“PEOPLE—” THE DRIVER’S voice cracks over the intercom. “This is the final rest stop until we part company and some of you change buses or go home to your families—thank God.”

Before I know it, Miguel and his sister squeezing past WK to sit on my lap. “That breath.” I pull Miguel’s thumb out his mouth and cover his lips with my hand. He covers mine too. “Guess both our breath stink, huh?” I plant a big kiss on his right cheek—his sister gets one on the nose. “You!” It’s the driver. “I’d like to see you for a minute.”

WK clowns me on my way up there. Says the driver think he’s my father.

I step over the yellow line. “What?”

He don’t answer. He let me stand there while he pull into a tight space, then turn off the engine. “Here’s the plan.” He puts on the brake. Gets off the bus before me and everybody else. “Mrs. Rodriguez will escort you wherever you need to go—to the bathroom, for a drink of water—no stores whatsoever. She says she has food for you.”

I say it’s against the law what he’s doing. He asks if I want him to call the police. “There’s a station up the road.”

Most people on the bus still sleeping. One or two come off, look my way and shake their heads. When I ask the driver why he’s doing this to me, he says, “Passengers talk. Some like to take pictures. Underage drinking is against the law, you know.”

WK gets off the bus with Blaine. “You okay, Char?”

I think about the police. About me being drunk on the bus. What if they arrest me, call JuJu, or keep me from getting back on? “I’m cool.”

Them two walk away holding hands. Mrs. Rodriguez’s kids hold my hands after they hop off the bus. “Come along, Char,” their mother says.

April come off last, sweetening the air on her way by.

“Who got Cricket?” My eyes go from one bus window to the next, then back to her.

“Some man and his wife said they’ll watch her.”

“I woulda done it if you asked.”

She walks past me, past the rest stop and the lamps that light up the dark. Taking off her heels, she walks through the grass, then runs over gravel, stopping when she get to the trucks parked in the lot across the way. It’s full of eighteen-wheelers—with pictures of food on ’em—hamburgers and fries, bottles of milk, crackers, and vegetables. Men, like cows, stand around waiting.