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and is astonished. It’s not a smartphone. It is a prepaid, disposable phone. It has no apps. He cannot check Facebook. He cannot play games or read.
    Nobody on a college campus has anything less than the best phone he can afford. Jason has a lot of money; it’s clear from the shoes he wears; the sunglasses; their dinner out.
    But his phone is a cheap throwaway. Perhaps he is also too mature for games and social media. She thinks of poor Stu, across the street, with whom she has had one dull, pitiful dinner. Stu lives for video games. At that restaurant, Stu ate with his fork in one hand and his cell in the other. Lander came in third, after food and phone. Which does not matter at all, because Stu is so useless she doesn’t even rank him.
    But this time? With this man? Lander aches to be first on Jason’s list.
    He returns from his phone call, bends over her, sweeps her hair from her face. She wants to know a thousand things about him. She wants to kiss.
    But in fact, this is a week-old memory. In fact, she is in a cell, surrounded by invisible swearing prisoners, trembling in short sleeves because the air conditioning feels as if it’s set at sixty degrees.
    The police insist that drugs are stashed in that boat of his. Not a little bit of weed, but a serious package of cocaine.
    She cannot swallow. Saliva builds in her mouth, horror in her heart.
    A person dealing drugs uses a disposable phone. Is that what he is? A dealer?
    Is that what he’s done? Left her with that package?
    He didn’t mean to,
she tells herself.
He meant to come back. He’s afraid of the police. It isn’t his drug package! He’s been forced to deliver it! He’s a good person.
    But she knows nothing of this man she adores. Do her teeth chatter because of the cold or because she spends six days with a man and learns nothing—nothing at all—about him?
    She thinks of her tendency to scorn her little sister, who exaggerates. She is now the opposite: a person of science—who nevertheless does not bother with a single fact once she is in love.
    He’s a good person, she repeats in her heart. And what am I? A good person? Or a killer?
    Please, please, God, don’t let me be a killer. Please don’t let this happen to me. Get me out of here.
    She is on her knees now, in front of the metal toilet that has no seat. She is retching so hard the vomit gets in her hair. Her hands have vomit on them.
    When the last awful sour slime leaves her throat, when she has spit out all that she can, she cannot get up.
    She is aware of somebody lifting her at the waist; standing her on her feet; handing her water in a plastic cup so cheap that if she holds it tightly she will squash it. She manages to swallow some, manages to whisper, “Thank you.”
    She says, “I have to wash my hands and face. I have to wash my hair.”
    She is given a wet paper towel, the brown kind, which dissolves in her hand. The vomit dries in her hair.
    “It’s so cold. Can I have a blanket?”
    They give her a square of fleece, more of a shawl than a blanket. She huddles in it. It is not clean.
    Neither are her thoughts.

FRIDAY MORNING
    Miranda’s summer days are long and slow.
    Such a pleasure to do nothing after a crushingly hard school year.
    Miranda is given to short-lived passions. This year, in music, she drops violin and takes up bass clarinet, which she played for a while in elementary school, so that she can now join marching band. The hours of rehearsal required for marching band and the Saturday games force her to drop tennis, Spanish club and horseback riding. She lasts through the football season in marching band, but does not continue through the winter with concert band. She means to return to violin, but ends up in sketching class and competing in math tournaments. She fails to make the softball team and takes up clogging.
    Lander is disgusted. Show discipline! she snaps. Don’t give up so easily. Choose one thing. Work hard. Excel.
    Miranda is never interested in