But it was done now and Jordan was by her lonesome, putting on her lipstick in a discolored bathroom mirror. The whole bathroom was a little unpleasant to look at in a way that turned right around to being pleasant in a shabby way. It was nestled in the corner of a generous space in Fenway Studios, a grand historical building constructed a hundred years earlier to house nearly fifty artists. Old wood floors, twelve-foot windows, fourteen-foot ceilings, vintage radiators slinking along the plaster walls like ribby animals, easels and supplies set up everywhere, speakers that didn’t work with Jordan’s new burner phone but did with the boom box she found in the closet. It was not meant to be a place to live and it was entirely possible her couch surfing violated a city code, but the owner, an artist who blew up nude photographs and painted bigger, more colorful boobs on top of them, wasn’t the type to be fussed about such things. It was only supposed to be until she found a roommate, anyway.

How long did Jordan think she was going to get to do this for?

As long as she could.

Jordan put on her leather jacket and examined the look in the mirror. She didn’t have a lot of choices; she had the clothing she’d fled in, this orange bodice she’d found in a very nice consignment shop in South Boston, and a T-shirt and joggers she’d bought because God knew if this guy came to work in the middle of the night to paint another one of his fucked-up nudes, she wanted to be clothed. And although she’d been doing a little forgery work here and there since arriving in the city, taking deposits, impressing tourists at the holiday fairs with some quick cheap works, she’d been saving that money.

For what? For the future. The future. A foreign concept. Back in DC, she hadn’t had a future. She, and all the other girls, had an expiration date set by Hennessy. When Hennessy died, it was game over for all of them. As dreams, they’d fall into permanent sleep without their dreamer. Until then, they all shared the same life—Hennessy’s life—living as her and as each other. The girls shared this uncertainty every day. Would the dreaming kill Hennessy today? Would the drugs, the cars, the self-hatred? Would today be the day they fell asleep in the middle of the sidewalk?

It hung over them every day.

It was hard enough to put one’s life in another’s hands; it was even harder when those hands were as reckless as Hennessy’s.

Jordan tried to live life to the fullest. What else could she do? Not just wait.

But in the end, the girls hadn’t fallen asleep unexpectedly.