The light sucks. I have to lean over a box of coffee stirrers to work on a shelf by the window and it puts me at this weird angle where it’s hard to keep my hand steady. But I don’t have to change much—just shape the eight in 1978 to a five on the birthday and issued dates, white out the J for junior license, and then I’m nineteen. When I start working on it, the stuff about the blending and the paper towel makes sense. I focus really small, the way I do when I’m putting on eyeliner, thinking about where I want the pencil to go, and then my hand just does it, one tiny speck at a time. I feel so lucky that as sloppy as Bodie is, he’s kind of anal about his art supplies. All his pencils are perfectly sharpened.

Bodie is in the kitchen when I get back. I’m not expecting him to be. He usually takes the world’s longest smoke breaks. He sees me holding his pencil case.

Sometimes my brain thinks faster than I even know it can, because I say, “Bodie, you must have dropped this. I found it on the floor under one of the tables.”

“Shit, Pilgrim,” he says, “you’re a lifesaver. That’s like my soul right there.” And then I feel awful, because the way Bodie feels about his pencils is totally the way I felt about my guitar.

“Favor?” I ask. I can’t stop now just because I feel bad.

“Anything,” he says, so stupid grateful that I saved his pencils.

“Can you cover for me for like ten minutes? Girl trouble,” I say, knowing Bodie is squeamish about those things. He blushes for hours after Carly makes him restock the tampon machine in the bathroom. And as much as it embarrasses me to embarrass him, my desperation makes me brave.

I run to the art supply store, buy a can of something called fixative, spray my license in the alley, and dump the can in the dumpster. Mark Conrad says the fixative is what separates the pros from the amateurs, because it makes it really hard to rub the fake numbers off.

— Chapter 24 —

Carly is in a mood today. She’s always in some kind of mood. I’ve never worked a day with her where the way she was feeling didn’t change the air around her one way or another, but this mood is especially bad.