I CLAIMED THE BACK seat of Cindy's ferocious red Thunderbird, intent on avoiding all interaction for our fifteen-minute trip. But, as usual, my plans were chaff, crumbling to specks and blowing out the slivered car window to drag miles behind the bumper. Asa tried to distract Cindy, blanketing the car with cotton-thin words, but she was above it. Her unblinking stare pegged me at traffic lights and stop signs, glancing sharply off the rearview mirror, perforating the intermittent, mizzling conversation. I tucked further into my seat until her stern gaze drilled holes in the upholstery above my right shoulder instead.

     Outside, the world whirred passed in streaks of saddle-brown laced blue; inside, the car was a funeral pyre. The scent of stale flowers tickled my nose. Brittle tissues lay in balls at my feet, smudged with bright lipsticks and beige makeup crust. Emotional decay clung to the carpet and roof liner, collapsing my chest like stacked bricks. All the while, Asa's peak perspective on the A-Team as a metropolitan Mad Max turned my brain to candle wax.

     A standard, cement DPW building loomed into view, and my stomach softened, my muscles relaxing at the prospect of freedom. But the relief was oddly flaccid. The limp weight dropped from my breast to my toes, letting me breathe while remaining on my person like a pebble in my shoe. The impermanence of the feeling stuck with me. Relief wouldn't last. This car ride was over, but something equally as aggravating would be along without fail to take its place.

     Our final destination was a smaller, cinderblock structure hidden behind the Department of Public Works: the home of Sterling Hill Animal Control. A large chain link dog run grew on one exterior wall like a tumor, and a sign above the single push/pull door was missing as many letters as employees. (St-rling -ill Animal C-n-rol.) Parked under a lone carport cradled by brush, a 1977 Dodge Tradesman awaited our arrival. The car slowed. I cranked on the door handle and escaped before the tires stopped rolling. Asa called, "It's open. The keys are in the glove box," as I went, and I let him take charge of Cindy, pausing at a safe distance to watch the quick farewell hug that passed between them.

     Bitterness settled on my tongue, and I yanked on the van's stiff passenger door. The interior was warm and musky.

     " ... Don't let it be another six months before we see each other again..."

    Cindy's words carried to me via her raised voice. I jammed the key from the console (Wiseman was too lazy to hide them any better) into the ignition and turned the engine over with a roar.

     Asa threw me a nervous glance. I flipped him off, double-fisting two middle fingers behind the dusty windshield. His hands pushed into the pockets of his blue jeans, and he waited, a good little nephew, for Cindy to make the main street. Then she was gone.

     Good riddance.

     "Smells like kiss ass in here," I said, emphasizing the word 'ass' as he climbed into the van's driver seat. The fabric was coffee-stained and torn on the edges.

     "You're not helping," Asa muttered, which was as good as a standard 'fuck you' from my little brother.

     I chuckled and grabbed the clipboard off the sticky dashboard. On it was a list of addresses and summary complaints printed neatly across a few white paper pages.

     "Where to first?"

     Asa adjusted the depth of his seat to reach the foot pedals. "Start with the farthest location. We'll work our way back."

TWO HOURS AND FIVE road-rotten animal carcasses later, I sat in the rumbling great white whale, studying my plain-Jane face in the silver side mirror that stuck out like an unfortunate ear.

     The van's nose sloped down from the broad windshield, its sides stretched opposite, meeting up with a set of doors in the rear. It was unmarked. The town seemed more comfortable with a naked white van trolling the streets than having the words "County Animal Control" announcing its purpose. I let my elbow poke out the open window. The gap between the housing and the door panel creased my skin through my jacket.

     Beside me, Asa avoided any reflective surface as he drove, craning his head outside to merge or turn. The wind from the open windows tugged at my curly hair, pulling strands across my forehead. I wore it gathered on the top of my head in a disgruntled, brown nest desperate for soap and water. It'd been a day since my last shower, but after sleeping in a vacant interrogation room, that day felt a week long. The ick hadn't left me despite a quick change of clothing.

     I rubbed my freckles-less nose across my sleeve. Asa glanced at me, then back to the road, then back at me again. A pattern he'd been developing for the last ten minutes, ever since we'd left the previous address with a shriveled fox knotted inside a black bag. We'd spoken little during the drive—nothing about my evening or the dead woman I desperately wanted to erase from my memory. He wanted to ask. I sensed his anxiety like a mist on my skin. But these side-eye flickers were different. He wasn't looking at me to explain. He wasn't looking at me at all.

     "What?" I said, turning my head to face him.

     Asa flexed his fingers on the steering wheel, "Nothing."

     He looked again.

     "Stop doing that."

     "I'm not doing anything."

     "Yes, you are—that!—right there."

     Asa's shoulders curled at my tone. He hunched closer to the dashboard and forced his eyes forward. "I'm sorry. It's—it's nothing."

     "Asa," I gentled my voice, "I know when you're lying."

