The long stretch of dirt road cracks its mouth wide, swallowing us whole down the gullet of darkness. Ahead of us is the same avocado green 1970 Impala we’ve been sharing the road with for miles. Jules and the other driver have maintained a steady, consistent pace. Like model trains on a track, a steel rod forcing the appropriate distance.
It had been Jules’ idea to take this route. I would have taken the turnpike. But I wasn’t the one driving, now was I? I had offered, but Jules doesn’t like my car and prefers to take hers and I don’t drive stick, now do I?
Jules prefers a lot of things.
For instance, Jules prefers we celebrate our anniversary at a restaurant an hour away rather than the Lebanese place a block from our apartment where we’d had our first date. The place with the hummus we buy in bulk and the shawarma Jules jokes she loves more than me. The place you know is good because they don’t take online orders or do delivery.
When I pointed out the menu for the restaurant she chose doesn’t have anything I can eat besides the salad bar, Jules said my going vegetarian hadn’t been her idea, now had it? And why should she have to sacrifice her love for steak on such a special night? 
And it is a special night, our anniversary. She asked—no, requested—no, prefers that I wear the same dress I had worn that first night. The blue one with the white polka dots. I wanted her to wear the same black dress but I couldn’t ask and so I didn’t ask—hoping she’d do it anyway but she didn’t. And now I wish I had asked anyway even though I know if I had asked she would have intentionally not worn it. But now she’s not wearing the outfit as it is and is wearing jeans and a t-shirt instead. Meanwhile I’m in a dress I’ve only ever wore once before and is now so big on me I had to use safety pins to cinch the waist and I feel overdressed and uncomfortable, and I want to be eating Lebanese, and I am hungry, so hungry. But it’s a special night and I wish—no want—no, need Jules to be happy, so I wear the polka dot dress and pretend to look forward to my meal of wilted lettuce and dry shredded carrots indistinguishable from the dry shredded cheddar.
It’s been six months since her sister—no, her twin, no, her identical twin—died. The one with the freckle on the thumb. I think. The casket was closed, something I guess they have to do in cases like this. Jules told me one of them had a freckle and it was the only way their parents could tell them apart as babies. Only I thought Jules was the one with the freckle, but the last time I looked I couldn’t locate it on the map of her skin, and she no longer lets me take her hand in mine, and now I can no longer remember which twin was the one without.
Ahead of us, the Impala slows. Jules presses the brake to match the new pace. It feels like we’ve been following the car for hours, but it couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes. I think. Jules never keeps the right time on the dashboard clock and my own smartwatch died almost as soon as she started driving. 
Broomfield, next exit. The brown sign blinks in the headlights of the car. 
“Didn’t we already pass that sign?” I twist in my seat.  “Are we going in a circle?”
“Don’t be stupid, Ashley.”
Outside, the trees line the road like a set of teeth. Like a set of dental records. An unfamiliar bruise wraps around my wrist like a bracelet. I press my thumb into it and wince. My flesh is tender, like an overripe avocado, like the Impala Jules is so careful not to pass. A sliver of moon appears under my nail. The sky is moonless, the darkness snuffing out the pair of headlights on the long stretch of road. Even though I swear we were supposed to have a full moon tonight. But my smartwatch has died and now so has my phone so I can’t confirm. Even though I swear I had recharged both before leaving the house. We couldn’t have been driving for so long that both ran out of power, right?
Right?
Suddenly, I have the thought that Jules doesn’t want to pass the Impala because she doesn’t want me to see who is inside. Not for the first time I wonder if this Jules is not my Jules but the other Jules. The one we buried. Or thought we buried. If my Jules is really the Jules in the closed casket, the one that required dental records. If maybe the wrong dental records were used and a switch was made and now I am with the wrong twin. And now the right Jules, my Jules, is driving the phantom Impala and there is no exit to Broomfield or anywhere else and we will be chasing each other forever.
Don’t be stupid, Ashley.
The Impala picks up its speed, kicking dust from the road. I reach for the window crank. I want to fill the car with the dust and the dirt and the dark. To choke on it and be buried alongside Jules.
She rests her palm on my knee and squeezes. I release the handle and squint into the darkness, straining to see the moon.