It stood to reason, when you thought about it. Maybe they had drivers’ licenses, but the entrance and exit to the Mile 81 rest area were now blocked off by those big orange barrels the highway crews used. Grass was growing up through the crumbling pavement in the deserted parking lot. Pete had seen this for himself thousands of times, because the school bus used I-95 to go the three exits from Laurelwood, where he got picked up, to Sabattus Street, home to Auburn Elementary School No. 3.

He could remember when the rest area had still been open. There had been a gas station, a Burger King, a TCBY, and a Sbarro’s. Then it got closed down. Pete’s dad said there were too many of those rest areas on the turnpike, and the state couldn’t afford to keep them all open.

Pete rolled his bike through the gap in the chain-link, then carefully pushed the makeshift gate back until the diamond shapes matched up and the fence looked whole again. He walked toward the wall of bushes, being careful not to run the Huffy’s tires over any broken glass (there was a lot of it on this side of the fence). He began looking for what he knew must be here; the cut fence said it had to be.

And there it was, marked by stamped cigarette butts and a few discarded beer and soda bottles: a path leading deeper into the undergrowth. Still pushing his bike, Pete followed it. The high bushes swallowed him up. Behind him, Rosewood Terrace dreamed through another overcast spring day.

It was as if Pete Simmons had never been there at all.

The path between the chain-link fence and the Mile 81 rest area was, by Pete’s estimation, about half a mile long, and there were Big Kid signposts all along the way: half a dozen small brown bottles (two with snot-caked coke spoons still attached), empty snack bags, a pair of lace-trimmed panties hanging from a thornbush (it looked to Pete like they’d been there for a while, like maybe fifty years), and — jackpot! — a half-full bottle of Popov vodka with the screw cap still on. After some interior debate, Pete put this into his saddlebag along with his magnifying glass, the latest issue of American Vampire, and a few Double Stuf Oreos in a baggie.