I shook off her hand and stopped to look at myself in her mirror. My hair wasn’t washed or brushed. I ran my fingers through it to straighten it. In front of the mirror Sage had jewelry and makeup arranged in little baskets. I took a tub of lip gloss, dipped my finger in, and leaned forward, close to the mirror, spreading its clear shimmer across my lips. It tasted like strawberries. I stood back. I had on one of Marie’s T-shirts she’d left behind—Talking Heads, Remain in Light. She had worn it so often that the red masks across the four faces had bled pink across the white. My hair had grown so long it reached the bottom of the shirt now, and strands of it around my face had been lightened by the sun.

“You look beautiful, Libby. Wild and sleek. Like one of those mountain cats. What is it? A bobcat.” Sage was able to say these things, to compliment; Charlotte did it, too. In my family we didn’t know how to do that, saying those good things to each other. I think our faces would have contorted and our sentences fallen apart if we’d tried. It was hard for me to imagine my mother saying “You look beautiful in that.” I’d thought Sage looked stunning when I walked in, but I hadn’t said it, and if I did now, it would seem as if I was only saying it because she’d said something nice to me. Instead I said, “You always make me feel good, even when I know I look like a feral racoon.”

When we reached the top of her driveway, Sage stopped me and held my wrist. “Libby—I didn’t tell Grady anything about Ellen. You have to believe me.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t want to bring it all up again. I missed her.

“The other day, I went back to Space Port. I meant to tell you.”

“Why? He’d notice you and remember. In there with your waitress uniform.”

“I know the manager. He’s a regular in the diner. I stood there talking to him for a bit. Barbie Man was playing some of the games, but mostly he was looking around, like he was looking for someone.”

“Maybe because teenagers from the mountain might hang out there if they went to the mall, because he might recognize one of them?”

“That’s what I thought. But it was only Upper Merion kids in there anyway. I left before he did. Poor Ellen. I can’t stop thinking about her in the car with him. The way he looks.”