The earthquake stops quicker than it starts.

I climb from underneath the table, crawling over broken plates and wrecked meals. From this level, I see the few other patrons finally getting to their feet. The kitchen is a mess. Water and coffee form a shallow pool on the linoleum floor.

The bathroom door opens and water slides down into the hallway to mix with the mess. Two pairs of feet splash through and stop right in front of me. Staring down are Ray and Mrs. Dufort.

"You guys alright?" I ask, crawling on my knees. "That earthquake came outta nowhere, huh?"

"Get up," Mrs. Dufort says, not skipping a beat. "We're leaving."

"Oh. Okay."

I climb onto my hands and knees and that gummy I ate back in Paradise finally hits me. The wreckage turns into art and all of a sudden it's like I'm in a Karen Carson painting. Mrs. Dufort stares daggers into my soul when I dramatically try to put my coat back on, and goes over to the bar to talk to a tall blond woman in an apron.

"Everything okay?" she asks the woman.

"Kitchen's wrecked, but other than that we're all good back here," the lady says. "Sorry about your lunch."

"You the manager?"

"Yeah."

I watch as Mrs. Dufort pulls her wallet free and retrieves a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills. She fingers through it, rolls it up, puts a rubber band on it and holds it out across the bar.

"This should pay for our lunch and hopefully it'll help you out with the damages."

"Ma'am," the manager says as she takes the roll in her hands, "I thank you, but I can't accept all this."

"Yes, you can. Think of it as a Christmas present from Mrs. Hess," Mrs…Hess, I guess, leans in so she can whisper, but I can't help when I overhear, "but it can also be an incentive to pretend you never saw us."

The manager's brow furrows in confusion, and it appears that she's about to ask why, but something in Hilde's face must tell her to let the conversation die and just accept the money.

"Thank you for the food, ma'am," Hilde says, grinning coldly. "It was very nice. Happy Christmas."

Happy Christmas? I think. That's weird.

Ray comes over to me and grabs her bag from the booth. She presses up against my side, brown eyes looking up into mine, puffy from fresh tears.

"You okay?" I ask, reaching my hand up to rub my thumb underneath her eye.

"Yeah, just got a little sad, thinking about my parents."

"I'm really sorry for mentioning them," I reply. I throw my arm over her shoulder and pull her into a hug. "I didn't realize how much it bothered you."

She snakes her way out of my arm and grabs it, pulling me out the door and into the cold. Sirens from emergency vehicles blare from the city. An ownerless Dalmatian barks angrily at us down the sidewalk, keeping its distance as it stares at us with crazed eyes. Ray places her hands on either side of my face. "You zooted?"

"I'm up there. Hey, I gotta ask you something."

"What's up?"

"It's about your grandma. Is she, like, I dunno, a veteran or something?"

"Um," Ray mutters, her eyebrows knitting together, "yeah, I guess you could say that. Why?"

"It's just that I noticed in the restaurant, when she was paying the manager, well like overpaying the manager, your grandma mentioned something about acting like we were never here. Now you don't need to tell me if something's up, but I'd rather not be in the dark if it—"

Ray pulls my face to hers and kisses me hard on the mouth. Her soft lips part and I feel her tongue rubbing against my teeth. I let her in, my breath intertwining with hers until I'm drowning in her essence. When she pulls away, I suck in cold air through my nose and regain myself.

"Baby, I promise you that there's nothing to worry about. Hilde's…she's a little out there. But think of it this way; she's a lot like you, always trying to keep moving and just be. Please just don't read too deep into any of the shit she does, 'kay?"

"Okay. Cool."

"Let's get back to the repair shop," Hilde calls sternly from behind us. I wonder how long she's been standing there, listening to our conversation.

We return to the repair shop in what feels like a matter of seconds. Hilde pays the mechanic again and tells him, just like the manager at the diner, "Pretend you never saw us."

With that, we return to the van. I rush to get in the driver's seat, noticing when I cross the front of my car that the license plate I've had for the past four months is different. I get in, put on my seatbelt, and wait. Hilde doesn't skip a beat as she leans against my door, gesturing for me to roll down the windows.

"I'm good to drive," I say, smiling politely. "Don't worry about me."

Hilde stares at me until she pushes off the car with enough force to send it rocking back and forth. Far too much power for a sixty-year-old woman to be able to muster. She strides along the car and gets into the passenger's seat. Ray sits behind us, spread over the backseat and listening to music with my iPod. I really want to let this slide and not read too deep into Hilde's weirdness, but between the earthquakes and the reverberating sensation in my head, it's difficult to ignore.

"Detroit, right?" I ask.

"Yes," she hisses, staring ahead at the open garage door.

