“god, I hate these places,” Kat said, looking around at the mauve-cushioned wooden chairs, the round plastic tables shaped like cylinders, the gray industrial tile.

“Waiting rooms?” Jerrica asked.

“Hospitals.” Kat folded her arms across her chest, shuddering slightly. She imagined a three-year-old Lala beside her, her palm blistered with a third-degree burn. Lala had reached for the pan on the stove. When Julia caught her, she reasoned that her daughter needed to understand that stoves were hot. So she held Lala’s hand over the open gas flame. Just for a moment. Just enough for her to learn…

“Yeah.” Jerrica nodded. “Me too.” Her eyes turned blankly toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined one wall of the waiting room. Kat could see their reflections, like ghosts, in the glass. For a moment, she just watched herself, wondering what she was doing there.

Nearby, a young boy was sitting with his parents. He had tissues stuck up both nostrils and was tilting his head back while his mother stroked his arm. An older woman sat diagonally across from them, beneath a large poster of a red sunflower. She leaned on her cane, breathing shallowly with her eyes closed. She wore a lavender dress and one brown shoe. The other foot was swollen and stuck awkwardly out of a fuzzy yellow slipper.

Kat had gone with Sanjay when the triage nurse called his name. But when he went in to see the doctor, she’d stayed behind, not wanting to watch him get stitches.

A gurney rolled down a lit hall. A woman was lying on it, her belly huge beneath a pale blue blanket.

“Nobody ever gets well here,” Jerrica said suddenly.

Kat turned to look at her. “Sure they do.”

Jerrica blinked at Kat as if she weren’t sure what they were talking about. “They do?”

There was something in Jerrica’s face that reminded Kat of Lala when she was very small. Kat took her hand. “Sanjay’s going to be okay.”

Surprised at the warmth of Kat’s palm, Jerrica looked down at their hands. She tried to jettison the image of her mother, pale and exhausted, in the white hospital bed. The first time, after Isabel was born—the baby had looked so tiny and horrible, covered in wires in a plastic box. And the second time. The second time, three months after Isabel had died, when Jerrica’s mother was in the accident…She was in the hospital for four days, but she never got better. Finally, her heart just gave up, as if it had really, truly broken, like in a fairy tale…

Kat pulled Jerrica close to her, wrapping her arm lightly around Jerrica’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “It’s all going to work out.”

Jerrica closed her eyes and leaned her head against the flat place just below Kat’s collarbone. But she couldn’t believe Kat. A raw, aching fear had settled in her chest, like an intruder that would never leave.

A dark silhouette sliced its way into the pale box of light reaching in from the hallway. Kat released her arm and Jerrica sat up.

“Sorry to make you wait,” Sanjay said. He smiled a little, then winced at the pain.

“How are you feeling?” Kat asked as Sanjay eased himself into the chair beside hers.

Sanjay pointed to the cross-hatching at the side of his face, half an inch from his left eye. “Does it make me look tough?”

“Like Frankenstein,” Kat told him. “What are you going to tell your parents?”

“That I fell off my bike,” Sanjay said smoothly.

“Do you even own a bike?” Jerrica asked.

“Quit bogging me down with technicalities. Okay, I’ll tell them that I fell off of a friend’s skateboard,” Sanjay amended. “Then my mother can cluck and disapprove of how Americans never watch over their children.”

Kat nodded. “Play to the bias. It always works.” Her eyes lingered on the ugly red ladder. If it had been just a bit over, he could have lost an eye…

“Isn’t it weird that we would be so lucky and so unlucky all in one night?” Sanjay said.

Kat stared at him for a moment, then cast a sideways glance at Jerrica, whose black brows were drawn darkly over her green eyes.

“Do you think,” Jerrica asked, “that what happened was just a coincidence?”

“Yes,” Kat said quickly.

Leaning back in his chair, Sanjay let out a heavy sigh. “Jerrica doesn’t believe in coincidence.”

“How much was in the bag?” Jerrica asked.

“Not sure,” Sanjay admitted. He’d intended to give the bag to his contact. Now that he’d been ID’d, it would have been nearly impossible for him to cash out their chips. And Kat couldn’t have done it all by herself—it would have taken too long, cashing in a couple hundred here, another five hundred there. He’d gotten the name of a consolidator, someone who was willing to buy the chips off of him for a cut of ten percent. Sanjay needed the money. And now he didn’t have it.

