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Nikes or something.”
    My sister cocked her head. “You're pretty young for a
Heaven's Gate reference, tyke.”
    “You know, I'm so tired of people telling me I'm too young.”
The words fell out of me in my whiniest voice, which I realized did little for
my case. “I've done crazier things than so many older people. I've given our
mother a bath during a relapse. I've paid the bills and balanced the checkbook
since I was fifteen. I've worked since I was fourteen. I've even been taking
college classes, did you know that? English Lit and American History. I'm going
to UT a whole year early! This fall!”
    Carson's eyes had glazed over again, but this time I didn't
care. I was on a roll.
    “I've been having sex—safe, consensual, adult sex—since I
was thirteen! And I drive, and...”
    “Okay, Ash. You know actual adults don't have to prove they're adults.”
“Only because no one ever asks them to,” I pouted. Carson shrugged. We lapsed
into the kind of silence that soothes.
    Soon, the city would become the color it had been when I
regarded it from a roof top, at a crazy frat party in May. Perhaps even sooner,
that crazy frat party in May would take on the sepia quality of a distant
memory. It would be like I'd never kissed him, Mr. Tall Drink of Water. I still
kept swearing to myself that that night had been different. I'd done plenty of
crazy things in my life, but was still reluctant to categorize the chance
meeting with the perfect stranger as just another one of Ash's “life stories.”
    “You are thinking about a boy,” Carson said, grasping
my hand and gently tugging me in the direction of the apartment she shared with
three other singer-songwriters and one “paranormal psychology” student. “I can
tell. Spill the beans, missy.”
“It's nothing. Just some stupid hook-up at a party.”
    “That's how Tex and I met,” Carson muttered, wistfully.
Then, she pointed a long, bony finger in the direction of the early moon,
hanging high in the afternoon sky. “I believe in magic. Don't you?”
    “What does that have to do with anything?”
    “It has to do with—if your world was rocked, your world was
rocked. Don't downplay. Let it be a magical thing.”
    By then, we'd reached my sister's house—an old clapboard
painted bright blue, with two bedrooms on each floor. An algae-glazed pool held
dominion in the backyard. I peered over the fence at the green water and
remembered the delicious feel of those ice cubes gliding down my back. That
single dramatic act had done something to my whole body. Whoever he was, he'd
woken me up. I laughed darkly, to myself.
    “What's his name, lady?” Carson muscled her tan shoulder
against the sticky screen door. Even for half-sisters, we didn't look alike.
Carson had never known her father, but Anya maintained that he'd been a member
of the Choctaw nation. We had no real proof but my sister's dark, thick,
straight hair, the texture of a horse's mane—and of course the dollop of extra
melanin in her skin. Meanwhile, I could burn from walking around the city with
shoulders uncovered for an hour.
    “Wait,” she said, turning. Her paint-splattered overalls had
already begun to catch early beams of moonlight. “Do you not know his name, Miss
Thing?
    I slapped my sister on her denim-clad ass, enjoying the peal
of giggles this inspired.
    “You little S-L-U-T!”
    “It's not like that!” I shrieked, as she continued to taunt
me. “We made a pact to not exchange names.”
    “Why would you do that?”
    My tongue suddenly felt dry in my mouth. The reasons why—the
whole freaky map of possible reasons why—had actually never occurred to me
before. Or perhaps, I'd never allowed them to occur to me.
    “Because... he's probably a serial killer, and I'm an
idiot.”
    “Oh, Ash! Don't be so dramatic! I'm sure that's not
it.” Yet Carson didn't sound fully convinced. And when she finally eked the
door open, flooding the porch with warm light and the sounds and smells