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teeth smiling at her, teeth that seemed to glow, and for a second she thought maybe he was one of Them and They were smarter than she’d thought, sneakier than she dared to think, that maybe one of Them had been on the bus the whole time, all the way from Waycross, just biding its time, giving her enough rope, and, “Hey there,” the man with big teeth said. “Where you goin’?”
    No answer at first, don’t talk to strangers, Dancy, her mother’s voice, grandmother’s voice, don’t ever talk to strangers, and the man grinned wider, showing about a thousand more teeth. “Oh, come on,” he said, and it was a wonder anyone could talk around all those teeth, a wonder anyone had room for a tongue in a mouth like that. “You can talk to me. I don’t bite.”
    “What’s it to you where I’m going?” she asked him, and the man shrugged and shook his head, hair shaved close to the skin and ears too big for his skull. “It ain’t nothin’,” he said and shrugged. “I’m just tryin’ to make polite conversation, that’s all. Thought maybe you got a long ride ahead of you, and it might help to talk some.”
    “Memphis,” she lied. “I’m going to visit my Uncle Stewart in Memphis. My Uncle Stewart sells Elvis T-shirts at Graceland,” all that spilling out of her, all-at-once deception before she could even be sure any of it made sense.
    “Really?” the man replied, one eyebrow up, surprise or suspicion, and Dancy couldn’t tell which. “Graceland. Now that’s someplace to be goin’, ain’t it?”
    “I guess so,” and she looked back at the window, and maybe a police car wouldn’t be such a bad thing to see, maybe a police car would scare the man with yellow teeth away.
    “That’s the Home of the Blues,” the man said. “Memphis, I mean. W. C. Handy and Beale Street. What about you, Dancy? You listen to the blues?”
    And her heart jumping, skipping a beat, because she knew she hadn’t told the man her name, knew that he hadn’t even asked so how could she have told him. She kept her eyes on the window, her reflection superimposed on the night, ghost of herself trapped there in the glass, trapped between him and the night outside, and “No,” she said, whispered, and it might be an answer or a wish.
    “Well, you better start, if you’re gonna be stayin’ in Memphis. They take that shit pretty damn serious up there.”
    And then the bus was turning, air-brake growl and hiss past a Denny’s and a service station and a green road sign that read CHILDERSBURG.
    “Well, this is where I get off,” the man said, and he leaned forward on the seat, spit chewing tobacco on the floor. “But you take care of yourself, way up there in Memphis. Awful big city for a little girl like you.”
    The bus pulled to a stop again beneath blinding bus-station lights and Dancy looked away from the window, automatic flinch, the light like needles in her eyes, and he was already gone. Just a shallow depression in the seat where he’d been, seat cushion rising slow like dough, filling in any sign he’d ever been there, and her heart so loud everyone in the bus could probably hear it. Whoosh and thunk as the bus doors opened wide, and she thought she glimpsed the man getting off, his silhouette indistinct against the windshield before he was gone down the stairwell and out into the garish light, bright, bright lights to shield something dark from her weak eyes.
    “Jesus,” she said, loud enough that someone turned around and looked at her, glared, so the rest kept to herself. It was just a man, that’s all, just a man on a bus, and you’re about to pee in your pants you’re so scared. For a moment that even sounded good, good enough, anyway, and then, the smaller voice stuffed way down inside, afraid but speaking up anyhow. So how did he know your name? it asked, and she looked quickly back to the window, pushed her sunglasses back down on her face and watched the men unloading suitcases from the belly of