Elle couldn’t believe that she was sucker enough to be sympathetic a minute ago. She thought it was a boring line because the word exotic was so played out. Six months ago, a rich white lady had approached her and said the exact same thing. “You’re so exotic.” The woman had reached for Elle’s chin and cupped it. Elle remembered her hand smelling of cigarettes and bruised gardenias. She had declared, “Cupid lips and a face like a perfect little China doll!” Elle felt special because a rich woman had picked her out to compliment. Then the husband with the big hands and tiny espressos turned to his wife and said, “Wouldn’t her skin look lovely in the white interior of our white Rolls Royce?” When Elle had wanted to leave the café early that day, Sophia hadn’t understood.

“It’s not like it’s a put down,” said Sophia. It was hard for Elle to explain that it didn’t make her feel ugly but rather like she didn’t even exist.

The motorcycle guy was now going on about how sexy and different Sophia was and she seemed to like it. The guy said, “Hold on,” and returned to his bike. He was digging around in the hatch, and from out of nowhere he lifted a boa constrictor into the air. It was brown and gray and coiled itself up and around his hairless arm. He asked, “Do you want to touch it?”

Elle kicked Sophia beneath the table and said, “He might be like the guy from the River.”

Sophia laughed but went to him anyway.

Last weekend, Elle’s soccer team had organized a canoe trip fundraiser. Elle and Sophia were in a canoe together when a nude man with a jiggling gut chased them in the shallow end and screamed, “I’m gonna gitcha good, you nasty little girl.” He had his thing in his hand and he jerked it back and forth like he was loading ammunition. Elle wondered which of the two he intended to “git.”

It gave Elle the creeps but Sophia still petted the thing. At first she hesitated and only dabbed it with her finger. She did it ever so gently the way the woman behind the cosmetics counter had taught them how to apply eye cream without tugging at your skin. The motorcycle guy urged Sophia on. He said, “Go on. Don’t be shy.” Next thing she knew, Sophia was full on stroking the thing and giggling with delight.

In bed at Sophia’s house that night, Sophia said, “Even though the snake looked like it would be slippery and moist, it was actually dry.” She hissed the word “moist” because she knew Elle thought the word sounded perverted.

Elle said, “Yuck, shut up!”

Elle liked spending the night at her cousin’s because Sophia’s mom, Aunt Kim, was never home. They could do whatever they wanted.