But the club was nothing like she’d expected. They’d passed the places with long lines and thin women checking names off clipboards. They’d passed the hotel lobbies lined with bored valets watching over expensive cars. Their club was in an alley off Ocean Drive that smelled like piss and mildew. There was no line, no velvet rope. There was one skinny guy with red eyes who didn’t bother to ask her for ID, which would have blown Jeanette’s cover. He gave them both orange wristbands.

Inside there were only a few people. More men than women. A handful who looked like high schoolers just like her. The space was one small black rectangle with a hoselike contraption blowing bubble foam that reached to Jeanette’s waist. A disco light circled in a frenzy. Get ur freak on, Missy advised. And if you want me, want me … come on, get me now—An air horn interrupted.

But Jeanette didn’t act surprised. She asked Johnson for a drink and he obliged. She asked for an amaretto sour, which Sasha had told her about at the first club, but he came back with something called a Long Island iced tea.

“With Bacardi 151!” he shouted over the music into her ear. “Let’s see what you’re made of. We’re gonna have fun tonight, little girl.”

She downed the ice tea quickly to impress him. He seemed impressed. He bought her another one. Jeanette wondered how many drinks she could get away with. She was mesmerized by this newfound power. Men wanting to buy her things just like her father did. She felt like Queen Caro, ruler of all the men, floating in her foam kingdom, watching women in bikinis grinding against men with their shirts around their necks. She liked the way they danced like they also knew their power. But how could she compete? How could she show Johnson she was even more desirable?

She felt woozy from the drinks. She decided to up her game. She bent over and dipped her hands into the foam. It was like reaching into a cloud. She felt her shorts rise up over her butt cheeks. She pictured Johnson wanting her butt cheeks. She backed up into him.

But he didn’t seem surprised. He just grabbed her waist and jerked it back harder. He had a drink in his hand and he tipped it over and a stream of liquid rolled down Jeanette’s back and into her hair and then into her ears and then into her nose.

She shook her head but felt dizzy. She stood up again.

“You little freak,” Johnson yelled into her ear. He pulled a spliff and a lighter out of his back pocket and lit up. He handed it to Jeanette. She noticed two guys beside them watching her. She puckered her lips when she sucked the spliff and stared one of them in the eye.