“How old are you really, though?” Johnson said, switching the manual gear up a level and getting on the highway. “You know what? Don’t answer that. I’m barely legal myself, ha ha ha.”

Jeanette didn’t get it. She was so tired of pretending to get things. She switched the subject. “I’ve been to a club before.”

“Oh yeah?”

Johnson had the radio station tuned to Power 96. Jeanette thought he looked too old to listen to hip-hop but then realized she just thought that because her parents never listened to Power 96, only the easy listening station and Spanish talk radio, what she assumed all adults over a certain age listened to.

“Yeah. In South Beach. Got super drunk. It was so fun.”

This wasn’t a lie. Two months earlier she’d used Sasha’s sister’s ID, and even though the two of them looked only slightly similar, the bouncer at Club Tigre had glanced at her rhinestone bra top and slid open the velvet rope. She remembered dancing on a table. She remembered older guy after older guy buying her drinks. She remembered Sasha’s attachable ponytail that made Sasha’s hair longer and thicker. She remembered vomiting on the side of the road on their way home.

“Well, it’ll be fun tonight. You ever been to a foam party?”

“Yeah,” Jeanette lied.

After an uncomfortable pause she said, “So what do you do?” This was what grown people said to each other according to all movies and TV shows. They were passing the downtown skyline, which meant Miami Beach was minutes away. Select windows of high-rises lit up like those Lite-Brite toys from when she was young. She pictured reaching out and plucking each window into her palm so the whole city went dark.

Johnson eyed her before returning his eyes to the road. “Are you some kind of hooker?”

“What?”

“What’s your endgame here? I’m not giving you money. What are you trying to do to me?”

“Fine,” Jeanette said, measuring the depth of her next lie. “I’ll tell you. I’m seventeen and a half.” She thought that’s what he wanted to hear. She thought that would set him at ease.

But Johnson just frowned at her. “I don’t get it,” he said.

They drove in silence until they crossed the bridge to the beach. Immediately the human landscape changed. Women in stilettos. Men in suits. Sex and sexiness pouring from every crevice.