“Abner is wrong,” I said, several times too many. “He’s missed the point. It doesn’t matter if his family’s a touch crooked. What matters is, they show up. They’re on a crusade for nothing, fighting against no one, all for something that no sane person could understand.”

“That’s what the Westside is all about,” said Cherub, whose eyes would not stay open.

“That’s what it used to be. It used to be fun. It used to be beautiful.”

“It used to be that a few hundred people got killed every year for no good reason.”

“But there was something . . . there was purity. Grace. Love. The Byrds have that, or they think they do. That’s worth showing up for.”

Cherub ran his hand through my hair. It caught on one of my knots, sending a wave of dull pain crashing over my scalp. I fell down on the mattress, and he fell beside me, and we laughed ourselves to sleep.

I dreamed of being burned alive. It was a theater dream—for someone too cowardly or foolish to have ever wanted to act, I have more than my share—in which a trio of stagehands lashed me to a pile of firewood and set me alight. An inferno of blue crepe flickered up around me, blown by unseen fans. When it touched me, it burned.

I screamed, and the audience was silent.

I screamed, and they booed.

A cry came from the wings in a nearly impenetrable Irish accent: “Pull her!”

The stagehands returned, and the crowd roared approval as they dragged me off, my skin starting to char.

The stage manager appeared, leading a hunchbacked woman who had four fingers on her right hand. I choked on the stench of burning hair.

“I told you,” said the Irish woman, “the girl does not have the range.”

“A mistake on our part,” said the stage manager. She flipped open her notebook and crossed out my name. As the paper flames swallowed me, I recognized my mother’s face, as serene as the day she died.

I woke with bile in my mouth, warm for the first time in months. Ash burned my eyes and smoke oozed in from under the door. A spike of fear pierced the fog of gin and dreaming. I got to my feet and found I was still deeply drunk.

The knob was red hot. The door remained locked.

“Abner, you bastard, let us out of here!” I screamed. No answer came save the gentle crunch of a happily growing fire.

My screams had not disturbed sweet Cherub, so I kicked him in the side.

“We have to break the lock,” I said. Even drunk, he had the sense to feel his pockets, looking for an implement, and found nothing. In that moment, I was certain we were going to die.