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any brands she recognized in the store, but at least it wasn’t gross and it didn’t smell like dog food.
    She had just about enough energy left to climb into bed and watch one of the DVDs she had brought before turning out the light. She didn’t even hear when her mom came in.
    * * *
    There was no sign of Mom in the morning, other than her purse on the kitchen table and more small bills and coins in the jar. From experience, Staci knew that the highest probability was that her mom was drunk-asleep and would sleep until at least 5 P.M., since this was Sunday and a bar wouldn’t be open. Hopefully, she was sleeping alone…the times Mom had brought guys home, they had all been creepy, and Staci had never stayed around when they were there any more than she had to. And if those guys spent more than one night, she always locked her bedroom door.
    I hope this door has a lock.
    She looked at the stuff in the fridge, but… Hell. I am not making my own breakfast. Especially since she wanted pancakes and they were a pain to make. She grabbed another handful of money from the jar, locked the house up behind herself, and got on her bike.
    The nice waitress—Beth, that was her name—wasn’t at the diner when she got there; it was an old lady this time, who wasn’t mean, just tired-looking, and didn’t seem even remotely curious about anything other than getting Staci’s order. So she ate in a hurry, left an okay tip, and got back on her bike. Time to find out if the story about cell reception on Makeout Hill was a fairy tale.
    It was a long, hard ride. The grade wasn’t too steep, but the road itself was gravel once you left the pavement of the main streets, and it switched back and forth a lot. If you had wings, it probably wasn’t all that big a trip, but by the road it must have been two miles, at least. She was too busy peddling up to the top—or stopping, getting off, and walking for a while when her legs got tired—to pay any attention to the view. It wasn’t until she made it to the top that she caught her breath and looked around.
    There was a huge old tree at the edge of what turned out to be a pretty steep drop right down to a little bit of beach at the edge of the water. The grass was all worn away between the road and the tree, proving that people did a lot of parking up here. Then the gravel road continued on into some woods. Staci didn’t think she’d ever bother exploring that way. It wasn’t that the woods were spooky, because they weren’t. They just looked tired, and uninteresting. Pretty much the same as the town.
    On the road side of the bluff, you got a good view of the entire town, which didn’t look quite as shabby from here, although it certainly didn’t look any more inviting than the woods. Staci dug the placemat-map out of her pocket and compared it to the view, and it was pretty clear the map had been drawn from this vantage. She picked out all the “landmarks” Beth had drawn for her, then, holding her breath, she pulled out her phone.
    Three bars! And the phone started beeping as the texts came in.
    She sat down in the roots of the tree—it wasn’t bad, not uncomfortable at all—and began answering them. There was something close to the sensation of being a little high, like she’d had a couple of puffs of grass, as she finally got connected back to the real world. It was so euphoric that she took her time answering each one, even though under any other circumstance, she’d have done them with a “reply all.”
    She could have done just that, since she answered all of her friends pretty much the same way. It’s horrible here. The town is nasty and gross, stuck in 1950 and not in a good way. There’s no cell, no net, and no cable. The only way I can get cell is to get to the top of this hill and it’s like five miles to get there. Mom is worse than ever, I don’t think I’ve seen her sober for a minute. She offered me beer for breakfast!Then she decided to throw any pretense