The actor who plays her father grabs Loretta by the arm and says, “Forget it. Your mom mustn’t be hungry enough.” He pulls her out the door of the wagon and Loretta stumbles a bit on the steps, but manages to get herself into the back seat of the car.

  “Why are you sitting back there?” her father asks.

  “I always sit back here.”

  “Sit up front.”

  Loretta doesn’t ask any questions. This act is serious, and she knows her part. She moves to open the car door to get out.

  “Just climb! Don’t make more noise.”

  Loretta used to climb in cars when she was little. She’s not little anymore. She tries to calculate the act and pretends she’s the contortionist from Prague. The contortionist from Prague was very bendy.

  “Don’t get dirt on the seat!”

  She takes off her shoes.

  “Jesus, hurry up!”

  Loretta stumbles into the front seat, and before she can fasten her seat belt, the car takes off down the small driveway, tiny bits of gravel flying under its tires.

  “You don’t need a seat belt,” her father says, as she’s halfway to buckling it. She buckles it anyway. He reaches over and clicks the belt free.

  “I drive just fine. Don’t be so over-reactive.”

  The drive is five minutes long, and her father sings along to a song on the radio even though he doesn’t know the words. He pretends to be a normal dad. He seems happy. The audience is tense because when characters change like this, it’s a bad sign.

  They pull into the Arby’s Drive-Thru lane and he doesn’t ask her what she wants to eat. Loretta always gets the classic with cheddar cheese and an order of potato cakes.

  “Hello. Welcome to Arby’s! Can I interest you in our—”

  “Just gimme a number one meal large with a Coke. And an extra order of fries.”

  “Large fries?”

  “Large curly fries.”

  “That all?”

  Loretta puts her hand up inside the car as if it were some sort of classroom.

  “And whatever she wants,” he says.

  “May I please have a classic with cheddar cheese, the gooey kind? And an order of potato cakes?”

  “Small potato cakes?”

  “Yes, please,” Loretta says.

  “Twelve forty-eight,” the Drive-Thru girl says. “Please come to the second window.”

  There are two cars ahead of them. Loretta’s dad doesn’t turn the radio back on and just sits, staring into the passenger’s side door. Loretta doesn’t know why he’s looking that way, but she doesn’t look away from her knees.

  “Why are you still wearing that old thing?” he asks. He means her dress. They left in such a hurry, she’s still got her blue-chiffon Ringmistress dress on.

  “Don’t know. I just like it.”

  “It’s too small for you.”

  “I know.”

  “Damn. Look at those legs,” he says. He’s still looking her way. At her legs. “You must’ve got those from my side of the family. Your mother’s side is all short and stubby.”

  Loretta doesn’t want to talk about her legs.

  “You shave them?” he asks.

  Loretta doesn’t want to talk about her legs.

  “You do, don’t you? With that cute little pink razor you got.”

  Loretta doesn’t want to talk about her legs.

  He reaches his hand over and rubs her knee. “Smooth, even in winter. Funny, you won’t brush your hair but you’ll stay smooth.”

  A horn beeps, short and impatient. Her father’s eyes jerk from her knee to the rearview mirror. He sticks his middle finger up and moves the car up one space, then puts it in park. Loretta doesn’t move.

  “Your mother won’t shave in winter, you know. Dumb bitch.”

  Loretta doesn’t want to talk about her mother.

  The person in front of them at the Drive-Thru only got a drink, so it’s time to move up and pay. While her father is turned toward the girl in the window, Loretta yanks her dress down to cover her legs as much as possible. She’s thankful her father doesn’t allow her to use the seat belt because she knows how to unlock the door and roll out if she has to. She saw it in a movie. Or maybe a dream. She can’t quite remember.

  Her father says, “Gimme a bag of condiments while you’re at it, okay?”

  The girl in the window says, “Sure. You want straws again this time?”

  “As many as you can gimme, sweetheart.”

  He’s looking at the girl in the window the way he just looked at Loretta’s knees. Loretta takes this opportunity to slide over toward the door so he can’t reach her without leaning.

  “And a shitload of napkins,” he says to the girl in the window. She gets the bags ready and waits for him to pay, and he says, “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m trying to find my wallet. Wanna give those to me to get them off your hands?”

  She hands him the Coke and the bag full of condiment loot first—ketchup, horseradish sauce, barbeque sauce, mustard, straws, and napkins—and he tosses it at Loretta, who places it in the back seat. He says to the girl working the Drive-Thru, “Call you later!” Then, before Loretta can turn back around, he plops the whole bag of hot food on her lap and takes off, wheels squealing and everything.

  “Shit. I forgot salt,” he says.

  “We have some. I saw it when I was eating dinner.”

  “You don’t tell anybody what you see in our house. It’s our private business. Nobody knows what I go through having to live with a crazy person. Damn shame she can’t just die.”

  Loretta doesn’t want to talk about her mother dying.

  She thinks back to Holloway and how good he was at pulling that tiny train. He used to walk it in circles, backward, and even a figure eight once. What a performer. Always loved the spotlight.

  Loretta doesn’t like the spotlight.

  “Can I eat this in the car?” she asks.

