“Ready, Ariadne?” she asked, daring her, it seemed, to say no.

Ari was thrown for a second as she didn’t recall sharing her name, especially not her whole name, with the singer, but she recovered quickly and said, “Show me the way.”

The singer gestured out the window she’d just come through. “We ride,” she said. “It will be a long journey.”

Although she hadn’t heard it, Ari expected the singer to have her own motorcycle like the big man from the night before had, but when they got outside—the singer insisting on using the window instead of the door—Ari’s was the only bike in the drive.

The singer sat behind Ari, her arms wrapped around Ari’s waist. She smelled of leather, clove, and the slightest hint of jasmine. She gave directions over the sound of the wind and the road. Ari could have sworn that she was humming, but it could have been that the songs were still in her head from the night before. Either way, it gave Ari energy as did the feeling of having the arms of this strong, beautiful girl around her. It kept her going until the sun began to rise. They were riding along the ocean, out of one state and well into the next by then.

The singer instructed her to pull off the road and Ari’s heart pounded, thinking they were close to Dee, but then the singer said, “We sleep. You’ll need your energy. There is still a long road ahead.” The singer had stowed a blanket for them in the saddlebags of the bike. She’d also brought bread, honey, fruit, and tea. Ari felt wide awake after they ate and told the singer so, said she could keep going.

The singer shook her head, the hair on the right side moving back and forth across her shoulder. “You’ll need your energy,” she repeated. “Rest. Tell me stories about her.”

So Ari told her about the lake, the tea parties, and the mural painting. As she recalled their sleepovers and the stories they made up for each other, she felt like Dee was there beside her and quickly fell asleep even though the sun was shining through the trees.

When she awoke at dusk, she found the singer sitting on a tree stump, smoking a cigarette. She offered Ari more bread, honey, fruit, and tea, and then they set off. Once again, they rode until the sunrise, the singer’s arms wrapped around Ari’s waist. Once again, they stopped when the sun started to peek through the trees to the east and Ari said she could keep going, but the singer insisted they rest. Once again, she suggested that Ari tell her stories about Dee and Ari agreed. This time, though, Ari got to the uncomfortable part—the part she wanted to erase from her memory, about how Dee had changed in the last few months—and stopped.

“Why don’t you tell me a story?” she asked the singer. “I don’t know a thing about you. I don’t even know your name.”

“This is not my journey, it is yours,” the singer answered. “It’s important that when you reach your sister you have the full story of the two of you fresh in your mind. Where you’re going, where she is…it’s easy to forget things.”

“I’ve told you all there is to tell.”

“Are you sure?” The singer’s brown eyes seemed to ask the questions that her mouth did not. Like, How can you face the dangers that may await you if you cannot face the truth?

Ari took a deep breath and admitted, “These past few months, things have been different.” She told the singer about Dee’s new friends, about their shack at the edge of town and the one time she’d accompanied Dee to a party there. She did not like the people there, especially the man they flocked around, who had ghost white skin, black spiked hair, and a silver tooth.

“The room changed when he entered,” Ari said. “It had been a dirty basement—cobwebs, spray paint, the smell of piss—and then suddenly…” She couldn’t even describe the opulence, the black marble floors and shiny metalwork on the walls. The stage with the cages beside it where Dee had tried to convince her to dance to the music that seemed to be coming from everywhere—the floor, the ceiling, especially the walls. And there was fog, so much fog. It must have been from a machine somewhere, but while Dee and everyone else had spun and swirled, acting euphoric, Ari had felt sick. She’d run for the stairs and slipped halfway up, but something, like an invisible hand on her back, had helped her to crawl forward.