Chapter Two

Angel stared at the pockmarked ceiling.

It was too damned quiet in here; the stillness grated on his overstretched nerves. He wanted suddenly to fill the silence with noise, loud, boisterous noise that said I’m here, I’m still alive. He wanted to take strength from that simple sentence, pleasure from the knowledge that his lungs still pumped air. But it wasn’t enough anymore, not nearly enough. Now there was a vial of liquid nitrogen inside his chest, a dark, ugly splotch that could explode at any second. Any second.

Just a blip on the screen and it was over. Flat line.

He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the headache pulsing behind his eyes. He didn’t want to think about this crap anymore. He wanted it all to just go away.

“You look like shit.”

Angel heard the drawling, southern-fed voice and almost smiled. Would have smiled if he hadn’t felt so damned low. He cracked his eyes open, blinked hard as the fluorescent lighting stabbed through his brain.

“Thanks.” Angel inched his way to a sit. The needles in his veins pinched with every movement. By the time he was upright, he was winded and his chest hurt like hell.

Val stood in the doorway, his thin, designer-clad body angled against the doorframe, his tangled blond hair tucked self-consciously behind one ear. He pushed away from the door and glided into the room in that slow, loose-hipped walk that always drew attention from the media. He reached out, grabbed the bedside chair with long, delicate fingers, and twisted it around, slumping casually onto the hard seat. Leaning forward, he rested his chin on the chair back and dangled his arms over the mustard-colored fake leather. A slow frown pulled at his eyebrows as he studied Angel. “I mean, you really look like shit. Even worse than last time.”

Angel didn’t have the strength to smile. “Give me a cigarette, will you?”

Val reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. Flicking the hard pack’s top, he checked the contents and shrugged. “Empty. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” He pulled a pint of tequila from inside his coat and grinned. “But I’m not completely useless.” He set the bottle down on the bedside table. “I just watched the dailies for yesterday. That death scene of yours was unbelievable—even I didn’t know you were that good. The writer went ape-shit. When you get out of here, we’re going to start the Oscar hype immediately. The publicist thinks …”

Blah, blah, blah. Val’s voice droned on and on, but Angel stopped hearing, stopped listening, anyway.

He stared at the man who’d been his friend, and then agent, for sixteen years and tried to summon a smile—to act like a film performance mattered right now. But he couldn’t do it; he wasn’t that good an actor.

He remembered suddenly the night he’d met Val—it had been in New York, the middle of a winter’s night in a seedy tavern, when they’d both been cold and hungry and lonely. Angel had been just a kid then—barely eighteen and already on his own for over a year.

They became friends almost instantly and spent the next year moving from town to town, running and running until it wasn’t fun anymore—just a series of fleabag motels in towns with no names, swilling booze and eating from Dumpsters.

Amazingly, it had turned around in a single day … a day that started with old tuna. Val had gotten violently ill from a tuna sandwich he’d stolen from a hot Arizona lunch counter. At the hospital, he called his parents. Within hours, the two boys were ensconced in the Lightners’ gorgeous New York penthouse apartment.

Val’s mother was the most beautiful woman Angel had ever seen. Cold as ice, hard as diamonds. Val delighted in telling her where they’d been and what they’d done. She was horrified, of course, and Val made her promise to give them an apartment and put them in college.

“But you haven’t even finished high school,” she said in a nasal, white-bread voice.

Val only laughed. “Please, Mother. You’re rich.”

She’d wagged a ringed finger at him. “Life will not always go your way, Valentine.”

He’d given her a disarming smile. “You can always hope, Mother.”

Angel shook his head to clear the memories. Then he looked at Val. “They want to cut my heart out.”

Val patted another pocket, still looking for smokes. “They’ll have to find it first.”

“I mean it, Val. They want to do a heart transplant.”

Val’s smile faded. “You mean, take your heart out and stick in a dead guy’s?”

Angel felt sick. “Close enough.”

“Jesus.” Val slumped forward.

Angel sighed. Somehow, he’d expected more of Val, but he didn’t know what that more was. “I need a donor,” he said, forcing a smile. “A really good agent would offer.”

“I’d give you my brain, buddy. God knows, I don’t use it. But my heart …” He shook his head. “Jesus …”

“Unless you’re praying,” Angel snapped, “try to say something more helpful. I need advice here. Hell, if I’d known a transplant was in my future, I’d have quit smoking and drinking years ago.”

