Cocaine makes you feel invincible. Sure, man, I said, I’ll kiss the Six Million Dollar Man. Bragging and tough, like I did this kind of thing all the time. Dean Black could hardly compare. He was my boyfriend; he was the one all the girls wanted to love. My former friend Tiffany Chamberlain tortured me when I started going into the bushes with Dean. I can’t believe he likes her, she used to whisper so I could hear. She’s not that pretty. She’s weird. She used to live with those free-love freaks. Well, Tiffany could have Dean now. I was here.

I rifled through China’s clothes, choosing a white flimsy dress, with a ruffle on the left side, a birthday party dress, the kind of pretty, frilly garment I’d dreamt of wearing when I was fourteen. China handed me her brown leather lace-up boots with heels three inches high. Witch boots, she said, that’s what these kickass boots are called.

China backcombed my hair so it rose around my face like a wild red mane. She lent me lip gloss. It smelled like smoke and cherries.

You know I’m going to lose, and gambling’s for fools,

But that’s the way I like it baby. I don’t want to live forever…

Lee Majors was about to arrive. That’s what China called him. The dude’s loaded! He’s the Six Million Dollar Man.

The Chinese man upstairs yelled, Turn it down! China threw her bottle up at his voice and the bottle smashed against the ceiling, shards of glass falling down like lacerating rain.

Her bathroom was the smallest bathroom I’d ever been in. I sat on the toilet and my feet touched the wall. Blue mold on the tiles; dust of violet blush on the floor.

The shiver started in my back, seized me suddenly. My muscles started to contract as the chill coursed through me. My knees were bone white, goose-pimpled, and I went fetal.

My teeth were chattering and my jaw ached. The hair on my arms rose as I trembled. I might as well have been in a freezer. I tried to will it away, but I couldn’t think of a warm place because I’d never been anywhere tropical. So I hugged myself, running my hands up and over my body as if I were my own comforter.

In the quiet of the bathroom, I heard my own voice again. I can’t handle this. Get out, I told myself, you’ll fuck this up. Just go home. Leave. I barely knew China; she might be setting me up in some perverted scam. I could go home, be consoled by Sylvia. In the morning, she’d bring me warm milk, thistle juice, let me miss school while I slept off the chill.