“I’m not even sure why I did it,” I blurt, trying to keep his interest. “I mean, she had it on her at school one day. Her mom gave it to her to go shopping the weekend before. She was showing off this purse she bought that cost, like, four hundred dollars.”

Daniel eyes me over his glass of Cherry Coke. “Say more.”

“It wasn’t about the purse. I didn’t even like the purse. I thought it was kind of ugly. I can’t explain it.”

“Try,” he urges.

“I just felt this rage bubbling up inside me, and I felt like I would explode if I didn’t do something. So, when Jaq got up to throw something away, I reached in and pulled out her wallet and slid the card out. And then I put the wallet back and acted like nothing happened.”

As I confess, the overwhelming taste of peppermint rolls over my tongue. I can feel the silky liquid from my run-in with the green-eyed guy washing through me. I clench my teeth so hard I nearly bite my tongue. My nostrils are cool as ice tunnels when I exhale.

“Did anyone see you?” he asks.

“No. It’s something no one else knows, remember?” I try to smile but fail miserably.

“What did you do with it then? The credit card?”

I kept it. I kept it and I turned it over and over in my hands at night when I could hear Moony snoring down the hall. I rubbed my thumb over the imprint of her mother’s name: Caroline Green. Such a normal-mother name. A PTA name. A bakes-cookies name. “I cut it up,” I tell him. Which I did…eventually.

He nods once and then peers at me.

“You’re an odd one, Cat.” “You don’t have to tell me.” I remember the man on the street and shiver.

He shakes his head. “I like it. Where I come from, odd is good.”

The way he says it, the glimmer under the words, makes me want to know more about where he comes from.

“Your mom too. She’s…interesting.”

And just like that, the bubble bursts. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“What’s her story? Why did your grandma raise you?”

I don’t like that we’re venturing into this so soon, but I figure it’s better to rip it off like a band-aid. “My mom has bipolar disorder.”

Daniel nods, undeterred. “What’s that like?”