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much of a poker face. Before I’d even gotten in her car I was crying. She held me close, waited while I told her between sobs.
    She told me we’d had no choice, that we’d done the right thing. She said she would have gone in with us to save Ange if she’d been there. But she hadn’t been there; she hadn’t stabbed people while they screamed. There was so much distance between intent and action. I’d had no idea how much until I had to act.
    The screensaver in my mind no longer held a picture of a beautiful smiling Sophia, it held a screaming man, his hand sliced between two fingers, nearly to the wrist.
    “I have a job interview arranged for you in Savannah. It’s not much, just working in a convenience store, but it’s a start.” She was so remarkably clean, her clothes so crisp and new.
    “I can’t leave my tribe,” I said. “They need me now; we need to stick together.”
    “No,” she said, pulling me to her, holding me tight. “You have to come to Savannah. You can help them more that way. You can get an apartment and they can all stay with you and look for jobs.”
    You can get an apartment . Not “we.” Three’s a crowd, after all.
    “I can’t leave them now.”
    “How will any of you ever get out of this if you refuse to ever separate?”
    “I don’t know.”
    She pressed the interview information into my hand. “Just go to it.”
    I took my phone out of my pocket and held it out. “I’ll always love you, Sophia. Always.”
    Fresh tears rolled out of her dark eyes. “No. I don’t want it.”
    “I can’t answer it any more.”
    “So don’t answer it.”
    I kissed her, long and deep, and for the first time since we’d been in that movie theater, she let me. Then I got out of her car and headed into the woods to find my tribe.
    So don’t answer it , she’d said. But I knew I would. If she called, I’d answer.
    There was a cypress swamp below the tracks, trees with roots like melting wax, branches draped in Spanish moss. I threw the phone in a high arc. It ricocheted off a tree and splashed in the brown water.

Chapter 2:
Art Show
    Fall, 2024 (Eighteen months later)
    T he buttery-sweet smell of the candy bars made me a little nuts as I stacked them in the wire receptacles near the register. I fantasized about squatting behind the counter, out of sight of Amos the Enforcer, and scarfing a few down. But I couldn’t afford to lose my job, and besides, I couldn’t steal from Ruplu. Weird as it was to have a nineteen-year-old boss, the guy was gold, and I owed him for hiring me. Plus my momma taught me not to steal.
    Having so many different colorful packages in my line of sight hurt my brain after a while. Racks of chips and crackers, gums and sodas, cigarettes and beer, energy packs and water filters, magazines, 3-D porn—there was barely a square foot of blank space for my eyes to rest on.
    Amos stared out the window, arms folded, pistol tucked into his belt.
    “How’s it going, Amos?” I said.
    “Just fine. Just fine,” he said without turning his head. Amos wasn’t much on talking. His qualifications for the job seemed to be that he owned a gun and was eager to use it.
    The door jingled. An incredibly skinny woman came in, her hair so white it looked blonde, two fingers clutching a cigarette. She wandered the aisles, whispering to herself. From behind, you could easily mistake her for a girl in her twenties. If you did, her shrunken, wrinkled, toothless face would give you a jolt when she turned around. She walked with the knock-kneed energy of a godflash addict, which she probably was. She grabbed a packet of malted milk balls and brought them to the counter.
    “I’m doing fine,” she said, holding out a five, taking a pull on her cigarette, not noticing that I hadn’t actually asked.
    “That’s good to hear,” I said, handing back her change. Amos watched her go, alert to any sign of a grab and dash.
    Another woman put a box of tampons on the counter, opened her