It was another lie, another in the long string of lies he’d told himself. He’d known for years that his heart was bad—and it hadn’t stopped him from drinking or smoking. His only lifestyle change was to drop a heart pill before snorting a line of cocaine.

He had never wasted time thinking about the future. His life had always been a roller-coaster ride, with him strapped willingly in the front seat. The days and nights hammered forward at blinding speed, turning, dipping, plunging. Never slowing, never coming to a bump stop.

Until now, until yesterday, when the coaster had rammed into the brick wall of his own mortality.

And as if death weren’t bad enough, they wanted him to go to Seattle for the surgery. Christ, what a mess …

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve this. Sure, he’d been an asshole in his life, he’d hurt people and lied to them. But he was supposed to go to hell for that. He’d been raised Catholic, he knew the rules.

Hell was after death.

Not hell on earth, not a heart transplant, not half a life.

“This is stupid,” Angel said. “I refuse to worry about it anymore. What does some low-rent doctor in a backwater hospital in the middle of nowhere know about cutting-edge technology? He probably wouldn’t know a heart transplant patient if he backed over one with his car.”

“Oh, and you would.” Val crushed the empty cigarette pack. “So when do you have the surgery?”

“I’m not going to.”

Val frowned. “Don’t be a jerk, Angel. If you need a new heart, get one. It’s probably a breeze now. Hell, they separate Siamese twins and turn men into women. What’s the problem?”

“I may not be Albert Schweitzer, Val, but I think a new heart would change your life just a little.”

“Death might be a harder adjustment.” Val tried to look casual, but Angel could see the fear in his friend’s eyes. It was frightening, that look, for Val was fearless, the only person Angel knew who played as close to the edge and lived as recklessly as Angel did. A dilettante bad boy who handled the careers of some of Hollywood’s most famous people.

Angel wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. “Did you see that movie The Hand, with Michael Caine? The one where he was a pianist, I think, and he lost his hand. They sewed a ‘donor’ hand on the end of his stump. Catch was, it was a serial killer’s hand. Caine went around killing everyone he saw.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Angel.”

“Well? It could be true, it could happen. What if I get some namby-pamby heart, and after the surgery my biggest dream is to dress like Doris Day?”

Val let out a bark of laughter. “I don’t know. You’ve got a hell of a pair of legs. I could probably book you in some La Cage aux Folles nightclub. You could be Liza Minnelli.” As soon as the words were out, Val stopped smiling. Then he leaned forward and drilled Angel with a hard look. “The point is, your heart’s a goner. That’s a fact.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Easy?” Val echoed the word, a small frown tugging at his full lips. “You’re my best friend. None of this is easy.”

“What about my career? The New York Times said my acting had heart.”

Val didn’t look away, though Angel could tell that he wanted to. “Acting is the least of your worries. I got you more money than God for that piece-of-shit action picture.”

Angel stared at the empty cigarette pack in Val’s hand. He wanted a cigarette, a shot of tequila. Anything that would magically take this moment and transform it into something else. He wanted it to be yesterday, last month, last year.

He wanted not to be dying.

But with every breath, every aching, pain-riddled breath, he felt the truth. His heart was throwing in the towel. The realization brought a gnawing sense of loss and frustration. “I don’t want to go public with this, man. I’ll feel like a freak.”

“I’ll leak a story that you’re exhausted—they’ll think you had a drug overdose, but that’s no big deal.” Val waited a minute, obviously thinking, then he leaned toward him, looking as serious as Angel had ever seen him. “But, Angel, you’ve gotta get your head straight. Image is not your biggest problem.”

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Angel didn’t want to say anything, didn’t know what to say, but the quiet ate through his nerves until he couldn’t stand it. “I want to be mad at God, you know? But if there’s a God, there’s a hell. And if there’s a hell, my whole life has been a race into the fire.”

Val winced. “Let’s not get philosophical. I’ve got two women and a bag of coke in the limo downstairs.” He smiled, but the look in his eyes was sad.

And suddenly Angel knew what Val was thinking. The two of them had done the same drugs, screwed the same women, walked the same razor’s edge. If Angel was dying, Val wouldn’t be far behind.

What would this do to their friendship?

