They were leaning along the rails, passing a bottle of pink lemonade between them. Lucy Ellison, Noelle Cohen, and Nina Wright. We had gone to middle school together, until their parents sent them to private schools inland. We hadn’t been friends, exactly—Noelle and Nina lived in Margate, in large houses with fountains in the front yards and high iron fences, and they always hung out together after school. Lucy lived in Marvin Gardens, in a pink Spanish-style house with her parents and two standard poodles—her life looked like something from a storybook. Des never wanted to give me bus fare, so I never met up with them on the weekends or after school, and after a while they stopped inviting me.

“I almost didn’t recognize you. Your hair,” Noelle said. She passed the bottle to Lucy, who grimaced when she took a sip—not just lemonade.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s different.”

“How’s Atlantic City High?” Lucy asked. “Do girls really throw bleach at each other when they fight?”

“I heard there’s a day care in the building, because so many girls have had babies,” Noelle said.

“I—it’s okay.” It wasn’t true, about the day care or about the bleach. But I didn’t want to explain that I had dropped out. I’d had visions more frequently in school than anywhere else. It made me anxious, unable to concentrate. Des told me she wanted me to help out more in the shop, but it had been my idea to quit, once my sixteenth birthday came around and no one could report me to the state. I told myself it would just be easier that way.

“Want some?” Nina asked, holding out the bottle.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Some of my mom’s vodka, with a packet of Crystal Light stirred in. Down here none of the cops even care, so we came to pregame.”

I took the drink from her. It smelled like nail polish remover and SweeTarts. A ring of lip gloss shimmered around the mouth of the bottle. I took a sip, which made me cough. I had never had a drink before, but I hoped maybe it’d make me feel different—calmer or braver, or just less myself.

“What are those?” Lucy asked, reaching for my wrist. At first I thought she meant the pearls, but then she turned my palm over into hers, slid a business card out of my grip. My face got hot, and I could feel the mottled rash creep across my neck, the way it always did when I was embarrassed.

“Clara Voyant, Seer and Fortune Teller! Oh my god. Stop.”

“It’s just a … a project,” I said. I thought of what Des had said the other day. My mother and I made the same face when we lied.

“What kind of project?” Her eyes gleamed with mean joy.

“Hard to explain.”