“All of it,” I say.
“Maybe no one will see.”
“More people were videoing us than not videoing us.”
“I’ve been trying to think of a spell.…”
“To erase the Internet?” I set my sandwich on the car bonnet and start wrapping my scarf around my hair again. “You’d have to cast a holy book and sacrifice seven dragons.”
“So it’s notimpossible.…”
“Give it up, Bunce. We are well and truly fucked.”
“Then why aren’t you more upset?”
Simon swaggers out of the shop, holding a bag. “I’ve found a way around the sandwich problem,” he says. “Beef jerky! This place sells at least thirty different kinds.”
He reaches into my jeans pocket for the keys. “My turn to drive.”
I spin away from his hand. “Is it?”
He holds my hips against the car and digs the keys out. We’re both laughing.
Bunce is watching us.
Simon gets into the driver’s seat, and Penny steps closer to me. I still haven’t managed this scarf. “We’ll be home in less than a week,” she says. “We have to think of something.”
The car starts. The radio is already blaring.
“Where are we sleeping tonight?” Simon asks.
I slide past Penny and get in the car. “We’ll know it when we see it.”
I was being poetic earlier, when I said that America was endless. But Nebraska reallyisendless. As big as England and as empty as the moon. I’ve never seen the sky look so black.
Cornfields give way to scrubby grasslands and rocks. We think we see pixies just after dark—flashes of light in the tall grass. But when we pull over and get closer, they turn out to be little phosphorescent beetles. “Fireflies,” Simon says. “I think.”
He and I wade into the grass, watching the bugs slowly blink on and off. They’re so sluggish in the air, it seems like you could almost catch one—and then Snow does catch one. He holds it out to me in his cupped palms, and I put my hands around his and look.
“Are they magic?” I ask.
Simon shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
The firefly gets bored of inspecting Simon’s palms and flits up between our bowed heads—we both jump. Then we try to catch another one, chasing each other as much as the blinking lights.
Even Bunce stops brooding long enough to join us. She squeals when she catches a beetle, dancing around like a pony. “Wolla-la-laggh!I’ve got it! I can feel its wings!”
“Don’t crush it!” Simon says. “Let’s see!” He opens her fist, and the firefly flies out and lands in his hair. Simon freezes, a smile hanging off the edge of his lips, the light blinking slowly on and off over his ear.
I move in to kiss him, trying not to startle the firefly. I can do it, I’m vampire-stealthy. Snow sees me coming and doesn’t move. But when my lips brush his, he pulls his face to the side. The firefly takes off.
Back to this then. Whatever was making him bold earlier has burned away.
“Come on,” he says. He’s still smiling, at least.
I want to take his hand and keep him here with me, in the weeds.“Are you still mine?”I’d ask him.“Do you still want this?”
But I don’t.
