“Hey,” he said. He hadn’t asked my name. “You forgot this.” He handed the doll out the window. I could hear him laughing as he drove off. Once his taillights disappeared, I threw the doll as hard as I could against a concrete pillar. Her face broke into pieces: a sliver of cheek, a blue long-lashed eye. Outside, lightning crackled in the distance, the clouds dense and greenish, otherworldly. The wind whipped through the city, and finally the clouds deepened in color before they broke apart and released rain. Huge drops fell, splashes as big as poker chips, and the thunder boomed through the garage, loud enough to trigger a few car alarms. I sat and watched the city get drenched, listened to the blare of the alarms, and savored the feeling that no one knew where I was. For the first time I could understand what would make a girl want to disappear. No one else to see the bad things you had done.

I HOPED that Peaches would come back—some people did, after a tough reading. They wanted it to be like the casinos, when a new deal, another shuffle, might refresh their luck. When she didn’t, I decided to search for her: in the dim little casino bars on the floor, at the nightclubs, where I sat at the bar and drank an orange soda until the strobe lights gave me a headache. Every time I heard the click click click of high heels on marble, I turned to make sure it wasn’t her, strutting in those heels with the ties. I didn’t hear the crying anymore, but I was still having visions, a baby’s hand uncurling then clenching into a fist. Little legs kicking in the air. Another, of moths fluttering in and out of a streetlight, the blare of horns. But what I didn’t know, couldn’t understand, was why the visions lingered, repeated on a loop. They interfered with anything else I might see. For the first time in years, I couldn’t use my intuition, those little bread crumbs of knowledge that had been helping me get through the world. Like when I was younger and a bad storm rolled in off of the ocean, and the TV went fuzzy, then dim. I hadn’t thought of how vulnerable I might feel without my visions. One more reason to go to my mother—to ask her what was happening, to see if she could help.