Overnight
Her dad said the desert was the most honest place there is.
Her phone told her to take the route. It shaved forty minutes, and the day had been long already. The boxes were stacked wrong in the back of her delivery truck and the lift gate had stuck on the third stop. She had eaten a granola bar at noon and another at four and nothing in between. The radio faded in and out as the road thinned. She kept one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the door. It helped her stay straight.
She drove for a company that liked to say she was an independent contractor even though they set the times and the rules and the routes. But she still liked driving. It let her show up somewhere at the end of the day, done with something.
The desert began the way deserts begin, with less of everything. Fewer poles and fences, a scrub pulled back from the shoulder to give way to stones that looked like they had been dropped there and never picked up again. The light grew hard and flat. The air went thin and bright.
She followed the turn the phone gave her. The screen dimmed and brightened and dimmed again. She did not notice the last bar disappear until it was gone.
“No,” she said, softly, forgetting it could not hear her.