  “Nothing to stop you.”

  She opens the meal on her lap and starts to eat. She tries to take bites slowly and chew enough, but it’s been a week since she had good-tasting food and it’s hard not to rush. The potato cakes are hot, and she burns her mouth a little with the first bite.

  “Let me have one of those,” her dad says.

  Loretta wants to shove both potato cakes into her mouth at once so she doesn’t have to give one away.

  She hands him the one she already bit out of and he doesn’t complain.

  She eats the rest of the food in less than a minute in case he wants a bite out of her sandwich, too.

  He drives too fast down the lane to the back lot, and pebbles hit the paint job. The car is fifteen years old already, so it’s not like it matters, but he’s the one who complains. By tomorrow it will be her mother’s fault for the tiny scratches on the paint. By tomorrow it will be Loretta’s fault for wearing that dress.

  When she gets into her room, she opens the lunch box to make sure Gerald is still alive, and when she finds he is, she breathes a sigh of relief. Then she whispers, “Look at this one last time! I’m growing again.” She peels off her sweaters and turns once to show off her dress and then she takes it off and puts it in a plastic shopping bag. She catches a glimpse of her naked body in her small jewelry box mirror and smiles. She closes the lid of the lunch box and lies on her bed. She has to do this so she won’t die.

  She gets dressed and grabs the bag with her dress in it, a can of lighter fluid that she keeps for the ring-of-fire act, and a box of matches. Climbs out her window. Walks to the far end of the lot. Lights the dress on fire. Watches it burn.

  End scene. Curtain down. Audience applause.

  CanIHelpYou?’s CallYouLater

  Len says it’s not worth calling the police on a Drive-Thru runner. Even if they catch them, all they do is bring them back to the store to pay and Len says it makes them angry.

  “But they stole it,” I say.

  “Yes. And they’ll be back for more,” Len says.

  Len is only here for an hour to check in on things, and he seems about as interested in this Drive-Thru robbery as I am in doing my homework. He goes back to the office and I’m left talking to the manager, Susan.

  “The guy said he’d call me later,” I say. “It was creepy.”

  “You know him?”

  I run through my client list in my head. “No.”

  “You sure? Maybe he knows your parents.”

  “Definitely doesn’t know my parents.”

  “He probably said it to distract you—you know, so he could take off like that without paying.”

  I can’t explain the look the guy gave me when he said “Call you later,” but it was the kind of thing you’d see on that government website for registered sex offenders.

  I suddenly want to check his face, while it’s still clear in my mind, against the sex offender database, but then the Drive-Thru bell sounds and I slip my headset back over my ears and say what I always say.

  Three cars come one after the other and I feel jittery—more jittery than I should because that guy shook me. Each car arrives and I make them pay first. Always pay first. It’s the primary rule of Drive-Thru. I wonder why I didn’t think of this with the CallYouLater guy. I was looking at the girl in the passenger’s seat. I couldn’t see her face, but I saw how she sat, almost facing away from him, curling in on herself, shrinking.

  That’s what distracted me.

  Now I really want to call the cops, but I know Len wouldn’t listen to me and Susan would tell me that maybe the guy isn’t kidnapping/trafficking girls and maybe my imagination is taking off from the runway that is my brain, but that’s what the plane says and that’s what the runway is for. Something was wrong with that picture. That’s the name of my airport.

  When I finally leave work, no word from Ian all day, I decide to skip texting him and just call him. My mother is always saying how my generation doesn’t know how to use a phone properly.

  “Dude,” he says.

  “Dude.”

  There’s a weird silence. I’m not sure if it’s me still distracted from CallYouLater guy or if something is wrong. Ever since our acid night/I started falling in love with him, Ian has been different.

  “I skipped AP history today,” he says finally.

  “You love that class,” I say.

  “That research paper. My thesis statement was all over the place. All my sources were lame. I stopped caring.”

  I think about how I’m probably a bad influence on Ian. We should have never done that hit of acid. “I had a creep at the Drive-Thru tonight. It freaked me out.”

  “Creep how?”

  “Stole food,” I say. “Said he’d call me later.”

  “Ew,” he says. “Do you know him?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s older, you know? Had a girl in the car with him and she seemed scared. I didn’t piece it together until a few minutes later. I feel like I just helped a girl get kidnapped or something.”

  “Probably not.”

  “How would you even know?”

  I feel like he thinks I’m hysterical or something for thinking the most obvious thought in the world. He says, “Do you remember the car?”

  “It’s the guy who always asks me for straws. I know that much.”

  “Call the cops?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. Would they even care or believe me?” I say. “And what if I’m wrong?” And what if they know me? What if they know how I really make money?

  “Then you tried—just in case. I mean, if you really think he was that creepy, then you should do something about it.”

  This is when my brain runway does its best work. The plane is in the queue, not taxiing yet. I consider the same guy has asked me for straws and condiments at least twice before tonight. I consider the fact that he must be local. I consider the fact that I didn’t see the girl’s face. No planes ever really take off from my airport.

  “I won’t be in tomorrow,” Ian says. “They suspended me for a day.”

  “For skipping?”

  “Mmm. My mom’s freaking out.”

