“Where are you?” I texted Jake and then, unsure of what else to say, how to get the answer I needed, I typed, “I’m sick.” But my thumb hovered over the send arrow and I waited, carried the phone to the window, a wide rectangle and beyond, desert, disappearing into dark. I pictured myself, barefoot in the robe, attempting escape, rocks and snakes and saguaros in my way. I would be caught, or nature would take me. Not even my mother would know where to look. I deleted the words, the stink of need on them, and lay down on the couch again, forced myself to open my photos. There were the images from hair and makeup: girls with sexy, immobile faces; girls with matching brunette blowouts and mink eyelashes and perky implants and asses. But that was where my phone had been taken. I went to @BlazeCannabis, saw story footage of girls wreathed in vapor and men; men with blunts and glasses of scotch and thick watches that flashed when they gestured these nuts at the camera. I scrolled. There was my face by the pool, by the bar, leaving the bathroom with Girl, our eyes red needles. I scrolled a revolving room of mirrors, embedded in every palm, recording, receiving, posting, gathering. I returned to my photo folder, scrolled back in time until I landed on Leah. She was in the candy aisle at H-E-B, blocks of red and orange color behind her. I pinched to see her face, wide open.

She reminded me of an interview I’d read with a famous fashion photographer. Something about how this—vulnerability, childhood, what Leah had—was the special quality he pulled from his subjects. He stripped women bare, he bragged, made them honest. A trademark smile, the scout who found me had said of mine, my teeth too big for my mouth. I touched my lips, stared at the screen, trying to remember the scout’s name, when Jake’s appeared, bubbled in blue. “Baby, you had a rough night,” he wrote. “Be right there, 5 mins.” Jake would help me remember. Maybe there was a pill for that. I waited. Five minutes, ten, fifteen. The door opened, and Ella passed through.

“Babe, you went too hard,” she said, and sat beside me on the couch, touched my hair. “I told you not to get sloppy.”

“Where’s Jake?” I asked.

“With Blaze. He sent me for now.” I pulled away. On the TV, the news showed footage of a zoo, a pack of otters huddled in a corner of their habitat. “Cold Snap!” the banner said. The seasons were changing, and fast. “I need to go home,” I said. “My mom is in the hospital.”