#silver state

It is cooler out this morning than it has been in a long while. Chloe’s got a jacket somewhere in her closet and she digs it out just for the occasion. She doesn’t have much else that she cares to bring with her—not here, not from this house. It’s barely hers to begin with.

This time, as she stands over Cody’s sleeping form beneath her covers, she doesn’t worry about him waking up. She’s feeling a little reckless. She doesn’t want to think about the odds that it all goes wrong. She’s already waited too long.

He’s pretty. He’s tall and large and lanky. His hair is downy. The blankets twist around him, because he’s always been a thrasher in his sleep. She loves him. She really does. She is going to regret this for the rest of her life. But she just can’t be sure he feels the same anymore.

Rodney and Kick are all huddled up together on her living room floor, so at first she thinks they’re talking to each other. Her heart rate spikes. They’re just sleeping.

The operators don’t work at night but she happens to have spent a lot of time recently dialing the local police station. The emergency number is as good as memorized. Anonymity isn’t her first concern, not if she’s able to communicate the danger of the whole situation and get them on her side.

The keys are burning a hole in her pocket. She keeps fidgeting with them, scraping the rough metal against her fingers just to make sure she’s still breathing and this is real and it’s happening. The truck isn’t registered under Cody’s name; he isn’t even listed on the insurance. All they’ll see is her dad. He’ll vouch for her. He’ll understand. It’ll turn out fine. The law is on her side. 

She’s tapping her foot so hard she might give herself a blister. Those work boots are made nice but they don’t fit her quite right.

She picks up the receiver and almost lets it slip from her hands and clatter to the ground. When did her world get so hard to grasp? She feels like she should be crying or something right now but nothing comes to her. Just empty, just focused. She has a set of motions to go through and she’s going to get it over and done with and then maybe she’ll stop to think about everything.

She’s not sure how to give the police a tip-off. She’s never had to do that before; when Cody made her call them about the kids, she was just putting on a character and doing an act. That’s not illegal, it was coerced. Now, though—this call could determine whether she skates free or gets tied down forever.

Her voice is so soft, even to her own ears. She is freezing up. “Hi. Yeah, I’d like to report a crime.” She tells them everything. How he took the kids off the side of the road. The room in the basement. The Zip-Ties. How she tried to help them, but he threatened her. If she can just explain everything away, it will all fall into place: the kids get returned to their families, Cody gets taken away. She wants so badly to censor herself; he really wasn’t that bad, if you look at it the way I do. He said some stuff but he didn’t actually mean it. She stifles the impulse.

Yeah, it’s been going on for over a week. She didn’t know how to report it. She was scared. He has a history of physical aggression. She knows his location. She’s calling from there right now. It’s the house of a friend of hers, Chloe Rondale? Yes, she heard all about Chloe’s children.

Chloe omits the part where she lied to the police. Where she pretended she was rescuing lost children. Where she’s still lying, she can’t stop herself, it’s too easy. All the aspects that might make her seem untrustworthy, scheming. She’s not like that. She’s above that. She didn’t mean to get so tied up in all of this.

The lady on the other line (maybe even the same one that took her call last time) says she’ll look into sending someone over in a few hours. The kids aren’t in immediate danger, and the hardworking officers do need their sleep. This is good. It gives Chloe more time.

She stumbles through her dark house like a zombie. She sure feels like one. The moonlight shines through the little windows in her front door. It’s full tonight, a perfect circle. She is unlocking it. She is touching the keys in her jacket, just one more time, just to make sure they’re still there.

“Wait.”

She gasps, hand flying to cover her mouth. Her heart is going to beat its way out of her chest. She can feel it now, up through her esophagus, laid bare to the rest of the world. They can see right through her. They can see her fear.

It’s not Cody, that much is obvious. It’s the little one with the dark hair. Rod. She’s always been a little biased towards him, if she’s being honest.

“Where are you going?” he asks. Chloe can’t really see Kick from their place on the floor, but she can feel their eyes on her.

She leans down a little closer to speak to Rod. “I’m just going for a drive.”

He frowns deeply. “But you’re coming back?”

“Yeah, soon, in a few hours. Just go back to sleep.” She swallows the bile. Lying to him feels like starving a puppy. Kick is by his side in an instant. All she can take in is their eyes.

“You’re not coming back.” It is not a question.

She looks down at the hardwood floor. They’ve got her cornered.

“Take us with you.”

“No.”

“Please.”

If they keep pushing she is going to give in. She always does. “Don’t make me do this. I said no.” Not this time.

“We’ve got his spare keys,” Kick says.

“No, I’ve got his spare keys.” They’re right here. They’re in her pocket. She’s been keeping them in a box underneath her bed. She grabbed them as soon as she woke up.

She removes them from her pocket and squints at the tag. ‘HOUSE’, it reads. Her mother’s handwriting, just like all of the tupperware. Maybe she left them out, maybe she mixed it up. This can’t be happening.

Kick brandishes the correct keys with as neutral an expression as they can manage. She knows what they’re really thinking, though: we won. This freedom is ours to take. Time will keep moving and you will stay exactly where you are.

She stares them down. She is not going to fight a child. They can’t help it. They want this just as bad as she does. But they haven’t had to suffer for nearly as long. She lunges for the keys in their hand.

“No!” they hiss, pulling away. They’re looking at her like she’s a monster. Even Rod has stepped back from her, standing like a shadow behind Kick’s protective shoulder. She can’t be that bad. She never takes anything for herself. She just wants her life back.

“Please,” they say again. “We don’t want the car. We’ll leave as soon as we get where we need to go.”

“You’re going to wake Cody,” she whispers. Kick and Rod, in silent ignorance, duck their heads and push past her out to the front of the house. All of the lights are off on the street; Rod regrets not looking for a flashlight of some sort.

Cody’s truck is parked askew down the road, taking up just enough room to ensure parallel parking is doable but frustrating. Kick leads the way. The keys are balled up tight in their fist. Rod walks a little faster to keep up with them; no one is getting in the way of them and that truck.

When they reach the vehicle in question, Rod instinctively moves to open the back door. Kick yanks him back by the fabric of his shirt. “No,” they tell him, speaking directly into his ear. Their touch makes him feel all nervous and warm inside. “You’re driving.”

Kick isn’t trying to humiliate Chloe on purpose, they just want her to know who’s in control. It’s Kick. Kick is in control. Rod is by their side. Chloe can have the backseat.

Rod really hates driving in the dark. Headlights can only go so far, especially with that night in the storm resurfacing in his mind. It’s not helping that he doesn’t know the streets of Slaughter, like, at all. Walking them is one thing but driving is another. He looks to Kick and they meet his gaze and he trusts them. They’re gonna get him out of this mess.

There are a million questions. Why didn’t they think of the truck earlier? Why is everything so easy now? What’s the plan? Kick twists in their seat to face Chloe. They don’t say anything, but she knows just what they’re asking.

“Turn right,” she says. Rod doesn’t need the answers to all those questions, not when Kick and Chloe are behind him. The trees are beginning to reveal themselves. The houses and stores are lit by the brightest sun he’s ever witnessed, an invincible ball of orange piercing the blue horizon. It illuminates the clouds, it gives life to the decaying brick.  He is driving straight towards it. He is leaving Slaughter behind.

He forgot their clothes at the house, but it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. There is nothing that could make him want to turn around. He’ll miss his favorite shirts, sure, but he’s ready to reinvent himself. He doesn’t want anything that reminds him of his past.

Chloe knows how to get to the nearest Texaco pump. They fill the tank up all the way with her money. Kick picks up a few maps from the rack outside. Rod sends up a few silent prayers in the hopes that nobody stops them, especially now that Kick’s license is a melted crisp in the ruins of Cody’s garage.

