PEACHES SPENT THE TWO DAYS after the tarot reading at the library, leaving only when the librarian rang a bell and announced that they needed to close. All of the homeless men, wearing their puffy parkas in the full heat of summer, the old ladies whose palsied hands made papers rattle in their grip, the mothers scrolling through their phones while their kids tugged on their sleeves and held up picture books. Once, she slipped into the business center at Caesars, using a john’s room key to access the tiny closet on the third floor where the casino kept two old Dells and a creaking, dusty printer. She added her name to lists, researched payment plans and Medicaid coverage. It had been one full day since she last used, and her head was already throbbing, her gut starting to churn.

It took nine calls and three waitlists before she got a bed at a detox center in Hammonton, and she used most of her cash on the cab ride there. She remembers these small farm towns from when she first came to Atlantic City, three years ago with Josh. They remind her of home—all those blueberry trees, the rows of stout bushes, their branches tipped with fruit. Welcome to the Blueberry Capital of the World! a sign announces cheerfully. The cabbie frowns at her in the rearview when she laughs.

The cab cuts through the town’s main street, and she watches other people moving through their tidy lives. A man raises the grate on the front of the hardware store, a paper cup of coffee in one hand. A woman lifts a pastry from a waxed paper bag, closing her eyes as she takes a bite, releasing a puff of confectioners’ sugar into the air. Already, Peaches is sweating so much that her hair is soaked, her stomach lurching. The cab stops at a squat building that looks too ugly to be a place where anyone might get better, might heal. She wants to ask him how much to go back, to turn around and head to AC again. She closes her eyes and thinks of that card, the Tower: the leaping bodies, the creeping flames.

At check-in, she clicks her license down on the counter. In the photo her hair is purple. She fought with her mother about that, her palms still stained with dye.