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Al says, “What the—?” Then he looks at his hand and back and his eyes get big. “Did I—? I think I left my cigar in there.”

GL shakes her head. “That'll do it. Methane gas. You're lucky you didn't go up too.” She settles back in her seat and waves a hand. “Come on, Scooter; nothing we can do now. Let's hit it.”

Somewhere a siren is wailing as I ease out onto the road. I guess we're all a little shaken up, because none of us notices I've turned the wrong way until a little way along, when a pickup truck whips past us, going the other way, green lights flashing from its dashboard. I know from going to Grandpa's cottage that green lights mean the driver is a volunteer firefighter. I can guess where he's headed.

“Shouldn't we be over the railroad tracks by now?” AmberLea asks.

She's right. I pull over and do my second three-point turn in the Caddy just before a car zooms past with more green lights flashing. I pull over to let another one go by before we get past the cottage again. By now there's a lot of smoke above the trees. I can feel us all trying not to look at it.

Then we're bumping back across the railroad tracks. The siren gets louder. We pass the church, and now I can tell the sound comes from a tower behind the community center. A whole whack of cars and trucks with flashing green lights are back there too, parked every which way. Men are pulling on firefighter suits as a red pumper truck backs out of a garage.

“There you go,” says GL. “They'd have hosed you down in no time, Al.”

I hear a weak laugh from the backseat as we roll on. Maybe now isn't the time to mention something else I see as we pass: behind the community center, trapped in the middle of all the cars and trucks with the flashing green lights, is a black Lincoln Navigator with tinted windows.

TWENTY-ONE

By now I'm Mr. Confusion. I'm still going with it, but both Grandpa and GL sending me—or us—to Jackfish is too much of a coincidence. And how did the
SUV
already get here if we shook them yesterday? It's got to be a script. If it is, it's awfully complicated though. Who worked it all out? Was the outhouse rigged to blow up? What about the fancy gunshot that put the hole in the windshield? And why would Grandpa want me to go to Jackfish anyway, even without Gloria Lorraine? Was something else planned for up there? Maybe not, if the deal was to film a road and a deserted town and make up my own story. On the other hand, all I was supposed to do was get a kiss on the cheek from an old lady. All this other stuff is way too complicated. But if it's all for real, it's too…well, it's too much like a movie.

We stop for a break in Pointe au Baril Station. I'm still thinking it over as I check for texts, standing in front of Al while he gets us clean shirts again, which is trickier in a small place. The signal isn't very strong and I keep moving around, which bugs Al, of course. Finally I see there's one from Deb, one from Jer, and one from Bun. Deb's gives me the name of a book about film noir that will help with my questions. Sylvia will get me a copy. Jer's says ok
.
Bun's says his tattoo hurts and he's still hanging with Jaden and the posse and something about guns. Sounds as if he's making progress with his video game, maybe pulled an all-nighter. I text him back: outhouse exploded tell u later. That will give Bun something to think about when he isn't blasting aliens or leading a gang war in Parkdale or whatever he's doing. Suddenly I really wish I'd gotten the outhouse explosion on camera. Damn.

Then we're driving again and I'm wondering about my own game and how real it is. How can I find out? I turn it over in my mind as we head up Highway 69 to where it meets 17 just south of Sudbury, and then we go west on 17 through Blind River, Thessalon and a bunch of other places, all the way to Sault Sainte Marie, where GL says we'll stop for the night. If this is all fake, GL is in on it and Al has to be an actor, so they won't tell me anything. That leaves AmberLea. It's worth a try; she was more talkative last night at the cottage—at least until I bombed out by asking about her house arrest. After we get checked into a Comfort Inn, GL mixes martinis for herself and Al, and they start talking about Vegas. I say to AmberLea, “We should take Mister Bones for a walk.”

