At Joe’s Place, everything felt safe again. Through the shop’s front window, a tableau of modern conveniences: Soda fountain. Terraced racks of candy. Motor oil and blue jugs of washer fluid. From beside Dakota’s Focus, the highway was visible. A hum of white noise. So many cars, driving wherever they wanted.

Dakota popped her trunk, and her car exhaled the odor of melted Popsicles and hot plastic. Five black garbage bags, stuffed full. She hauled them out with a clatter so loud it tickled his eardrums.

“All cans?” Lance said. “Wow.”

“The worst,” Dakota said. “It’s Moody’s Soda season. Grape flavor. My mom and my sister suck the stuff down like mosquitos.” She made a desperate sucking sound, wide-eyed and frantic. “Sickening.” She twisted her wrist into black plastic and lifted.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do the thing with the tree,” he said.

She stopped. “You’re sorry? Why are you sorry?”

“Because it was really cool of you to bring me there. I’ve never met anyone who would take me out for coffee and a suicide tree.”

“Well, you’re in luck. That’s just the kind of girl I am.” She tossed the final clattering bag onto the pavement. “And I thought you’d appreciate it.”

“Why?”

“Because you notice things.”

She looked up and her eyes moved through him like a bucket through still water, churning up something shivery, deep inside. He must already know this girl. From a past life his brain had forgotten, but his body remembered.

“You want to make it up to me?” she said. “Tell me a story. Tell me one true thing.”

He could tell her. He would never see her again.

“So the Buick I have, that broke down,” he said. “My dad gave it to me.”

“Yeah?”

“He gave it to me when he left,” Lance said. Beyond the two gas pumps, a blue Geo Metro sat idling. He’d just look there while he talked. “When he took off, he left me a letter. And the keys to his Buick. One of the things he wrote was Take my car. You’re going to need it. I keep the letter in the glove box, and the guy who towed my car almost took off with it. I had to throw a rock at his truck to make him stop. Now I’m afraid he’s going to murder the Buick.”

“Wow. Did you get the letter back?”

“I did,” he said.

“Do you still talk to your dad?” Dakota asked.

“No. I don’t even know where he is.”

“Maybe that’s better. Sometimes I think that would be better.” She was rocking from foot to foot. He could smell her again, the spritz of an orange and a touch of something more real—sweat. What would it be like to wrap his arms around her? To bury his face in her neck and make her still?

“I wish I could read that letter,” she said.

“No one’s read it but me.”

“Not even your mom?”

He shook his head.

She brushed her hair back from her eyes. The blue Geo puttered out of the parking lot, leaving them alone. Nowhere to look but her.

“Good secret story,” she said. “Want to trade secrets?”

“Definitely.”

Dakota opened the driver’s-side door, reached under the seat, and came out with a leather-bound book.

“I have this book,” she said. “No one sees this either.”

“A journal?”

“Not exactly.”

She held it so he could see. Flipped through its pages. It smelled like a used-book store, a grandpa’s leather suitcase. Rough-hewn pages stitched into the spine and inked with brilliant sketches: a leaf with insectile veins, a sunset bleeding color into clouds, matchstick trees with filigreed branches. Words. Calligraphy like spikes and flowing rivers, filling every available space, squeezing between angular symbols and haunting faces and then the book was closed and she was staring at him.

Seeing the book had changed Dakota. Words and images, filling in the deep space behind her eyes and when she swung her gaze at him, he felt the full freight of her—all that thinking and intention—crashing into him. So much to see. He fought to keep his eyes level.

“You’re an artist,” he said.

“I draw.” She covered the book with her hands, like the sunlight might cut it to ribbons.

“You’re incredible. You could frame any page in that book and sell it.”

She watched him. “But I don’t want to sell it.”

“So what’s it for?”

“What’s it for?” she said. “What’s playing trumpet for?”

“I love music,” he said.

