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along to them. She snaps a picture of all of us beside the bus and sends that, too, with our names. “No offense,” she says. “But a girl can’t be too careful these days.” We all nod.
    “How do you know about the engine?” I ask Mia.
    “I know a little bit about a lot of things. You never know when you’re going to need stuff, so I try to keep my eyes open.”
    “We’re not sure how long we’ll be gone,” I try to warn her. “Dad’s not really a planner.” I hope he hears the disgust in my voice even as I hope Mia doesn’t. I wish there was a way to be charming to her and make Dad know I’m mad at him. “We’re supposed to be in a hurry to get there, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
    She shrugs. “I can take a couple days. It’ll be a good story. A person in my line of work needs to collect life experiences; makes my art more authentic.”
    “Saddle up, then. We’re heading out. Put some ice on that nose,” Dad says to me as he jumps on the bus, Gus, Theo, and Atticus behind him. Mia and I drop into seats as the bus lurches out of the parking lot. Theo hands me a wad of paper napkins filled with ice from the cooler.
    I watch Atticus hop onto the seat and lean against Mia as he looks out the window. She puts her arm around him and nuzzles his ear. I take their picture. Mia grabs the phone, studies her image, and makes me take another one she likes better. “Always looking for good head shots,” she tells me. “And a picture with a dog will make me more memorable. He’s very handsome.”
    I take a couple of shots of my iced nose and sendthem to Mom. She’s sent a few texts. I press Save without reading them. Maybe later.
    Theo’s texting again, chewing on his thumbnail. Gus seems to have fallen asleep. Dad’s singing along with the radio.
    I take the ice away from my nose and check for a new leak. I’m good. So I’ve stopped dripping blood and I’m sitting on a school bus talking with a kinda-hot girl who’s just decided to run away with us. I usually have trouble talking to girls. I’m pretty shy and can never think of what to say. Apparently rescuing a dog makes it easy to keep a conversation going. Good to know, though I’m not sure how many times I can use the technique. Probably more than the average person, given how nuts our family is about dogs and saving them from being put down.
    “I like you, you’re impulsive,” Mia says.
    I glare at the back of Dad’s head. “It kind of runs in the family.”
    “You don’t sound happy.”
    “Not so much.” Because pretty soon I’ll be quitting good jobs and disappointing kids. It’s a slippery slope, this impulsive thing. And she should talk. She just walked away from her job and got on a bus with a bunch of strangers to rescue a dog.
    “You guys have a beautiful aura,” she tells me.
    “That’s not something a person hears every day. What’s it mean?”
    “You have good energy, I can tell. I’m sensitive to that, and chakras. It’s a gift.”
    This is turning into a very weird trip. But a few hours ago, I thought I’d be stuck in the truck listening to Dad, and here we are on a bus with three other people and I’m eight rows away from him with a girl who’s getting prettier all the time. And she’s smiling. At me.

ATTICUS
    The girl who smells like pancakes and bacon, Mia, points out the cows on the side of the road and then we bark at them. No one else thinks this is a good idea. They’re wrong.
    I’m going to have to bare my teeth at Theo and my boy if they look at her that way again. I lifted my lip at them when they hesitated by her seat the last time we stopped for gas, and they got the message and sat behind her. She’s mine. They can talk with her, but they can’t sit next to her.
    I’ve seen the Bobby person who tried to hit Theo. My boy and I were taking a book to Theo’s apartment and he was in a car parked at the curb. Waiting. And when Theo answered the door, his shoulders were tense and he kept