AmberLea doesn't look any happier than she did this morning, but this might be my only chance. She clips the lead onto Mister Bones's collar and we start down the street. It feels good to stretch my legs. Mister Bones likes it too, hitting two telephone poles and sniffing up a storm. I make a lame joke about phone poles being safer than outhouses. She laughs, and I wish I looked as if I needed a shave. Girls like scruffy guys. I've decided she really is better-looking than I thought at first. I go for it while she's still in a good mood. “You know last night, when you said, ‘What's going on?'” Right away she frowns. I keep on anyway. “Well, what
is
going on? Is this for real, do you think? Like Al being a gangster and bad guys chasing us with
GPS
and stuff?”

AmberLea pushes her sunglasses up to the top of her head and looks at me, hard. I notice she has green eyes before I look away. “You're asking
me
?” she says. “Look, Spinner—”

“Spencer.”

“Sorry. Spencer. Whoever. Sorry, all the names she uses get me confused. You're asking the wrong person. I mean, I don't even know who
you
are. I don't know
where
we are. All I know is, you show up yesterday and my gramma drags me off to ‘change my life,' and I'm gonna be in it so deep when I get back that I'll need a ladder to get back up to the bottom.” She swears and tugs Mister Bones away from a Big Mac wrapper.

Oh, boy. I tell her about Grandpa's will and having to get the kiss and going to Erie Estates and what happened before we picked her up. As I do, her eyes go from blank and angry to confused and angry. “That's weird,” she says. “Gramma called the day before yesterday, said she'd be coming over to our house Friday morning and would Mom be around. I said no, because Mom always golfs on Fridays, and she laughed her cackly little laugh and said, ‘Perfect, see you then,' and I forgot about it until you all showed up in the Cadillac.”

“Well, it gets weirder,” I say. “Last night she told us we're going to Jackfish, right? Look at this. It's from my grandpa, about what I was supposed to do if your grandma wasn't around.” I give her assignment number two. She reads it and looks at me, even more confused. “So, what's up with Jackfish?” I say. “What's it got to do with her?”

AmberLea shrugs. “Who knows? She's from Kansas. Why did she hide that locket behind a moose head—”

“Deer head.”

“Whatever, in a cabin—”

“Cottage.”

“
Whatever—
cottage—no one ever knew she had?”

“Well, see, that's what I mean. Maybe it's all a setup. Maybe the cottage was rented. Maybe she got somebody to put a locket behind the deer head. Your grandma is rich, right? She could hire somebody to— well, it could be done.”

AmberLea's chin has been tucking in ever since I started talking. Now she's shaking her head. “No. No. First, she isn't rich. My mom says she doesn't have a dime. Her last husband went bankrupt and wiped her out, and the gangster one before that had everything taken by the government. Nobody knew about the cottage. Second, she told me this morning that the money from selling that cabin or cottage or whatever is going to be mine in her will, if I…”

“If you what?”

“Never mind; it's not important.” She bends and scratches at her ankle. She seems to do that a lot, I've noticed. Mister Bones comes over to investigate. “The point is, it must be hers. She wouldn't promise me something fake. She's a pain in the butt, but she's always straight up. So that means the picture must be real too.”

I'm not convinced. “Okay, then either somebody does know about the cottage, or there's another mystery, because guess what I saw this morning? That black
SUV
again. It was hemmed in behind all the volunteer fire guys' cars back there in Torrance. How did they know where we were going?”

She looks up at me, dead serious. “Maybe there's another transmitter.” She scoops up Mister Bones and starts feeling around his collar. Mister Bones wriggles and then licks her face. Considering what else he's been licking in the last few minutes I don't envy her. “There's nothing there.” AmberLea puts the dog back down. He trots over to a lamppost. “So, either they knew about the cottage…”

See?
I want to yell.

“…or somebody told them where we were going.”

“Who?”

“Not me,” says AmberLea. “Not Gramma; she doesn't have a phone. Not Al; he couldn't get a signal last night, remember? That leaves you.”

“Well, I didn't tell them! I got a signal down on the dock, but I didn't call them.”

“Did you tell anybody?”

“Only my brother. He was my only call last night. He doesn't know any mob guys in Buffalo. He's not even going to tell our parents.” I doubt his Fifteenth Street skateboarders or video posse or whatever will be interested either, so I leave them out of it. Bunny can be hard to explain sometimes.

