But that night with Jason’s father, sitting there stoned, listening to Fleetwood Mac, her brother was already long gone, even though Shelley pretended he was still where she knew to find him, living with several other kids at the edge of town and driving pizza delivery. He was stoned a lot but was so much happier than he had ever been, and she was wishing for him the ease she’d felt in that tent, tucked in and far away from the rest of the world. Jason’s father also had thick brown hair, and she asked was it weird he looked a little like her brother. He said he didn’t know, and she gave a long explanation about how she didn’t mean anything like that, like maybe all she meant is that her brother was someone she felt like she could trust and depend on.

“You can trust me,” he said. “That’s true.” And he reached over, took her hand, and pulled her close, and they sat there like that until the needle was at the end of the album, a long, scratchy digging-in sound, until he got up and lifted it. Then he asked what her name was, and she told the truth.

There was a photo of a girl on Jason’s father’s dresser—a clean-faced girl wearing pearls. Jason’s father’s skin was dark, his origin hard to determine, with his black eyes and dark hair, and he smelled clean, like that soap Irish Spring or some kind of spearmint, which surprised her there in that place so saturated in alcohol and smoke and mildew. He bumped her with his elbow when removing his shirt and said, “Excuse me. I’m so sorry,” and for that reason alone, she really did think that she could trust him. She felt the girl in the pearls was watching them, and wondered if she was somewhere wondering where he was, or if she was just some dream of a girl he was holding on to. Oddly, that was what she thought of when she missed her period, that the girl had watched and somehow knew Shelley was a failure in life, that she just longed to fit in somewhere, homesick for something she had never had.