”

A voice in the background: Is that Lance? Miriam was handing him over.

“Lancelot! What in the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

Jonathan, already dialed up to ten.

“Hey, man. I’m stuck. The car is dead.”

“What? This is The Party, Lance. Do you understand? The. Party. You have the penthouse suite. I changed my parents’ sheets for this. Which was gross, Lance. Super gross.”

In the background, Miriam said something he couldn’t make out.

“Jonathan, I have no car.”

“Rent one.”

“I’m in the middle of nowhere.”

“Steal one.”

“Dude.”

“Lance. Over the course of a life, what’s more important? Doing what’s strictly legal, or experiencing the culminating moment of, literally, your entire life? I’m sure your dad taught you how to hot-wire a car.”

His dad had talked about it, but there had never been a hands-on demonstration.

“You’re serious,” Lance said. “You want me to steal a car.”

“Damn right I’m serious,” Jonathan said. “Lance. You’ve had zero fun this year. Old Man Disco Davis has partied harder than you. You’re about to turn into a shitty little bank-telling turtle for the rest of the summer. Listen, Lancelot. You’re better than this. You have to pull out something amazing right now. Defy expectations, okay? I’ll hold my toast until you arrive.”

A distant oooooo, like somebody spilled a drink. Miriam’s voice, orbiting closer.

“Lance. Lance?”

“Hey.”

“Sorry. Jonathan Davis is in rare form. Two White Russians and he’s already into the disco.”

“It’s not even seven,” Lance said.

“Your mom said she could get you home. Can’t you leave the car?”

“Did my mom call you?”

“Yeah. So?”

“It’s weird when she calls you,” Lance said. “I feel like I’m in an arranged marriage.”

“I’m glad someone called me.”

“Miriam.”

“Lance.”

“Did my mom tell you her plan? She wants to junk out the Buick.” The end of his sentence came out a croak. On Miriam’s end, stunned silence. He pictured her, locked in a soundless scream, shock and disbelief. Until she said:

“We’ll be at OSU next year. You won’t really need the car.”

“What?”

A thud of bone-jolting bass—choppy, syncopated guitar from Mr. Davis’s underground disco collection. The party, getting better by the minute.

Miriam! C’moooooon. Let’s get funked!

A male voice, closing in. Some idiot who couldn’t tell funk from disco.

Yeah! Shake that thang!

Who was that jackass? Darren? Had Darren heard Lance wasn’t coming? Darren had been waiting two years to take Lance’s place in the Miriam equation. He was probably eyeing the bedroom Post-it with a Sharpie.

“Miriam, can you go outside? I can’t hear anything.”

“Hang on.”

“Miriam, who is that talking to you?”

She was laughing, then nothing.

“Miriam. Hey, can you go back outside? I can’t hear you.” But there was no music. No Miriam. Lance’s phone vibrated against his cheek. He stopped breathing. His stomach hit a speed bump, hung in the air, and refused to come back down. He pressed the power button. Again. Then again.

Dead.

“No,” he said.

Panic came in quick, hot waves. Because there was no phone charger plugged into an outlet in his room. No phone charger in his suitcase or backpack or trumpet case or the orange duffel bag, which he had not opened, which he would not open. He clawed through everything else. Unzipped and rezipped and heaved out and scattered and paced the room until panic dulled to fact.

His charger was at Joe’s Place.

“Nachos,” Lance said.

He picked up the landline. Still dead.

Somehow, his life had taken the wrong exit. He’d flipped over the guardrail and was going down. There was no taxi. No train. His car was broken and would remain broken. His virginity, intact. It would spend the night with him. Him and his virginity, curled up alone in bed in a shitty motel room with pissed-off cats and a drain full of hair that was not his.

Nothing in this room to throw. Nothing he could afford to break. A sickening feeling in his chest, and he needed to get it out.

Hands shaking, he unsnapped his case. He took out his trumpet, palms damp on cool brass. Then he yanked open the window and aimed the bell of his horn at the opposite building. With one breath, he reached inside, yanked out the hot feelings twisting in his guts, and blatted a wild, true sound out into the night. A growling wail, slapping the building across the parking lot, bowling over its roof, crashing somewhere off in the trees.

The air trembled with the noise, and Lance let the horn drop to his side.

Breathing.

There was a distant pop of glass and metal, like breaking a window with a home-run baseball. He stiffened. A warbling sound hovered in the distance, close to an F-sharp. Growing louder. The sound attached itself to a lone yellow light. A will-o’-the-wisp, bobbing behind the trees. The sound was a car horn. With the chug of a broken engine, a ruined white SUV bounced into the parking lot, hood metal skinned down to bone. One headlight dangled from its socket.

The car stopped and the horn blared.

The driver’s-side door popped open and a girl climbed out and her yellow sundress was covered with blood and she was screaming.