“Yeah. I love everything in this book,” she said. “All the things people should notice, but don’t. Like clouds. Like tiny white flowers. The things you lose by not paying attention. I have to keep them somewhere. They feel like clues.”

“Clues to what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He made a brief sound, close to a laugh. No words came. The conversation should fade to black now. He could close his eyes and vanish into a dark room where he had time to crawl into his mind and unpack Dakota’s drawings and words and turn them over in his hands, but they were still in a parking lot, and she was looking at him, and time kept moving.

She stuffed her book back under the driver’s seat.

“Dakota,” he said. “That’s amazing. You should show people.”

“I just did.”

“I mean, people in general.”

A battered pickup pulled into the parking lot, American flag in its window. New country blaring. The passenger spat a long brown stream out the window.

“Like them?” she said.

“Maybe not them.”

“There are an awful lot of them.”

Dakota double-checked the book’s hiding place, then slammed the door. They walked toward Joe’s and Dakota went around the side of the building with her cans. Inside, there was nobody behind the counter, and Lance’s charger was right where he left it. He plugged his phone back in by the nachos. Outside, Dakota was playing the three-note sequence of can redemption in the key of F: Crunch, churn, BEEP.

Dakota, feeding cans into a machine. He walked to a window at the end of his phone-charger tether and could see her elbow sliding backward, hand dipping into the bag, reappearing with an empty soda can. A soothing rhythm. A hypnotic elbow.

His phone jolted to life in his hand. Texts, voice messages. Words scrolling in the preview ribbon, charting the course of his absence. Questions, exclamations, all-caps profanity.

Miriam. He grabbed a fistful of hair on the back of his head. The Party, whooshing by in voice messages. The past catching up to the present while he stood beside nacho cheese.

Lance stabbed his finger at the screen.

Lance hung up. William’s voice had lacked pep. He sounded like a doctor with bad news. Outside, Dakota was still feeding cans.

The rhythm felt endless. Like if he didn’t interrupt the cycle of can redemption, he might be stuck here forever. He pressed his arm to the metal top of the nacho machine and it hissed. The sharp odor of burnt hair. A white line.

“Ouch,” he said.

“Hey kid,” Joe called from behind the counter. “Electricity ain’t free.”

“What?”

“You’re sucking up all my juice through the wall.”

“The charger was plugged in all night.”

“So?”

“So,” Lance said, “a charger uses electricity whether or not it’s hooked up to a phone.”

“Says who?”

“Says physics. Says the entire world.”

“You best watch your mouth, son. You make your call and go.”

His phone battery was still blinking red. He turned his back on Joe and dialed Goodview Towing. He needed William to get him the hell out of here. Away from bubbling cheese and grape soda cans. He needed to hear William’s honeyed voice telling him it was all going to be okay.

“Goodview Towing!” William answered.

Lance took a breath. William sounded better. Chipper, even.

“Hi. It’s Lance. I’m glad I caught you. How are things with the Buick?”

“Oh, well. That’s real interesting.”

“Interesting?”

Interesting was a blue butane flame in the pit of his stomach.

“Last night the missus and I run a few tests. We get code 254. Airflow sensor. The airflow sensor regulates combustion. If the sensor can’t regulate, you can’t get the right combustion.” William spoke the words deliberately, like lines he was rehearsing for a play.

“I’m with you.”

“’Course you are! Well, here’s the thing,” William said. “It ain’t the airflow sensor!” His laughter rang between Lance’s ears.

“My car is not running,” Lance said.

“Not at all.” Lance’s stomach went from simmer to boil. He was being hustled. William was about to mention the check engine light. Lance could feel it coming, and heard his father’s voice: If they say “check engine light,” you just run. Slap them first, if you can get away with it. Then run.

“What about the check engine light?” Lance asked, baiting him.

“What? Check engine?” William said. He sounded thrown. “No, no. But, hey, you know that air hose? How it’s got kind of an opening near the top there?”

“I don’t—”

“I’m thinking that might be it.”

