“Stay for breakfast? My mom would love to make you eat a thousand pancakes. She’s as bad as Francine with the food pushing.”

“I wish I could,” I said honestly. “I’m off to Salishwood.”

“Oh, that’s right.” She smiled. “Work: the walk-of-shame edition.”

“We talked.”

“Tell that to Katiana,” she sighed. “You’re on their radar, you know. They’re jealous.”

“They’re toothless. If you told Sean—”

“No,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are.”

“Just be careful,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “They better be. Dime a dozen peaking in high school cookie mannequins.”

“Accurate.”

“But now, Elliot…”

She put her face in her smoky pillow.

“He seems nice,” I said. “And like he should be a forward on a basketball team.”

She turned over and smiled wide. “He is one of those mythical sensitive, smart, straight boys.”

“Sasquatch of the XY pool.”

“And talented. He uses real film and takes actual photographs and makes these collages….” Her smile was gone. “That was fun, last night. Hanging out with those guys. Art class people. Three of them want me to draw their tattoos.”

“Kira. You should be in that class. Not those bitches.”

Stay in your lane.

She picked up her phone. “Ugh. Someone called in sick. Work in an hour. No pancakes for anyone. Want a ride to Francine’s?”

“Kira.”

“If you want a ride we’re going in twenty. Shower’s down the hall.”

“I’ll shower at Francine’s.”

“Okay, then wait for me here. If you go downstairs, Mom will shove food down your gullet till you beg for mercy.” She stumbled, still tired, to the door.

“Kira.”

She turned.

“I need…” I could not believe I was saying it. “I need new clothes. I need to wear something different sometimes.”

“Of course, look in the closet, you can borrow anything!”

“No, not just today. I mean, like, everything. New.”

“Oh.”

“I told Sean I’d go out with him on Saturday.”

Her smile was back. “Okay.”

“That’s all.”

“Okay. We can go shopping tomorrow.”

“I don’t need you to Pretty Woman me, I just…” Why was my throat getting tight? “I don’t have anything…nice.”

She stepped back in and grabbed my toes through the sleeping bag. “You will tomorrow. I promise.”

“Okay.”

“Sean working today, too?”

“Yes.”

“Leave the eyeliner on.”

—

I arrived, as always, twenty minutes early at Francine’s, who smiled a lot and made sure I took a banana for breakfast. She did not comment on the eyeliner. Then I rode the bus to Salishwood, where Natan creepily did.

Kira and the Myers-Briggs had set my guilt free. Yes, I silently derided Natan nonstop, but my instinct was not “judgment”—it was, in reality, more of an objective evaluation of abundant evidence. And all evidence pointed to his creepiness. Which I was not obligated to put up with.