Like many things, the drive takes forever. As Rod taps his fingers at every intersection, the police begin to pull up at Chloe’s house. Just one at first, just there to check out the situation. The officer is smirking a little as he enters through the unlocked door. He’s sure that the children from this call are related to the ones from the missing case. This is his big break; he’s going to solve it all on his own.

He’s calling for backup as soon as he sees Cody. Cody doesn’t speak to him because he doesn’t really need to. He isn’t armed. He stands on the staircase in his socks and his boxers and he stares . The officer fears for his life.

More policemen show up, crowding the small property and blocking the street. It’s like the fire all over again, except Cody isn’t going down without a fight this time. They ask him about the kids and he doesn’t respond. They tell him they know what he did, that someone called in and filled them in on everything. They said he better start talking or they’ll have to make an arrest.

The officers there talk a big game, but it doesn’t take much to clue them in that something is wrong here. The house, for one, is almost empty. It looks like someone was getting ready to move. There are clothes on the floor of the sitting room, boys’ clothing. Their main suspect was recently accused of arson—it’s that dyke that thinks she’s a man.

The police don’t exactly have a warrant but this is a matter of saving those kids. Nobody around here is gonna complain if they’re doing the right thing. They pick apart the house like turkey vultures to roadkill. There are many places that kids could hide. Under beds, couches; in cabinets and the bathtub; the owner of this house, Chloe something, seems to live exclusively out of her bedroom. She’s got a cluttered desk and a threadbare armchair, posters and papers and news clippings pinned to every inch of available wall space. They can’t find a theme; it appears to be just whatever caught her fancy. Dewey Decimal classification cards are spilled all over the floor. They try her closet, her dresser drawers. No kids, just a lot of polo shirts.

As Kick navigates the best they can and wonders what they might be able to eat for lunch, police officers spill into Chloe’s basement. The hallway leading down to it is unlit and narrow. All they can find are battery powered lanterns. There is enough peanut butter and saltines and boxes of pasta to last for months or maybe longer. Three locks on the door, a gas mask on the wall. Iodine tablets and a first aid kit the size of a duffel bag. She may be a prepper, but the kids aren’t there either.

They cuff Cody with no small amount of force. He is stick thin but not afraid to pull away from their waiting hands. They get some of the heavier guys to knock him around a little, pin him against a wall. He stews in his anger, refusing to move until they drag him away from the house. Even with his hands behind his back, he leans up against the door frame, plants his feet. They push Cody down the front steps while miles away, Rod sits back in the driver’s seat, feeling safer than he has in a long while.

Chloe is not a perfect woman. At every pit stop, every fork in the road, every red light, she will consider leaving them behind. They’re old enough, she reasons. They could find their own way home. She will watch them finishing each other’s sentences, playfighting. Kick holding the map upside down and somehow still figuring out the right directions. Rod’s voice is strong when he tells them that yes they do have to wear a seatbelt. She will feel the envy sitting heavy between her ribs. That she never had a friend like that. Or—that she did, and she left her behind.

But for now, as her home phone rings off the hook and Cody begins his attempts to blame his brother for everything, Chloe sits in the backseat and waits. She is patient. Kick and Rod have more willpower than she gave them credit for; they keep moving even as they are knocked down over and over again.

This resilience will take them farther than they could reasonably stop to think about in their current states, slouching and hungry and just a little bit pissed at everything. Rod might return to that little apartment in Nevada just to find Kick gone and their mother at the mercy of whatever pills she took in a moment of desperation. Kick might sit with Rod for hours trying to find a job that won’t send him into a panic at the thought of being left alone. A drunk phone call might accidentally inform Kick and Rod’s old families of their new whereabouts. Kick’s mom isn't the mother she’s supposed to be and the empathy will be a long time in the making, but by the time the baby fat is lost and a real home is settled into, Kick and Rod will have become new people even to each other.

Now that she’s on her own, Chloe can admit to herself that she will have to make some adjustments. There may be three hundred dollars in the seams of her jacket but they aren’t gonna last forever. It should be enough to get her on a plane and out of Arizona for good. She wishes more than anything that Cody was by her side right now. He makes her nauseous, dizzy. He makes her feel important. He is strong when she is not. If he saw her now, if he was right here, he’d be holding her and telling her not to worry. Probably. If she asked nicely.

As Cody sits in the backseat of a patrol vehicle for the second time in a matter of days, he is blinded by his wrath. Chloe didn’t even say goodbye. She was too much of a fucking coward to listen to his plan. She ran away from him and she isn’t coming back. It’s too much to think about right now. He’d like to kill her. He’d like to kill himself. He’d like to sleep forever and forget everything, but hell’s not a kindly place for people like him.

It will tempt him many times in the days that follow. He will crave the end times like never before. He won’t know what to do. He will forget how to live. When Rod and Kick think back to him, it won’t matter if he is alive or dead, if he deserves it or not. They will already have brought about the demise of Cody McGee.

When they eventually do reach state lines, Rod will have decided that he wants nothing to do with cars ever again. He will walk everywhere. He will walk until he can’t anymore, just like that interminable afternoon in the desert. He will argue, when they are older, about either of them getting a license again. He doesn’t want one. He doesn’t want to be in a car. He will say that Kick doesn’t remember all of the hours in the backseat of Cody’s truck. Or being in the station wagon—they weren’t driving, so it wasn’t the same. They wouldn’t understand.

It takes time to heal fear. Fear like a house of mirrors. Fear like an open wound. It’s claustrophobia on the football field. It’s hating the cowboy movies. It’s looking into the eyes of the person you’ve loved all your life, and seeing something that wasn’t there before.

Kick curls up in the passenger seat, dreaming of the new love they might welcome for a person they’ve never met. They have seen her hands, in all those severed baby pictures. Holding them, cradling them in her arms. A body detached from its head. How old is she now? What does she wear? Does she have long hair? Is it beautiful?

They heard her voice through the phone. Calm, a little tired, gentle. She was crying but it didn’t feel sad. It’s me Susan, Kick told her, but they call me something else now.

Kick didn’t mention the part about being a girl but not actually living like one. They were hoping she would just know , upon seeing the two of them. They think if she’s been able to choose a life for herself in an impossible situation, if she’s lived with the shame of it hanging over her head all this time and still persisted—well, she must understand the choices they’ve made, too.

“Should we call her to let her know we’re coming?” they ask, biting their lip.

“What’s her name?”

Kick thinks hard. It’s always been ‘your mother’. Your mother made some decisions I am not happy about. Your mother is living a different life. Your mother has her own problems to work through. “I don’t know,” they say. I’ve never been told.

Rod glances over at them. He’s forgotten about Chloe, probably watching the whole thing from the backseat. She doesn’t matter right now. “I guess we’re gonna find out. You know the address, right?”

Kick’s not organized; they never have been. They can’t memorize for shit, and they also can’t keep papers in one place even when they do write things down. Their mom told them the address over the phone, twice, and Rod wrote it on one of the maps, but by then Kick was already rolling it around in their mouth, feeling the way the numbers would sound when they asked for her room over the intercom. Tucking it behind their tongue like a secret. Of course they know the address. They never forgot it.

They wriggle around in their seat to face Chloe. She is sitting behind the driver’s side but she is looking out the other window. “You won’t tell, right?” they ask.

She chews at her nails, an uncultured display of vulnerability they wouldn’t usually expect to see from her. She’s all distorted through the mesh partition between the front and back row. “No.”

