Somehow, he had white bath towels in his hands.

He was in a dream, outside, moving in slow motion, and the girl in the bloody yellow dress was screaming and jerking at the passenger’s-side door. She’d been driving, and a man was trapped inside.

Get out, Stone! Get out, goddamn you!

A small crowd had gathered, but they were standing in the wrong places to be performing a rescue. Just watching. Stone had short hair and a leather jacket, one leg hung up on the shifter. He jolted to life, trying to move. His head rolled fast and loose, like his neck was made of straw. The girl was frantic. A yellow streak bolting from door to door, jerking at the handles.

Get out! Get out of the car!

“Don’t move!” Lance pulled open the driver’s-side door. The girl was suddenly in his face. Cheeks flecked with blood. Who the fuck are you? Alcohol, a hot wave from her mouth. She knocked Lance aside, groping for Stone.

“Stop!” Lance said.

He grabbed a fistful of her dress, yanked her backward.

“Don’t move him,” Lance said. “He could die.”

Shock in her eyes. People did not tell this girl stop.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Someone call 9-1-1,” Lance shouted. “Call the police!”

“No one’s calling the police!” She kicked off one shoe, screamed at the pavement. She should’ve been beautiful, which made her ugliness worse. Bloodshot eyes, face pinched with disgust. She’d been driving.

Lance knew from his first-aid course to secure the victim’s head. Never move the victim. And Stone’s head was lolling like something in his neck had split. His right arm jerked up, as if trying to swat a fly. Lance ducked into the car and shhhh and it’s okay and relax and packed white towels around Stone’s neck, bracing his skull. His eyes fluttered, white slits. Blood trickled from his mouth. Blood, in the cup holder, like spilled soda. Blood on Lance’s fingers. Warm. And a noise in his right ear. Shaking his eardrum. The girl.

“Out of my car! Get the fuck out!”

“Stand back!” Lance planted one foot on the pavement.

She charged.

It was instinct, putting his hands out. It didn’t feel like a push, and it didn’t feel hard, but then this girl was sucking air like her lungs couldn’t find it, and she was stumbling backward, hands paddling. She rocked back on her heels, tipping like a chopped tree. She fell on pavement. Her head made a soft sound when it hit.

“He just pushed Breanna!” someone shouted.

“Yo! Back the fuck up!” someone else shouted.

Shadowy faces, men’s voices. The crowd constricted. The voices, coming for him, then the front-office door burst open and someone was coming faster. Cheri Front Desk, a wrecking ball snapping loose from its chain—crashing into the crowd, scattering the men and their voices, grabbing hold of this whole ugly thing.

Get back! Stand up! Back to your room! Rocco—I will call the police! Shut up, Meebs! Get up, Breanna! On your feet!

Breanna, the one he’d pushed. She wrestled off her other shoe and flung it into the parking lot, then turned and ran barefoot toward the field, feet slapping pavement. Lance climbed back into the SUV.

“Stone—is that your name?”

“No,” he said. “James. My name is James.”

“What’s your last name? Can you tell me what day it is? James? James?”

Sirens approached, grew shrill. Emergency lights transformed the car into a fun house and James was red and white and barely moving. Lance grabbed James’s hand because it felt like he should, and someone’s palm clapped on his back. Lance turned toward a strong set of eyes, looking into his.

“Thank you, son,” the officer said.

Lance got out of the car. Police swept in, people who belonged here. Lance’s hands clenched to fists and James’s blood pulled at the short hairs on his knuckles. An unsettling flutter in his chest, like the beginning of a shiver. He stood, frozen. He ached for goosebumps, a shudder, a sneeze. Some kind of release.

“Come here, kiddo.”

Cheri had him by the arm and through a door, beneath a naked yellow bulb. A waist-high sink. An oval of pink soap. The water was scalding, steam blanketing the mirror. Lance scrubbed red hands until they were raw and pink shavings had replaced the blood beneath his nails.

Back outside, the stretcher stood at a crooked angle. The straps were tangled as if it had just been pulled out of storage. Police stood in small clusters, pointing in different directions. These men were not neat and trim like the Bend police. They had beards and bellies, like someone had yanked them off their barstools and stuffed them into sky-blue patrolmen shirts. A pair of them walked into the field, flashlights bobbing in the dark.

Had he saved someone’s life? Committed assault?

They would have questions.

But he could not make a report. He could not have his name in an official file, anchored to this place. This was his chance to walk into the shadows with freshly scrubbed hands and no one would ever know. He calculated the best route back to his room, and was moving as quickly as he could when he saw her.

She was watching him.

A girl in the darkness. In possession of perfect stillness. Her stillness made him stop, and because he stopped, it came. The feeling he’d been aching for. Toes in ice water. Feathers up his calves. A hair-prickling, teeth-rattling rush of a shiver so good it made his eyes sting. He took a deep breath and looked at her.

“I saw you,” she said. “You’re the guy with the trumpet.”

He nodded and tried to see her, but her attention was like a spotlight. Hard to look at straight on. She was maybe his age, or a little older. Possibly beautiful. They were on the wide concrete slab of the motel parking lot, but it felt like a small room. Like he should say something important, or ask her to dance. The silence was getting heavy, their instant on the verge of thickening into a moment.

Behind him, voices and emergency lights. He had to move. Now or never. So he didn’t talk. He turned away and stepped to the side, and once he was moving inertia carried him around the corner, away from this still girl, and up the stairs.

Back inside his motel room, police lights flared through the blinds and did strange things to the wall hangings. The cloth sailboat turned orange, the water, crimson. The cats’ eyes were flashing marbles. Lance picked up his phone and cradled it. His hands were no longer bloody. His phone was cracked and dead.

He took a shower. The first blast of hot water sent the dark hairs scurrying down the drain, almost before he noticed them. Time passed with a dull, white roar, and when his lungs were heavy with steam he shut off the water. He reached out, pawing bare wooden shelves.

There were no towels.

His feet slipped on linoleum. Back by his suitcase, Lance balled up a white T-shirt and rubbed it over his body until he was dry.

He was damp and dressed in a clean shirt and jeans. Socks and shoes. Shaking hungry.

Out here, The Float is it.

The emergency lights were gone, and he hadn’t eaten in twelve hours. He walked out of his room, down the stairs, and out toward the giant glowing flotation device, feeling wobbly and light, like a moth dancing toward a flame.