Robert’s office is sparse and neat. A well-lit collection of ninety-degree angles. A giant wooden desk. On the desk, a single black portfolio. And a wall-size aquarium at the back of the room with the biggest fish Lance has ever seen.

The fish is several feet long with scalloped silver scales like layers of freshly minted dimes. It has a blade of a lower lip, protruding at a forty-five-degree angle. The fish doesn’t swim. It paces. Like the grizzly Lance once saw at the zoo with his mother, the day he came to understand the word cagey.

A door bangs open.

The man stepping inside looks ready for a postapocalyptic gunfight. Torn leather jacket, bounty hunter sunglasses. Black hair combed in neat, greasy rows. He shoves the sunglasses up on his forehead and his dark eyes roll around the room like overlubricated ball bearings. Those eyes will not stop.

“I’m Robert,” he says. “And that’s my platinum arowana.” His voice is rough. Words crumble out of his mouth.

“Beautiful fish,” Lance says.

“Ha!” Robert says, crossing behind the desk. “They call them monkey fish. Want to know why?”

“Yeah.”

“Because they eat monkeys.” Robert stares at the fish as if he hates it. “Solitary son of a bitch. Can’t put another fish in there. Just try.”

The front door bangs open again and a young man enters with a clattering steel box. Robert jolts, his tattered coat ruffling like plumage.

“Shit, Douglas!” he shouts. “Way to make an entrance.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Douglas is just a few years older than Lance. He carries a stack of papers to a filing cabinet.

“So what brings you here?” Robert says, turning his wild eyes on Lance. “That Buick out back?”

“Yeah,” Lance says. “Macland’s said you’re good with problem cars.”

“Oh, that’s what they said, did they?” Robert throws himself into the leather chair behind the desk, rocking backward. “What they meant was, I actually fix things. What they meant was, I don’t sit around giving grandmas lube jobs all day. What they meant was, I’m a real mechanic.”

“That’s great,” Lance says. “I was—”

“I’ll tell you something else,” he says. “I expect to be paid for my work. I’ll tell you—I’m not doing this for fun. Am I doing this shit for fun, Douglas?”

“No sir,” Douglas says.

“No sir,” Robert says, leaning forward. “I’m a rabid capitalist businessman. I’m here to make money. Right, Douglas?”

“Right,” Douglas says.

“Kids don’t feed themselves, do they Douglas?”

“Nope.”

“Now let’s get out and see that car.”

Robert’s garage is a two-story cathedral. Only five vehicles inside: gleaming, foreign things, tiny and colorful, more candy than car. Two are up on giant lifts bookended by machines the size of mainframe computers. And there’s space. So much space. Lance’s Buick is in the middle of it all. Isolated as if contagious.

Robert walks up and pops the hood, exposing the engine.

“Are you kidding me?” he says, a vein near his left temple suddenly visible.

“What?” Lance says, peering over his shoulder.

Robert reaches into the engine block and plucks out a chunk of yellow glop. “You see this?”

Lance nods.

“Insulation. Some sonofabitch squirted insulation on your hose.” He flicks the chunk against the wall like a cigarette butt.

“And this!” He backhands a limp piece of plastic, then tears it off.

Lance flinches. “Is that—”

“I’ll tell you what that is,” Robert says. He flaps a wide palm in front of his cheek, like a leaf. “Some shade-tree bullshit. This is out under the maple with your football buddies and a case of Oly.”

Lance almost laughs, but Robert is tearing into the guts of his engine block. He twists his wrist and yanks out a giant piece of metal, like pulling a tooth.

“And this?”

“Airflow sensor,” Lance says.

“Sure, if you’re driving a Dongfeng in Beijing, goddamnit!” Robert says, spittle flying. “But we’re not in China, are we? We buy American here, don’t we, Douglas?”

“Yes sir,” Douglas calls back.

“I won’t put this part back in your car,” he says. “You could beg me. Pweese, Wobert. Pweese give me a cheap Chinese part. Why? So it can break in six months? So we can buy more shit parts from China? No!” He thrusts the part at Lance’s chest.

“I think the original airflow sensor is still on the backseat,” Lance says.

Robert glances in back. “Yeah, good.”

“Any idea what’s wrong?”

“You got two issues.” Robert’s hands writhe like mice in his jacket pockets. “You got what was wrong in the first place. Then you got what’s wrong now that a couple of grease monkeys have been jerking off on your engine block.”

“Geez,” Lance says. “I can’t believe this.”

