Suffice it to say that had been the last time—the last time I had allowed them any free reign: to see, to feel, to live vicariously through the lived experiences of others. After that, the gloves had stayed on. Stayed on as we trekked from Seattle through Tacoma and across the Olympic Peninsula to Aberdeen, where we had hoped to find Lisa’s parents, but found only a house with a collapsed roof and a protoceratops nest in its kitchen. So, too, had we lost Puck, who had chased a turkey-like creature into the ruins of a T.J. Maxx in Olympia and never come out, even though a search revealed no other egress but the shattered front doors—which left us no choice but to assume he had vanished in some aftershock of the Flashback.
And now here we were, somewhere between Hoquiam and Ocean City, trav
