Page 160 of Roadrunner

Arthur didn’t change it.

He just wanted it known.

I shifted.

The back of my neck was damp.

January in Tucson was not supposed to feel like August in a closed Jeep, and my body had stopped taking instruction from the calendar.

I blamed the blanket.

Then I kicked the blanket off.

Riley’s hand found my ankle.

Not a question.

A check. “You want the window?”

“I want the planet to drop ten degrees.”

Arthur glanced over.

He had the look he got when he was adding things up and pretending he wasn’t.

“Ginger ale’s in the fridge,” he said.

I hadn’t asked.

He had been paying attention since the humming.

I went and got it.

The can was so cold it hurt my palm, which was the first honest temperature I’d felt in an hour.

When I came back they had left my spot the shape of me.

The gunshots kept arriving on schedule.

Riley laughed once, low, at something that wasn’t that funny.

Arthur’s foot tapped the table until Riley looked at it.

Arthur moved the foot.

Not because he was afraid.

Because the rule existed and he lived here.

I drank the ginger ale and watched them instead of the movie.

Martina passed through with a basket of laundry and did not comment, which was how Martina blessed a room.

I could have named what I was looking at.

I had named a lot of things in my life that would have been better left to the body.

A boy who corrected gunfire.