“Hey, hey,” Robert says, clapping him on the back. “Don’t go to the dark side, kid. Look. This is an amazing car. A ’93 Buick Century, V-6 Custom? You kiddin’ me? American made. Bulletproof.” His eyes were fixed, reverent. “Hell. If I had to peel out of here in any one of these pieces of shit and drive cross-country, I’d do it in this car.”

“It was a gift.”

“Well,” he says, “someone must love you. Let’s sort this out.” Back in his office, Robert pulls out a black calculator, a fountain pen, and a neatly lined sheet of paper. He works with horrifying delicacy. On the wall, beside the aquarium, a framed picture Lance hadn’t noticed before. A family photo crammed with at least a dozen faces. An attractive, red-haired woman stands beside Robert. Lance recognizes Douglas as the oldest kid in the picture.

“Here it is,” Robert says. Lance’s eyes skip to the bottom, ink figures so neat they might’ve been typewritten.

$1,500

“Fifteen hundred dollars?” Lance stops breathing. He touches his empty wallet.

“Just the advance authorization,” Robert says, shuffling papers.

“Authorizing what?”

“Diagnostics.” Lance hears himself ugh.

“Look,” Robert says. “I can’t work on a meter, kid, coming out to call you every hundred dollars’ worth of work. I need full trust. I work with a clear head, and it takes as long as it takes.”

“Is the car even worth fifteen hundred dollars?” Lance asks.

“Is it worth it to you?”

Lance nods. “Yeah.”

“Then you just answered your own question. Sign right there, and there.” Lance signs his name twice and Robert tucks the papers in a desk drawer. “Now, where do you need to be?”

“The Trainsong Motel,” Lance says. “Is there a bus stop nearby?”

Robert scoffs and picks up the phone. He calls someone named Bea and asks her to scoot right over. About five minutes later, the red-haired woman from the picture shows up. She and Robert kiss, then she looks Lance up and down.

“The Man With The Buick,” she says.

“That’s me.”

Bea is sweet. She has attitude, but none of the googly-eyed madness of her husband. She drives a Buick, too. A much newer, much nicer Buick. On the way to the Trainsong, Lance tells her the story of his breakdown and she really seems to listen. Her hands are small and pale and delicate on the wheel. He tries to imagine those fingers locking up with Robert’s greasy metal-ripping talons and can’t quite make the pieces fit.

“How many kids do you guys have?” he asks.

“Twelve,” Bea says with a proud smile.

Kids don’t feed themselves.

Twelve kids. Which part of their family will Buick diagnostics finance? One meal for fourteen? Robert Junior’s braces? Bea drops him at the front office and gives his shoulder a squeeze.

“Robert will fix you up,” she says. “He’s the best.”

Bea’s confidence lights him up, but the feeling vanishes the instant he opens the door to his motel room. That smell. And the place is just as he left it. A wreckage of dirty clothes. Scattered papers and the awful orange duffel. He’s just starting to straighten up when his phone rings.

A Bend number. And a voice from another dimension.

“Hey Lance?” the man says.

“Yes?”

“It’s Mr. Leeds. Just wanted to do a quick check-in on your speech.”

Mr. Leeds. The absurd voice of his guidance counselor rips him out of Washington, sucks him through the receiver, and jams him into a tiny, windowless office with the smell of sour gym clothes. He feels dizzy.

“Everything’s fine,” Lance says. “The speech is almost ready.”

“Sure, Lance. I’m not worried, personally.” Mr. Leeds is talking casually, with an under-the-breath familiarity. Like they’re old buddies, just shooting the breeze. “I told your mom I’d call. You know how it is.”

“Yeah,” Lance says.

“So what are the chances you’ll have it memorized?”

“Still working on it.” Lance tries to envision a single sentence from his speech. Just one word. All he can picture is the page of required administrative signatures and student witnesses. Three peers who had attested the speech was representative of the character of both school and speaker.

“Hey. One thing, buddy. Please remember the part about the kids not throwing caps at the end of the ceremony. It’s just chaos, you know?” Mr. Leeds laughs.

“Right. Tell them not to throw their caps.”

“It’s better, coming from a peer. If I were you, I’d end your speech on that note. So that’s what they remember.”

“I can do that.”

“Great. I knew you wouldn’t mind. So how did your audition go? Seattle, right?”

“It was a really good audition.” Saying it, he realizes it’s true. It was the best he’d ever played. Probably the best audition of his life. He looks at his horn, and his eyes sting.

“I did already send your transcripts to OSU. That’s where you’re headed, right?”

