Cheri Front Desk stood outside the office, murdering shrubbery with a high-powered hose. The water was strong enough to strip paint. She grinned up at Lance, shredding bushes like confetti.

“What’s happening, Breakdown?” she asked.

It was confusing, what was happening. The day had come on bold and bright, and he was somehow standing in a motel parking lot, holding his trumpet case. Time had passed. The moon had gone down and taken away the party of his life. And the sun had risen on what, exactly?

Cheri Front Desk and denuded boxwood.

“I need to get to Joe’s Place.”

“Sure,” she said. “Just down Highway 2. About a ten-minute drive.”

“But I don’t have a car.”

“Ohhhhh, right.” She stopped spraying. “Want me to find you a ride? Ladies around here would line up around the block for a tall drink of water like you.” She giggled. “But I won’t be held responsible for what happens.”

Lance took a step back. Tall drink of water. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he didn’t want Cheri filling the glass. He had to be careful. He’d met others with Cheri’s bizarre, life-bending powers. Neighbors. Proprietors of general stores. Innocent-looking people who could grab hold of your morning with one unsolicited comment and swing your day completely off course. Lance moved away slowly, before Cheri’s powers could take hold.

“Wait, wait,” she said, scanning the parking lot. “There’s a taker! Lookee there!”

Too late! Too late!

He was caught in a Cheri Front Desk tractor beam. She was sending him across the parking lot in the direction of someone familiar.

Dakota.

The girl he’d last visualized naked in the privacy of his motel room, now existing in broad daylight. She was sitting in a green plastic chair, tan legs stretched out in front of her and crossed neatly at the ankles. He felt like he should apologize for taking her clothes off. Or give her flowers. Something. Then Dakota was looking at him and he was taking one step in her direction, more steps, until he was standing right in front of her.

“Go on!” Cheri said. “Ask her for a ride. Hey, Dakota!”

“Hey,” Lance said, his voice coming out low and stupid.

“Hey,” Dakota said, squinting into the sun. “You’re still here. Is your car fixed?”

“I don’t know. My phone’s dead. I left my charger at Joe’s Place. It’s about—”

“I know where it is.” She smiled. “You need a ride?”

Her question tingled under his skin and projected a word onto the backs of his eyelids. dangerous. Like black letters on a white screen. This word, coming from nowhere. Cheri Front Desk would not be held responsible.

He nodded.

“Good,” Dakota said, pulling out keys. “I was just out here thinking up a good reason to leave.”

“Glad I could help.”

“You’re perfect.”

They climbed inside her sky-blue Ford Focus. A green tassel hung from her rearview mirror, tangled up with a bacon air freshener that thankfully didn’t smell like bacon. It smelled like a freshly peeled orange, or Dakota did. A warm smell, coming from her neck. She had a little blue vein there, tracing up around her jaw. They seemed to be sitting really close in this car. Maybe the Ford Focus had a weird thing about smashing their passengers too close together. Or maybe Dakota sat this close to everyone.

They drove for a few minutes. It was quiet.

“I don’t usually give rides to strangers,” she said.

“Well, thanks.”

“Had a bad experience with a hitchhiker,” Dakota said. “Hell of a story.”

“Really?”

She pursed her lips, then didn’t go on.

“So what’s your story, Wildman?” Dakota said.

“Which story?”

“Your best story. You’re going to be gone forever in five minutes, right?”

“Well, I was supposed to go to an amazing party last night.”

“That’s your best story? You were supposed to go to a party?”

He laughed, surprising himself. “Yeah. I think that might be it.”

She smiled. A nice smile. A little crooked. Not showing a lot of teeth, but lips. The kind of lips Darren and Jonathan would’ve commented on crudely and specifically. The kind of lips Lance had never noticed until now.

“Want to get coffee?” those lips asked.

“Yeah,” he heard himself say. “I do.”

A fluttering anxiety rose up in his chest, like a warm breeze scattering leaves, spinning up behind his lungs. This was a choice he could not easily explain later. A few miles down the road, they pulled into a parking lot.

“Whiggley’s!” Dakota announced. She sounded like a little kid.

Whiggley’s was the real deal. An actual DINER. Every spot in Bend had just been a cheap knockoff of this: homemade pies spinning in a glass case, a steel tank of a cash register, booths with padded red seats, and hollow, glass-topped tables stuffed with ’50s knickknacks and memorabilia. Their waitress was actually named Maude. She was one of three bustling white-haired ladies in aprons and striped shirts. They could’ve been identical triplet Maudes, possibly fathered by the diner itself.

Maude #1 flopped a few giant menus on the table and filled their mugs to the brim with hot coffee. Steam unraveled, perfect in the sunlight. Folding and uncurling, stretching slender fingers toward the ceiling. Lance warmed his hands on the ceramic cup.

“Lance,” Dakota said, leaning forward. “I need to ask you something.”

“What?”