Chloe will keep this promise until maybe a year later, when someone curious finally convinces her to open up. It will take some prying; Chloe won’t want to talk about Cody or the kids for fear of causing a repeat offense. She will live for a long time treating Cody less like a villain of her past and more like a god. She will worry that he can hear her thoughts. She will not trust tall men, or teenagers with red hair, or Catholics. She will trust them too much. She will spend all of her time in libraries. She will not read.

Her home in the big city calls to her, and the simple things it has to offer will bring her comfort. Streets, named after trees, with crosswalks and stoplights; greenery instead of sand; horses in the Wissahickon. This drive is only the beginning. This truck is the end.

When they do make it to wherever it is that Kick and Rod want to go, some isolated suburb that Chloe’s never heard of, she won’t wait to drive away. She won’t check that they’ve made it inside, or that an adult is around to help them. She doesn’t want to wait anymore.

A chorus of ‘ are we there yet ’ ‘ are we there yet ’ ‘ are we there yet ’ interrupts the uncomfortably awkward silence in the tiny cab. Kick stretches languidly across the center console, reaching an arm around Rod’s headrest.

Rod elbows them. “You would know, dumbass. What does the map say?”

“Turn left at the next…I dunno. Is that like, a ranger station?” They hold it up in front of him and he pushes it aside so he can actually see where he’s going.

“That’s a lake,” Chloe says.

“Yeah, what she said.”

Kick puts their feet up on the dashboard. There is a large hole in the seam of their sneakers that definitely wasn’t there before they got abducted. “Turn left at the next lake.”

The lake is more like a pond. It’s all marshy looking and steer graze idly in its midst. The earth out here is wide and flat, the sky is blue. Rod thinks maybe he’s died and gone to heaven.

“Wait, I just realized. When he took us there was air conditioning,” Kick says, pushing the lever all the way up. Rod was wrong— now he’s in heaven.

Kick tries the radio, but it’s just static. The lock on the glovebox is broken, so they dig through it. A cross necklace that looks like it was made by a little kid; a Beatles tape; a little envelope with mostly pictures of car parts, except for one.

They pull it out and turn around in their seat again. “Is that from when you were our age?” Chloe’s pained scowl is the same, but that’s about it. She’s got all this makeup on and longer hair and some sort of jersey.

She squints at it. “Can I see?”

Kick tries to hand it to her before remembering the mesh barrier situation, kinda like how birds fly into windows. Rod laughs.

“Just get rid of it,” Chloe says.

“Really?”

“Go for it.”

Kick folds seventeen year old Chloe in half and throws it out the window. Her high school days are long behind her. She’ll have to keep telling herself that. Cody is long behind her. For better or for worse, he can’t get to her anymore.

Rod is trying to recall why he wanted to leave home in the first place, and he’s not sure exactly. In the dark of the winter, in between classes they hated and parents whose love came with conditions, running away was a golden idea. They wouldn’t be missed, surely. He and Kick are young, and they won’t have considered that sometimes you have to lose something to realize its value. Life repeats itself because of your capacity to lose, not in spite of it, and the two of them took more than just canned food when they left.

There’s more to running away than just the open road; there’s more to family than who’s supposed to do what; there’s more to devotion than consistency. And if it all seems unforgiving, in time the details will drift from Rod’s mind. The teeth in Cody’s grin, the shape of Chloe’s glasses, the press of the bruises on his wrists which will fade eventually if he would just stop rubbing at them.

Cody McGee has always been a simple man. All he needs from life is a job that doesn’t ask too many questions, a brother who owns a house and is willing to share, a woman he can come home to. A chosen family willing to feed his transsexual delusions. He doesn’t need kids. He’s still a kid himself, he’s still got a whole shitty life to live before he settles down. But there’s something about having them within reach, two baby-faced rats in his fucked up maze, that excites him. As long as he has power over something, anything, he can breathe comfortably knowing that what does not rise up will be stepped on.

This is why he hides things. Deciding to take in the kids was not the big scandal everyone else would’ve made it out to be. With the way they were carrying themselves, they weren’t headed towards anything except an early grave. Cody knows this. He’s lived through being shunned, being punished, thinking too highly of himself. Short hair and arrogance doesn’t make those two any less of the girls they were born as; if it weren’t for Cody intercepting them, they were never going to learn to man up. He saved them.

But that was before. The shop’s gone, he burnt his last bridge with Seamus, Chloe finally got smart and left him. He didn’t think it would have to come to this, but there’s no denying it any longer: it’s him, his truck, and those punk ass teenagers against the world. He’s going to save them all, or die trying.

He hasn’t slept since Chloe walked away. Like a coward, he’s been hiding in the one place that can’t turn him away—the bar. It’s still calling itself a saloon, just like it always has. It’s not much more than a cowboy themed tourist trap with a taste for the locals. His dad sure spent a lot of time here after the war.

Cody rots at the bar for as long as he can without ordering anything. He hates alcohol, never got the appeal, but he makes sure to keep some liquor in his dresser drawer for guests. It mostly gets used for toying with Chloe; she’s braver while she’s drunk. At some point he looks up and everyone’s left the place and the bartender just gives him a knowing nod. Cody doesn’t want anyone’s fucking pity, so he leaves. Sitting on high stools and oversharing with strangers is a shit pastime anyways.

On autopilot, he finds himself idling behind the wheel of his truck. Those kids don’t know how lucky they have it, having no attachments. It must feel so liberating to be completely unmoored, to have the whole road at your feet and ready to meet you. He laughs to himself. Too bad they don’t have a fucking car, those poor idiots. Cody can’t bring himself to feel bad for them. He’s got a whole host of marionette strings tying him to this town.

He tries the radio and gets only static. There’s bird shit on his windshield. The sky is still a cool, early blue, the dark refusing to let up too easily. The stars only remind him of Seamus and that stupid ass telescope he spent their grocery money on. He turns his thoughts to something prettier.

The scars in the leather of the seats from where Chloe grasped for purchase. The necklace she made for him, the one he’ll wear every single day until she rips it from his neck. That picture he keeps in his glovebox, Chloe in a ill fitted pinny in the school locker room. Hair still at her shoulders and heat forced curls a little flat on the one side. A band-aid from where his friends put a cigarette out on her neck. She didn’t want him taking the picture, but she came back. They always come back.

His camera is at his feet, lying in wait like a tired dog. He stopped carrying it around a few days ago. He itches with inspiration, but he wasted his film on a few meaningless shots and he’d have to drive out of town to get more. And he’d have to have money. He really should’ve gotten a new picture of Chloe before she left, just so he could compare it to her old self. That’s what he gets for taking things for granted. He won’t do it again, though; when he gets her back, he’s never letting go.

Also in his glove box is one of his sisters’ rosary; he can’t remember whose. It’s the kind with the plastic beads and embroidery thread he found right before he moved out of his parents’ house. It was a sign then, something lucky.

He hasn’t prayed the rosary in forever. It felt too stale, too ingenuine. He thanks the Lord before every meal, and when he wakes up, and when he fixes a car, and when he gets paid, and when Chloe falls asleep next to him, and when a photo develops properly. He’s too lazy to recite his prayers but he’s never gonna forget them. That’s gotta be good enough.

Kick watches him from the window, face pressed to the glass. Seamus still isn’t home, so they aren’t bothering to act secretive. “He’s just sitting there.”

“In his truck?”

They nod. The pickup is nearly camouflaged against the red sand. The sun is slowly rising. Going back to Chloe or Seamus for help would just be embarrassing. Seamus is nice but he has that creepy Shirley lady going after him, and Chloe seems to be getting more unstable by the day; they obviously have more important things they could be doing than babysitting.

Besides, the first thing Rod knew when he woke up that morning was that now is the time to leave. Something is off about the place. Everything is all wrong.