“William. Are you telling me the car isn’t going to be ready today?”

“Tomorrow’s looking good for sure. You still got a room?”

Lance shook his head, denying the conversation; denying another night at the Trainsong, his broken car, the missed party. William’s voice, calling up from a well.

Hello? Lance? Ya still there, bud?

Blood on fire. He needed to walk. Right now. And he did. Away from the nachos and out of Joe’s with the sad clank of the bell. The bell clanked again. Joe was coming through the door. Lance turned to face him. He backpedaled, and Joe kept coming.

“What?” Lance said. “Hey, what!”

“You’re not the sharpest tool in the shed.” Joe pointed at his own skull. “Missing marbles.”

“Excuse me?” Lance stopped. His grip was getting slippery. Like it had at The Float, when he grabbed the butter knife.

“You got a loose wire,” Joe said, stepping forward. “In your brain.”

Something snapped and Lance was free, floating toward Joe, riding a current of hot air.

“You think I’m stupid, Joe? You came out here to tell me that? You know what, I’m valedictorian of my class. Okay? I’ve got a full-ride scholarship. I got a thirty-five on my ACT!”

“Thirty-five? Sounds low.”

“Well it’s not. And it pretty much guarantees I won’t end up pumping gas for a living.”

“You pump your own gas in Washington, fool.” Joe took another step forward, and Lance raised his fists. Lance wanted to stand his ground, but Joe had scars like vapor trails crisscrossing under his half-beard, like he’d been sliced up with a razor, and his head looked impossibly thick, like a triple-walled pumpkin. One hand was coming up now, giant, opening, and something black was unspooling from his fingers. Dangling like a yo-yo.

“You left this plugged in. By the nachos.”

“Oh,” Lance said. He slowly took the charger.

“Bad for the environment.”

“Right.”

He held it out toward Lance.

“You’re too smart to lose this twice.”

“I guess not.”

Lance took the charger and wrapped the cord around the connector. “People forget behind their backs.”

“What?”

“People forget what they want to forget,” Joe said.

“Why would I want to forget my charger?” Lance asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. You’re vale-dic-torian. You tell me.”

Joe looked over Lance’s shoulder at Dakota. Dakota, who was watching the whole thing. Her attention was like heat on a sunburn and his cheeks were on fire. He could see The Parking Lot Meltdown playing on repeat behind her eyes. Chart-topping tracks like “I’m Valedictorian of My Class, Okay?” and “I Got a Thirty-Five on My ACT.” She knew all the words, and now everyone at The Float would know them too.

She took a fistful of redemption slips and went inside.

He was alone in the parking lot.

In Bend, they’d be cleaning up Jonathan’s house. Trying to mimic Ms. Davis’s trademark diagonal vacuum lines. Jonathan would be frying bacon and doing impressions of whatever stupid things people had said the night before. Maybe Lance would be on the couch with Miriam. She could be running her fingers through his hair. She did that sometimes, when he asked.

The best hangover feeling. Better than bacon.

Lance ran his own hand through his hair. Once. Twice.

The clang of the awful bell pulled him back to Baring. And Dakota, in the parking lot of a service station. This girl he’d somehow known for one day and maybe forever, balancing two gleaming flats of shrink-wrapped purple soda cans.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

How did she know?

“My car’s not ready.”

“Good thing you’ve got a ride.”

She unlocked the doors.

The inside of Dakota’s car was dark and cool. She sat beside him and leaned back to snap on her seatbelt. Her scent rolled over him and he felt submerged, like he’d been beneath the willow tree.

She was so close. His heart like a stone, skipping over water.

Dakota pulled out of the parking lot and his phone buzzed.

Miriam.

Lance bolted up straight and glanced over his shoulder. He wanted to talk to Miriam, but Dakota was sitting right there. It felt rude to answer, and it also felt wrong to decline the call. Lance looked down and let the phone buzz in his lap, over and over, until it was still.