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and the lights come back on. “Thank you. Now, you, please.” She aims the book-sized device at the screen and the show clicks to black.
    “Think somewhere in West Palm Beach Mrs. Richardson’s boobs were getting bigger and smaller?”
    “Her brain, more likely.” She fluffs up her matching green velvet couch cushions and I do the same with mine, returning the room to its prior immaculate state. Mom pulls her checklist from her apron pocket, and I bend to pile my completed homework into my bag. “Do you want to use the bathroom before I do a final faucet polish?”
    “I’m good.” I pull on my UGGs.
    “Great, you take out the garbage and start the car, and I’ll polish while it warms up. Meet you out front in fifteen?”
    “With a rose?” I bat my eyelashes, and her tired face breaks into a laugh.

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    “Zipper up out there.” She gathers the aluminum containers and hands me the shiny black bag. “And grab my rim shot?”
    I pull out the Evian bottle. “Check.” I dump it into the bag. “We were never here.”
    Mom sighs. “Your homework’s done, right?”
    “ Yes .” I pull on my coat and feel through the green velvet folds to the lock on the glass door. Gripping the bag of take-out containers in one hand and my coat closed with the other, I climb through the white drifts toward the Richardsons’ garage. The sky has cleared enough for the moon to peek through, allowing me to use the burlap-wrapped topiaries as guideposts to the edge of the property.
    With the wind no longer blowing, I hear the ever-present distant waves and then something else. Yelling. A man’s voice. I round the corner of the cedar-shingled garage and see the growing bone structure of the new mansion on the lot abutting the Richardsons’. The garage’s lantern lights spill through a demarcation line of a low hedge onto a Sheetrocked guesthouse all of ten feet away.
    “I don’t give a crap where you take ’em, take ’em to a goddamn hotel, but to mess with my business—”
    “Dad—” another voice pleads.
    “So now I gotta go down to the police station and explain that my construction site is secure—thanks for the call—just my shit-for-brains son screwing some slut on a sleeping bag like a homeless bum—”
    “I’m sorry—”

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    I hear the hollow thud of a punch and then a tight growl. “No, what you are is pathetic.” A tarp-covered doorway flips open, and I crouch just as Mr. McCaffrey struts out in his Giants leather jacket and disappears around the building.
    I quickly stand and raise the lid of the pine bin, using my head to prop it as I drop the bag into the can, wanting to get out of there as fast as possible. But I jerk up when I hear the tarp lift back again, and the lid slams shut. Before I can move, Jase steps out, raking a hand across his wet eyes as they land on mine. A shot of surprise and then his expression hardens, a drop of red trickling toward his chin from his split lip.
    “He’s not going to tell my mom about this, is he?” a voice calls uncertainly. We both turn to where, teetering in high-heeled boots, the wrong blonde rounds the outside corner of the guesthouse.
    “Get in the car, Trisha.” He flings his pointer finger toward the Hummer and, with a last look at me, follows her to it.
    I stand there for a second watching them go before turning to trudge back to the house, thanking God I’m not in their orbit.

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    PART II
    THE REELS

    REEL 1
    The next morning, I slide into my seat in calc, half a cold Pop-Tart tucked in my hand. The only two things that make this class tolerable are the knowledge that the time remaining in my life that I’ll have to waste in math is now measurable in a countable clump of hours—and illicit blueberry streusel. Streusel that almost goes down the wrong way when Mrs. Feinberg comes in trailed by a cameraman inches from her face.
    “Good morning, class.” She is as red as the robin knit into her sweater. “I’ve been instructed to teach as