Angel felt a fluttering of panic. Suddenly he understood the price of his recklessness, and for a second he wished he could take it all back, change the way he’d lived. Anything so that he had friends right now, real, honest-to-God friends who cared about him.…

“Sorry, pal,” Val said in a quiet voice. “But it’s over. Over. The booze, the drugs, the parties—they’re gone. I don’t care if you have the operation or not, those days are gone. I’m sure as hell not going to party with you again. Christ, you could snort a line and drop dead on the coffee table.” He shivered at the thought, then moved closer to the bed. “I know you’re scared, and when you’re scared you get belligerent and pissed off, but you need a clear head about this, Angel. We’re talking about your life.”

“Some life. And you haven’t heard the best part—they’re sending me to Seattle for the ‘procedure.’ Seattle.”

“Good.”

Angel frowned. “What the hell is good about it?”

“You’ll have your brother. I was afraid you’d be alone. I have to go to the film festival, and I have the Aspen house booked for two weeks.”

“By all means, don’t let my death screw up your vacation plans.”

Val flashed a guilty look. “I could cancel.…”

Angel had never felt so alone. He was world-famous and it didn’t mean shit. His life was like his star on Hollywood Boulevard. A beautiful, glittering thing to behold, but frozen in the pavement and cold to the touch. “No, don’t bother. I’ll be fine.”

Finally Val said, “You’re stronger than you think you are, Angel. You always have been. You’re gonna make it.”

“I know.”

After that, there was nothing left to say.

Dr. Madelaine Hillyard entered the ICU in a breathless rush, her name still crackling over the paging system.

The room was bright and impersonal. A single bed cut through the center of the small, private room. Beside it stood a table, its surface heaped with pitchers and cups.

Her patient, Tom Grant, lay in the narrow bed, a pale, motionless body, eyes closed, throat invaded by tubing that connected him to the life-sustaining ventilator. Intravenous lines flowed from his veins. Two huge chest tubes stuck out from the skin beneath his ribs, suctioning blood from his surgical wounds to a bubbling, hissing cylinder.

Susan Grant sat huddled against the bed, her arms uncomfortably looped over the silver metal bed rails, her hand curled tightly around her husband’s limp, unresponsive fingers. At Madelaine’s entrance, she looked up. “Hello, Dr. Hillyard.”

Madelaine gave the woman a gentle smile and moved toward the bed. Wordlessly she checked the tubing, made a note on his chart that the canister needed to be emptied more often, and checked his medications. Pressors, immunosuppressants, and antibiotics—they were all working overtime to keep Tom’s battered, cut-up body from rejecting the new heart.

“Everything looks good, Susan. He should come to any time.”

Tears squeezed past the woman’s lashes and streaked down her cheeks. “The children have been asking about him. I … I don’t know what to say.”

Madelaine wanted to tell her that everything would be all right—would be better than all right—that Tom would wake up and smile at his wife and hold his children, and life would be good.

But Tom was a very special patient. This was his second heart transplant. In the twelve years since his first operation, he had proven that transplants could truly give a patient a new lease on life—he’d fathered two more children, become a marathon runner, and been active in spreading the word nationwide that transplantation was an ever-increasing success. Still, the heart had finally given out, and now he was a pioneer again. One of the few patients ever to get a third chance.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Susan said softly.

Madelaine didn’t answer; it wasn’t necessary. Instead, she pulled up a chair and sat down. She knew that her presence would comfort Susan, give the woman an anchor in the silent, terrifying world of post-op recovery. Her gaze shot to the wall clock, and she made a mental note of the time. She had forty-five minutes before her next appointment. She would be able to stay with Tom for a while.

On the bed, Tom coughed weakly. His eyelids fluttered.

Susan lurched forward. “Tommy? Tom?”

Madelaine hit the nurses’ button and got to her feet, leaning over the bed. “Tom? Can you hear me?”

He opened his eyes and tried to smile around the endotracheal tube. Reaching up, he pressed his hand to his wife’s face.

Then he looked at Madelaine and gave her a thumbs-up.

It was the kind of moment Madelaine lived for. No matter how many times she stood at a bed like this, she never got used to the adrenaline-pumping thrill of success. “Welcome back.”

“Oh, Tommy.” Susan was crying in earnest now. Tears dripped down her face and plopped on the pale blue blanket.

Madelaine performed a few quick tests on him before easing out of the room to give the couple their privacy. In the hallway she stopped the head transplant nurse and quietly gave her an update, then grabbed her coat from her office and raced from the building.

