LUCY HAD GONE TO THE party knowing there’d be drinking. She was almost seventeen, none of the kids was going to narc, and Mat and Nealy would never find out. What was the big deal?

Then Courtney Barnes passed out behind the couch, and they couldn’t wake her up. Somebody called 911. The cops showed up and took IDs. When they found out who Lucy was, one of them drove her home while the rest of the kids got hauled into the police station.

She’d never forgotten what the officer had said to her. “Everybody knows what Senator Jorik and Mr. Jorik did for you. Is this how you pay them back?”

Mat and Nealy refused preferential treatment for her and hauled her back to the police station to sit with the others. The press covered the whole thing, complete with op-ed pieces about the wild children of Washingon’s pols, but her parents never threw that in her face. Instead they talked to her about alcohol poisoning and drunk driving, about how much they loved her and wanted her to make smart choices. Their love shamed her and changed her in a way their anger never could have. She’d promised herself never again to let them down, and until yesterday, she hadn’t.

Now she stood in a small-town discount store that smelled of rubber and popcorn. She’d adjusted the plastic bag under her shirt so it didn’t rustle, but she looked so mangy after hours on the road that no one was giving her a second glance, although Panda was attracting the same wary attention he’d garnered in the restaurant. A young mother even pulled her toddler into the next aisle to avoid him.

Lucy glanced at him from under the brim of her ball cap. “I’ll meet you at the register.”

He held up a cheap pink training bra. “This looks about your size.”

She gave him a tight smile. “Really. I don’t need any help. You can do your own shopping now. It’s on me.”

He tossed down the bra. “Damn right it’s on you. I’m keeping the receipts.”

But he still didn’t move. She added some ugly white granny panties to her shopping basket because she wasn’t going to let him watch her choose anything else.

He pulled out the granny panties and tossed in some neon-colored nothings. “I like these better.”

Of course you do. But since you’ll never see them, you don’t get a vote.

He slipped his hand under his T-shirt and scratched his stomach. “Hurry up. I’m hungry.”

She needed him, so she left the trashy nothings in the shopping basket and let him steer her to the single aisle that served as the store’s men’s department.