She beckoned him forward. They leaned toward each other.

“What’s with the case?” she whispered, cupping her hands.

“Which case?”

“The one you carry around like a suitcase full of money.”

“Oh,” he said, touching it with his foot. “That’s just my trumpet.”

“I figured. Is it handcuffed to your wrist?”

“Maybe. I’m not allowed to say.”

“Can I see it?”

“Right here?”

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s get crazy.”

He pulled out the case and set it on the glass-topped table. He unsnapped the buckles, and there was his trumpet. Sunlight broke over its hammered brass like an egg yolk, and Lance saw himself smile in the bell of his beautiful horn.

“Wow,” she said. “It is like a suitcase full of money.”

“Not cheap,” Lance said. “Two summers as a bank teller, right there.”

She reached out to touch the horn. Instinctively, his hand jerked up to stop her.

“Wow,” she said. But she touched the horn anyway, running her index finger along the trademark etching of a windblown tree.

“Wild Thing, eh?” she said, tracing the letters.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what it’s called. That’s the brand.” He quickly snapped the case shut and put it under the table. It felt better there. Safe.

“So, musician. Knife-fighter. Bank teller. Are you a good student?”

“Pretty good.”

She sat back and shook her head. “You’re interesting, Lance.”

His heart was pounding because suddenly he, Lance Hendricks, was interesting. And did that mean she was interested in him? It did, at least literally. And, also—wait, was this a date? This was just coffee. Which was fine. Everyone drank coffee together. Friends. Relatives. They could be related, if someone asked.

“Tell me a story,” she said.

“What kind of story?”

“Any story,” she said. “I don’t know anything about you.”

This girl never checked her phone. She did not look away.

He lifted his menu to face level, but did not look at the column of Piled-High Country Skillets nor the Barn-Buster Breakfasts. He needed to hide. Safe from her eyes, he rifled through his stories like a deck of old baseball cards. What had he ever done? Behind his menu, under the bright lights of Whiggley’s Diner, he was forced to give his stories a good, hard look.

There was the night he and Darren threw folding chairs in the deep end of Bend Public Pool. Shopping-cart races at Walmart. His craziest, spur-of-the-moment trip when he skipped trumpet practice and drove exactly forty-five miles before turning around at a gas station with a blended coffee drink.

His mantras came rushing back, trying to save him.

You are valedictorian.

You are the first-chair trumpet player.

You have a full-ride scholarship.

Miriam Seavers is in love with you.

But he did not have stories. Just achievements.

And all the coffee cups were rattling in their saucers. Silverware, shivering against the glass-topped case. That damn train. It must be coming back.

“You okay?” she said.

“Yeah, why?”

He looked outside, bracing himself for the earsplitting whistle.

“Your left leg is a seven-point earthquake.”

Lance planted his feet and the table stopped shaking. He attempted to resume normal breathing.

“Are you nervous?” she asked.

“No, it’s just a condition.”

“Like PTSD?”

“Restless legs syndrome.”

“Is that a twitchy spasm thing? Like Tourette’s?”

“No. It’s not like that.”

“You don’t swear uncontrollably?”

“I don’t.”

“I can’t believe that’s a syndrome. I’m going to look it up.” He thought she might pull out her phone and give him a break. But she just hit him with another question.

“Do you get nervous when you play music?”

“Not usually. I was a little nervous at my audition. The guys there—you could just feel how much they’d played.” Improvising for that panel had felt like improvising for Dakota: He could play his whole heart out, and it might not be enough.

“So you’re going to school for music then?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I mean, I’m going to keep playing music, but I’m going to school for business.”

Her eyes shot open and Lance looked over his shoulder, because maybe someone behind him had just picked up a giant bloody hatchet. But there was no ax murder. That look was just for him, studying business.

“Business,” she said.

“What?”

“Why would you study business?”

Lance’s stomach prickled. But he knew the answer to this question. He had the script.

“There are a lot of places you can go with a business degree,” he said. “Most competitive employment sectors are looking for business graduates, so I want to give myself the academic freedom to find something I love.”

“Wow. You love music, right?”

“Yeah. But I need to make good money.”

“Why,” she asked. “For what?”

That solid stare. Was she serious?

“You need to know why I want to make good money?”

“Yeah. What do you want to do with all your good money?”

Lance had a specific vision of himself with money. Wearing expensive sunglasses, he walked out of an important meeting and into a parking lot. He opened the door to a new white convertible, threw himself into the front seat, and jammed a key in the ignition, music blaring as he peeled off to kick ass at his next important meeting. He’d never considered the purpose of these meetings. Only being rushed and valuable. He smiled, picturing it.

“So?” Dakota asked.

Lance shrugged and said: “I want to be able to do what I want.”

“What do you want?”

According to his five-second mental film clip, he wanted to be between meetings.

“I want to travel,” Lance said, remembering Seattle. “Play music.”

“So why not just travel and play music?”

