“Who is?” My mother was waking up.

“You’ll be,” Grace said.

“Oh,” my mom said, “sorry.”

“Honey, you’re fine.” Grace said it like she’d already had to more than once. My mother’s apologies were punctuation and had been for as long as my memory. Even as she scrubbed period blood, read feminist fairy tales, the word sorry was a tick. It was, I remembered then, what she said when Leah moved away.

“Not your fault,” she had said, and held me as I cried. “I’m sorry honey, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Where’s Leah?” she asked me now, as Grace fussed with wires.

“She left,” I said.

My mom said, “Itchy, I think maybe bugs?” She looked from me to Grace.

“Bugs where?” Grace asked and my mom was quiet, thinking.

“No honey,” Grace said, and something about Dilaudid. I opened my phone, the screen where I was astonishing, sweet, sexy, stelle, not a botched best friend, not a child, helpless while my mother pleaded —I’m sorry, don’t leave, don’t yell, I’m sorry but you don’t understand this world of hurt. On Instagram I was @annawrey, neither myself, nor someone else, a fantasy worth 60,000 followers. As a Blazed Bud I could be loved beyond 100,000; as a Blazed Bud, I could be worth as much as Erin the weightlifter, Ella, my father, that forgotten time before Leah, where memory began. And after that, I’d never be alone again. I imagined myself, lit up in green, posted to @BlazeCannabis. I imagined the flurry of likes and follows and jobs that would come next, how a whole week would be swallowed by the excitement of their attention, their commitment to the dream I sold, the envy and want @annawrey triggered every time I posted.

“Bugs in the bed,” my mother was saying, “I feel them in the bed.”

I got up, pretended to make a call, then stood outside, counting breaths and listening to Grace bargain.

“Honey,” she said, “the itch means you’re healing—doctor says you’ll be going home soon.”

Soon my mother would be home. Soon she would be in recovery and need me there, need the $7,000 I could earn in one night away from her. If I went, I would be back within a day; she would never have to know. And I would give her every penny, a good daughter, a daughter who seized the opportunity to provide, and to caretake. It was an opportunity I’d lose forever if I didn’t hurry up. The phone was in my hand, the call I hadn’t placed was a door inside the screen. I entered numbers to unlock it, and pressed Jake’s name.

16.