She drove out of the parking lot and sped down Madison Street toward the freeway. For the first few moments she was flying high, exhilarated by Tom’s progress. Soon he would be getting out of bed, kissing his children, holding them on his lap, twirling them in the air on a bright spring day.

She, the other members of the transplant team, and the donor’s family had all done their part to make that miracle. No matter how often it happened, she never failed to feel an incredible, humbling sense of awe. When a patient woke up after surgery, she felt on top of the world. Oh, she knew that it could end tomorrow, knew that his body could reject the heart and turn on itself like a rabid dog. But she always believed in the best, prayed for it, worked for it.

She glanced up, saw her exit sign, and the good mood fled as quickly as it had come.

She was on her way to a meeting with her daughter’s high school guidance counselor. She did not expect it to go well.

Madelaine sighed, feeling the first telltale pulsings of a migraine headache. Yes, the Tom Grants of the world were the reason she did what she did, why she’d spent years in college, years without sleep or a social life, working herself like a demon to become a cardiologist. But there had been a price. As she got older, it was the truth she’d come to understand. There was always a price.

She was losing her daughter, watching Lina drift further and further away. Madelaine tried to be the perfect mother, just as she tried to be the perfect physician. But being a doctor was a snap compared to being a single parent. No matter how hard she tried, she failed with Lina, and it had gone from bad to worse. Lately their relationship had been hanging by a thread.

Madelaine wanted so badly to do the right thing, be the right thing, but what did she know of motherhood? She’d gotten pregnant as a teenager—much too young. She’d known she had to take care of her daughter, give Lina a good, stable life. Medical school had been a pie-in-the-sky goal at first. Madelaine had never believed she’d actually make it, but she’d kept plugging away, spending the trust fund that was her mother’s legacy. She’d worked her ass off to become the best and brightest of the graduating class, and she’d finished early.

But somewhere along the way, she’d gone wrong. At first it was little things—a missed birthday party, an emergency call on family night, a field trip she couldn’t make. Madelaine had been so consumed by her own ambition, she’d never noticed when her daughter stopped inviting her places, stopped counting on her to be somewhere or do something.

Now she was paying the price.

She pulled into the school parking lot, got out of the car, and strode through the school to the counselor’s office. At the closed door, she knocked sharply.

A muffled “come in” answered her.

Exhaling steadily, Madelaine collected herself, then went inside.

The counselor, a pert brunette named Vicki Owen, smiled broadly and extended her hand. “Hello, Dr. Hillyard. Come in. Sit down.”

Madelaine shook the woman’s hand. “Call me Madeline, please.”

Vicki took a seat behind her desk and pulled out a stack of papers. “I asked for this meeting because Lina is exhibiting some serious behavioral problems. She’s skipping classes, forgetting to turn in homework, mouthing off. Frankly, her teachers are at a loss. She used to be such a wonderful student.”

Madelaine felt every word like a blow. She knew it was true, knew her daughter was in trouble, but she didn’t know what to do about it.

Vicki’s face softened in understanding. “Don’t worry, Madelaine, it’s not just you. Every mother of a sixteen-year-old daughter feels the same way.”

Madelaine wanted to believe the counselor’s words, but she couldn’t allow herself such an easy way out. “Thank you,” she mumbled.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

Madelaine gazed steadily into the counselor’s dark eyes. She wanted to share her burden with this young woman, to lay her cards on the table and say Help me, I’m lost, but she didn’t know how to be so open. She’d been taught from earliest memory to buck up and be strong. Showing weakness was incomprehensible to her. “I don’t think talking will solve my problem,” she said evenly.

Vicki paused for a moment longer, waiting, then she went on, “Lina’s teachers tell me that she responds well to discipline. Rules.”

Madelaine flinched at the subtle reproach. “Yes, she does. I just …” She stared at Vicki. I just don’t know how. “I think she needs more time with me.”

“Perhaps,” Vicki answered doubtfully.

“I’ll talk to her.”

Vicki folded her hands on the table. “You know, Madelaine, some things can’t be talked out. Sometimes a teenager needs to feel the wrath of God. Perhaps her father …”

“No,” Madelaine said quickly—too quickly. She tried to force a smile. “I’m a single parent.”

“I see.”

