Suddenly, she was overcome with a kind of panic at the prospect of living for three months with a man who spoke of nothing but clams. Turning to her mother, she said softly, “Please don’t make me go.”

For a moment, the hardness that surrounded her mother like a shell softened. Just for a moment, Caddie thought that she would acquiesce, swing the car around, and speed back to Los Angeles, where all would be forgiven. And then it passed, just as quickly, and Caddie knew she would not beg again.

Instead, she turned once more to the window. She told herself that it was a television screen, the images passing by nothing more than some program that could be changed at will, turned to some other, more interesting show. The blank shoreline, the soundless sea, the sky so flat and blue and soulless, all of them could be made to disappear with the press of a button, replaced by laughing voices and excitement, the thrill of nighttime in Los Angeles and the joy of being with Sam and Bree, who understood her without asking and didn’t make her feel somehow broken and a disappointment.

She closed her eyes tightly. She was dreaming. She would wake up, open her eyes, and find herself asleep in her own room. She would pick up her cell phone, type out a text message, make plans for later that evening. A movie, perhaps. Maybe flirting with guys whose bravado they would test with darting eyes and laughter. Anything but the endless sand and monotonous ocean. Anything.

Her jaw clenched, and roaring filled her ears. She would stop time, reverse it, travel back to fifteen when things between her and her mother were only difficult, not impossible. She would know better this time, know when to stop. She would not make the same mistakes.

I won’t, she promised. I won’t I won’t I won’t.

She opened her eyes. For just a moment, she’d believed herself capable of magic. Now, reminded of her inability to bend the world to her will, she succumbed to ordinary sullenness.

“Look,” her mother said. “A mall.”

Caddie, lured into looking out the window, saw only a faded Kmart sign rising from the expanse of a parking lot. Surrounding the store were others like it: Bed Bath & Beyond, Barnes & Noble, Jamba Juice.

“That’s not a mall,” she said scornfully. “That’s a shopping center.”

Her mother made no argument. Again Caddie thought of home, of the Beverly Center and its floors of shops. The withered Kmart passed from her view like one of the tired, washed-out hookers on the wrong end of Hollywood Boulevard. She imagined it filled with fat-assed women in too-tight sweatpants, dragging screaming children down the aisles as they searched for deodorants and cheap flip-flops. I might as well be in Van Nuys, she thought.

She wished she’d remembered to get some pot before leaving. Probably she could find some somewhere in Monterey; you could find pot anywhere, but she was almost certain it wouldn’t be any good. Probably just some shit grown by an old Deadhead in his backyard between the tomato plants and zucchini.