HERE IS A SHORT list of the things you will wear and find when you are performing community service with Lupe Hidalgo, or perhaps some other person, on the side of a road for two hours:

A bright orange vest that makes you look like a deflated pumpkin.

Heavy work gloves.

A brimmed hat and reflective sunglasses, provided by the County Detention Center, that kind of make you look like a covert operative or a drug dealer, and which, you are sad to say, kind of make you feel cool and important and mysterious, which is good, because:

You will pick up some disgusting stuff.

There will be the usual smashed beer cans, tossed from cars. Some of these will still be a little full and you should know that beer in cans in 115-degree heat smells like the worst possible pee ever, so don’t spill it on yourself. Assume every can is loaded.

There will be cigarette butts, some lipsticked, some not. They, too, smell horrible in the heat.

There will be odd papers, Post-it notes with strange scribbles.

Candy wrappers.

There will be ID cards, like driver’s licenses and debit cards and EBT cards, strewn in a kind of line along the road, which makes you think of the mystery of how they got there. Lupe is interested, too, and whispers, “Bet there’s bodies out here they haven’t even found yet,” and raises her eyebrows. That makes you shiver, but the foreman glares at you, so you keep spearing cigarette butts with the stick.

There will be underwear. Also disgusting.

There will be diapers. See above. These are difficult to pick up properly if they are fairly fresh, and you never want to think of it again.

There will be makeup, pens, lone shoes, socks, hats, needles. And packets of what might be drugs, which have to go to the foreman immediately.

Sometimes, there are animals, but you aren’t allowed to touch them. The foreman has to call animal control.

“Disease, yo,” says Lupe knowingly, leaning on her pincher. Lupe is working hard to keep her scholarship. She wrote letters of apology to Mr. Jackson, the owner of the lawn ornament, the neighbors along the path the Jellymobile traveled. You go to teen AA meetings together that meet in Sierra Vista and you’re surprised who else is there, but you keep it quiet.

Lupe says, “Not my business. Not yours. Move forward, Tolliver, not back.” After the meetings, you go to Los Betos and gobble tacos. You swear you’ll never drink again. You like Lupe now, her humor and her hardness, her big heart and big mouth.

When she gets to the University of Arizona this fall, you’re going to meet up at the student union for coffee once a week. You made a promise. Your new house isn’t far from the university, just a bus ride and a short walk.