From the Prologue

The plane dropped lower through a patch of stubborn cloud, its descent stretched out in that peculiar way that made every minute feel longer than it was, as though the machine itself were reluctant to surrender its hold on the sky. Frederick pressed his forehead against the oval of glass, the coolness soaking into his skin, and stared at the world assembling below. From here Kansas looked less like a place to live than a draft on graph paper: rectangles of land in baked yellows and late-summer browns, divided by ruler-straight roads that met in precise, unapologetic right angles, stretching toward a horizon that didn't care who watched.

Movie Night, Marion

Garrett, quiet but satisfied: “Now that's psychedelic.”

“I saw that word earlier,” Frederick said, still watching the screen. “On a car.”

“Where?”

“White Mustang. Psychedelic State on the back window.”

Garrett rolled onto one elbow. “Proper usage,” he said, academic. “Psyche: mind. Delos: made visible. It never started as tie-dye; it started as permission. Then the sixties arrived, and permission got a soundtrack. The Grateful Dead toured the phrase until it thought it lived in a van.”