I thought, or you’ll do what? Then I imagined my mom at Jake’s front door, pounding. It would be almost funny to see her there, frizzy-headed, dog hair on the butt of her Not Your Daughters brand jeans. Maybe I missed her. Maybe I wanted her to come. I didn’t know what I wanted. I had thought I knew. I opened Lyft but didn’t know where to go, where I could afford to go. I had recently watched a story Ella posted in which she and her mom shopped at a mall called the Beverly Center. It would cost me thirteen dollars to get there. I scheduled the ride, gathered my stuff, and left.

THE MALL WAS like the Houston Galleria, where my mom would take Leah and me back-to-school shopping. A familiar space, the couture clustered at the top; the middle floor, bookended by department stores, Abercrombie and Zara and Victoria’s Secret in between; the basement where the bargains lived. My mother didn’t understand “fancy designers.” We shopped at JCPenney on the lowest, darkest level. But at the Beverly Center, I wandered in and out of Gucci, Prada, Saint Laurent like I knew their worth, and mine. Men stared. They held the hands of women who also stared, especially the older ones. They made me think of the crescendo of my mother’s menopause, ongoing as I prepared to leave for LA, as we argued over my leaving, as finally, she let me go, lingering in the doorframe of my room, frozen peas pressed to her chest, watching me pack.

“It’ll be a relief, the end of all that,” she said, cryptically.

“All what?” I said, annoyed to have to ask for context, annoyed to indulge her.

“Being looked at,” she said. “Not that I’m looked at much as it is, but from now on it’ll be just me, no men to show off for.”

“I’m not showing off for men,” I said.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. And then, innocently, she asked, “But isn’t that what Instagram is all about?”

“Um, no,” I said.

“What are you doing when you post, then?”

“Wow,” I said. “Misogynist much?”

And yet it did feel like an accomplishment, to take the attention of other, older women’s men. Also, lonely. I wandered around the Beverly Center, watching my reflection in every window, a small, solitary girl projected over shoes, bags, lush swathes of leather and silk. Meaningless objects next to the young, white beauty I wore as a pass, permission to enter and browse. Still, I was aware of the scratched pleather backpack I used as a purse, the silver clutch I carried at night, their cheap sameness in every picture I shared.