Her odometer has just tipped above two hundred and fifty thousand miles. How much of that has been spent running, she thinks, hurrying from one place to the next, trying to remain unnoticed? She buys a canned coffee from the mini-mart and fills her tank. At the neighboring pump, a girl is perched in the passenger seat of a raised pickup, sucking on the tip of an e-cigarette. Her feet are bare, resting on the dashboard, toes pressed into the windshield. She can’t be older than twenty, pretty in the way her peers must clamor over, dishwater-blond hair wrestled into a bun with a pretend thoughtlessness, eyebrows drawn dark, cutoff shorts slinking up past her ass. Sometimes, Mitty feels like she never really got to be that age. Lawless and projecting love onto a gaunt boy who fancies himself an adult. Was she lucky, having avoided the pregnancy scares and constant yearning for some invented romance? Or had she missed out on some crucial phase that would have made her more discerning and less afraid of the people who might hurt her? What was lost, she wonders, from being so protected?