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two hours later Raya knew something was wrong. Her mom hadn’t called or come home, and Raya immediately pictured her stranded on the side of the road shaking her cellphone because the battery was dead, the wagon’s hood open while steam hissed out.
    Raya was so convinced by the vision, she’d gone and found her dad in the Bike Cave and told him she thought Mom was having some car trouble. Her dad tried calling and there was no answer. Worried, he went out looking for her, starting at the Safeway parking lot where Mom usually shopped. Raya stayed home, in case her mom called or got back first.
    They came home twenty minutes later and it turned out Raya had been exactly right. Well, almost exactly, which wasn’t exactly at all, as her English teacher Mrs Iwerson reminded her whenever Raya accidentally used a contradictory or redundant adverb in one of her papers. Exactly the same. ‘Exactly’ was like that, it could fool you. And the car breakdown was like that. Not exactly like her vision but so close as to be spooky. In real life it turned out to be a flat tire, not the engine. And her cellphone battery wasn’t dead. She’d simply left it in her office at Fresh Starts.
    Still, it was enough to make a girl wonder.
    Raya was on the verge of sleep for the fourth time in as many hours when Chad finally texted back.
     
    Lost all my money. No more cards for me. U still awake? Wanna talk on my way home?
    Too sleepy , Raya sent back, but are you OK to drive?
    Chad wasn’t a big drinker, usually limiting himself to a few beers. His personality didn’t change when he drank, a sign her mom had warned her to watch out for.
    Didn’t drink tonight, Chad replied.
    Raya found this unlikely, though she didn’t think Chad would lie to her about having a few beers. She’d never hassled him about it, so maybe he was telling the truth.
     
    Promise?
    Swear. And I love you.
    You too , Raya wrote.
    That always made her happy, when he said the words. But she couldn’t say the actual words back. She knew ‘you too’ was misleading, and she sensed he understood the difference. She didn’t love Chad, really love Chad, like she knew she would love somebody when she was older. She cared about him a lot, and he was super-sweet to her, and what was wrong with telling someone ‘you too’, even if it wasn’t the purest, strongest, most amazing love you would ever have? Maybe nothing, except that she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Maybe someday. Not tonight.
    Finally she could go to sleep. Except now she had to pee again.
    Raya got out of bed and walked to the bathroom attached to her bedroom suite. She was about to drop her pajama bottoms when she noticed that the toilet paper roll had only like four squares left. Probably enough, but she hated getting pee on her hand, even if it was her own pee. And she would need more in the morning anyway, so might as well get a fresh roll now. She opened the cabinet under her sink but it was empty. Great, now she had to go out to the bathroom at the front of the house to stock up. She could have put it off, but one of the things she took pride in was something her dad told her over and over when she was little, until it became a habit of her own.
    Don’t put off getting things done, honey. Even the little stuff, the stupid stuff. Every day there are dozens of things you could do, and should do, to make life easier, and you will be tempted to put them off until tomorrow. But don’t do that, because it’s a small bit of lazy, and it only gets easier and easier to be lazy. And pretty soon, after years and years, your life might still be good but there will be hundreds, thousands of little things you could have done, done so easily, but you didn’t.
 
    And the secret is this, honey. Putting off thousands of little things makes it easier to put off doing one or two of the really big things, something really special and worthwhile. If you want to build a company, write a book, travel around the