“What are we going to do now?” Kat asked.

Jerrica sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m tired.”

Sanjay reached across Kat to touch Jerrica’s knee. “Hey,” he said. “Hey—it’s fine. It’s no big deal—”

“I just don’t think I want to do this anymore, Jay,” Jerrica said. It was hard for her to say, but it was the truth. The futility of what she was doing had finally occurred to her. The Principles seemed further away than ever. Besides, if she ever succeeded in figuring them out, she would lose Sanjay. And if she didn’t figure them out, she’d lose him anyway—in the end. I never really had him to begin with, she thought. I was just kidding myself. He’s with Kat. “I’m tired,” she repeated.

“But hey—hey, listen—” Sanjay started to say, but Kat placed a hand on his shoulder.

“She said she’s tired,” Kat said. Sanjay’s gaze met hers, but she didn’t blink. “Give it a rest, okay?”

Sanjay sat there for a moment. He stared at the dark gray tile, his heart slamming against his rib cage. Is Jerrica saying that it’s over? It can’t be. Not yet. But he didn’t dare push her.

“You guys can talk it over later, okay, Sanjay?” Kat said. She pressed against him slightly, so that his hand fell from Jerrica’s knee.

Sanjay nodded. “Sure. No problem.” His voice was a little too bright, too eager, but he did his best to cover that with a smile. “Hey—let’s get out of here, okay? It’s getting late, and my parents will freak if I’m not home by eleven.” As he stood up, he realized that every inch of his body was aching. Even his eyelids hurt. I’m just tired, he told himself. We’ll all feel better after we get some rest…

When Kat held out her hand, Jerrica took it, pulling herself out of the chair.

She looks so pale and so small, Sanjay thought. Kat was right. She looks exhausted. Really, I’m glad she didn’t let me push her. Jerrica could go right over the edge. With both feet. He wanted to put a reassuring arm around her, to tell her that everything would be all right. But that seemed too strange with Kat standing there.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

The lights were on in the kitchen when Sanjay arrived. He’d briefly considered coming in through the front door, but he’d still have to pass the kitchen on the way to his room. Nobody ever used the front door.

He said a silent prayer in the hope that he would find his sister sitting at the bright yellow table. His fingers hovered over the doorknob, and he formed a complete mental image of Priya, her hair tucked into a messy bun at the nape of her neck. He imagined half a torn chapati and the remnants of that night’s dinner on a plate in front of her. The good student’s midnight snack.

The image had been so vivid that he was surprised to find his mother seated at the table. A large mug of peppermint tea sat before her, and she barely lifted her eyes when Sanjay walked through the door. “You’re late,” she said.

“I know,” Sanjay admitted. This scenario was exactly why he and Jerrica had been doing most of their gaming in the afternoons—less explaining to do.

Sanjay walked to the cupboard and pulled out a tall glass. He held the glass under the tap, let the water foam into it, and took a long drink. The water offered a sweet relief.

“What happened to your face?” Sanjay’s mother asked. “Were you fighting, Sanjay?”

Sanjay set the glass down. “Yeah, Ami,” he said.

As he turned to face her, Mrs. Patel tucked one hand below her elbow and touched the other palm to her cheek.

Sanjay heard the water drip slowly from the tap. His father had been meaning to replace the washer for weeks, but he never got around to it.

In the dim light of the energy-saving fluorescent, Sanjay could detect long lines stretching from his mother’s eyes to her temples. She wore a salmon-pink shalwar kameez—her favorite night-clothes. But the color made her skin look sallow and tired.

Sanjay was filled with a sudden urge to comfort his mother. He sat down across from her. “Ami, it’s not a big deal,” he said. “I just got into a stupid argument, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” Mrs. Patel’s gaze was challenging. “Is this how we raised you? You solve your problems with your fists?”

“I didn’t start anything. I was just defending myself,” Sanjay insisted. This, at least, was true.

“I don’t think I want to know anything more.” His mother held up her hand, with its long, elegant fingers so much like his own. “Your father fired David today.”

“What? Why?” For a moment, Sanjay held out hope that his father simply didn’t want to pay for a night manager on weekends anymore. That he planned to work all the shifts himself…

“Because he discovered some discrepancies in the accounting.” She held his gaze for a long moment, and Sanjay heard the slow, steady drip…drip…drip from the sink.

