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Her bare feet leave small, bloody prints in the gravel by the side of the road.

Arjay’s thin mouth shapes a faint, triangular smile. No need to hurry. What she is coming for has waited this long—a few more hours changes nothing.

And the air around her takes on a quality suggestive of storm clouds massing to the north, black and heavy with snow.

Passing her, uncalled images spring to mind—reflections of a cold life in a distant land. Birds hanging frozen from telephone wires; milkweed caught by frost in mid-launch. Shallow bedrock graves.

* * *

Take me down baby

Take me where I wanna go

Take me down down down

Baby take me where I wanna go . . .

“Forget it, booger. ‘S mine, anyway.”

“Daddy said it was my turn! You don’t play fair!”

“Says who? Besides, you’ll just break it.”

Take me down baby now

Baby take me down

“Will not!”

“Will so, booger.”

“Won’t! And don’t you call me booger!”

“Why not? Broke it quick enough last time—snot-nose.”

“Don’t you call me snot-nose, you—rat-turd!”

All the way down down down

Baby take me where I wanna goooo . . . .

“Snot-nose, snot-nose. Booger, booger, booger!”

Harold Monkson Junior, call him Hank, braces himself for a screech from the back seat. He isn’t disappointed.

“Dah-dee! Jeannie called me—”

A booger, and she wasn’t too far off, you little shit.

“Ronald, If I hear one more peep out of either of you about that Goddam Transformer, it’s straight back to Buffalo and I’m not kidding.”

Vicious whispers greet this announcement. Under the parental guidebook, they qualify as silence. Hank inhales and coughs, spitting Marlboro smoke. The car reeks of three parts enforced proximity and one part greasy Chinese food. His vision started blurring at the border, and that throbbing just behind his left eye is surely an incipient migraine. And he can’t find one station on this entire radio that isn’t playing fucking disco.

Take me down baby now

Take me where I wanna go

All the way down down down