“Yeah. That’s right.” Lance squeezes his hands shut. Nails bite into palms.

“Okay, Lance. You sound kind of busy. I’ll let you get back to it. See you Friday, bud!”

Many times, Lance had needed Mr. Leeds. He’d queued up to get into his office, to pore over schedules and test scores, cozying up to his desk for a peek at the roster of students to see where he fell in the rankings. Mr. Leeds had given him the special green folder where he was told to keep his speech. Another composition to memorize and play perfectly.

Lance opens the green folder. Stares at the speech.

Three knocks at his door.

TAP TAP TAP

Lance shuts the folder and drops to the floor. Police!

TAP TAP TAP

“Lance? Are you there?” Not the police, but he’s shaking. He stands and makes the doorknob work and it’s her. Dakota. Somehow Dakota, wearing a white sundress and smelling the way she smells, is right there in front of him.

“No way,” she says, leaning forward. “You. Is it really you?”

“I was about to ask you the same question.”

She’s holding two glasses and a bottle of white wine. The glass is sweating, dripping onto painted blue wood. Her toenails, a few shades lighter. Blue like the sky.

“Can I come in?”

“Do I have to invite you?” he says. “Are you a vampire?”

“Maybe,” she says.

“Then yes.”

The wineglasses touch like soft chimes as she crosses the room. She sets them on the green folder, using it like a coaster. Lance laughs.

“What?” she asks.

“That’s my speech. My guidance counselor just called me.”

“Oh my god,” she says.

“I know. It’s in three days.”

“No. Oh my god you have a guidance counselor. What am I doing?”

“Corrupting a minor.”

“Guilty,” she says. She twists off the bottle’s cap and pours a few generous glugs in each glass.

“You’re not wasting any time.”

“No,” Dakota says. “This is all stolen time now. We have to spend it all.”

They touch glasses and drink. The wine is crisp and grassy and delicious. He’s never had white wine before.

“So, this is your place,” she says, pacing around the bed. “Nice.”

“I’ve been here so long. I feel responsible for the decorations.”

She laughs. “I love what you’ve done with it. The sailboat says I’m a dreamer and into craft sales. While these cats say I’m weird and maybe don’t have any friends. It’s a great balance.” She’s looking straight at him. Not hiding. A fresh heat flushes her cheeks, like she just spent a week in Florida.

“You look different today,” he says.

“Yeah?” she says. “Good different?”

“Glowing different.”

“I am different today,” she says.

They both drink. He’s grateful for the wine.

“Not a vampire,” he says, looking in the bathroom mirror. “I can see your reflection.”

“Disappointed?”

“Kind of. I’ve always wanted to see a vampire.”

“I’m over vampires,” she says. “You know what I want to see?”

“What?”

“A ghost,” she says. She sits on the bed and crosses her legs. The dress slides up just above her knee. “Not a little orb in a photograph, a real one. I’ve gone to every haunted house within a hundred miles. I’ve been to Aux Sable a hundred times, but it’s never happened.”

“That’s probably good.”

“Yeah. I’m not sure what I’d do.”

“Run away screaming,” he says.

“But I mean afterward,” she says. “How could I go back to my regular life? How could I ever think about life and death and science and religion the same way? If you really think about what it means to see a ghost—it would make you a different person. It would change everything.”

“So what would you do?”

“Become a Believer.”

“With a capital B.”

“Yep,” Dakota says. “Like those people who see Bigfoot on a camping trip, then quit their jobs and buy an RV and recording equipment. And waders. That’s all they can do. Drive around and try to see Bigfoot again.”

“There are worse ways to live.”

“Yeah.”

“So are you shopping for RVs?”

She finishes her wine. She looks up at him.

“Nobody kisses like that, Lance. They just think they do.”

Between his ears there is a white-noise seashell sound, like a long hush, and Dakota is sitting on the corner of the bed in a dress, too close and too far away. Springs tighten in his knees and calves. He could leap and crash into her body and tumble into the bed and roll into a brand-new life that would not have to be here nor Bend nor anywhere he ever dared consider. It’s suddenly possible. The full freight of his life, balanced on one corner.

And his phone is ringing. Still ringing. He looks at the number and suddenly the phone is ringing at a different pitch, vibrating in a new way.

“A Seattle number,” he says. “My audition.”

“No,” she says, clenching her hands. “Take it! Take it!”

TakeitTakeitTakeitTakeit!

She’s still telling him as he walks out the motel door, closing it behind him.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Lance? This is Mr. Kay, from the Seattle School of Music.”