“How—how did he…?”

His mother wrapped her fingers around her mug. “He wanted to surprise me,” she said. “He wanted to take out enough money for a wedding gift, like I’d asked him. But when he checked, the numbers were off by more than two thousand dollars.”

“I can return the money,” Sanjay said.

As his mother shoved her chair away from the table, it made a horrible scraping sound across the linoleum. “What’s done is done, Sanjay,” his mother said. “But if that money isn’t back in the bank by the weekend, I will tell your father everything. And you will never take another dime from our store. The only reason I haven’t told him yet is because I know it would break his heart.” Her voice caught, and her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “No one else will suffer because of what you’ve done, do you understand?”

Sanjay felt his throat closing. “Ami, I’m sorry—”

“Just fix it,” his mother hissed. Slowly, she stood up, padded to the sink, rinsed her cup, and placed it in the wooden rack to dry. She gave the cold water knob an extra twist, but a fat silver drop fell from the tap. Before she left the room, she looked at Sanjay as if she wasn’t sure who he was anymore. He shrank under her gaze.

“I’ll get the money,” Sanjay promised as the question How? how? how? sang softly in his mind.

The guard studied Kat’s identification, made a note on his clipboard, and then waved her through the gate and into the courtyard. Her head felt muddy and dense as she walked into the austere visiting room.

She took a seat at a table. Around her, families buzzed and gathered, waiting for their loved ones. Do any of them want to scream, run, escape? Are any of them afraid?

The minute hand reached a quarter past the hour and the prisoners filed in. A broad, squat woman waiting near Kat burst into a huge smile at the sight of her husband. A riotous family swelled into a cacophony of voices at the appearance of a slender woman with ebony skin. But the beautiful blond woman with the perfect posture didn’t even look around as she strode in at the end of the column. Kat had to wave to get her attention.

When she saw Kat, Julia’s slender eyebrows flickered. Without makeup, Kat’s mother looked vulnerable, almost ghostly. There was a faint white scar at her temple, the only remaining visible sign from the night of the accident. Her stride was purposeful as she walked. Straight as a stick. She slid into the chair across from Kat’s.

For a long moment, they just looked at each other.

Finally Julia spoke. “Thought you’d come sooner.” Her voice sounded tinny and strange.

“I’m sorry,” Kat said, instantly regretting it. Her mother hated those words. Kat then muttered something about being busy with school, but Julia cut her off with a wave of the hand.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Where’s Lala?”

“She couldn’t make it,” Kat replied quickly.

“A ten-year-old girl is too busy to visit her mother?”

“I wanted to talk to you alone.”

Julia spread her hands on the table, palms down, fingers splayed wide. “You got the letter.”

“I got it.”

“The lawyer says it would really help my case if you could show up at the hearing,” Julia said. “Lala too.” She leaned forward. “I could be out of here in two months,” she hissed.

Two months. All Kat had to do was show up at the parole hearing and talk about how much she missed her mother, what a great parent she was, how she was sure that Julia felt deep remorse…

Julia smiled. “Remember all the fun we used to have, Kitten? Remember the time we went to the carnival and you ate two cones of cotton candy and how—”

“—the man let us ride on the teacups as long as we wanted?”

Men were always giving Julia special attention. The memory, long buried, rose up again, making Kat dizzy.

“It’ll be like that,” Julia promised.

Her mother could be fun, unpredictable, impulsive. But Kat also thought about the endless string of boyfriends—all the creeps and crazies. And she remembered the time Julia had a lock installed on the outside of Lala’s door so that she could keep her from wandering into the kitchen at night. And the time she kept Lala in her room for twenty-four hours because she had spilled grape juice on Julia’s favorite shirt. She thought about the things her mother told her—that she was a liar, a pig, a selfish beast, a bitch, worthless. She thought about all of the things that her mother could have done to protect them but didn’t, or wouldn’t, do.

Maybe jail is the best place for her. For us. For me.

Right now, Kat didn’t have enough money to take Lala and get out of town. But she could. If Jerrica would help…

Reaching out, Julia touched Kat’s hand. “Don’t forget, Kat,” she said. “Don’t forget how it could be.”