Madelaine couldn’t sit there another minute, couldn’t take what she saw in the counselor’s eyes. Her shame and guilt were overpowering. She lurched to her feet. “I’ll handle this, Vicki. You have my word on it.”

Vicki nodded. “The supermom is a tough row to hoe, Madelaine. There are several outstanding support groups that can help out.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your concern.” With a final nod, Madelaine turned and walked from the office. When the door clicked shut behind her, she closed her eyes for a second.

Perhaps her father …

She groaned. God, she didn’t want to think about Lina’s father. For years she’d pushed him out of her thoughts. And if, sometimes, late at night, the memories came to her, she shoved them away with a cold shower or a run around the block.

It had worked, too. After a while she stopped thinking about him, stopped needing or wanting him. There had been a time when she’d almost forgotten what he looked like.

Then Lina had begun to change. It had been subtle at first, the transformations. A few more holes in her ears, tears in her Levi’s, dark mascara smudged around her beautiful blue eyes.

As usual, Madelaine had barely noticed. Then, one day, she looked up at her daughter and saw him. She’d realized then what she should have seen since childhood. Lina was the spitting image of her father, a wild teenager who lived life at a full run, taking no prisoners, asking for nothing. Like her father, too, Lina saw through Madelaine’s brittle exterior, saw the weak woman inside. A woman who couldn’t make rules, couldn’t enforce even the simplest conditions. A woman who was so desperate for love that she let people walk all over her.

Lina Hillyard took a long, stinging drag off her cigarette and exhaled. The smoke collected against the windshield and hung suspended, mingling with the massive cloud that was already there. She held back a hacking cough by sheer force of will.

Shifting uncomfortably on the narrow seat, she cast a surreptitious glance at the boy beside her. Jett was driving fast, as usual, his foot slammed onto the gas. Pedal, his free hand curled around a bottle of Jack Daniel’s he’d stolen from his parents. On the other side of her, Brittany Levin was sucking on a lime—the last stage of her tequila slammer. Everyone was laughing and talking and singing along with the radio. It was blasting a song by the Butthole Surfers.

The song ended and something softer began. Jett cursed loudly and switched the radio off, then swerved onto the side of the road and hit the brakes so hard that all of them were hurled forward. Lina’s hand shot out instinctively, slammed against the windshield. Her cigarette hit the dashboard and rolled toward the vent.

The little Datsun’s doors flipped open and everyone spilled out Lina reached for her cigarette. By the time she’d retrieved it, the gang was already outside, milling beneath a huge cedar tree in the center of the clearing.

It was their Saturday night party spot. Yellowed cigarette butts already littered the ground, alongside empty liquor bottles and roach clips and crumpled smoke packs. Someone had brought a boom box, and loud music vibrated through the air.

Lina dropped her cigarette and ground it out beneath her heel, then headed toward the group. Jett was standing alongside the tree, guzzling Jack Daniel’s as if it were water. The golden alcohol trickled down his stubbly chin and dripped onto his T-shirt.

She wished she knew what to say to him now—just the right thing that would make him look at her, see her. She’d had a crush on him for as long as she could remember; he was so cool. And they had something in common. Jett had grown up without a father around. Lina was certain it meant something—some destiny thing—that their lives were so alike. But he never seemed to notice her, none of them did. She was like a ghost, hovering on the perimeter of their friendship, trying to find the words that would admit her.

“Hey, Hillyard,” Jett called out, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “You got any money? We need more smokes.”

Lina grinned and tucked a stray lock of black hair around her ear. It wasn’t much, she knew, but it meant that he wanted something from her, needed something. She always had more money than the rest of the kids. (It was the one cool thing her evil mother did.) “Yeah, I got enough for a couple of packs,” she answered, digging into her jeans pocket.

Brittany gave her a stinging look. Then she flipped open her purse and pulled out the pint of tequila. “Here, Lina, have a drink.”

Lina grabbed the bottle’s warm neck and took a burning drink. The tequila ignited along her throat and exploded in her stomach.

Brittany ran a hand through her short-cropped hair and sidled up to Jett. Staring triumphantly at Lina, she reached up and planted a long, wet kiss on his mouth. Jett’s hand slid around Brittany’s waist and pulled her close. “You taste like tequila,” he murmured. Then he looked around. “Who’s got the pot?”

