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So before she could ask who I was maybe wanting to kiss, I said, “Now you. Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

“All right … It’s stupid and it’s pointless and it ain’t never gonna happen but … I wanna be a country singer.”

“You sing?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

I took another drink of the beer. Then, because I was feeling bolder than I usually did, I said, “Sing something for me. Now.”

Bo just laughed.

“I’m serious,” I said. “I wanna hear you sing.”

“I don’t sing in front of people.”

“You’re never gonna make it as a country singer, then.”

“You’re right. I won’t.”

“Come on, Bo. Please? Just a little bit of a song?”

She sighed. Then, so quiet I couldn’t make out the words, she sang. But with each note, each lyric, she got a little louder. Until I finally recognized the song.

“ ‘Jolene, Jolene,’ ” she sang, her voice getting louder and clearer.

And she could sing. Real well. Her voice was rich and thick. And it even had a little bit of Dolly Parton’s vibrato.

By the time she hit the chorus again, she’d gotten past whatever nerves had kept her from singing in front of people before. Like the music was in her, like it had possessed her, she hopped to her feet, standing on the hood of the car. Then she climbed onto the roof.

I spun around to watch as she belted out the song, using the roof as her stage. Her feet tapped to the beat and her arms waved around. I smiled. I couldn’t help it. No one who saw this could think of Bo Dickinson as anything but wonderful.

I finished my beer and tossed the can on the ground, making a note to pick it up later. Bo had finished “Jolene” and started in on “Delta Dawn” already, and that feeling that had dragged her onto the roof of the car found its way into me, too, because I started singing along with my not-so-nice voice.

“ ‘And did I hear you say, he was a-meeting you here today …’ ”

And then, without thinking, I was standing up on the hood, trying to keep my balance and the tune as I moved to join her on the roof. I stumbled a little, and Bo grabbed my hand.

For a second, we both stopped singing.

I thought she’d tell me to be careful. Tell me getting on the roof was a bad idea. I might fall. I couldn’t see the edge. She wouldn’t have been wrong.

But she reached for my other hand and pulled me up to join her. To share her stage.

She started singing again, picking up from where we left off.

We sang our way through half a dozen songs like that, belting them out from the roof of the car. And even though I almost lost my balance a few times, Bo never told me to get down. She just kept her hands close. Not gripping, not clinging. Just close. Ready to catch me if I started to fall.





“Hey, it’s our song.” Agnes leans forward and turns up the Reliant K’s radio. “ ‘Laugh with me, buddy,’ ” she sings along with Willie Nelson, smiling at me. She’s wanting me to sing, too.

I can’t, though.

I try to smile back, but the corners of my mouth feel heavy, and I’m glad she can’t see my face real well. “Since when is this our song?”

She stops singing for a second to answer. “Since I decided just now.”

We’ve been in the car for about an hour, and she’s been talking and singing the whole time, acting like we’re on a road trip instead of running from the law.

“Maybe we could get a cat,” she says once the song is over.

“What?”

“A cat. In our new place. Do you think Utah would get along with a cat?”

“I … I dunno.”

“Let’s ask.” She turns in her seat, looking back at the dog. “What do you think, Utah? Should we get a kitten when we find a place of our own?”

I hear Utah’s tail thumping against the backseat.

“You gotta promise not to eat the cat, though,” Agnes says. “Can you promise that?”

The tail keeps thumping.

“Good.” Agnes spins back around in her seat, laughing and smiling in a way that oughta make me feel happy but instead makes my chest ache. “Utah promises not to eat our future pet cat. So it’s decided.”

I keep my eyes on the stretch of blacktop ahead, trying hard to fight the thoughts of me and Agnes in an apartment with Utah and a cat. In my imagination, it’s small and white and way too fluffy. And she’s named it something like Waylon or Hank, after a country music singer. And we’ve got a place that’s small but clean, with bookshelves full of poetry and braille books and a kitchen that ain’t never empty.

I fight it because as nice as it sounds, that ain’t what’s gonna happen.

But I can’t tell her that. Not yet.

“Hey, listen,” Agnes says after a minute. “I’ve been thinking. I know we’re headed out to your daddy’s, and it’s a long ride. But we’re not in a big hurry, are we?”

I glance at her, then look back at the road. “Depends how you look at it. Why?”

“I was just thinking … I’ve never been outside of Mursey, and no one but Colt knows what car we’re driving now … We ought to make the most of this driving, you know? Make a few stops. Have a little fun.”