Even Justine, the girl you were asking about, I begged her and she said no way, and she’s insane, man. But she wouldn’t help me out. Not that she could have. She looks too fucked up.

So do I.

You? You look really clean.

I didn’t feel like telling her that my face was a lie, that I only looked clean because I was cold and friendless and I pushed everyone away.

You’re clean like a hospital, man. That’s why I like you. Hospitals, I love. I’ve started OD’ing on purpose. I’ve OD’d five times just so I could go somewhere clean.

That got to me.

Another thing about China that got to me was this book called The World. She kept it hidden beneath her piles of dirty underwear. The World by Alice. Page after page of maps she’d painted from memory. Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Nepal. The paper was crumpled and sodden now, but her drawings of countries were still jagged and vivid. Her countries were surrounded by bright scarlet oceans and in her oceans there were black slit-eyed serpents and mermaids with hair like flames. She said she’d made The World when she was twelve, back in the days when she loved geography. I could memorize entire countries, she said, and draw them with my eyes closed. It was a kind of gift, that’s what my teachers said. If you help me tonight, I’ll be able to go to a school for drawing maps. They’ve got that kind of school, right?

Sure, I said, even though I’d never heard of such a thing.

Now I was part of her Plan, as fucked up as my dad’s. We didn’t need hammers and solar panels. We had to rely on her lips and her lies and mostly her hands.

Her hands. She took off her nail polish with Cutex Quick & Gentle. The paler the better, she said, though we’ll have the lights low. My mother’s coat thrown over the desk lamp so the light was a barely-there blue glow. She took off her charm bracelet because the silver heart and pony clanked against a roller skate when she moved her wrist. She stuck a toothbrush in her sock, and I thought of Justine, wondering if she’d done what we were about to do, but knowing even then that she never would. Neither should I, but I wanted to. Lose my innocence, which wasn’t necessary at all.

A man upstairs banged on the floor, yelled in rapid-fire Chinese.

China ignored him, turning her music up as loud as she could.

You win some, you lose some, it’s all the same to me…

I trusted her, even though she was coked up. Just kiss him, she said, make sure he closes his eyes.