“I don’t know,” she said, and I saw that her pupils were huge, and I knew whatever she was on, it was more than weed, more than vodka pilfered from someone’s mom. “Ryan asked me out on a date and then we went to the mall and then we all took these pills, and I feel amazing, but now I’m really scared. Am I okay? Is everything okay?”

“You need to go home,” I said. “Just tell them you have to go home and then walk there—do not drive. Just walk home. I get off in two hours, I’ll come take care of you.”

“I don’t know how,” she said. I had rung up her items and bagged them, and there was a limited amount of time left for us to talk without holding up the line.

“What do you mean you don’t know how? You’re at Rite Aid. It’s seven blocks. You’ve walked from here to your house a million times.”

“I think I would get lost,” she said.

“It wants you to swipe your credit card,” I said.

She fumbled with her wallet and swiped her card.

“You are not good to be hanging out with boys like this. Do you understand? You need to go home. Bunny, are you listening?”

She nodded, and I could tell she was on the verge of tears. “How long have we been in this store?” she asked me.

“Ten minutes,” I said.

“Oh good,” she said, “I thought we had been in here for hours!” And then she laughed, and I knew she was not going to go home. “There is,” she said, and paused, “some kind of shadow on your face.”

“There’s nothing on my face,” I said.

“You look so sad!”

“Take your card and fucking go,” I said.

“Why are you mad at me?” she asked, but she took her card and put it back in her wallet. Her friends were waiting for her by the exit, holding their bags, cracking open their sodas, giggling.

“Just go,” I said, so angry I was getting tunnel vision and my heart was pounding.

As soon as she left, I felt guilty for getting angry at her, and guilty for not doing more to protect her. And yet, I knew that this was the world. I knew that this was what teenagers did. I knew that Bunny was so desperate to be seen as sexually attractive that she probably would have had sex with one of those boys stone-cold sober, even if they had Cheeto breath and there was bad lighting. I had no reason to suspect those boys had drugged her in order to get in her pants, no reason to imagine them ignoring her protests as they took it too far, no evidence that she would wind up scared and missing pieces of her memory the next morning. Bunny didn’t need my protection. She could probably pick up one of those boys and throw them. And I had no knowledge of those particular boys and whether they were a good or a bad sort. I knew only that one of them was on the wrestling team and they both took Spanish. I hoped that they would all go to someone’s house and eat too much candy and watch a movie whose plot they couldn’t follow. I hoped they would get lost staring at someone’s fish tank, saying things like “Isn’t it crazy that fish exist?”

Still, I must have been visibly perturbed because toward the end of my shift, Terrence put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed the muscles there and they twanged under his fingers like guitar strings. “You poor thing,” he murmured. “Do you want me to see if Lisa will close for you?”

“Uh, no, it’s okay,” I said. I had already texted Bunny several times and she had not texted me back.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Just worried about my friend. But I’m sure she’s fine.”

“You’re such a good guy,” Terrence said, and I knew he was more stoned than usual, and I felt like I was in a nightmare where everyone was on drugs but me. Except that it was not a nightmare, it was quasi-factual, because everyone present in that Rite Aid, every one of my coworkers and customers, was, if not already drunk or high, planning on becoming so within the next few hours.

Was I a good guy? Was Terrence a good guy? In many ways he was the kindest person I knew, but I also was aware that he was nothing but a sad, doped-up manager at a small-town Rite Aid, and that if he was the best guy I knew then there was really no hope at all for anyone.

“It’s fine,” I said. I wanted to work the extra hours. I needed the money.

* * *

—

When I got home, there were no lights on in Bunny’s house. I knocked on their door, rang the bell. It had been a hot day, but now the air was cool and the wind was picking up. I texted her from her front porch. I was still sitting there when Ray Lampert suddenly materialized in the darkness, having evidently walked home instead of driving.

“Michael, my man!” he cried. And I regretted all of my life choices leading up to that moment so intensely that I felt I was internally collapsing.

“Come in, come in,” he said, fumbling with his keys.

“That’s all right, sir,” I said, already standing and trying to edge past him down the steps to the sidewalk. He grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me like I was a dog toy. “Get in here,” he said. “Don’t make me spend the rest of the night alone. I’m not ready for it to be over! It can’t be over. You know why? Because we won’t let it be over!”

And it was exactly like when Bunny would grab me in the pool like an alligator and pull me under, only now, instead of drowning, I was inside a gaudy living room, watching Ray Lampert fumble with his phone trying to put a Patsy Cline record on the Bluetooth sound system, as he told me about how it had been stand-up comedy night at the Blue Lagoon and some comics had come from L.A. and that was something he had always wanted to try: stand-up comedy. I could not imagine anything more horrible than Ray Lampert doing stand-up.

“Where’s Bunny?” he asked, as he poured himself a glass of wine.

“I don’t know. She didn’t answer my texts, so I’m guessing she’s asleep.” It was always best to sprinkle your lies with truths.

“We’ll let her rest, then,” he said. “She’s so tuckered out from those practices. It’s a long day, she’s there from seven to seven just about.” His pride in her caused his face to become beautiful, and for several seconds I could see him as a younger man, the kind who would marry the prettiest, well-brought-up, good and sweet girl he could find, determined to earn her, to make a place for himself in this world, to build this house for her. The kind of man innocent enough to think that an all-black bathroom was compelling and chic. I had come to understand, somehow, over the years, that it was Ray and not his wife who had decorated their house. His touch was everywhere, in the grandiose marble and the gilt end tables, the oversize art reproductions in bold colors hung on every wall as though they were real paintings. He had tried, with a teenage boy’s imagination, to conjure a rich man’s house, and then he had made it a thrilling reality in every detail.