“You should be glad that you don’t. She’s trouble, mind you.”

Clara began to murmur words in a softer cadence, seemingly to herself, but I caught unnatural and improper in her spiel. I escaped back to Rose’s room.

As the sky turned black outside and it became apparent that Rose was probably going to sleep through the night, I realized I hadn’t checked in with anyone since leaving Yumi that morning. I wondered what she and Merry were doing, if they regretted not coming along. Peter had called my cell a few times, but I didn’t want to listen to his messages. The lamp in the bedroom had not been lit but it was a last-quarter moon outside and the venetian blinds were still twisted open, and it was bright enough that I could see the shine on Rose’s eyes. “You’re awake?” I whispered.

“Been awake. Just thinking,” she murmured back.

“I was just going to grab these blankets and . . .”

“Here.” She scooted over, making room for me on the twin mattress. I lay as I had before, not side by side with shoulders touching, but head to foot so that it felt less intimate. Nothing telegraphs casualness like having your stockinged feet in someone else’s face. Once the springs stopped shivering, she spoke again, in a low voice, “Your feet kinda stink.”

“Sorry.” I switched directions. I felt the fatigue in the back of my eyes; I’d slept poorly on Lucy’s couch and driven for hours. My head relaxed into the pillow and I closed my eyelids, aware that my teeth had a filmy layer of grit from the sugar in the protein bar I ate.

“I can’t believe that Yumi and Merry aren’t here.” She huffed in disgust. “How is it that you’re the one to come visit Viv with me, and you don’t even know her?”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that but it seemed inappropriate to not acknowledge it. “Hmm.”

“It’s fucking ridiculous. You think you know somebody . . .”

I opened my eyes and she was looking at me. A tiny jolt tickled my sternum. It was as if she saw me for the first time—really saw me. I wondered if she felt something too, or if she was still ruminating over her anger toward the other two Glossies.

Embarrassed, I decided to deflect. “Did you like growing up here? I mean, you grew up next to your best friend, right?”

“Ugh. I keep trying to give my mom money but she says I should hold on to it. For security, she says. I tell her she can leave this tiny-ass town and live in a bigger city but she likes it here, even though there’s nothing to do in a town this size. And you can never get in trouble because everybody knows your business.”

I felt the heavy sense of Rose’s commitment to getting herself out of here. I could understand her anger when I slipped right into the group—a girl who tried out for a talent contest with an audition in the city she already lived in! How convenient, how easy. She would have had to plan her trip weeks in advance. A girl like this, who traveled to another city to practice her talent, who finally made it to Hollywood and could actually buy a chunk of it with money earned by herself, well, that was a girl to be commended. I could bet that everyone in her hometown, all the doubters and naysayers, were probably eating their words right now. A house in Sunset Strip. She was practically Clooney’s neighbor.

She rolled away, the weak light from the moon illuminating her back. Maybe we were done talking. It wouldn’t surprise me; Rose wasn’t much of a talker to begin with.

“I think,” she said, halfway muffled by her pillow, “it was a mistake to come see my mom. I care for my mom, but . . .”

“Sure,” I said, voice floating up into the low ceiling. Clara’s murmurings had worried me a bit, but I wasn’t going to say it aloud.

The next moment, brightness streamed in through the single window and it was morning. I shifted awake slowly, the slanted light creeping warmly onto my cheeks. I was still fully clothed on top of the pink ruffled bedspread. Without getting off the bed, I slipped a hand into my bag and found my cell phone.

As I eased onto my back, wiping sleep from my eyes and displaying my missed call list, my elbow bumped into a curled-up lump next to me, under the blanket. Rose slept with lips slightly parted and hair strewn across her pillow like a mermaid.

At this angle, her eyes closed and face relaxed, she looked younger. Sweeter. Less intimidating. Maybe it was because I couldn’t see her striking eyes staring me down.

Rose shifted and snuffled. She yawned and opened her eyes, and it was back to normal, like last night’s chat had never happened. She barely looked at me as she got out of bed and ignored me as I checked my voice-mail messages.

Clara was still in the living room, still on that same couch, as we ate cornflakes for breakfast. I couldn’t imagine how she had transported Rose anywhere outside of this house, especially to gigs in San Francisco. The pageant-show mom I’d imagined and the woman in front of me now could not be reconciled in my mind.

I drank the warm dregs of leftover milk, but Rose dumped hers down the sink. “We’re going to go,” she said in a flat intonation without looking at Clara. “We didn’t, you know, bring a change of clothes and we have stuff to do back in L.A.”

Clara pursed her lips together but did not argue. “Are you going straight back?”

Rose sounded careful in her reply. “We might swing over to San Jose. Cassidy’s never been to the Bay Area before.”

“Are you going to see . . . her?” Clara’s disgust for Viv was palpable. I couldn’t understand what Clara could hate about a sick young woman.

Rose shook her head and gave her mother a stiff hug goodbye. I climbed back into the driver’s seat, gazing at Clara as she waved goodbye at the front door and shut it before we’d pulled away. It struck me as odd that someone who could claim knowledge of a god could hate someone so forcefully. We didn’t discuss what her mother had said.

It was easily another hour to San Jose, and we listened to Barenaked Ladies and Savage Garden on low volume, Rose having had the good sense to pilfer some of her old CD collection before leaving her childhood house. “I thought she was your neighbor,” I said, my hands clenched around the steering wheel. It felt wrong to ask about Viv, after all the secrecy, but at the same time, Rose had dragged me out all this way.

“They moved out here for treatment,” Rose said bluntly.

“Oh.”

“I heard from Viv’s mom while you were in the bathroom. They’re out of the ER and back at home. So we won’t have to visit any hospitals.”

I wondered if I could just wait in the car to avoid any awkwardness, but Rose directed me to a house near the city center and gave me a look when I didn’t unbuckle my seat belt. When Rose knocked on the door, a woman appeared from behind a screened porch door. She was short, with warm brown eyes and a long braid that swung from her shoulder as she reached for the doorknob. “Come in!” she said. “She’s sleeping right now but she’ll be so happy to see you.”

The smell in the house was all wrong. Our apartment in L.A., after days of being sealed up while we traveled, smelled like musty towels and stale perfume, the scent baking into itself. This house smelled strongly like antiseptic, the stomach-clenching scent of bleach-water that I recalled from cleaning cafeteria tables with old sponges in elementary school.