“Shit, Audrey. How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah,” she said.

She leaned over the plate and inhaled a line. She cut one for me, but I didn’t want any more. I felt woozy and twitchy. Audrey took a cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it, started talking again.

“We did it every night. He was ugly . . .” She shuddered and took a sharp drag off the cigarette. “I used to get mad at my mom for marrying this ugly man. I wished he was handsome—I thought it would be easier. I felt shitty being mad at her when she was sick, and she needed me to be strong. She always said that to me. ‘Be strong for me, pumpkin.’ I tried to. I tried hard. After she died . . . He drank as soon as he woke up in the mornings. He was always pissed off.”

Her voice was oddly calm, didn’t match what she was saying. I was horrified, thinking of Audrey as a child, helpless and alone. I couldn’t see how she could be so fun, laugh so much, even while all this had happened to her. Maybe I’d been lucky, with no dad around. I touched her hand across the table. She didn’t notice.

“I dressed up in her clothes for him. My mom was gorgeous, I mean dazzling. I wore her slips and her dresses but they didn’t fit right, they were too big. He said I looked too much like her, and he couldn’t stand to see me. Before, that’s why he liked me, ’cause I reminded him of her except not sick. And then, boom, he changed his mind. He didn’t like me anymore. He hated me. It didn’t matter how good I was, how hard I tried.”

“Audrey, I don’t understand,” I said. “You wanted him to—”

“He was all I had,” she said. “He wouldn’t fuck me or let me do the things he liked. Rub his neck, or get him more ice for his drink, we didn’t have to have sex. He wouldn’t. He didn’t even take ice anymore, he drank from the bottle. One day he just shoved me out and locked the door. He didn’t want me. He wanted to drink.”

The bitterness in her tone scared me. She bent over the coke and inhaled, pushed the plate to me.

“Do it,” she said. “Be high with me. Please.”

My heartbeat was a rapid flutter and my jaw hurt from clenching. But how could I say no? I snorted the line she cut for me.

“Danielle knew,” she said. “Danielle knew the whole story. If she were here I wouldn’t have to talk about it.”

“We don’t have to,” I said. “But it’s good that you told Danielle.”

“Why?”

“Because she was your friend. She cared about you.”

“Yeah,” she said. “And now she’s dead. And bloody, and . . .”

I reached across the table and hugged her. She felt stiff in my arms.