     He hesitated, shifting almost imperceptibly in his seat. His gaze slipped to mine for a fraction of a second, indecisive, "I think you picked something—someone—up in the police station."

     "Excuse me?"

     "A spirit."

     A whoosh of wind forced hair into my mouth as I snapped it open, "Fucking hell, Asa. Not this again."

     "You don't believe me."

     I dragged my fingers across my forehead. I knew what it was to be alone in a belief. To see certain...people...uniquely. Keeping a grip on sanity was hard when no one else understood. When a public facade invalidated every experience and feeling you had. I spent years convinced I was a one-off, a problem. Only to discover my truths were, in fact, real.

     "It's not that I don't believe you," I plucked the cigarette lighter from the console and pressed the heated tip to a cigarette I'd fished from the carton in my jacket pocket. It smoldered magically into existence. "I don't know. It's hard sometimes, man. Ghosts?"

     "You think I want to be the one seeing these things?" Asa said, distressed. "I'm a freak."

     "You're not a freak."

     "Aunt Cindy thinks so."

     I took a pull and bared my teeth, "Screw Cindy. She'd shoot her dog if it would make her more popular."

     "She doesn't have a dog."

     "Good, it would hate her."

     "You shouldn't fight with her."

     "I don't. She starts it. It's disgusting how she tries to use you against me. Like I'm a lazy mother she can't trust with a newborn. Or, or, a fucking tween babysitter."

     Asa braked at a cross-section. The truck rocked forward and stopped. "Whoa, now. Is that how you see me? A baby?"

     Cold regret zipped through my nerves, and I said, "That's not what I meant." But it was. How could it not be? Day after day, I made space for his idiosyncrasies, from covering the TV when I was done to spray painting the chrome faucets in the bathroom to the burden of weekly groceries.

     "I know what you meant." Asa's foot solicited the gas pedal, and he made a lefthand turn. "I'm not as helpless as you all think."

     I watched the smoke from my exhale fade out the window, "I know you're not entirely helpless, but you do have...difficulties."

    "Difficulties," Asa echoed.

     "Yeah. Difficulties." A flush of heat spread from the back of my neck, and suddenly, I resented the conversation. "You're afraid of your goddamn reflection to start. You never leave the house except to scrape roadkill. You have no friends. You won't even go into a store for any helpful reason. And I know you miss Polly, which is—STOP looking at me like that!"

     Asa slammed the shifter on the van's steering column into the park position. The engine idled, vibrating beneath our seats. After a moment, he switched off the ignition. A deadened quiet bloated the inside of the cab. We were far from the highways, alone on a stretch of gravel with only the wind and an occasional frantic rat-a-tat spiral of a distant woodpecker.

     Somewhere, water chuckled over rock.

     "What about you?" Asa said, popping the stiff membrane between us. "You're afraid."

     I scoffed.

     "You use me as an excuse because you miss Ma, too. She's gone, and now you're alone, and nothing feels right anymore, not how it did when she was there. Admit it."

     I shook my head. "No."

     "You miss when it was good but don't want to discuss it. You never do. You won't even talk about, Dad."

     "It was never good, Asa. Dad would agree."

    "Have you even talked to Bus Girl?"

     My head whipped around faster than my neck appreciated. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

     Asa unclipped his seat belt. "A lot." He shoved the driver's side door open and hopped out. The resulting slam rocked me in its wake.

     My summary anger deflated, collapsing to hide in my sneaker alongside the pebble of relief. I sat alone and watched Asa's figure, a flap of yellow and blue fabrics against the dry horizon, trudge the path toward the mocking creek.

     I sighed, exasperated. Time to apologize. Kicking open my door, I flicked the cigarette onto the ground and stamped across it, climbing the path in long strides to catch my brother as he crested the small mound and disappeared. When I reached the top, the sandy dirt tore off, forming a shallow cliff. Scoot marks from humans and animals cut a rough track diagonally to the bottom colliding with more sand and gravel and, eventually, a muddy creek.

     There was nothing of note in the immediate area. A span of hay-colored grasses and scrubs jumped the winding creekbed and smacked head-first into a line of boulders and stunted trees several yards away. From there, the trees traveled upward, conquering one of the hundred hills that made up the Salinas Valley. Below me, Asa stood, his sneakers partially sunk in sediment. Over his shoulder, tucked into a tangled V of weathered pine branches half-submerged, I glimpsed our carcass, belly white in the sunshine.

     "Hey, I think this might be the deer Ray told me about," I said breathlessly, "Maybe we can keep the skull." The wind altered, sweeping up to greet me. A pungent tinge of wet soil and algae modulated with the water's flow, and on the tail end, the sickly sweet scent of rot forced its way into my mouth.

     "Good God Almighty," I gagged and hid my nose in my hand. Asa turned to look at me. His freckles stood against his bloodless skin like marker dots on paper. The woodpecker drilled mercilessly, the creek gurgled, unhinged, and in between, my voice croaked out:

     "What's wrong?"

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