He must breathe. Must unclench his throat.

“Oh, hi. I was really looking forward to hearing from you.”

“This an okay time?”

“Perfect time.” He smiles at the door, Dakota beyond it. “It’s a perfect time.”

“Well bud, I’m sorry to say we don’t have room for you this year.”

Lance tries to translate the words. A cliff, coming toward him in slow motion. Brain skidding sideways, no surface to grip.

“Excuse me.”

“We’re full up. Only ten spaces, you know?”

“What?”

“Sorry, my friend. You blew really well.”

“How—but how did I not get in?”

“You were great, Lance. Really great. The improvisation got you, just a little bit.”

“I can improvise for you right now,” Lance says. “I’ve got my horn. Let me just—”

Mr. Kay laughs. “I’m sorry, man. We can’t do that.”

He could make this right. Had to make this right.

“Is there a wait list?”

“No one really gets in on the wait list. You were close, you know? A lot of people play out a little. Take a year, then c’mon back next fall if—”

A loud ringing overtakes his voice. Panic alarm. The red lever. He’d break more glass, pull it again and his mother would go over Mr. Kay’s head to the person with the big desk and plush chairs who hired and fired people like Mr. Kay, and that person would get A Serious Phone Call and Lance would end up in Seattle where he was meant to be.

Except his mother does not want him there. The lever will not work. And in the place where her help has always been, there is a void. There is nothing. And all he has for Mr. Kay is goodbye.

His phone is a block of ice. He puts it in his pocket, stares at the door.

She can smell his failure through the wall. He’ll drink wine. He’ll walk in and gulp a glass because the Seattle School of Music doesn’t matter. It never mattered. He was never going to Seattle, and so he enters the room and Dakota looks up at him and flinches. She has never looked at him this way before. Because she knows.

Or because the green folder is open on her lap. His speech.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“Did you get in?” she asks.

Dakota has flipped past the page of teacher and student approval signatures. She is two pages into his speech, which means she has read past the introduction. The words of his speech, so elusive up until now, crystallize in his brain with uncanny clarity:

As we graduate from Bend High School, it occurs to me we will all be stars. Each of us, in our own way. And in the galaxy of our shared futures, we will shine brightly. We’ll drift apart and become our own suns, lighting our own paths. Finding new planets in the orbits we choose.

Words he is responsible for.

“That’s private,” Lance says.

“Aren’t you giving this speech to a thousand people in three days?”

“Well, I mean, if I just left my journal laying out on a table, would you read it?”

“Maybe.” She shrugs. “Probably.”

“Well, that’s wrong.”

Outside, a car thunders into the parking space just below his window. Doors clap open and shut. Young voices. Laughter. Hair raises on the back of Lance’s neck.

“Okay. But how is this private? There’s a hundred signatures on the first page.”

“They’re teachers.”

“And three student witnesses. Whatever that means.” She puts it down. “Oh. I get it.”

“What?”

“This is from your real life. Right? I’m not allowed to see it.”

“Dakota.”

His phone is buzzing. Mr. Kay! He fumbles for his phone and hope leaps in his chest, a flood of endorphins and forgiveness. Don’t worry, Dakota, it’s okay, and guess what, I did get in! There was a terrible mistake!

But it’s not Mr. Kay. It’s Jonathan. Lance doesn’t answer.

His throat is tight again and the voices outside are swelling, ballooning up in the air and pressing against his window. An icy-hot mixture sloshes in his gut. His body knows something his brain does not.

Lance walks over to the blinds, parts them with a finger. There’s a Mustang. A white Mustang with Oregon plates. His molars lock. He stops breathing. Dakota is saying something underwater. Something he can’t hear.

“Lance?” she says, breaking through.

In the Trainsong parking lot, figures from another life: Jonathan. Darren. Miriam. Miriam is in the parking lot. He pinches his left forearm. This fails to erase his friends. He bites the palm of his hand.

“What are you doing, Lance?”

“You have to go,” he whispers.

“What?” she asks. “Why?”

“You have to go right now.”

This girl. This perfect girl. Her brow knit. Startled eyes, like she’s just been stung. It was the way she looked at the bag of soda cans in the parking lot, only this time it’s him. She turns away and cuts across the room.

“Dakota,” he says.

“Laaaaa-aaance!” someone calls from outside.

Dakota stops, hand on the doorknob. “Who is that?”

“Lance!” Jonathan screams from below. “Where are youuuuuu!”

Lance finishes his wine. He can barely speak.

“Bend is here.”