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tried to see the woman’s eyes through the lenses. The woman’s teeth were yellow behind her lips.
    â€œYou’ve grown,” she said.
    In the cold and dark they made their way to the bus station, past the walls of the prison, the wire and the fencing, past the market and the stoplight. They turned left on Hawkins Street, moved from glow to glow beneath the streetlamps. Cars passed slowly on the rain-slick road. They seemed to be the only people on foot. Shelby watched her white breath cloud from under her hood, watched their reflections in puddles under the lamp glow. She reached out, took Phillip’s arm, slowed him down. As they passed over each pool of water, she tried to bring herself and Phillipinto focus, but they were moving too quickly, or Phillip would stamp his foot into the puddle. Circles spread from his boot step, blurred the reflections.
    There was little left of the bus station, only a concrete shell and a pile of burned, broken furniture left against the side of a dumpster. The plot of land, what remained of the building, reminded Shelby of Bremerton. They seemed to be home again, but still far away. Out in the road, they could hear the rush of drain water in the gutters. Phillip pushed a cinder block over with his boot. They held hands and shivered in the dark.
    Across the road was a car, parked facing the state road. Beyond it they could make the outline of the Olympics, could even smell the bay from where they stood. One of the backlights of the car flickered red, reflected against the water on the street.
    They crossed the road, tried to see in through the fog. They hesitated, climbed into the backseat, shut the door behind them. It was eight o’clock.
    Otis was leaning forward, against the wheel, flicking the back of the paper frog on the dash. The creature jumped at each flick, knocking against the windshield, falling on its side after. Otis set it back upright and flicked again. They listened to the tap against the glass.
    Eventually, he turned, put his arm up on the seat next to him, held the frog between his fingertips. He looked at them with his two eyes, both big, one damaged.
    â€œHow’d it go?” he said.
    They set their hands in their laps, looked there, listened to the rush of rainwater outside, felt a pain in their fingertips as their hands began to warm. The glow from the dashboard lit the car—the seats, the vinyl ceiling, the windows—in a dull green and white. Otis waited, looked at the frog, at the creases and folds.
    â€œThis guy didn’t want to sit still,” he said.

THE LOST BROTHER
    I went down to the basement in late evening because of a strange, familiar shiver that frightened me. There was water down there, shin deep, and it was filled with silt and sand. My brother Albert and I had been trying to pump it out. I opened the gun cabinet and checked for his pistols, and sure enough there was one of them missing. I’d been worrying about him for a while. I’d felt something similar years before, and another feeling had set me to motion. Out from school and into home, and when I got there Ma was under the table, eating pills, talking on the phone to nobody. And another time, after a visit to my granddad—a good visit, he’d been feeling better—I woke and knew that he’d died. These were not visions to me, and not ghost whispers in my ear. I was an Atkins, and a good number of us had turned crazy over the years. But I was not yet crazy. I was fifteen and Albert’s only brother, and we were friends, he and I, back then.
    It was dark outside, and the moon was half, and I could see up for as many stars as I’d like. I listened to the rustle of dead leaves across the yard, and there was some smell in the air, like a storm might be moving in, though there was no other sign. I had the chills down my spine. Albert had pulled himself up on the engine of the old jeep, and he was looking down into it, like maybe