The dead woman’s eyes were open, the pupils fixed on some faraway horizon. They were milky, looked like they’d be pebble hard to the touch, and the mouth was slightly parted like death had come as she said something innocuous. How’s the weather over there? mouth barely closing over ere.

“Fuck, I don’t know. Fuck! I’m so high. Okay, give me a moment. I need to think. Give me a moment.” Johnson ran a hand through the wisps of hair left on his almost-bald head.

A moment ago Jeanette had thought she’d reached the precipice of who she wanted to be, thought she’d finally walk the halls of Gables High like a harder girl, like the ones with boyfriends who didn’t have to lie about sexual experience. They’d always both intrigued and frightened her. She knew they knew of things she only read about in romance paperbacks with worn spines or watched on HBO late at night with the volume muted so her parents wouldn’t hear. She believed the harder girls, the cooler girls, were contagious and she, dripping with want, could siphon their cool. She’d tried to move in their orbit, hoped they’d see her as one of their own. But until this night, she had lived with fear they’d find her out for the girl she really was.

Now she was standing in front of a dead body and knew of things none of the cool girls would ever know.

It started like this: Two girls in denim coochie-cutters hanging outside a gas station. Sasha’s car was parked in an IHOP lot. They’d just finished eating a stack of pancakes for dinner. They were bored. Sasha’s mom was at her boyfriend’s place in West Palm Beach, where she spent most weekends. Jeanette’s mother was home recovering from a tummy tuck. Her father was home drunk.

They’d split a joint and hot-boxed Sasha’s car at the car wash. They did that often: selected a deluxe super-plus wash, which meant the car went in and they didn’t have to pull out for like fifteen minutes. So nice, to be pulled along, car moving on its own, no decisions. In a haze of smoke, Jeanette had watched automatic rollers paint Sasha’s windshield with giant, clumsy, felt-robot hands. The robot and Jeanette had blown hot air at each other. Then, giggling, they’d rolled into the sunshine, opening the windows to air the car as a bored young worker took Sasha’s money and shook his head in disbelief and, probably, a bit of jealousy. Then IHOP. Then they’d wanted cigarettes. That’s why they went to the gas station.