He and Kick fell asleep on Cody’s couch completely unsupervised last night. They came back inside well after dark and tried the back door and it was unlocked. Kick even went upstairs to investigate, and they couldn’t find anyone in the house.

This shouldn’t be allowed to happen—the two of them could run at any moment. What happened to keeping them restrained, to keeping them locked up? It’s like Cody doesn’t even care anymore, and that’s what scares Rod the most: if Cody isn’t bothering to keep a close eye on them, it must mean escape is impossible.

“I think we should go before anything happens,” he says. Actually, Rod’s hoping something does happen. It’s foolish, he knows that, but he doesn’t feel like orchestrating some grand scheme. He’s tired. He wants someone to blame.

Kick gives him a weird look. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“I've been saying that this entire time . Let’s fucking go!”

They have no belongings really left to bring with them besides spare clothes, so Rod balls those into a pile before joining Kick to raid the kitchen. The fridge is unplugged. All Rod finds in there is strawberry jam that’s three months expired. Kick says there’s a box of saltines in the cabinet, but by then Rod is feeling too guilty. “They’re clearly going hungry. I don’t think we should take anything.”

Kick rolls their eyes. “I’m going hungry as well.”

It is not until they’ve both left the house (Kick with crackers in hand, Rod carrying all of their clothes) that they realize they don’t know where the hell they’re going.

“Kick,” Rod says. “Where the hell are we going?”

“I thought you had a plan.”

He shakes his head.

“Maybe tour guides run through here?”

Rod hasn’t seen anything run through here at all. “We have no money.”

“But they can’t turn away lost kids.”

“Oh, is that what your mommy told you?” he mocks.

Kick hasn’t actually seen their real mom since they were a baby—only the shallow replacement their dad married as soon as she turned legal. Yet despite Kick’s mom’s efforts to stay hidden, them and Rod actually tracked her down. They called her. She’s in Nevada. She said she wants to get to meet her daughter again. She’s changed. She said they could live with her. She said she knows how bad things can get.

“Not in the fucking mood,” Kick scoffs.

“Sorry. I didn’t actually mean it.” He’s tired. Nevada looked so close on the map, just a few turns and a fork in the road away. They’d find someone who’d take them in, someone they can trust, who understands why they left in the first place. He remembers so vividly that feeling when they made it to the highway. Like they were homeward bound.

They make it back to the town center eventually, if it’s even considered that. There’s no street signs, but he recognizes it because of the ‘Don’t Pet Wild Burros’ placard. It’s that one road with the stores and the church and the electrical lines; he’s beginning to know his way around town now, even if all of the houses kind of look the same.

As per usual, the donkeys are their only company. Kick runs up to one of the churches they’ve been to and stands on their toes to scan the inside. “It’s empty.”

But that’s when he sees them. Loitering in the meager shade of the saloon’s porch, fair-skinned and fairer-haired, is a whole family. Rod can’t believe it: a couple under the age of sixty; other children . This is their chance. Rod warns Kick to act normal.

“Good morning,” Kick says, waving both arms, saltines forgotten. Perhaps the very antithesis of ‘normal’.

The kids, who have been playing quite aggressively with the rocking chairs on the deck, quiet down. Both the man and his children—who don’t look like much more than toddlers—are in tailored suits. The woman wears a shapeless dress that covers her neck, arms, and ankles. She peers up at Kick and Rod from beneath a ridiculously oversized sunhat. “Good morning,” she replies. Her husband steps a little closer to her, almost protectively. Rod hopes he’s making that part up.

“Do you live here?”

“No,” the woman says shyly. “We’ve come to spread the Word.”

“What word?” Kick asks. They’re such an idiot.

“The Word of Jesus Christ Our Savior,” the man cuts in. “Are you interested in joining our mission? There are lots of opportunities for young men like you all in the church.”

What church, Rod wonders. Why does everybody they meet have to be so weird? At least this family hasn’t yet recognized their objective heathenism. Rod misses his church. He wasn’t even thinking about the plan during that last service he went to. He didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.

Kick stares at Rod until he notices them looking. “Do I have to?” they whisper.

Rod nods. He doesn’t see why not—religious folk usually have food to share, and he trusts people with children.

They turn back to the family with a friendly smile. “Tell us more. We’d love to get involved with your church.”

While the long dress lady tends to her little blond children, her husband tells Kick and Rod all about their mission work. Something something blah blah blah ‘ kids aren’t raised the way they used to be ’ ‘ the faith is getting removed from schools ’ ‘ right to free speech ’ ‘ spread the word ’. He still hasn’t mentioned his name, or which denomination exactly they’re promoting. Those damn Evangelicals.

“Are you planning to stay here for a while?” Kick prompts when the spiel is over. They know what information they want, and they’re aiming right for the heart of it.

“Oh no, we’re just passing through. Preach the Word, in season and out of season.” Rod tries not to roll his eyes; way to lay it on thick. His church would never send people out like this.

Kick bites down on an elated grin. “Any chance you have room for us travelers? We’ve been looking for a reason to spread the word as well, especially up in Bullhead. You know how the city dwellers are, thinking they’re too busy for Him.”

This gets the woman’s attention. She glances up at her husband. “I’m sure we can make the space.”

The man attempts to quiet one of his fidgety toddlers before reaching over the railing of the porch to shake Kick and Rod’s hands. “It’s settled then. What are your names?”

“Sullivan,” Kick says easily. They really had that one ready to go. They cast Rod a tight lipped, expectant smile.

“Uh. I…Radney?” he decides. Kick bursts into laughter, failing to compose themself even as he glares back at them.

The family doesn’t seem to notice their shenanigans. “I suppose we’ll see you around,” the man confirms, not taking the liberty of introducing himself. “We’ll be leaving in about a month.”

Rod has to tap Kick on the shoulder until they close their slack jaw. He mutters something arbitrary and then he links his arm with Kick’s and walks them away before they can think to protest. He can’t be completely sure that they won’t throw a temper tantrum, right here in front of the nice family. He can’t be completely sure that he won’t throw a temper tantrum.

He walks them all the way down the street, past all the donkeys, around a few corners, until he can be sure that the family won’t be able to hear them scream.

Kick pushes their palms into their eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me? A month ?” they shout, already pacing.

Rod hops up onto the ledge of some unused shipping container. They’re pretty close to the main road now. The two of them could just start running and see what happens.

“Oh my God. I’m literally gonna scream.”

Hopefully not. Rod doesn’t want to attract too much attention. “We knew it was too good to be true, right?”

“I just pretended to believe in God for my own gain and then didn’t even gain anything.” They spin towards him, dust flying. “Do you know what that makes me?”

“A sinner?” he guesses.

“Bad at lying. Fuck, we’re never gonna get out of here.”

Rod takes a long breath through his nose. He swears he can still smell the fire from all the way on the other side of town. “We’ll find a way.”

“Whatever you say, Radney.” They can’t even pass this one off as mean. They try really hard to put some heat behind it, but it just doesn't work. Their scowl melts. They can’t stop giggling.

“You gave me no warning!” he protests, but he’s giggling too. ‘Radney’ might as well be the funniest thing either of them have heard in a long time.

They hop up next to him. Their hair is so spiky, ghost of a grin lingering on their chapped lips. Rod wants to reach out and touch it. Their hair. Not their lips, obviously. They squint their eyes at him, shock green in the bright sunlight.

“If we weren’t kidnapped, I’d kiss you.” They say it so seriously and don’t even blush or anything.

This startles him. He blinks. “If it weren’t so hot, I’d kiss you too.” That’s the truth, Lana Turner be damned.

