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opened it up, running through the gears. The car responded with seemingly limitless power to her slightest pressure on the accelerator, obeyed her slightest turn of the steering wheel. She felt its surefooted tires mastering the road as she swung around curves. She tried rapid acceleration, shifting from first gear straight to third. The car never broke stride. It could do anything. It made her feel as if it were alive and she were part of it, wanting to sink deeper into its strong, swift, wild black depths.
    She eased the seat back even more, so that she held the steering wheel low, at arm’s length, so that her legs extended full-length to reach the pedals, so that she nearly lounged, like a movie star beside a swimming pool. Jessie had never felt this way about a car. Suddenly and for the first time in her life, she wanted to buy herself some expensive sunglasses. Not to protect her from the sun. To look cool. Brand-name shades.
    Acting on impulse–and Jessie did not often act on impulse–she headed off in another direction, drove to a pricey department store she’d been to only a few times before, parked the Z-car at an angle, taking up two spaces, and strolled toward the entrance.
    People stared at her shining new black car and stared at her, and she liked it. She felt cool. She wished she were dressed in black jeans and a black hoodie. She’d feel even more cool then.
    She took her time at the gleaming racks of sunglasses, looking often in the mirror as she tried on pair after pair of fashionable shades, settling finally on Oakley Flak Jacket Asian Fit, black frames, deep purple lenses. She paid the bill, well over a hundred dollars, with her duplicate of Mom’s credit card, meant only for emergencies. Hell, life was an emergency at this point. Yet she felt so no-problem about everything. In fact, she liked living this way, like a spy in a foreign place, wearing a disguise that might betray her.
    Even though it was getting dark, she put on the new sunglasses right away, feeling without acknowledging the envious looks some people gave her as she strutted to her new car.
    Sweeeet.
    She took an indirect way home, driving fast, savoring the way the Z-car handled and cornered. She didn’t say a thing to her mother as she walked in the door, sunglasses still on. But Mom beamed a high-wattage smile as she told her to go wash her hands for supper.
    Upstairs, laying the Oakleys on top of Jason’s dresser, Jessie noticed three other pairs of sunglasses there. Why hadn’t she stopped to think Jason had shades already? She’d gone and wasted all that money–but within a moment she shrugged it off. Mom was such a space cadet that she wouldn’t notice, or if she did, she wouldn’t care. Anyway, it had been fun.
    Supper was steak with double-baked cheese potatoes. Jessie had never liked cheese potatoes, but she ate them anyway, and they tasted better than she remembered.
    Then instead of doing any homework, she watched TV, taking charge of the remote before Mom could get to it. She found herself interested in one of those shows about oversize, heavily tattooed men battling each other hand and foot inside what looked like a kind of chain-link fence. She didn’t have a clue what they were trying to prove, but it looked like they wanted to kill each other. Interesting.
    Mom got up and left the room. “That sort of thing gives me nightmares.”
    But Jessie didn’t have any nightmares. She was sleeping in Jason’s bed now, with essence of Jason in the pillow, the blanket, the camouflage-print sheets. She fell asleep right away. And she had a good dream. She dreamed Jason was sitting in the room with her. She saw his handsome face grinning at her. Way to go, Sis . She saw him give her thumbs-up. He didn’t look like a dead person.

Chapter Eight
    As soon as Alisha got out of school, she headed for the post office, where she asked a pimply, red-faced woman behind the