Page 53 of The Bright Lands

i fucking hate football

it’s like i hear this town talking when i sleep.

The back door of the building cracked open. Joel switched off the radio.

The girl strode briskly to the car, a little too confident. She climbed into shotgun and lowered herself until she was practically flat on her back.

Bethany Tanner said to him, “Do you remember how to get to the dam?”

When he turned onto the industrial road southwest of town, she risked a glimpse out the rear window and flinched when a car zoomed past.

“I’m starting to worry I shouldn’t be seen with you,” Joel said.

“What? Why? Take a left.”

“You mean onto the road buried in weeds?”

“Trust me.”

The car bucked over a stone in the overgrown road. Joel shot the girl a look.

“It’s just through there,” she said, rising up again to point.

A line of cedar trees, their crowns all weighted down with streamers of poison oak, stretched ahead of them. A single black bird watched their approach from a low branch, almost invisible in the long shadows of the sunset. Its tiny head cocked one way, then the other.

Joel steered them toward a rough path and flipped on the headlights.

“My dad tracks my mileage,” Bethany said flatly. “He’d know if I came here in my own car.”

“I remember hearing some scary stories about your father.” Russ Tanner, Joel recalled, was big, red-faced, loudly rich, somehow connected to Mr. Evers, who was president of the Chamber of Commerce. Powerful. Angry.

“You don’t have to worry about me. Jasmine’s covering. My dad thinks I’m sleeping at her place.”

Joel eased the convertible down the path. He considered reminding Bethany that Dylan and his friends had tried the same sort of story last weekend with mixed results, but he decided against it. Branches snapped beneath the tires. Something whispered as it ran along the doors.

“Nobody comes out here anymore since the cops started patrolling it,” Bethany said.

“Nobody except the cops.”

“The cops don’t bother Dylan. They don’t bother me.”

“Who was that kid? The one at the diner?”

“If I started naming everyone at school who owed me a favor, we’d never have time to talk.”

“You said you had something to show me.”

She bit her lip. “You’re friends with the lady officer, right?”

“You mean Clark?” Joel wasn’t sure what he and Clark were to each other. “We’re cordial.”

“Do you think you could tell her something for me? But, like, quietly? So nobody would know it but her?”

“I could try. Is that what you brought me here to see?”

The trees ended at a tall chain fence enclosing the town’s abandoned dam. The dam had once housed a power plant, up until fracking in North Texas had undercut the energy market with natural gas and made hydropower a luxury only the rich, liberal cities could afford. Joel knew: he’d written a report recommending his company’s clients divest from water. He’d never once considered how such an opinion might have affected his hometown.

Bethany climbed from the car without answering him.