“If we lived here, I bet this would be a pretty good spot to hang out.” They’re right. The building closest to them looks abandoned, and they’re hidden away between a few walls. The shipping container is probably older than they are, but it makes for a pretty good seat.

“I’d get bored,” Rod adds. “And there’s no ladies around here.”

“Yeah,” they agree. “If I had a toothbrush, maybe.”

“If I knew no one was looking.”

Kick doesn’t know how to feel about that. “Do I embarrass you that bad?”

Rod turns his whole body to face them. “No. I just like it when it’s just us.”

“‘Cause you’re a fuckin’ faggot,” they cackle, slapping him on the back. He won’t admit to it, but he almost falls off the ledge before regaining his balance. And he might’ve walked right into Kick’s trap, but they’re laughing again and he feels like laughing, too.

Cody, on the other hand, feels like actual fucking shit. He doesn’t know what to do with his time now that he’s got nowhere to clock in. He’s missing something, he knows this, but he can’t think of what it is. He could use some strong fucking coffee right now.

It’s getting hotter out. Sweat stings his eyes. This truck is a cage and he needs to get out of it. He throws the door open, grabs his keys, and turns his face to the world at large. This is it. There is no escaping now. Hell hath no fury like a man without his job or his girlfriend or his house—or y’know, however the saying goes.

He realizes what’s missing, now, because how could he forget: it’s those kids. Where the fuck did they run off to this time? Before he can stop himself, he is running too. He is throwing himself at the wind and he is hungry and he is tired but he is running, he is running because he doesn’t care if anyone sees him anymore and he needs this, he needs air in his lungs and an ache in his body that is greater than the one in his mind.

The first place he thinks of is Chloe’s house, but he’d rather spend all day searching fruitlessly than step foot over there. The next is the church. (Not his own—in his experience, Catholics don’t take too kindly to scruffy teenagers—but the Episcopals. Those protestant liberals practically get off on saving the rest of the world’s lost causes.)

He’s never actually been inside this church building and he sure doesn’t trust it. They’re always trying to host soup kitchens and charity events instead of minding their own business. A hot meal is tempting most nights, but he and Seamus have learned to be suspicious of free handouts. They’re capable adults.

Cody’s not looking for charity today, he’s looking for those fucking kids. He peeks inside the windows of the big red doors. No worship this morning. He’s getting angrier by the minute. He wants them back here, and he wants it now. He’s not sure he’ll be able to restrain himself if they keep wasting his time like this, even if he knows the only thing worse than kidnapped kids is kidnapped kids with bruises.

They can’t have gone far. There’s no way out of this place unless they found a way to hitchhike, but it’d have to be something real convenient. It’s pretty hard to just stumble upon a ride when nothing ever—

A passing car distracts him. He’s hypervigilant in this state, all too aware of his surroundings in a burning, seething way. The birds singing are too loud, and the ground is too dry, and the sun is too hot. The car is probably nothing.  He’s gotta keep focused.

He tries the desk at the shitty hotel, and is told that the guestbook is confidential. Since when? His next idea is the travel agency, a relatively new set up which he’s sure will be out of business by the end of the year. It’s just more outsiders trying to push their trends and values onto the people here. It’s pretty hard to make a town with a name like Slaughter any more appealing to the general public, and they’ll realize that soon enough and get the fuck out.

As Cody enters the tiny storefront, he has to remember to plaster that smile on his face. He’ll get answers by acting nice, not by scoffing at the prices on the wall. Everything is bright, clean, a ‘packaged deal’. There are pictures of tropical beaches and blue skies and city skylines. The whole concept is laughable; anyone can call an airport himself without having to pay someone to do it for him.

The lady behind the counter is smoking a cigarette. Her hair looks scorched at the ends and her makeup comes off in flakes. Cody, towering over her, can see down her shirt. He might’ve gone to school with her kid. He hopes she’ll mistake him for Seamus.

“Are you interested in one of our deals?” she asks lazily. He wants to pluck the cigarette from her mouth and step on it just to see the face she pulls. She could at least put some effort into pleasantries. Isn’t the customer always right? Man, he could really use a smoke himself.

“Just lookin’ around,” he chirps. His voice is higher than he intends but maybe it comes off as friendly. “Has anyone else stopped by this morning?”

“It’s quiet today.”

“Can’t see why. Now’s the time to escape the heat.”

She doesn’t answer, just gives him a mildly enthused laugh and rests on her forearms over the counter. So at least she’s falling for it.

“You get any kids come through here?” he asks. Wrong move.

The lady’s expression droops, her thin mouth just another fold in her sagging skin. Christ, he’s made her suspicious now. 

“Kids?” she repeats.

Two grimy sons of bitches, approximately five feet tall, eyes like spooked horses. “My brothers. Don’t want ‘em in trouble with anyone.”

She squints at him. “You’re a McGee, aren’t you?”

Uh oh. He flashes her a grin all sweet. “Yes, miss.”

“And you’re looking for…your brothers?”

Travel agent lady is trying to imply something here but Cody can’t figure out what it is. If she wants a question answered, she better say it outright. He slides his hands in his pockets and tries to remain calm. “Y’know, I bet they stopped to get ice cream or something. Thanks for your time, miss.”

She stands up. “Wait—”

He slams the door behind him hard enough to make the bell fall off. He really should eat something but Seamus has all of his fucking money.

Cody tries to think. When he was sixteen, he spent most of his time stealing makeup from his friends’ houses and sneaking cigarettes in the alley by the hollowed out shipping crate . That’s where kids go when they don’t want to be found, he’s sure of it.

As he rounds the corner he cannot fight the smile contorting his face. He is absolutely confident that the two of them will have found this place and set up camp. It’s perfect, really—the building next to it is abandoned, and the alley is formed by walls on all sides. The shipping container is rusted and peeling but it still looks sturdy enough to sit on.

And yet nobody is there. Fuck.

It’s not Cody’s fault for coming up short. There’s no way he could’ve known that just minutes before, Kick and Rod had spotted their ticket to ride: a produce truck delivering from Fort Mohave. Neither of them could remember where Fort Mohave was on a map, but they knew that it wasn’t Slaughter. Cody wouldn’t even be there to catch them because he’d been rotting in his truck since before the sun came up. Kick fast talked the driver while Rod mettled with the lock on the back door, and in no time at all they were on the move. All of this was going to make for a flawless plan. Well, except for the part where Cody watched the entire thing go down.

For the second time today he is sprinting through the narrow streets of his hometown, this time around with a real target in mind. The truck is moving at a snail’s pace but Cody keeps having to slow down and catch his breath because his chest is burning and his legs feel all weak and shaky. He doesn’t remember it being this way a few years ago when he still had actual muscle mass and it only spurs him to push harder.

With no small effort he reaches the window of the reefer, glaring at the driver until he brakes and rolls the window down. “Sir, I just saw two children climb in the back of your truck.”

The man behind the wheel, heavily bearded and probably twice Cody’s weight, shakes his head. “You’re the crazy that started that fire, aren’t you? I read about you in the papers. Get outta here.” He starts driving again. Cody keeps running.

“I’m not. Not lying, sir. This is. A serious matter.” It must not sound very serious with him panting like a fucking dog. “Stop the truck. Those kids. Are nothin’ but trouble.”

The driver rolls up the window and turns out onto the main road. From inside the truck, Kick and Rod hold onto anything they can reach—mostly each other—to keep from sliding across the floor with all of the other boxes.

“I think we’re out,” Kick says.

Rod can only nod along. He is luxuriating in the refrigerated air, nothing but cool metal and darkness closing him in on all sides.

“Rod. Earth to Rod.” Kick feels around in front of them, hand landing squarely on Rod’s face.

“What?”

“Can’t see anything. Had to check you were still there.”

