“I’m done with those douche bags. Especially Anthony.”

Audrey took a left.

“Where we going?” I asked.

“Shopping expedition. How much money do you have?”

“Uh . . .”

“Do you have forty dollars?”

“For what?”

“Coke. You like coke?”

I hadn’t been around coke since the old days with Danielle. I loved it and I hated it, same as everybody.

“I have forty dollars,” I said.

We sped north past the Loop, through neighborhoods and stretches of native forest. The cluster of pines and undergrowth gathered evening shadow. We passed subdivisions and people walking their retrievers in the twilight. The clouds glowed pink and purple in the sky.

“Fucking sunset,” Audrey said.

“You don’t like it?”

“I like night.”

Who doesn’t like sunsets? I thought. I studied her profile while she drove. She was agitated, her fingers moving on the steering wheel. She drove unsteadily, kept speeding up and slowing down.

“Where is this place?” I asked her.

“Almost there.”

The sky settled into streetlights and tree shadows. Gradually Audrey relaxed next to me.

“You and Brandon are close, huh?” I said.

“We hang out a lot. The three of us, me, him, and Dani.”

“That was very chivalrous,” I said. “How he stood up for you.”

“You mean the fight? He’s not the first guy I’ve seen punch Anthony.”

“I can see why,” I said.

She turned into a parking lot flanked by pine forest on one side and a slapped-together apartment complex on the other.

“Come on,” she said. “Give me the cash.”

I handed it over. We walked across the asphalt to a set of stairs, and around a corner to a door where she stopped and sent a text message from her phone. Crickets sang from someplace close. She grinned at me. “This won’t take long,” she said.

The door opened and Audrey grabbed my wrist and hauled me inside. It was dim. Central air blew from a vent in a wall. A switch clicked on, and after a couple of flickers, harsh light invaded the room. It wasn’t much of an improvement.

Our host had a flat pale face and fauxhawked hair. His grin made him adorable in the way of children in cookie commercials and when it departed it left him bereft, with an assortment of random features that didn’t quite add up to a face. Veiny muscles showed through his shirt.

“Audrey, great to see you,” he said, kissing her ear.

“Jacob,” Audrey said, “this is Charlotte.”

He took my hand and peered at us. “You could be sisters, couldn’t you? Same eyebrows.”

I glanced at Audrey. We didn’t look at all alike. She shrugged.

“Sit down, sit down,” the guy said.

He gestured to a couch in the corner, behind a wide glass-topped coffee table. On the table lay the fattest cat I’d ever seen. I skirted around it to take a seat on the couch. Cat hair grayed the green upholstery and flew out in a cloud as I sat.