She’s still so beautiful, Kat thought. Hard and fierce—like a lion. No—a liar.

“I miss you. I miss Lala.” Tears sparkled in Julia’s eyes, and Kat felt a familiar tug at her chest. As if she could forget about the hit-and-run that put Julia in prison for almost two years.

Kat had been half asleep in the recliner, watching TV, when her mother raced in, wild-eyed and frightened. It was three in the morning, but Kat was fifteen years old, and whenever her mother disappeared for the night she would stay awake, watching the door. Twice before, she had stayed awake for forty-eight hours, waiting.

The minute her mother burst through the front door, adrenaline zinged through Kat’s body. “What happened?” Kat asked, but Julia just brushed past her, went to the kitchen, and poured herself some vodka. She stood over the sink, staring at the window. It was dark out, and Kat wasn’t sure if her mother was looking into the night or watching her own reflection in the glass.

Kat stood in the doorway for a moment, silent as a stone. “Mom?” Kat asked.

Julia turned to face her. “You were with me in the car,” she said.

“What?”

“There was an accident,” Julia said. “Oh, God.” She covered her eyes with her hands. “I think I killed him.”

Kat’s stomach dropped. But at the same time, it was as if she had always expected this to happen. “What?” she whispered.

“Kat, listen to me.” Julia crossed the black-and-white linoleum in two steps and gripped her daughter’s shoulders with iron fingers. She leaned down slightly so that her eyes were level with Kat’s. “There was an accident,” Julia said, “and I drove away. This man, I don’t know where he came from. I guess he was trying to cross the street—it was dark, I—” Julia’s eyes glittered, wet. Her nose turned pink and began to run. Kat could smell her liquory breath.

“Did anyone see?” Kat was amazed—horrified—that she had asked this question.

Julia nodded grimly. “Maybe. There were a couple of people at the intersection. Still, it was dark…” Her fingers tightened on Kat’s shoulders, and Kat winced under their pressure. “If anyone finds out,” Julia said, “I’ll tell them that you were in the car with me—that you were hysterical and I thought you were hurt. I’ll say I took you home right away to take care of you.” Julia used her wrist to wipe away the clear fluid that streamed from her left nostril. “We’ll say that Mrs. Jennett was watching Lala.”

Mrs. Jennett was their neighbor, and she sometimes babysat when Julia remembered to ask her. She was old, though; ancient and stooped with age. She often got her days mixed up.

“You’re the only one I can count on,” Julia whispered, pulling her daughter into a hug. “Kat, you have to help me.”

Kat could smell the warm scent of her mother’s hair, the faded notes of her perfume. “I’ll help you, Mom,” she promised.

The police arrived the next day. A witness had remembered a partial license plate, they explained. Kat repeated the story exactly as her mother had told it, and the police arrested Julia. Kat had sat down with a heavyset woman in a bright green suit who turned out to be a social worker. Anita Maple was her name, and she was the one who called Trish and eventually assigned her temporary custody.

It turned out that Julia hadn’t killed the man. But she had broken his leg and fractured his ankle. He would recover fully. Still, the minimum sentence in a hit-and-run was two years. When Julia told her story—the story of a panicked mother desperate to make sure her daughter was all right—the district attorney had offered a plea agreement. Two and a half years in the Nevada Women’s Correctional Facility; possibly less with good behavior. Julia took it.

There was never even a trial.

Kat had told the false version of that night so many times that eventually she started to wonder what had actually happened.

Julia looked around the visiting room, her mouth pursing slightly as she stared at the green linoleum floor. “I can’t wait to get out of here,” she spat. Those were the first words that Kat believed.

“I’m sorry,” Kat said, cringing.

“Don’t say that!” Julia snapped. “Don’t ever say that! I’m not sorry. I’m here, I did my time.” She sucked in her cheeks, setting her jaw. “I just can’t wait for us to be together again. To be a family.” Her blue eyes searched Kat’s face, and Kat wondered what she saw there. Do I look like a stranger to her? Kat wondered. As much like a stranger as she looks to me?

“Me too,” Kat said.

They sat for a few moments more. When the guard announced that time was over, Julia gave Kat’s hand a final squeeze. “You’ll be there?” she said, but it was only partially a question.

“I’ll be there,” Kat promised.

Now she was the liar. Like mother, like daughter.