Rod rolls his eyes, feeling especially uninhibited now that Kick can’t make fun of him for it. “Obviously I’m still here.”

They find his knee, and then his hand, holding on. Rod doesn’t say anything, just sits quietly in the dark. Their palm is warm against his own.

He’s not sure what the plan will be when they get out. Kick already had a conversation with the guy driving the truck, so they can’t pull an innocent stowaway act. Rod managed to figure out the latch system keeping the door in place, but he’s worried they might be locked in. They could always make a run for it, he supposes. That’s all they’ve been doing. Running and running and ending up nowhere.

His excitement is muted. They escaped. Cody is far behind them, and he won’t ever think to look here. But also nothing has changed. They are still in a small confined space at the whim of a stranger. They have no idea where they are being taken to—it could be way out of the way. At least this truck is air conditioned.

At some point Rod balls up their remaining clean clothes and rests his head on them, curled in a fetal position next to Kick’s leg. He almost lets go of their hand just to trace the goosebumps that have probably appeared there between the mosquito bite scabs and other mysterious scratches they’ve gained while on the road.

It surprises Rod how much a week away from home can change him. He hadn’t realized how smooth his life was until now. Him and Kick were no strangers to horseplay and weird bugs and a little mud, but at the end of the day some ointment or a bath or Rod’s blanket was always waiting for them. Now he feels like he’s just sitting in his own filth, never knowing when they get to eat or if they’ll still have access to a roof over their heads by the next day.

He isn’t able to fall asleep on the floor of the truck, feeling every pothole and sharp turn, but he makes peace with himself. If he doesn’t know where they’re headed, he can at least enjoy this time he has now.

Kick fashions a throne out of all the boxes, digging around through a hole in one of the cartons that got damaged along the way. As Rod lays at their feet, they suck the life out of an apple they found rolling loose. “You want one too?” they ask him.

“Want what?”

They toss an apple in the direction of his voice.

“Ow.”

He’s grateful for it, though. It’s just as cold as everything else in here and it tastes so sweet. He doesn’t know what they’ll do with the cores but that’s a problem for future Rod. He rests back against the boxes and holds the clothes tight to his chest.

The drive must take hours. That’s the only explanation. They have been sitting here for ages. It’s worse than any road trip he’s ever been on. “Do you think we’re going out of state?” he asks.

Kick shrugs; forgetting that Rod can’t see them they add “I dunno” and join him on the floor. Rod’s almost starting to get the chills being in here, which he knows he’ll feel guilty for once they’ve been kicked back out into the heat.

When the truck stops, everything topples over. Rod splays his hands out in front of him and takes most of the weight with his palms, but Kick leans on his shoulder at the same time and they both kind of fall into each other.

Before Rod has time to generate an escape plan, the doors are wrenched open. Kick instinctively shields their eyes against the glare of the sun, and someone yells in surprise. To Rod’s relief, they are not greeted by that bear of a man who was driving, but instead by two guys in uniform speaking another language—Spanish probably.

The men look at Kick and Rod in confusion and then at each other and then back to Kick and Rod. The one makes an almost comical shooing gesture and Kick grabs Rod’s hand and pulls him out of the truck, out into the bright sunlight, out into the town of…

“Where are we?”

Chloe, who hasn’t left Slaughter since her family moved in, doesn’t know where the kids ended up since she left them and she doesn’t care. There’s something much more pressing in her life right now, and it’s the ringing coming from the kitchen phone.

Cody hasn’t called her in weeks. He doesn’t like talking over the phone, he always says, when he could be seeing her face. He knows a phone call has nothing on a hand-delivered six pack after he’s made a mistake. He’d much rather show up unannounced than be the square that makes scheduled dates. Chloe’s really let her guard down when it comes to her callers these days—it’s usually just her parents, wishing her well from their retirement in Florida. It’s usually just her boss’ assistant. It’s usually just a telemarketer.

She knows it’s him because he doesn’t say a word.

“What do you want?”

Silence. She should really hang up, but she needs to know. She’s managed to avoid him well enough, but she’s not sure how much longer she can go on without his help. She doesn’t leave her bedroom except to go to work or to eat, although she hasn’t been doing much of either of those lately. She asked for a few sick days after walking away from Cody, in case he tried to do something stupid during one of her shifts. And without any car to drive out to the nearest grocery store, her basement supply is dwindling. It’s only a matter of time before she has to come crawling back to him, and he’s going to make her pay. It could at least be on her own terms.

“I’ll hang up.”

He laughs. “No you won’t.”

“I’m eating at seven, don’t be late.” She places the receiver down gently.

Cody’s not one to refuse a free meal. He arrives with three minutes to spare, hair washed and shirt tucked. Chloe seems to like it when he cleans up. He doesn’t hesitate to ring the doorbell, feeling a little like her dopey boyfriend from high school. What was his name? Not important—

“So you’re here,” she deadpans.

“So I am.” He tries for a smile.

“Just come in. And whatever you’re expecting, stop it.” She pulls him in by the elbow. He almost trips over her pair of workboots on the ground, which is odd, because normally they’re set neatly on the shoe rack with the laces tucked in. (And she absolutely does have a shoe rack for her singular pair of shoes.)

“Watch the camera,” he says, clutching at his bag right before it hits the ground. Now that he thinks about it, that faded fucking crossbody’s gotta be the only reason why Chloe let him in. Carrying it around every day might just be the one predictable thing about him.

She’s already made dinner when he comes in, set in on the coffee table because she has no furniture anywhere else. He’s never asked her why, actually. Some things are best left a private matter.

They eat in silence, him on the couch and her on the chair, refusing to look at each other like children in some fucking playground spat. It’s really getting on his nerves.

“Why now?” she asks, pushing her glasses up.

He laughs nervously. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why the fuck are you eating dinner at my house?”

“Um, ‘cause you invited me.”

She drops her fork and stands. “Then maybe you should leave.”

“Wait, no—I can explain.” Chloe frowns at him and crosses her arms. “How about I tell you while I wash these dishes?” he offers.

“I can wash my own fucking dishes.”

“Jeez, alright,” he says, hands up defensively. “Can we at least sit down somewhere?”

Chloe is aware that she should not let him further into her house. She is thinking this even as Cody is reclining on the desk chair in her room. Even as he is sitting with his legs spread wide, adjusting his pants.

“Get any new decorations while I was gone?” he drawls.

“Get to the fucking point,” she snaps.

“Damn, the mouth on you.”

She’s not going to let him get under her skin again. She’s not a teenager anymore. She won’t allow herself to be bullied like one, either. She takes a seat on her bed, legs pointedly closed. Not allowing herself to get too comfortable around him; he’ll only take advantage of it.

“Anyways,” he continues, “I am here for a reason. I’m sure you can probably guess.” He grins almost sheepishly, but it looks forced. That’s all he’s ever been: a wolf in sheep’s skin; a boy in girl’s clothing; a sadist in a repressed teenager’s body.

The room is dark when Chloe opens her eyes, light suppressed by blackout curtains. There is no telling what time it is. She feels around for her glasses.

Even in his sleep, Cody’s brow is tensed, but he looks far less intimidating like this, curled around her arm. There is a single strand of red hair on the pillowcase between them. His breathing gives a rhythm to the night, a living thing in a dead-still room. Chloe’s nose and throat burn every time she inhales. She must be dehydrated.

Staring at the ceiling, in the bed she’s only ever had to share with her thoughts, she tells herself she will only be gone for a minute. She won’t try to run. There’s nowhere to go.

She pulls the duvet off of her sweaty skin, trying to shift her weight without falling over. The air on her legs is a cold shock. She scans the floor for her discarded shorts, the ones Cody called ‘girly’ right before he took them off last night. She’s not sure where her boxers went.