AmberLea shrugs. “I don't know then. But the cottage is real. And the picture is real. I caught her looking at it this morning and I thought she was going to cry. Believe me, Gloria Lorraine never cries. She said she had to show me something that nobody else knew. Right now, I guess I have to believe her.”

“But,” I said, “it's—I don't know—like a movie or something.”

She shrugs again. “Gramma always says it's only a movie if you believe. If you don't, it's just the pictures. And you know what? Even if it's all a crock and they hang me by my toes when I get back, it's still been better than staying home.” She looks away and tugs at Mister Bones's leash. “Anyway, we should get back.” She pulls down her shades. Then she pulls them up again and looks straight at me. “But promise me something? Promise you'll swear she forced me to come.”

“Uh, sure. You got it.”

“Thanks, Spencer.”

We turn back for the motel.

TWENTY-TWO

The next day we drive. And drive. And drive. And drive. We head north from the Sault. Al drives, AmberLea drives, I drive. GL rides shotgun. We pass tiny places—some I can't even pronounce—and they're getting farther apart. We stop a couple of times for food and gas and to let Mister Bones and us do our thing. Except for trucks, there's not much traffic. I start to see what GL meant about life being a movie without jump cuts—especially a road movie.

GL watches the landscape for a while as it gets rockier and scrubbier. She nibbles some of her crackers. She doesn't say much. Then I see her reach in her pocket and turn off her hearing aid; after that she makes like Mister Bones and pretty much dozes.

AmberLea listens to her iPod. Al tries to get a signal on his phone every so often, then swears in a halfhearted way and wrestles with a map. I can't get a signal on my phone either, so I take out my camera and try a few shots when it's not my turn to drive. I get a good one of AmberLea at the wheel, with her hair whipping out behind her, and one of tiny old GL asleep, all hat and scarf, in the front seat. Al says, “Don't even think about it,” when I turn the camera toward him, so instead I get a cool rolling-down-the-highway shot through the windshield. Then I turn around and get on my knees for a shot over the back of the car, of the road unwinding behind us. If this
were
a movie, I think to myself as I try to hold the camera steady, what I'd see right now is a black dot on the road back there, getting bigger until it morphs into the black SUV, gaining on us, with the motorcycles, and the helicopter would swoosh overhead. Or there'd be a jump cut to wherever we're going so we could skip all this.

But there isn't. No black
SUVS
or killer bikers either. All we get buzzed by are blackflies (one whacks into my head as I'm kneeling there) and rain, after the Sault. We stop to put the top up and everything seems dark and dreary and even more boring.

At White River, we stop for an early dinner. We stagger into a restaurant you can tell smells permanently of French fries. A lot of rigs are parked outside. I'm guessing the rest of the customers are truckers. The map and
GPS
both tell us we've got about an hour to go to Marathon, where GL says we're going to stop. She's had enough for today.

“Thank god,” says Al as we sink into a booth. I nod. I never thought sitting could make me so tired.

AmberLea brings GL back from the restroom and folds her in beside me. You can practically hear GL's hinges creak. She was so stiff when we got out of the car that I wondered if we'd have to unbend her ourselves. She looks worn-out, even after her naps. Some of her face powder has come off and her lipstick is blurry and staining her teeth. When the waitress shows up with coffee, she has a cup right off.

“Gramma,” AmberLea warns, “you never drink coffee.”

“It's a special occasion.” She hunches over the cup. “I need this like hell needs a fire hose. I used to live on this stuff.”

By the time the waitress takes our orders, GL's perked up some. “Between the caffeine and the bathroom I'll be up all night,” she says, panting a little, “but right now it's worth it. Now,” she goes on, leaning across the table, both hands around her cup, as if she's some moose trapper who's lived up here forever, “Jackfish is on toward Terrace Bay. We'll stop in Marathon tonight, rest up and be there in the morning. Just the way I promised.” She looks at us, as if we've been whining all day.

“And what are we going to do in beautiful Jackfish, Gramma?” Two days on the road haven't left AmberLea any too perky either.

“Unfinished business. Believe the living and bury the dead.”