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crooning about sex with a lady cab-driver as Allie pressed on the gas to propel the Prelude onto the 580 freeway toward a place she had yet to locate in her mind.
     

Chapter 3
    O n the one hand, Allie felt like she had been sleeping for six hours—it was as if she had closed her eyes, opened them, and found herself awake on the San Diego Freeway in Los Angeles.
    On the other hand, Allie felt like so much had happened in those six hours. She had memorized the entire Prince 1999 album. Every song. When she had messed up a word or two, she had rewound the tape and played the same section over and over until she had the right words, tone, notes, attitude even. Allie was convinced that her voice sounded exactly like Prince’s, that no one, not even the most talented sound artist, would be able to tell them apart. She hadn’t stopped to pee, or for gas, or directions. It was like the car had driven itself and she had been super-busy the entire time, making sure she didn’t sing got a time in my pock head and baby it’s rarin’ to roll , which were the words she had been using the first time “Little Red Corvette” played. It wasn’t until the third round of the A side of the tape that she realized how wrong she had been about those lyrics and so many others.
    And now, on the San Diego Freeway at eight p.m. on a Saturday, Beth’s Prelude was idling, the moon roof and windows were open, Prince was turned down low, and the baby-jar coke had worked its way out of Allie’s system (no more timepieces floating in the air). Allie could actually think, focus, and figure out what she was doing and where she would go.
    Yes, she had grown up in Los Angeles: Pasadena, for a time, while her parents were still together, and then apartments and condos everywhere from Santa Monica to the Valley. But in all those years of being a resident, Allie had never driven in Los Angeles. She got her license when she started dating Marc, and only then because he wanted to take her out to bars and restaurants where he hoped she’d have a glass or two of wine. Allie wasn’t twenty-one yet, but Marc showed her how to use chalk and a pencil to change her birth year on the California license. The pencil color matched the print perfectly, so unless some ruthless bartender with a wet thumb rubbed his digit over the altered number, it was a pretty reliable fake ID.
    Allie’s father’s restaurant was on Fairfax Avenue, so all she had to do was figure out how to get to Fairfax from the San Diego Freeway. She could hang out in the safety of her father’s looming figure while she figured out where to go next. Hopefully, her father could help her locate her mother, Penny. Though Frank would disown Allie if he found out she was fraternizing with a drug dealer, Penny wouldn’t be bothered by it. Her boyfriend, the faded rock-star Jet Blaster, was a former heroin addict. And, once, Allie had discovered in People magazine that her mother had been stopped at customs with “traces of cocaine on her luggage.” Allie had been ten when she read that article while standing in a 7-Eleven waiting for her father to buy a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. With Wai Po’s voice in her head ( WHAT IS TOLD INTO THE EAR OF MAN IS HEARD A HUNDRED MILES AWAY) , Allie swore she’d never reveal to a soul that her mother was involved in drugs. She hid all the copies of People behind Life and hoped that no one she knew at school read People. At the time, few things seemed more shameful. Now, Allie was almost grateful that her mother had a history and experience with drugs. Who better to help her out of this mess?
    The glowing orange light in the center of the gas indicator flashed on. Growing up, Allie had seldom been in a car that showed when you were running out of gas. Her father had always driven an old, white cargo van that didn’t have a working gas gauge. Frank had always said the van was part of the restaurant’s fleet (although it was the only car in the fleet), something