Annalie pushed the last bite of her cone into her mouth with one finger and stood up. ‘I’m the banged-up Corolla,’ she said, pointing at a black car on the far side of the parking lot.

Peach finished her cup of mocha chip and deposited it in the wastebasket outside the store. She grabbed her backpack and followed Annalie to the old Corolla. When they got inside, Annalie looked sideways at her as she started the engine.

‘I get the feeling you don’t like me,’ she said.

‘I don’t know you,’ Peach replied.

‘Is it because of me taking over from Justin? Was he like your gihow or something?’

‘Gihow?’

‘Guy I Hang Out With. Sounds better than partner or boyfriend or live-in or whatever.’

‘Oh.’ Peach felt herself shutting down at the mention of Justin’s name. ‘No, nothing like that.’

Annalie stared at her, as if she knew that Peach wasn’t telling the truth. ‘Okay.’

‘Do you have a gihow?’ Peach asked.

‘Me? No way. No time.’

She said it breezily, but Peach didn’t believe her. This woman was gorgeous. She had to be fending off passes from guys day and night.

They drove south on Gulf Boulevard, trailing a shuttle bus headed for Pass-a-Grille. She’d traveled this stretch of asphalt thousands of times: sometimes alone, sometimes with Deacon, sometimes with Justin. To Peach, this was Florida, with every building squeezed so tightly together that they looked as if they were holding their breath. The sidewalks were crowded with bare flesh. She saw turtle-like men with little heads jutting out of enormous torsos. Sagging old women in floppy hats. Boys with big bulges and girls with wiggling cheeks. Behind the buildings and parking lots, only steps away, the Gulf teased her, as motionless as glass, glinting with a million sun drops. There was hardly a wave cracking the surface now, but in a few days the Gulf would awaken like a monster and hurl itself against the land. Chayla.

Justin on storms. Hurricanes make you feel small. It’s good to feel small every now and then.

‘I looked up Justin’s murder,’ Annalie said. ‘So it was a drug thing, huh?’

‘That’s what they say.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘I’m not a cop,’ Peach said. ‘I have no idea.’

‘I just thought, you worked with him, you’d know something.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

They stopped at a stop light. Peach cracked the window, and a briny sea smell wafted inside. A crowd of teenage boys hooted at them as they ran through the crosswalk toward the beach.

‘If Justin was your friend,’ Annalie said, ‘you must be sad. Or angry.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you look like you’re working pretty hard not to feel anything, which tells me you feel something big way down deep. I think you were close to Justin, and you won’t say so.’