“Please let go of me,” she said. “Don’t make me remember you like this.”

I let my hands drop to my sides. It had come to this: remembering.

“You better get to where you’re staying,” she said. “You get there safe.”

I shoved her backward, right into the screen door. My own mother and I did it.

She steadied herself against the door frame and whispered, “What made you like this?”

She turned around and went inside. She let the screen door slam. I watched all the living room lights go off, then the kitchen light, then the dining room. Her bedroom stayed bright. I lifted one huge stone and threw it at her window. It broke into bits of glass that caught the light. “You made me,” I said, barely loud enough to hear myself.

I went back to Fiona’s but I only found Drew. He told me she’d skipped town for northern Nevada, a little place called Lovelock. He looked scared and hurt. He wouldn’t touch me, not even to shake my hand. I made him look me in the eye: “You’re not a bad person, okay? Believe that.”

I took a bus to Reno and got a job in an all-night diner owned by a guy named Phil. Philippe was his name, but everyone called him Phil because it pissed him off. He wasn’t even French.

The Reno casinos were like toys built for giant children. One of them had a mural that showed pioneers in covered wagons, Indians crouched behind rocks, a campfire flickering with little lights. I hung out there sometimes, smoking cigarettes, because I liked the feel of history towering over me. It was one of the oldest joints in town, this place. Rumor was they’d gotten famous for a game called mouse roulette back in the day, where they put a mouse in a cage full of numbered holes and people bet on where he’d go. They tried to make noise that would make him change his mind. I bet the mice chose holes that already smelled like their parents or their brothers. I loved the idea of men going crazy watching some little guy decide which dark cave he should choose for shitting. It felt good to be in a town that didn’t have anything to do with me. I woke up early and wandered air-conditioned lobbies just so I could see them empty.

One morning I was approached by a man wearing a pinstriped suit. He had a ponytail that reached his waist. He asked if I was in the business and whether I was represented. I remember that word he used: represented. Like you’d talk about talent or show business. He did this for a living. He was dawn-hunting that day, his word for it, hanging out in lobbies and searching for girls who looked lost. There weren’t too many reasons to be a girl alone in a hotel lobby in the early morning. I told him I wasn’t interested.