“Oh, right.” Lance laughed. She wasn’t smiling. He frowned. “Because you can’t just do that. I need to make money first. I mean, do you know the average business graduate can make over sixty thousand dollars a year? That’s really good money. After a couple years, I’ll be able to do whatever I want.”

“Sure,” she said. “But by then you’ll want different things. Maybe you’ll want a nicer car. And a nicer house. You could be married with babies and knickknacks and window treatments.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“With window treatments?”

“With the whole thing.”

“Nothing. If that’s what you really want,” Dakota said.

“It’s not what I want right now.”

“Exactly! Right now, you really love something. That’s rare. You carry your horn around like a newborn baby. Right now you stop and smell flowers.”

His cheeks burned, full of blood.

“Cute,” she said.

“Great,” he said, touching his cheeks.

“That’s rare, Lance. That’s precious. I like Lance Right Now. I don’t know about Business Lance. We might not get along.”

“And obviously this is all about you,” he said.

“Well, sure.” Dakota smiled.

“Do you always start fights with strangers?”

“Only when I like them.”

“Did you pull boys’ hair in grade school?”

She stared back at him, considering this.

“No. I didn’t mess around with hair-pulling. I just knocked them over. Flat on their backs. Usually when they weren’t looking.” She laughed. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

“It’s great,” he said. “I’m sure they loved it.”

“Maybe. I liked more boys back then. It’s harder now. There are fewer people I want to knock down.”

“Should I be careful?” Lance asked.

“No. You’re safe. You’re a high school student with a promising future in business.”

She was now taking a tone with him. And his own tone was creeping up the back of his throat like the first tickle of a cough. How did this girl spend her time, anyway? Did she still live with her parents? Hang out with the drunks from last night?

“I just believe long-term happiness is about delayed gratification,” Lance said. This was the voice he used when he raised his hand in class. The voice he would use in front of a gymnasium full of people when he gave his speech this Friday.

“Oh yay,” she said. “Let’s talk about delayed gratification.”

“Have you ever heard of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment?”

“Nope.”

“It’s a really famous experiment,” he said. She did not react. “Here’s how it worked. They would take a five-year-old kid and put him in a room with a marshmallow. So here’s the marshmallow.”

Lance tossed a white sugar packet in the center of the table.

“The researcher gave the kid two choices. Either eat the marshmallow now or wait five minutes and get two marshmallows.”

Dakota grabbed the packet and tore it open. Dumped it in her coffee.

“Well,” Lance said. “Now you won’t get two.”

“I only wanted one.”

“Fine. But you know what they learned? The researchers followed these kids for twenty years, and they could trace all their successes back to the marshmallow decision. One marshmallow now or two marshmallows later? It tied into how much money they made, where they lived, and whether or not they’d been in prison. Kids who could wait for the second marshmallow made more money, lived in better neighborhoods, and were generally happier. Kids who ate the first marshmallow ended up getting arrested or dropping out of high school.”

“Sounds like the first marshmallow was laced with something.”

“No,” Lance said. “They just proved it. Success is about delayed gratification.”

Dakota was looking at him evenly. Chin out.

“So who won?” she asked.

“Won what?”

“The marshmallow contest.”

“I don’t think anyone won.”

“That’s what success is about, right? Winning.”

“Well. I guess whoever ended up with the most marshmallows.”

“Right,” Dakota said. “That makes sense. That’s very mathematical.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just want to make sure I got this right. A five-year-old who wants to eat a marshmallow is eventually going to prison. The winner is the kid who would rather hoard his bullshit marshmallows in a lab with creepy grad students.”

“In all fairness, we can’t know they were creepy.”

“Yes, Lance. We can know that. And you know what I think? A five-year-old who won’t eat a marshmallow is a freak. And that’s who’s running our country right now. A gang of freakish children, all grown up, who never learned what the fuck a marshmallow was for. They just learned how to count them. Probably at business school.”

“Oh, good. Because I’m taking Statistics and the Marshmallow Economy next semester.”

“Good for you,” she said. “Start pricing window treatments.”

Dakota grabbed a second sugar packet. Tore it open.

“You said you only wanted one,” Lance said.

She stared right back. Poured in the sugar.

Just then, Maude came by: “Any food?”

“No,” they both said.

Maude left and Lance tried to keep his leg still. He’d probably just lost his ride to Joe’s Place. People were eating all around them. Obnoxious sounds. Laughter and slurping and lip smacking. A woman at the next table, chomping ice cubes. Like chewing glass.

“You’re fighting your leg,” she said. “It wants to move.”

A bar of sunlight slanted across Dakota’s face, brightening her eyes. Fixed on him. Moss-colored in this light, with sunflower halos. No one ever looked at him this long. And this girl didn’t blink.

Dangerous.

“C’mon,” she said. “There’s somewhere we need to go.”

“Where?”

“Aux Sable Cemetery.”

Not helping.