In fourth grade, I asked my mother what she would say if I came home with a boyfriend, like Mr. Bronson. I didn’t mean like Mr. Bronson; I meant actually Mr. Bronson. He was the student teacher, from Jamaica, in my fourth-grade classroom, and for some reason he didn’t look over my head like most teachers did. Naturally, I loved him.

My mother took a moment to consider my question, and she said, “I’d be worried that your life might be harder with Mr. Bronson. People are not always kind to . . .” and she hesitated. Even at age eight, I could see she was choosing her words carefully. “Differences.” She paused, I remembered, and she said, “Race is still something America hasn’t figured out.”

I went to school the next day knowing my future with Mr. Bronson was doomed. It made me sad. If we’d married, he could have helped me with fractions forever. The end of the year was coming, and I knew that without my mother on board, I probably wouldn’t be seeing Mr. Bronson again. I wanted something to remember him by, so I asked to touch his hair during quiet reading time.

“Samantha, that is a question that sometimes makes black people angry.” This surprised me. I just couldn’t imagine why this would be so.

“Why? You can touch my hair if you want.”

“No, thank you,” he said. He had dark-brown eyes with a tinge of yellow in the sclera. “It’s complicated. You have to know someone pretty well before asking to touch anything. Good for you for asking first, Sam.” He thought for a moment and offered the top of his head to me. I flattened my hand and patted his tight, dark, wiry hair. It felt exactly like I thought it would; springy and dry. I got a good look at the skin on his dark forehead, and I almost asked to touch it as well.

Maybe three years later, I’d heard from my mother that Mr. Bronson had gone jogging and died suddenly on the side of the road. He had a heart anomaly, but I thought she’d said heart anemone, and forever after I pictured a spindly sponge in the center of his chest that wilted, the tendrils closing in on themselves.

When I cried, my mom said in a matter-of-fact but not unkind voice I’ve carried in my brain throughout my life, “People die, Sam. That you can count on.” My mother had a way of simultaneously talking to me as both a child and an adult. It could be harsh sometimes, but there was a stickiness to her lessons.

“We’re odd, we humans,” she would say. “We know people die, but we act astonished when it happens. What is astonishing about death is our certainty that it isn’t going to happen to us or anyone we know without some kind of warning. And, we live our life doing stupid things like gossiping, when we should spend all our days planting flowers.”

If I asked for clarification on any of these points, she’d wave me off and say, “Ignore me. I’m irritated today.”

Now, here we were on the road, and though I’d done everything right, my measured responses were doing little for me. I’d planted flowers. I’d not gossiped. I’d married after the first positive pregnancy test. Stayed in my lane. Kept quiet, safe. More raindrops fell on the windshield.

Not Holly, though. She acted in whatever way she wanted. If her cells said, You love women, she went in that direction. If she wanted a child, she pursued it. Her fearlessness in college I’d found exhilarating. But now I snapped off the radio and settled into my outrage. The unfairness. How could recklessness be rewarded?

Summer stirred and without lifting her head said, “Stop thinking. You’re waking me up.”

I thought she was sleep-talking, and so I didn’t say anything. I was enjoying this snit I was having.

“Ugh. If you insist.” Summer sat up and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. “Let’s talk it out.”

“What out?”

“This thing you’ve got going in your head that’s making so much aura noise that I can’t sleep.”

“That’s not a thing, Summer.”

“Okay, Holly.” Summer had only been with us for less than a day, and she knew it was a slight to call me Holly. I looked at Summer in the dark, crossed over the fog line to the part of the shoulder that had the rumble strips. The noise and vibration caused Holly to grumble, and I gently guided the camper back into the lane. “You could feel my negative energy?”

“Anyone could. It gushes from you.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Okay, then.” Summer plucked the aromatherapy reservoir out of the lighter. She rummaged in her bag and exchanged the lavender scent for peppermint. The cab smelled immediately of candy canes. It made me think of Christmas, after-dinner sweets, and my garden.

