I blink back the salty sting of tears and grab my hair to keep it from blowing in my face. “So a year from now?” I tease.

“I’ll be here for you.”

My eyebrows arch. “Five years from now?”

“You just call me.”

I laugh and scoot close to him, then prop my feet on his truck’s black dash. “You’re too good to me.”

“Everyone should always be good to you.”

I snuggle closer, my hip pressed to his, my hand on his knee. “Can we just drive and drive? Keep going forever?”

He laughs softly. I feel his rib cage shift against mine. “It’s an island, girl. We’re going to be making lots of circles.”

I giggle, seeing us going around and around, forever and ever. “That’s okay. With you it’d be fun.”

“I love your laugh,” he says, glancing down at me.

“And I love that you can make me laugh.” At home I know I don’t laugh, at least not very much. “Everyone at home is more serious,” I say.

“Maybe people where you live take themselves too seriously.”

I think about this and remember Kristine and how she struggles with her boys, and Nic, who hasn’t prepared her kids for the realities of life. “But maybe we have to be. We’ve got to make sure our kids do well in school, so they can score high on the SATs, so they can get into a good university, so they can have a good career—”

“So they can what? Make a lot of money someday? Meet someone similar, and marry, and have kids and accumulate status and more wealth? Then they put their kids into private schools, where their children are pressured to excel, and get great grades and high SAT scores.” He lets go of my hand and drags a hand through his dark hair. “What are people doing, Jackie? What is it all about? What’s it all for?”

He looks at me, and his expression is hard, mistrustful. I just look at him, uncertain what to say.

“I know that world, girl,” Kai adds after a moment. “It’s why I left the mainland. Don’t want it, don’t believe it. Not going to sell my soul for capitalism, consumerism. Money is the root of all evil—”

“No.” I stop him. “Not money, Kai. Greed. We have to have money. We have to be able to live, eat, pay the basic bills. But how much money? Maybe that’s the question.”

“We don’t need much, we really don’t, Jackie. The world tells us we do. Everyone’s competing, trying to be better or best. And let’s face it, you wouldn’t live where you live if you didn’t enjoy your standard of living. I’ve looked at your area on the Internet. You can’t buy a house for less than a million dollars—”