Mina looked at the fake tattoos doubtfully. There was a black scorpion, and a hawk and a dragon, and some letters that spelled HATE.

“We’ll fix our hair and our faces—you can borrow some of my old clothes, I think they’ll fit… How much money did you bring?”

“Ten pounds.”

“Shit. That’s not enough. We want to score, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Whizz, tracers, maybe some E’s. A little Ecstasy—you wait, Mina, it’s fantastic. It makes you feel really sexy. Hey, techno music—I hope they play the Prodigy. Maybe Liquid Death. I’m going to dance all night… Hang on. There must be some money here somewhere.”

Mina watched Cassandra open kitchen jars and canisters. She wondered sometimes if Cassandra was hurt by her parents’ indifference. Cassandra always spoke of it as an advantage, but Mina wasn’t always sure she spoke the truth. Once, when she came back from a weekend with her father, who was forty, and her new stepmother, who was twenty-six, Cassandra had cried. But that was nearly a year ago; now Cass never spoke of her father, and rarely saw him. Mina hadn’t seen her cry since.

In the fifth container, Cassandra found some money. She tossed it down on the kitchen table with a little smile of triumph.

“I knew it. Forty quid. Great. We need plenty. Just wait, Mina! This is going to be great.”

Cassandra began rolling a neat joint. She lit it, inhaled deeply, then passed it across. Mina drew the sweet smoke down into her lungs; after a few minutes she began to feel lightness and lift. It made her feel calm and floaty and safe. It drove all the anger and muddle away, so she forgot about her mother and the telephone call that changed her life.

“Will Star be there?” she asked, breathing out.

Cassandra’s face became dreamy and soft.

“Sure he will. I told you. Just wait till you meet him, Mina. He’s, like, truly amazing. Wild. When he touches you…”

“What happens when he touches you?”

“I don’t know. I can’t describe it. But he just takes your hand, maybe, or touches your arm—and you can feel this power, and it’s passing from him to you, and it’s just—filling you up…”

They went upstairs and changed, and molded their hair into Medusa-like snakes; they painted their eyelids gold and their lips black. They applied the fake tattoos last of all. Mina fixed the black hawk to her left cheekbone. Cassandra pasted the scorpion to her forehead, the dragon to her throat, then she held out her left hand, and Mina helped her apply the four letters that spelled HATE.

“We look brilliant,” Cassandra declared as they inspected themselves in the bathroom mirror.

“Great,” said Mina. She still felt floaty. “We look great.”

Cassandra gave her a hug.

“I’ll introduce you to Star, promise,” she said. “You’ll really like him. And he’s bringing some new stuff. It’s amazing, he says. The best ever. He brought it back from his friends in Amsterdam the other night.”