Chloe’s head is still gauzy with sleep. Drawn towards the light in the hallway, she steadies herself on the railing. It’s nice to have something to cling to for now, but once she is in the kitchen she is on her own. Briefly she wishes she had a person, a guide, to tell her what to do and where to go. Like a fucking animal. She shivers, keeping her arms close to her side. That’s the same thinking that got her in this mess in the first place.

She picks up a glass that got left out on the counter. It’s probably dirty. She holds it under the faucet until it is overflowing. The water tastes metallic. Is she bleeding? Her finger comes back clean. She can’t tell if she’s going to throw up or pass out. Feebly, she hopes she doesn’t hit her head on the way down.

“Burning midnight oil?” Cody is leaning against the entrance to the kitchen, still wearing his jeans and t-shirt. Did he sleep in those? She hadn’t noticed.

“I was just getting water.”

“Scared me for a second there. I know you’re a flight risk,” he mutters, laughing a little.

He knows she’s a flight risk. He knows she’s…she knows he…they…

“Woah there.” He moves to grab her arm, keep her upright. “Let's get you back to bed.”

Back to bed. Back to her bed. He makes her feel like a child. She’s supposed to be stronger than this.

Chloe hesitates at the drawer next to the oven. She probably has Valium or painkillers or something. Cody watches her and she freezes. She feels like she should ask him permission first. She has time to consider it—he doesn’t know what’s in the drawer. He doesn’t know why she’s stopped, what she might be looking for, thinking about. He can’t read her thoughts.

But he decides for her. “C’mon, it’s late.” He takes her by the hand, leads her up the stairs. She stumbles and he catches her. It’s strange, because in the daylight he looks so frail.

There is still no light on in her bedroom. Cody adjusts the pillow and makes space for the both of them. “Look at me,” he says, quiet. Chloe tells herself she acts on reflex alone. He removes her glasses and sets them on the nightstand. She is blind now; at his whim. The darkness is grainy and soft around the edges and comfortable.

He’s got her backed into a corner, too tired to resist. She is small and weak. That’s exactly what he wants, isn’t it? The last thing going through her mind before she falls headfirst into an unwelcome sleep is that now she is laying on the other side of the bed, trapped between him and the wall.

Cody stays awake for a while afterwards. He is praying.

Chloe looks good in the morning. Prone. He almost wants to poke at her just to see if she reacts. He could do anything right now. This never happens; she’s usually awake long before he is.

Everything is going according to plan. Why would she let herself be so vulnerable if she wasn’t offering up an apology? It’s women like Chloe, the kind who get too caught up in their own heads, who make stupid decisions like the one she made. ‘This isn’t working’. Of course it is. She came right back. She should really be thanking him, if anything; he forgave her mistake and even welcomed her back with open arms.

She’s dreaming something. It makes her smile, a smile he hasn’t seen in a while. Like she’s having fun. She whispers something into the pillow, but he can’t tell what she’s saying. Then she’s awake, taking him in with those big eyes, and her smile fades. Now she just looks tired.

“What were you dreaming about?” he asks.

“Can’t remember.”

He gets his arms around her, pulling her close beneath her knit comforter. Her hair smells clean, that same shampoo that always fogged his brain when they were in school together. “Was I in it?”

“Yeah,” she says, because it’s what he wants to hear. She rests her head on his bony shoulder, trying to go back to sleep. It doesn’t work.

“You got anything going on today?”

She smiles. “Nope.” If she’s being honest, she’s forgotten what day of the week it is. The curtains are open now. His hand is on her waist.

He starts with her mouth, but his lips soon wander. Her jaw, her ear, her neck. Kisses to her cheek, words pressed to her skin. He doesn’t say ‘ I missed you ’, because he doesn’t have to.

It’s just like it used to be, like when they met each other again, when he wormed his way into her bed and she never regretted it like she thought she would. When it was just the two of them and nobody else. She misses this. She wants to stay here beneath these blankets for as long as she can stand it. As long as Cody is with her right here he is focused.

He whispers things so sweet she can’t help but blush. He’s charming when he wants to be. Nothing’s serious anymore, except for it is, except for it’s so true and exposed that there’s no room left for secret keeping. No lying, no sneaking around. Nothing between them except for their clothes, but that’s never stopped anyone. He has changed. He wasn’t capable of this before.

He smiles against her lips, and she smiles too, keeping her arms around his shoulders, pulling him closer. (Did he finally wash his hair? Took him long enough.) He kisses at her neck so softly. She’d forgotten what that was like—with those kids around, he was always too stressed to treat her gently.

“How’re you doin’?” he sighs, mouthing at her palm, the underside of her wrist.

She removes her hand from his grasp and instead uses it to get some leverage, kiss him deeper, suck on his tongue a little. “Doing good.”

Cody readjusts so that his full weight is on her, their legs all tangled. His hands are everywhere, holding her, teasing her, making her feel warm and tingly and cared for.

“Y’know,” he murmurs, between lavishing her neck with attention. He’s probably given her more than a few bruises but she doesn’t think she’ll mind. “I think I have something of yours.”

Chloe pauses. “You do?”

He grins, reaching for her glasses on the nightstand and handing them back to her. Then he pushes some of the blanket aside, retrieving something from his back pocket and presenting it to her. It’s just a piece of paper, really. How on earth did he find it?

“You wanna explain this?”

No. No she absolutely does not. “Get off of me.”

“How about you tell me what your plan is?”

“I was just gonna use it to visit my family,” she says, lying through her teeth. She tries to sit up. He keeps her pinned.

“Do you think I’m stupid? They send you postcards from Florida year-round.” He holds it closer to her face as if she doesn’t already know exactly what it says: Las Vegas to Philadelphia. American Airlines. One-way trip.

She tries to take it from him. He holds it out of reach, barring his forearm over her wrists. “Hey, calm down, baby. I know you’ve been wantin’ to leave, and I won’t stop you. But I need your help first.”

Chloe takes a long breath, glaring at him. “With what?”

He pulls away to straddle her, keep her beneath him. She’s going nowhere. “I need you to make a phone call. Then you can have the ticket back.”

“Can’t you do it yourself?”

“I don’t have a great rap with the police,” he laughs.

She doesn’t want to begin imagining what Cody could possibly want from the police. “And what if I don’t?”

He leans in close, pressing his fingers beneath her chin so hard it hurts. “Then you can kiss Philly goodbye. This little ticket is pretty flimsy. Easy to lose. I know you’d hate for something to happen to it.”

He’s right. Flights out of Vegas were the cheapest she could find. She still has to give the library her two weeks notice. She has to tell her parents. She has to convince her neighbors to buy the house. Maybe a phone call is the least of her worries.

“Alright,” Cody says, after Chloe has given in to his wiles and dragged her ass out of bed. He is standing in the middle of her kitchen with his arms crossed. She’s not buying it—he’s trying to be all intimidating, but there’s still a possibility that she holds out, right? He must be worried. He must have some doubt. She’s not that easy.

She picks up the receiver and dials the number to the police station that Cody apparently has memorized. He only gave her a loose script, but she gets the gist of it. Get the kids back.

As she speaks, he nods his approval. With every word he drifts a little closer, until he’s hovering right over her shoulder. It’s stressing her the fuck out. She cups the transmitter with her palm and turns to him.

“What’re their names?”

“Uh.” Cody hadn’t thought about that part. “Rodney and Kick Rondale?”

She leers at him. “You want me to tell them ‘Kick’ ?”

He shrugs.

Resigned to her task (and the thought of that ticket), she follows through. “Yes, Kick. K-I-C-K. No, of course not. It’s a family name.”

