Without their families they had the entire stretch of the day before them. Both Jesse’s uncle and Mira’s mother wouldn’t be home until late, and Celine’s father was never around much to begin with. She’d only met him a few times but they had been enough. Mira hated him, mostly for how she felt he treated Celine. He was a leering sort of man who held the swagger of someone who’d once been seen as being something, but he was nothing now. His looks had long since gone. Sloe-eyed, with a body bloated and heaving from the alcohol that had ruined him, he was a single parent filled with anger over his wife having left him to raise Celine alone. Being a diabetic meant a disability check every month to pay the bills. One would think his illness would have kept him from drinking, but every weekend meant he’d be sitting at Murphy’s bar until it closed, followed by a rough-and-tumble trek home where, if they were lucky, he’d pass out on the couch.

While the day wasn’t close to over, Mira already felt a sort of nostalgia for its end. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d spent an afternoon like this. Not that long ago it seemed like they were always together, but that was before Celine got beautiful. Her dirt-colored freckles faded. She’d grown out her hair and bought a box of Clairol to lighten it blonder. During long afternoons she sauntered the aisles of their local Walmart, searching through the bins for discounted tubes of mascara or lipstick. Because she was beautiful, the white boys at school didn’t mind she was poor, and because they liked her, the girls forced themselves to like her too.

Celine soon occupied herself with the older boys at school, boys she believed were her ticket out of this town, and so she let them flirt with her if they wanted, let their eyes linger on the parts of her body she used to want unseen—the gap in her loosely buttoned shirt, the curve of her hips, her bare legs in cutoff jeans. She let the boys buy her beer or smokes that she’d later share with Mira and Jesse. They bought her gifts with their parents’ money she’d hawk for cash, saving the bills in a little tin cookie box underneath the bed. She’d saved hundreds of dollars, not much, but she’d make it be because she was getting out of Kipsen. At eighteen she was going to take what she had and go and never look back.