Within seconds, the night air was thick with the sweet scent of marijuana. The kids drew together in a circle, passing the joint from one to another, laughing and dancing.

Lina felt the effects of the stuff in her bloodstream. The world seemed to slow down. Her body turned to heavy syrup and she sank slowly, slowly downward.

She closed her eyes and swayed. God, it felt good to be zoned out. When she was like this, there were so many things she didn’t care about. Suddenly it didn’t matter that her perfect mother was meeting with the school counselor today. Nothing hurt her when she was high.

Even the questions that had haunted her all day now felt as insubstantial as the smoke rising from her cigarette.

Brittany plopped down beside her. “I saw your dipshit mom going into Miss Owen’s office today.”

Jett laughed. “Ooh, you’re in trouble now, Hillyard.”

“Yeah, I saw her, too,” someone cut in. “She may be a bitch, but your mom is hot.”

“She could be a model,” Brittany said, then leaned close. “You sure don’t look like her. Who do you look like in your family?”

Lina flinched and reached for her smokes. Sometimes she hated Brittany more than she could stand. “My dad, I guess.”

Brittany gave her a cold, assessing look. “Course, that’s just a guess.” She took another huge gulp of tequila, laughing as she swallowed. Then she surged to her feet. “Hey, I got an idea.” She raced over to Jett and whispered something in his ear, and they both started laughing.

Jett dropped the empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and made his stumbling, lurching way to the car. He opened the trunk and rummaged through the stuff in the back, grabbed a few things, then ran back to the clearing. A big, alcohol-soaked grin exploded on his face. “Hillyard, we’re going to figure out who your dad is.”

Lina didn’t answer. They didn’t understand—none of them understood—how much they could hurt her with their careless words. “What do you mean?” she asked softly.

He squatted until he was eye level with her. “We’re going to see who you look like. It’ll be cool. You’ll see.” Before she could think of what to say, he’d slapped an old baseball cap on her head and whipped out a pair of scissors. “I’ll cut around the outline of the hat—it’ll be awesome.” He hiccuped drunkenly and laughed.

Alarm flared in her. “Wait a second—”

“My old lady’s a hairdresser. I know what I’m doing,” Jett said.

Brittany stared down at her. “You aren’t chicken, are you, Lina?”

The other kids closed in around them.

Lina bit down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling, but she never looked away from Brittany’s face. “I’m not chicken,” she said. “Besides, short hair is way cooler.” She turned to Jett, giving him her biggest, bravest smile. “Go ahead.”

Jett started snipping. Big clumps of jet-black hair slid down her Levi’s jacket. She flinched at each snip-snip-snip, and felt as if pieces of her were falling away.

Brittany fished a mirror out of her purse and handed it to Lina. There was a victorious gleam in her brown eyes. Slowly Lina picked up the mirror and stared at her own face. For a second she couldn’t breathe, but after a minute, she wasn’t looking at the shaggy, hacked-up haircut. She was staring at her own reflection.

The questions came flooding back, and this time the booze and pot offered no sanctuary at all. Suddenly she was thinking of her father—the mysterious father—who’d marked her face and imprinted her soul. As always, she wondered what he was doing right now. Was he coming home from work? Kissing some other child that he’d fathered along the way, one he’d stayed around to raise?

Everything would be different if I knew you, she thought for the millionth time.

“She looks like Mr. Sears,” Brittany said, laughing shrilly. “Hey, Hillyard, maybe the school janitor is your dad.”

Jett picked up a joint and took a hit. Smoke poured from his mouth as he said, “I don’t know why you don’t just ask your old lady. My mom gave me my dad’s address a few years ago. She told me to go live with him, and good riddance.”

Just ask.

Lina shivered at the thought. Maybe she would this time. Her sixteenth birthday was coming up.…

The thought coalesced, took shape in her mind until her whole body was shaking. Anticipation blossomed into a living, breathing presence inside her. She knew suddenly what she wanted for her birthday. “It’s time,” she said to herself, feeling the beginnings of a smile.

“What do you think, Lina?” Brittany’s nasal voice broke into her thoughts.

Lina’s gaze jerked up. For a split second she couldn’t figure out what they were all waiting for; then she remembered. The haircut. She looked first at Jett, then at Brittany—who was so clueless, she thought a frigging haircut mattered. “It’s way cool. Thanks, Jett. Now, hand me the tequila.”