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conversation options. The only other people in the kitchen, though, were two guys taking tequila shots and a girl leaning against the fridge having a weepy, drunk conversation on her cell phone. Unless I wanted to go outside, I was stuck.
    The door banged open again behind me, and I felt another burst of cold air. A moment later, the girl in the puffy jacket who’d been responsible for me getting my beer was stepping up beside me, pulling a bottled water out of her pocket, and twisting the top off.
    “Hey, Riley,” the girl in the slip dress said to her. She cocked a thum me. “She’s new. Starts Jackson on Monday.”
    Riley was thin with blue eyes, her hair pulled back into a ponytail at the base of her neck, and she had silver rings on almost every finger. She smiled at me sympathetically and said, “It’s not as bad as they’ve told you, I promise.”
    “Don’t listen to her, she’s a misguided optimist,” the guy said. To her he added, “Hey, you seen Dave yet?”
    She shook her head. “He was having a big sit-down with his parents tonight. I’m thinking they maybe didn’t let him out after.”
    “ Another sit-down?” the blonde said. “Those people sure can meet, can’t they?”
    Riley shrugged, taking a sip of her water. Her lipstick, a bright pink, left a perfect half-moon on the bottleneck. “I think he was hoping they’d decided to loosen up a bit,” she said. “I mean, it’s been two months. The fact that he’s not here, though, doesn’t bode well.”
    “His parents are so overprotective,” the blonde explained to me. “It’s crazy.”
    “Like the Gulag,” her boyfriend added. “But at home.”
    “Seriously. The kid is on the straight and narrow his entire life, and then one night, he’s just unlucky enough to get busted with a beer at a party.” The blonde did a combo cleavage adjustment–eye roll, a move it was clear she’d perfected. “It was one beer! Even the court just gave him community service. But in their eyes, he might as well have killed someone’s grandma or something.”
    “Hard-core,” her boyfriend agreed.
    I watched as Riley took another sip, then consulted her watch. As she did so, I noticed she had a tattoo on her inner left wrist, a simple black outline of a circle the size of a dime. “Okay,” she said. “It’s nine forty. We leave here at ten thirty at the latest in order to make curfew. No exceptions, no disappearing. Capisce ?”
    “You are such a mom,” the blonde complained. Riley just looked at her. “Capisce,” she said finally.
    “Ten thirty,” the guy said, then saluted her. “Got it.”
    Riley gave me a smile, then walked back into the living room, picking her way over to the sofa. There, a dark-haired guy in an army jacket was gesturing wildly, telling a story to a couple of girls gripping plastic cups, who looked to be hanging on his every word. I watched her as she sat down on his other side, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, and listened as well.
    When I turned back to Gulag guy and Trust Issues, I found them suddenly—and passionately—making out, his hands sliding under her jacket. I glanced at the girl at the fridge, still weeping, and decided to head outside for some air.
    On the side porch, people were smoking and shifting around in an effort to stay warm. It was a cold, crisp night, the stars so bright they seemed close enough to touch. Without even thinking about it, I started looking. One , I thought as I found Cassiopeia. Two was Orion. Three, the Big Dipper. Some people step over cracks, knock on wood, or toss salt over their shoulders. I never let myself look up at the night sky without finding at least three constellations. It just made me feel safer, more centered. Like no matter where I was, I could find somthing I recognized.
    It was my mom who had taught me about the stars. She’d been an astronomy minor in college—one of the many surprises about her, actually—and my dad had bought her a telescope for