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gravity released its hold; we spun like dust motes through a coppery quilt of light and passed out of our reality and into another.

FOUR
    B ACK IN THE PRESENT, THE doorbell rings, startling us both.
    â€œYoo-hoo,” a voice yodels. “I’ve brought breakfast. I’m letting myself in.”
    Huguette. My mother’s most loyal client.
    â€œWe’ll talk about this tonight,” my mother says. She begins to cough and soon she’s gasping for breath. She waves at me, gesturing for a Kleenex. I hold out the tissue box and she stares up at me with bleary eyes.
    â€œReschedule Huguette. This can’t wait until tonight,” I say.
    â€œNo, we need the money.” She shakes her head at me and begins hacking again.
    Huguette walks into the bedroom. Barely eight in the morning and she’s dressed and fully made up as if she were going to the opera. Around her neck she wears a silk scarf, elegantly tied. Her face falls when she sees the tray on the bed.
    â€œOh, you’ve already had breakfast.” She looks at the quiche she’s brought sadly.
    â€œBut she’s eaten none of it,” I say, taking the dish out of her hands. “Heat her up a piece after your session.”
    Huguette nods and hands me the latest issue of Car and Driver . She always brings me something: a cupcake, a set of drawing pencils, Chapstick.
    â€œTell me, what young man does not lust after cars?” she asks, content that I will now go and leave her with my mother.
    Despite the fact that I’m desperate to continue my conversation with my mother, my exchange with Huguette is artful, and we both enjoy it, for there is a secret, cruder conversation lurking beneath. You again. Yes, I know you’re guardian of this house. Here’s my offering. Now get the hell out.
    Even though Huguette’s gesture is largely self-serving, she’s not unkind, nor is she altogether wrong. I do lust after motorized vehicles, just not ones with four wheels; motorcycles are my passion. Still, I like that she takes the time to think what a teenager like me would enjoy. I mean, she could try so hard to pretend I’m normal that she would give me Maxim or Details , the grotesque images of a life that will never be mine. I adore Huguette. She sees no need to make apologies to me for my life.
    â€œI’m afraid I have nothing to offer you,” my mother tells Huguette, flashing me a dirty look.
    I haven’t done the shopping yet—I’ve been too busy with finals. I know what she’s thinking: she’s stuck in the house and I get to go out in the world. With my puckered face. She seems to forget about that.
    â€œI ate hours ago,” says Huguette.
    My mother glances at the clock. “Patrick will be waiting,” she says.
    I swig the last of my orange juice and stuff my leather gloves into the bowl of my motorcycle helmet, stalling.
    â€œI’ll be all right,” my mother says, her voice softening. “You can leave.”
    Huguette dismisses me. “Go, be with your tribe.”
    My tribe. Right.

FIVE
    M Y MOTHER SOUGHT HELP FOR me immediately after we arrived in Peacedale, a small town in the smallest state in America. We would have a lot of adjustments to make. America was years ahead of Isaura: it had electricity, cell phones, computers, and highways.
    Isaura was stuck in the horse-and-wagon days. This was deliberate. We could have gone America’s way; we had been on that track. But after the Great War the Ministry had decided that technological innovation would be the end of our civilization. So we’d purposely never moved beyond candle power and outhouses. We did have running water, the Ministry’s one concession to modernity.
    We wandered the streets at midnight. My mother knew we couldn’t afford to be seen in the day, not with me looking like a mummy and pus seeping out from beneath my bandages. She found the Valley Rehabilitation Center at 2:45 a.m.