go in the opposite direction and will just have to catch up. Landry gets on the radio and says he wants to run leapfrog, with the ghost car trailing the Pathfinder then heading back to the end of the line and letting the cab pick up the Pathfinder then heading back to the end of the line and letting us pick up the Pathfinder, around and around, for as long as it takes. Almost right away, though, for whatever reason Caspars pulls up in front of this twenty-four-hour Laundromat on the avenue. The ghost and the cab have to coast right on by so they won’t get burned. Me and Hart, we’re not even there yet. By the time the ghost circles the block, the Pathfinder’s gone and there’s all this broken glass in the street, but the ghost team can’t remember if the glass had been there before or not.
“Landry’s on the radio asking who’s got the eyeball, who’s got the eyeball, but no one has an answer for him.
“Hart’s choking the steering wheel by now, lipping the curb, and I’m on my cell dialing Caspars’s number but it keeps going straight to voice mail. ‘You know what to do,’ it says. I’m on the radio now with Landry telling him I can’t get through and he tells me to keep trying. His voiceis like weirdly calm. He tells me he’s calling Barnes but can’t get through, either. Maybe they were in a cellular dead spot, but I’ve since walked all around that neighborhood and never lost reception. Maybe all the other guys were calling Caspars and Barnes at the same time. Maybe that’s why none of our calls got through. At one point, this sanitation truck backs out of an alleyway and Hart has to swerve out of its way and ends up sideswiping a parked car. He’s driving sixty miles per hour down these little streets. I think about telling him to buckle his seat belt, but I don’t because that would be like a defeat somehow, like an acknowledgment that something bad might actually happen. At last Caspars’s phone starts ringing, but nobody answers.
“We make a hard left onto this little narrow one-way, squeezed in by row houses on one side and an elementary school on the other. As soon as we’re on it, Hart has to hit the brakes hard to keep from running them over. I don’t remember bouncing off the dash, but I must’ve. I’m out of the car now and there’s no Pathfinder anywhere, but a couple yards away from each other Caspars and Barnes are lying in the street. The air had this really thick burnt smell, from the gunshots or Hart’s braking, I don’t know.
“Caspars was the one closer to me, but I leapt right over him to get to Barnes. That’s another thing I don’t know. Why I did that. I think maybe because he was so, like, irretrievably dead. He lay on his side with his legs bent at the knees and his face was gone, but Barnes was on her back, like maybe just asleep. Except not really, of course. She already had some slight burning across her forehead, all the way up to her hairline. The real damage, though, went down the right side of her face. It looked all dark and sort of charred. Her eye on that side was filled with blood and she had blood all over her chin. Her eyebrow, too, was like super long there, with the inflammation maybe. Like Caspars, she’d been shot through the back of the head, but the bullet had come out at a weird angle, through her cheek. The exit wound looked like this little perfect Valentine’s heart, tipped over on its side. When I was breathing into her mouth, the air came puffing out of that hole.
“Hart was working on Caspars. He can’t find a pulse, he tells me, andthere was no mouth for him to breath into, so I tell him to come help me with Barnes. He puts his hand on the hole in her cheek and the entire time he’s chewing the heck out of a pen, a cheap little Bic, I don’t know where he got it. Her lungs won’t inflate, so I start chest compressions. Hart is still holding on to her cheek for the compressions, even though he doesn’t have to. I start with
“Landry’s on the radio asking who’s got the eyeball, who’s got the eyeball, but no one has an answer for him.
“Hart’s choking the steering wheel by now, lipping the curb, and I’m on my cell dialing Caspars’s number but it keeps going straight to voice mail. ‘You know what to do,’ it says. I’m on the radio now with Landry telling him I can’t get through and he tells me to keep trying. His voiceis like weirdly calm. He tells me he’s calling Barnes but can’t get through, either. Maybe they were in a cellular dead spot, but I’ve since walked all around that neighborhood and never lost reception. Maybe all the other guys were calling Caspars and Barnes at the same time. Maybe that’s why none of our calls got through. At one point, this sanitation truck backs out of an alleyway and Hart has to swerve out of its way and ends up sideswiping a parked car. He’s driving sixty miles per hour down these little streets. I think about telling him to buckle his seat belt, but I don’t because that would be like a defeat somehow, like an acknowledgment that something bad might actually happen. At last Caspars’s phone starts ringing, but nobody answers.
“We make a hard left onto this little narrow one-way, squeezed in by row houses on one side and an elementary school on the other. As soon as we’re on it, Hart has to hit the brakes hard to keep from running them over. I don’t remember bouncing off the dash, but I must’ve. I’m out of the car now and there’s no Pathfinder anywhere, but a couple yards away from each other Caspars and Barnes are lying in the street. The air had this really thick burnt smell, from the gunshots or Hart’s braking, I don’t know.
“Caspars was the one closer to me, but I leapt right over him to get to Barnes. That’s another thing I don’t know. Why I did that. I think maybe because he was so, like, irretrievably dead. He lay on his side with his legs bent at the knees and his face was gone, but Barnes was on her back, like maybe just asleep. Except not really, of course. She already had some slight burning across her forehead, all the way up to her hairline. The real damage, though, went down the right side of her face. It looked all dark and sort of charred. Her eye on that side was filled with blood and she had blood all over her chin. Her eyebrow, too, was like super long there, with the inflammation maybe. Like Caspars, she’d been shot through the back of the head, but the bullet had come out at a weird angle, through her cheek. The exit wound looked like this little perfect Valentine’s heart, tipped over on its side. When I was breathing into her mouth, the air came puffing out of that hole.
“Hart was working on Caspars. He can’t find a pulse, he tells me, andthere was no mouth for him to breath into, so I tell him to come help me with Barnes. He puts his hand on the hole in her cheek and the entire time he’s chewing the heck out of a pen, a cheap little Bic, I don’t know where he got it. Her lungs won’t inflate, so I start chest compressions. Hart is still holding on to her cheek for the compressions, even though he doesn’t have to. I start with
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