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had fallen to the floor. Dan bent over, grabbed it, then paused with Abra’s hand on the cap,
remembering what happens to soda when it takes a hard thump. From somewhere, Abra spoke to him
(oh dear)
and she was smiling, but it wasn’t the angry smile. Dan thought that was good.
10
You can’t let me go to sleep, the voice coming from Dan’s mouth said, so John took the Fox Run exit and
parked in the lot farthest from Kohl’s. There he and Dave walked Dan’s body up and down, one on
each side. He was like a drunk at the end of a hard night—every now and then his head sagged to his
chest before snapping back up again. Both men took a turn at asking what had happened, what was
happening now, and where it was happening, but Abra only shook Dan’s head. “The Crow shot me in
my hand before he let me go in the bathroom. The rest is all fuzzy. Now shh, I have to concentrate.”
On the third wide circle of John’s Suburban, Dan’s mouth broke into a grin, and a very Abra-like
giggle issued from him. Dave looked a question at John across the body of their shambling, stumbling
charge. John shrugged and shook his head.
“Oh, dear,” Abra said. “Soda.”
11
Dan tilted the soda and removed the cap. A high-pressure spray of orange pop hit Billy full in the
face. He coughed and spluttered, for the time being wide awake.
“Jesus, kid! Why’d you do that?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Dan handed him the still-fizzing soda. “Put the rest inside you. I’m sorry,
but you can’t go back to sleep, no matter how much you want to.”
While Billy tilted the bottle and chugged soda, Dan leaned over and found the seat adjustment
lever. He pulled it with one hand and yanked on the steering wheel with the other. The seat jolted
forward. It caused Billy to spill Fanta down his chin (and to utter a phrase not generally used by
adults around young girls from New Hampshire), but now Abra’s feet could reach the pedals. Barely.
Dan put the truck in reverse and backed up slowly, angling toward the road as he went. When they
were on the pavement, he breathed a sigh of relief. Getting stuck in a ditch beside a little-used
Vermont highway would not have advanced their cause much.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Billy asked.
“Yes. Been doing it for years . . . although there was a little lag time when the state of Florida took
away my license. I was in another state at the time, but there’s a little thing called reciprocity. The
bane of traveling drunks all across this great country of ours.”
“You’re Dan.”
“Guilty as charged,” he said, peering over the top of the steering wheel. He wished he had a book
to sit on, but since he didn’t, he would just have to do the best he could. He dropped the transmission
into drive and got rolling.
“How’d you get inside her?”
“Don’t ask.”
The Crow had said something (or only thought it, Dan didn’t know which) about camp roads, and
about four miles up Route 108, they came to a lane with a rustic wooden sign nailed to a pine tree:
BOB AND DOT’S HAPPY PLACE. If that wasn’t a camp road, nothing was. Dan turned in, Abra’s
arms glad for the power steering, and flicked on the high beams. A quarter of a mile up, the lane was