When it’s time to start, we get serious. “I’ll take the east-side deliveries,” I say to Trey. “I know the streets better.” I lean against the door with my first loaded-up pizza sweater—that’s what Tony calls the insulating bag.

Trey shrugs, distracted by the crap ton of orders that are piling up. “That’s fine. We need to move it. Don’t speed, but don’t linger.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m heading out.” With a wave, I push out the back door into the cold, snowy afternoon. I try to drive by Angotti’s every chance I get.

Thirteen

The afternoon flies by. Mom keeps up with the few tables in the dining room, and Rowan stays in the back pulling pizzas out of the oven, cutting them and boxing them up, keeping watch out the back door so she can see us coming and run them out to us so we don’t have to park and come in for our next load.

The slick roads are slowing us down. I’m not afraid to drive in snow, but it’s frustrating when customers don’t understand that weather is a factor in how fast we get the food out. But the upside is that the later into the evening we get, the drunker the customers get, and for most of them that means they tip more.

I manage to drive by Angotti’s twice even though I really don’t have time, and everything looks okay inside. If the crash is going to happen tonight, there’s nothing I can do about it. And somehow, in the midst of all this driving and thinking today, I realize that I absolutely do have to do something about this. I have to tell Sawyer. Because what if this vision thing is not just a big weird nothing? What if something really happens to him? To all nine of them? How’s that going to make me feel for the rest of my life? It would be worse to do nothing and feel horrible forever than to say something and make a temporary fool out of myself. And, hell, maybe I am nuts. Maybe I just need to do that one over-the-edge cry-for-help thing that’ll get my illness noticed and give me the treatment I apparently need. That’s what all the experts say on TV, you know. Here’s my big blaring chance to be heard.

I head toward Traverse Apartments, which is across the street from where “the incident” happened on Christmas Eve. My thoughts turn to that night, that walk through the shadows of the apartment complex trying to find 93B, that prickly feeling at the back of my neck and the sweat that came out of nowhere when I heard pounding feet and felt the guy grab my coat.

It all went really fast. The guy shoved my pizza bag up at my face and slung his arm around my neck, staying behind me so I couldn’t see him. He ripped my little money belt off me and shoved me into a snowy bush, face-first. And then I heard a click of a knife by my ear. I couldn’t even scream—my throat was paralyzed. My whole body was paralyzed. I was so scared I couldn’t even react to wipe the burning snow from my face. I was like some stupid bunny in the street when he sees the lights of an oncoming car and waits for a tire tread to hit him in the face.

I heard a door slam and a rush of footsteps as apparently some stranger came flying out of one of the buildings and tackled the guy. They rolled around while I scrambled to wipe the snow off my face, and the mugger managed to get up and get away. The stranger chased after him, and I never saw either one of them again.

I wasn’t hurt, and I wasn’t much help to the police. It had been really dark, and I didn’t get a look at the mugger’s face, didn’t really have a concept of how big a dude he was. The police guessed it was probably a random incident—some meth addict who needed money for supplies and was waiting for anybody to come along.

I shake away the memory and squint at the signs in this complex until I find the right building and a parking spot nearby. I don’t give myself time to get nervous, I just grab the warmer bag, zip out of the car. I jog up the three steps to the building and nearly wipe out on a slick spot right by the door, where a bunch of icicles must drip during the day and make a big ice patch on the step at night.

When I grab the door handle to steady myself, it swings open hard, right at me, knocking into the corner of my pizza bag and sending it sliding off my gloved fingers just as somebody plows out of the building into me, more startling than scary.

Out of instinct I reach out as I fall back, my focus on catching the pizza bag rather than on how I’ll land, and it’s one of those slow-motion moments where everything is blurry, my hands won’t move where I want them to, and my body is going in the opposite direction from the way I want it to go. Meanwhile, whoever plowed into me is now tripping over my leg and falling too . . . and his shoulder or arm or something takes my precious red bag with it.

My elbow takes the worst hit when I land, then my back, and my head smacks on the cement, but I’m wearing a hat so it’s cushioned, thank the dogs. The wind rushes out of me and I lie there for a moment trying to get it back, stunned. Immediately I think it’s another attack, but there’s no menacing feeling here. A second later I’m sure it’s just an unfortunate collision.

“Shit,” I hear. “I’m sorry.”

I try to sit up, and flames shoot through my arm, tears of pain and frustration over the lost merchandise and lost time starting to sting. My pizza bag rests upside down in the snow about five feet away. I close my eyes. “Shit,” I echo. My brain rushes to calculate the time wasted. At least forty minutes before I can get back here again with a fresh pizza. Maybe thirty-five . . .

“Are you okay?”

I freeze as it registers: I know that voice. And now I can’t speak at all, because Sawyer Angotti is tossing his empty pizza bag aside and kneeling on the icy step next to me. And I’m furious.