"Okay," I turn the engine on, which hums to life with newfound vigor. When we're out of the repair shop's parking lot, I put us on I-80. "Do you want me to put on some music or something?"

"Just drive, Wade. And try not to get us killed."

"No need to worry. This ain't the first time I've driven cross-country."

"I'm assuming that means you have experience doing it while inebriated, right?"

"What?"

"Look at yourself," she tells me, pointing at the rearview mirror. I sneak a glance at my bloodshot eyes and heavy eyelids, my mouth cocked in an unconscious half-smile. "You don't do a good job at hiding it."

"I swear I don't do this all the time," I say, looking between her and the road, "and I would never do this around Raven."

"But you did." Hilde nods at the road. "Keep your eyes on the road."

"Okay." We drive in silence until I reach I-90. "I just don't want you to think of me like that when you think of me."

"Wade, I can assure you that you do not want to know what I think of you."

Silence again. Lake Erie comes up beside us, reflecting the late afternoon sun, by the time Hilde says, "Where were you before LA?"

"Like geologically, or originally?"

"Either."

"Well, I'm a Seattleite, born and raised. My parents sent me to this bourgeois private school full of white kids. They said…well, my mom said it was meant to give me a head start in my education, that as basically a double minority I need to work twice as hard as I already have to. My dad didn't care, said he'd prefer to give me the full Duwamish lifestyle.

"Still, it's like they had my whole life planned out for me. Go to college, get my law degree, join Dad at his practice. People would look at us and say, 'Look at that token minority family! They're so mixed and rich and perfect examples of the American dream!'

"I was like I am not giving White America the satisfaction, so I left that whole scene behind and surfed my way down the coast. For now, I just want to, like, be for a while. You know what I'm saying? Like it's hard enough growing up knowing that you're the product of both genocide and slavery, but it's even worse knowing you have to represent both sides of the coin. I don't think I'm ready for all that pressure."

"Wade, our people have been through a hell of a lot on this planet," Hilde says, "but that doesn't mean you have to wallow in that pain forever."

"Our people?" I ask, glancing at her.

"Wan and I are more or less part of the same blood as you," she explains. "That's as far as I'm going to explain our relation to African and native civilizations, alright?

"Anyway, I was just like you back when I was…how old are you?"

"I'll be seventeen in January."

"So, sixteen," she says curtly, then mutters something in a language I don't understand. "Back when I was sixteen, I was carrying the branch of my family name. At that time, most of my close family had been born differently from me. They were people who were powerful, but they weren't given the same rights my family had been for so many generations. There I was, this really young kid who was the only normal one of us left. There were so many expectations from my grandparents about how I was going to be the one who protected the family name.

"And I wanted none of that, you know? They expected me to go to this special school and train people in my skills, but I tanked my scores on purpose to avoid it. Still, that call to honor my family wasn't something I could just run away from forever. After years of aversion and protesting the rights of my everchanging family, I just had to give in and do what they required of me."

"You're okay with that, though?" I ask her. "You don't regret any of it?"

She goes quiet, her breath shaky when she speaks again. "There are so many things I was I could have done differently, so many people I wish I'd been with, said goodbye to. But I didn't, and I'll never be able to. My call to action came and went and now all I care about is making sure that Wanda understands and honors hers."

"She's fourteen, though. Don't you think that's too much of a burden to place on her?"

"Of course, I think about that every waking moment, but we don't have a choice. Sometimes we just have to do what's best for the people we need to protect."

I let the conversation die and ponder her words. We've been talking for a long time, and I see the Detroit skyline rise over the bend of the river. Hilde has sobered me a bit, but not enough for the buzzing in my skull to fade. As I enter the city and pass the decrepit buildings, they loom darkly over the car in the crimson evening sky. It's like they're the legs of a massive table, holding up the heavens to keep them from crashing down over all of us. In the distance, firetrucks screech down the pockmarked streets.

"Huh," Wanda says, leaning over the back of my seat. "I like this place."

"It's too crowded," Hilde mutters.

"Where to first?" I ask.

Hilde looks at the map splayed across the dashboard. "How about the library?"

"If it's public," I reply, "then it's closed."

"Okay, we'll go in the morning. There's a public parking lot near Comerica Park. We should go north on Woodward, and we should be fine."

I find a space in a sparse parking lot in the shadow of the baseball stadium, just across from a Community Care Associates. "Are you sure we can park here overnight?"

"I think we'll be alright. We'll leave in the morning, and if we get a ticket, I'll pay for it."

"What are we doing here, by the way?"

Wanda squeezes my shoulder firmly, and I get the point to shut up.

"You guys better settle in," Hilde tells us, pulling out her netbook. "It's a big day tomorrow."