“I guess I like becoming someone else for a while,” Taylor admitted. “One of the schools I went to used to put on plays sometimes. I loved being on the stage and just forgetting myself. I’d pretend I was the character I was playing and I’d try to feel what it was like to have their past instead of mine. I guess it feels good to just not be me for a little while.

“Plus I wanna be rich and I love to be the center of attention.” He giggled as he owned up to it, then went on. “Plus I’ve got a friend there who said I could work at the restaurant she works at until I get accepted at the acting studio or land an acting gig, whichever comes first.”

He was silent for a few seconds and then, as if hit by a stroke of insight, peeled back the corner of his side of the blanket and said, “You should come with me if you can. The bus costs two hundred bucks. I bet you could even work with me at the restaurant when we get there.”

He looked at her like he expected an answer from her right then and there. She smiled at him and raised her eyebrows as if to say she’d consider it. Satisfied with the response, Taylor pulled the blanket back to buffer his face from the cold of the window, closed his eyes and leaned his cheek against it.

That night, after Taylor had fallen asleep, but before she could, Aria imagined herself as a waitress. She reached for the inviolable feeling of self-sufficiency.

She imagined waiting tables. She imagined what she would wear. Though it felt out of reach, she loved the idea.

She imagined LA to be a land of promises, a place where no one could hold you back from personal advancement. She could feel the sun on her face, she could imagine palm trees, which she had only seen in pictures but never in real life.

Just before she fell asleep, she found herself wondering what the leaves of palm trees really felt like, whether they were hard or soft. It didn’t matter whether this vision of her future was given to her by someone else. What mattered was that suddenly she had one.

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 8

On Sundays, at the community Christian church, the preacher stood in front of the pews, using a lectern to buffer himself from the onlooking crowd. Behind him, white organza fabric had been fashioned, like a curtain, to hide the bare wall behind it. Affixed to the center of the scene was a giant wooden cross, illuminated by cream-colored Christmas lights.