  “Dude, you’re a genius. Can’t you just come up with a thesis statement?”

  I feel wrong talking about thesis statements while nearly calling the cops on a guy who’s probably fine and isn’t on the sex offender list. They teach us how to write a clear thesis statement long before they teach us how to deal with creepy-maybe-sex-offenders.

  By the time my dad comes to pick me up, I’m scrolling through the sex offender registry on my phone browser. God, some of these people look like they climbed from the depths of Hell. I click the map view and as we drive home, I look around at how many there are. A lot of them just work around here. I knew a few worked at the battery factory because Mom rang her bell one day and we had a family meeting about it—places to avoid: the mall and the battery factory—but now I see a lot of them work at the bakery on Broad Street.

  Makes me never want to eat another shoofly pie in my life.

  THE FREAK LOVES WHOOPIE PIES!

  The Freak is warm. She misses winter and snow and big, fluffy coats. She closes her eyes.

  The Freak is somewhere flat. Too flat. You-can-see-a-hundred-miles flat. You-can-see-your-neighbors flat. You-can-see-airplanes-descending-to-land flat. It’s cold. If she was to guess, she’d say she was in Canada.

  She closes her eyes and flickers.

  Too hot. Palm trees. Flickers.

  Top of a mountain and the wind is unbearable. Flickers.

  A pebble beach in the rain. Green fields. This place is nice. There are sheep. The Freak loves sheep.

  She searches her pocket for her lighter and flicks it and watches the flame. It blows out in less than a second, but it was real and that’s what matters. There are no people on the pebble beach. She walks to the edge of the fenced-in field and she baas like a sheep. The sheep baa back at her. She is conversing with sheep. She decides to ask them where she should go next. She says, “Baa-baa-baaaa.”

  A medium-sized sheep approaches the fence. She looks pregnant or ready to sheer—The Freak wouldn’t know because The Freak isn’t a sheep expert or anything. The sheep says, “Go back to Pennsylvania. That kid with the shovel still needs your help.”

  The Freak says, “Okay. Thank you.”

  The sheep says, “Baa.”

  Pennsylvania. All The Freak knows about Pennsylvania is that her father hates it there. He grew up there, so this was a luxury—to hate where you’re from. All The Freak knows about Pennsylvania is that artists in residence don’t get paid much, because that’s the job her mother was working on the night The Freak nearly got punched by Kelly Pointer.

  The Freak walks to the water’s edge. She’s pretty sure she’s in Ireland or Scotland or New Zealand or one of those places where the grass stays vibrant green all year and the sheep speak English.

  She flickers. Tries to aim herself toward Pennsylvania like guided dreaming. She is surrounded by a herd of oryx. Their horns are the most amazing things she’s ever seen—some two feet long. Pure spiral. She’s fascinated. Fascinated until they start to run toward her with their heads down. Flickers.

  The big church. The statue of Mary. A traffic light on a big intersection. The Freak spins slowly to take in her surroundings. She sees the row of houses where the shoveling boy lives.

  She has the same coat on as the last time she was here, but it’s warmer now. March sixteenth. Should be colder in Pennsylvania in mid-March.

  The Freak walks. It’s sunny and she follows the signs for a yard sale. She has ten dollars in her pocket. It’s always there because she never spends it.

  Six blocks later she’s in a quieter part of town. Bigger houses, older trees, and people who tend their flower gardens. She sees the yard sale from down the block. People park and scan, leave their cars running, facing the wrong way on the wrong side of the road—people even park next to fire hydrants for a good deal.

  The Freak walks to the unstable clothing rack that bends in the middle from the weight of the clothing no one is buying. She doesn’t browse. She’s here for a reason and she finds it because it’s easy to find. She takes the dress to the woman who seems to be in charge and says, “How much?”

  “Twenty.”

  “I have ten.”

  The woman dials her face left, then right as if she has channels. The Freak hopes the woman finds the channel where she’ll take ten bucks. Not like it matters. She could just flicker out of there and pay nothing.

  “Fifteen. It cost me more than a hundred.”

  “I have ten,” The Freak says again, louder this time in case the woman didn’t hear her right the first time.

  The woman’s face dials right and left again. A young woman interrupts. “How much for the play kitchen?”

  “Forty,” she says. She looks back at The Freak. Looks her up and down. “It’s too small for you.”

  “It’s not for me,” The Freak answers. “Do I look like someone who wears sequins?”

  “Fine,” the woman says. She doesn’t say the amount again. The Freak finally spends her ten dollars. Rolls up the dress and puts it into a grocery shopping bag the woman hands her. She walks south.

  She has five miles to walk—she’d flicker if she could but she can’t risk ending up in Montana or Namibia again. She takes her coat off and leaves it on an oil tank outside someone’s house. She puts her free hand in her pocket and finds another ten-dollar bill. The Freak doesn’t understand this. She stops at a mini market and buys a locally baked whoopie pie.

  The whoopie pie is delicious.

  She finally arrives at the place she needs to be—a small charity consignment shop in the city. She puts the dress on a hanger and puts it where it needs to be.

  “You can’t just leave things in here,” the woman says.