“Is that how you knew about my husband? My noisy aura?” I said with curious disbelief.

“Sometimes I get things right, but I definitely had you and Holly wrong. You guys are the antipartners.”

I had a surprising urge to defend Holly’s and my friendship—it must have been a leftover defense mechanism from a long time ago. I let the moment pass. “Why are you here?”

A semitruck bore down on us in the passing lane, so close that the driver’s-side mirror looked at risk. I flinched and gripped the steering wheel. Once the truck passed, I glanced at Summer, who had placed a sheet mask on her face. She was pressing the edges down over her knife-sharp jawline and smooth, wrinkle-free forehead. “These are amazing. I get them online from China. They have placenta in them.”

This was the kind of thing Holly and I would joke about back in the day. I pictured what I’d say to Holly if we still had that kind of friendship. She said her mask had placenta! Only a Californian would think that is not dreadful. I’d save this for Katie. Or maybe text it to Drew, someone new who could laugh with me. The thought made me feel unusually happy and not anxious for a change.

“Actual placenta? Like baby placenta?”

“Gross. No. Soybean placenta.”

“I don’t think that’s a thing either.”

Summer repositioned her body, yanking the seat belt wide, so her back was pressed against the passenger door. “Tell me about yourself, Samantha. Why so flat?”

“Flat?”

She squinted at me in the darkness. I didn’t dare look in her direction. I didn’t want to be read. I didn’t want to be enlightened. I liked living on a somewhat stable surface where I could see, hear, and touch everything. If there were alternative planes of existence, where auras could talk to each other and spirits chatted, it would add a dimension of worry to parenting that I couldn’t cope with. Would I have to start warning Maddie about predators that could read her aura and manipulate her while she had a couple of shots at the college bar? I shoved that anxiety into a closet to deal with later. Much, much later.

“Tell me about your daughter.”

I swiveled my head in her direction. “Why did you ask me about my daughter?”

She shrugged. I couldn’t see her expression with that silly mask on her face, but I felt entirely exposed to her. “Give me one of those masks,” I said, wanting to cover my face, feel less vulnerable to this woman who seemed to be tuned into me.

Summer laughed. “Now we’re talking.”

Her floral bag must have been alphabetized because she reached right in, pulled out a thin packet, and tore into it in seconds. Her manicured nails slid between the damp folds, and with her dainty fingers, she placed the mask expertly on my face. The cold, wet material clung to my cheeks and provided some cover for a conversation that I couldn’t seem to stop.

“You’re going to love how your face feels after this. I promise you.”

I poked my finger into the left eyehole to make sure it didn’t obstruct my vision, and Summer said, “What do you want, Sam?”

“I’m fine right now. I could eat in maybe an hour.”

“No. I mean for your life. For you?”

“Oh. Easy. I want Maddie to be safe and happy. I want our friend Katie to not have cancer.”

“But, what do you want for you? For Sam?”

“That is for me.” Why was I getting frustrated? I could feel it crawling into my chest, rising up my sternum. “I want good things for the people I love. That will make me happy, and I get to keep them in my life.” I didn’t have an answer, and I wanted to stop thinking.

“It’s fine if you’re not ready for this conversation. Lots of people are blocked.”

“I’m not blocked. I’m a simple person. I like my people happy. What could possibly be wrong with that?”

“I think we can do something about that block. It’s not a permanent situation.”

I shook my head, pressed the wet mask around my forehead where I felt it coming loose. “Summer. I’m from Wisconsin.” I wanted to turn the radio up and feel the breeze on my newly moisturized skin. I wanted to keep driving and not think about anything but the directions on the GPS—which took its cues from satellites and Google and the mystical internet. That was all the woo-woo I could handle.

Then I yawned.

I’d tried to stifle it, but Summer said, “You should let me drive. I’ll get us to Vegas, and then you or Holly can drive.”

“I’m fine. I’ve had quite enough sleep for today.”