Cody can’t help but snicker a little, to Chloe’s obvious dismay. He sobers when she asks him for their height, weight, eye color, birth date, and what they were last seen wearing. Damn, he really hadn’t thought this through.

“Give me a moment,” he hisses, searching his jeans for a piece of paper or something. Coming up clean, he looks to her. The pockets of her shorts, seemingly endless, hold the answers to everything. She hands him a notepad and a pen and he begins to write.

Kick , 5 foot. Something. He guesses 5’5. Both of them have brown eyes, right? Kick is skinnier but more broad, and the other one is kinda stubby, so…about the same weight. He doesn’t fucking know what they were wearing. A t-shirt and shorts, probably. Hunched over the kitchen table, he tries to recall the driver’s license. “Are they both sixteen?”

“No, Rod’s a year younger.”

“Great, so just. Say whatever.”

Chloe tries not to roll her eyes at him. “They want to know why they can’t find any records of these kids,” she whispers.

“Uh…’cause we’ve been living off the grid. Home schooling. It’s a religious thing.”

Chloe could call him all sorts of colorful names. She could point out all of the holes in his stupid plan. She closes her eyes and thinks of Philadelphia, of her childhood, of those tree lined streets and cool nights and the little dogs she’d say hi to while they were out walking. She thinks most of her memories there are maybe a little bit made up, but rose colored glasses just fit so pretty.

She explains the situation to the police lady on the other line. She gives her the fake descriptors. She comes up with two arbitrary birth dates and makes sure Cody writes them down so they keep their story straight in the future.

“And tell them we want posters,” he says. “All over the county. I already sent in the pictures.”

“Where the hell did you find pictures of them?”

Cody thinks back to that afternoon in his garage, when his hands were shaking so bad he didn’t know what to do with himself and the sight of the kids, so angry and spiteful, now under his care, had made him want to capture those faces forever. They’re his kids now. “Had to take a victory photo.”

Chloe’s surprised she doesn’t just slap him right then, but she’s already seen one too many interactions with Cody devolve into fisticuffs in the past week.

“Yes, ma’am. Posters wherever it would be helpful.”

Cody looks her in the eye as she’s speaking. “It’s urgent .”

“It’s an urgent situation,” she echoes. “No. I last saw them…”

“They were in the back of a Fort Mohave delivery truck.” Chloe isn’t about to ask questions. She repeats his observation word for word.

They were by themselves. She didn’t know they were planning to run away. No, they have no other known family members. They may be hostile to those trying to approach them. They didn’t leave with anything except the clothes on their back.

By the time Chloe hangs up, she feels as though she really did lose two children, and she’s poised to flee. “Give me the ticket.”

Cody looks down at her for a long time. “I’ll give it to you when the kids come home.”

“They are not our kids !”

He just shakes his head, laughs wryly. “You’re right, honey. They’re mine.”

Rod still has no idea where they landed. They’re outside some kind of a fancy building. Mountains loom in the distance, perhaps the same ones, but it’s clear they’re far from Slaughter. The streets are paved, and the houses are tall and new and clean. Power lines run above their heads, but something else catches Rod’s notice. “Kick, are you seeing it too?”

They nod.

On each utility pole, as far as the eye can see, a grainy picture has been posted with their faces on it. Taped to every door, in the corner of every window. Rod looking scared out of his mind, Kick’s face set with a grim determination. And above it: Missing Children.

“Ew,” Kick is saying. Rod is back to sitting on the curb with his head between his knees, watching the produce truck workers pack up the shipments. He is barely listening to them.

Kick puts their hand on their throat and makes an exaggerated gagging noise. “Gross.”

“What? Did you step on a worm or something?”

“No,” they say, ripping a poster from a pole and handing it to him. “Look. It says we’re siblings.”

Rod picks up some dust from the side of the road and watches it slip between his fingertips. “So?”

“I mean. Y’know,” they say, blushing a little.

“I don’t get it,” he insists. “Stop acting weird.”

They sigh, placing both hands on his shoulders. “Incest, Roddy. God. We cannot be related!”

“Oh! Gross, dude, why would you even say that!”

They join him on the curb. “Because! It’s relevant. He’s trying to turn us into some psycho family unit—”

Rod doesn’t have time to think of a good reply. A police car is rolling slowly down the wide street, and they and Rod are basically asking to get rounded up. “Act casual,” Kick whispers.

Casual. Right. Rod dives behind a scrub bush.

Seeing no other options, Kick follows his lead. The cruiser passes right by them without stopping. “That was a close one,” Rod breathes, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Kick is still there.

Uh oh.

“Stay right there,” says the man with the gun. That’s not a pistol, that’s a semi-automatic hunting rifle. And it’s inches from Rod’s nose. The man shifts his stance. He’s wearing a tailored suit and probably an unholy amount of pomade. Kick clutches Rod’s hand again.

“I’m calling the police on y’all.”

When Kick and Rod stay frozen in place, the man snaps “Get up!” and waves the gun in their faces. The produce truck is long gone, and along with it any witnesses. They are ushered into the lobby of what appears to be an upscale hotel. A woman behind a cart of luggage shrieks when she sees the three of them and the man in the suit with the giant gun barks something at her that Rod hears but doesn’t really process.

As they stumble down the hallway, Rod catches a glimpse of himself and Kick in a tacky, gold framed mirror. They are dirtier than ever—when did that happen?—and look to him like not much more than a flash of gangly limbs and gaunt faces. He’s afraid to touch anything in this place for fear of disturbing its curated cleanliness.

A door beneath the excessively opulent grand staircase opens to reveal a much smaller room and the two of them are pushed into a corner. There’s a phone on the wall and the man stands in the doorframe as he begins to dial.

The police arrive within the hour (although the fancy suit man has already hidden away the gun by then). Kick and Rod spend the night in the chairs of the station’s waiting area. Kick falls asleep on his shoulder. Rod is wide awake.

At 2:03 AM, according to the clock that has been taunting him all night, Chloe Rondale walks up to the desk and claims she is here to collect her missing sons, Kick and Rodney Rondale. She disappears down a hallway with an officer. Rod doesn’t see her for another ninety minutes. When she returns she looks as if she has been through war, but maybe that’s just how Rod feels.

The ride back is quiet, Kick stirring sleepily in the backseat of Cody’s pickup while Rod leans against the window. Cody is not with them. Chloe looks small in the driver’s seat. She doesn’t speak to them at all, doesn’t look at them.

Cody hasn’t slept either. How can he, when Chloe and the kids are coming home? He was a little worried that she might just run off with the two of them, but that’s the ingenuity of his plan: as long as he has the ticket, she has to come back to him.

He is sitting on Chloe’s couch when they walk in the door. He’s holding the ticket between his fingers like a cigarette. He is ready.

His kids look absolutely exhausted. It’s obviously their fault—they’ve been up all night. Up all night running away from him. He should trip them, knock them to the ground. Watch them scramble to get up. He should make them apologize.

But he’s looking at their unguarded expressions, the way he can see every passing thought displayed on their little faces, and he knows he’s struck the jackpot. And then there’s Chloe, too. Just for a minute there, she’s back to how it was this morning. Trusting; careless. Perfect. She did drive eight hours just to pick up the kids. He oughta reward her.

“Give it to me,” she demands.

He rises to meet her, walking slow. “Oh, baby…” He takes one more look at her pretty face, the set of her jaw, pallid in the uneasy sunlight breaching her closed blinds. It must be almost noon by now. He holds the ticket up in front of her face—just so she gets a good view. He rips it clean down the center. Halves, quarters, eighths. He tries not to enjoy it too much.