told him what she wanted to do with her life, and he said, “You don’t want to be a teacher.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d have students like me.”
She smiled and pushed his arm, but immediately she knew she’d gone too far. He tensed at her touch. His expression reminded her of the eight-year-old boy she’d volunteered with that afternoon, who’d flung the Dr. Seuss book across the room because he couldn’t pronounce the word know.
She began to wonder if her friends at the bar had been right about this man. Julia, hija, you gonna talk to him?
They’d dared her twenty bucks. She’d taken the bet, conscious that the blond Anglo had been looking at her across the room, interested, intrigued.
She felt flush with success: Her first semester over, her grades excellent, her last exam put behind her that morning. By the end of the spring, her professors assured her, she could transfer to a full university if she wanted.
Shoot high, they’d told her. Look at Yale. Look at Columbia.
The names rolled over her like incantations—magical phrases from another universe. No one she’d ever known had gone this far. No member of her family had ever completed high school.
Earlier in the week, she’d dumped her senior year boyfriend. Life was too full of possibilities for her to marry him. She’d broken her last chain. Why not celebrate? Why not show off a little?
The guy at the bar was obviously from that other world she wanted—rich, powerful, groomed for success. It was as if he were put in front of her now, a symbol of what she could have. Did she have the nerve to take it?
They left together, and she turned to wink at her friends, knowing that tomorrow they’d owe her twenty bucks.
He pulled the Mercedes over on the side of a dark road. Mission, she thought, but she wasn’t sure. A crumbling streak of asphalt marched off into the night, scrubby trees and barbed wire on either side like scar tissue.
Her companion’s name was Frankie. That’s all she knew. The name made him seem younger, though he had to be at least a few years older than she.
He put the car in park and looked up at the stars. The Big Dipper, Orion, a bunch of other constellations she couldn’t name.
“Pretty,” she said.
He didn’t respond.
“So . . . you bring many girls out here?” She meant it to sound teasing, but when he looked over, the darkness in his eyes scared her.
“A couple,” he admitted.
She shifted away from him, just slightly. Already planning exit strategies. She would tell him she still had an early exam tomorrow. No . . . she’d already told him she was done for the semester. What else would work? That her friends were expecting a call, maybe.
“My father used to come here,” he murmured.
“Your father?”
“He used to bring women here. It killed my mother.”
This was getting creepy now. Whatever Julia had been reaching for, this was not it.
“I’m . . . sorry.” Julia tried to put herself into mentor mode. It was the only kind of training she could fall back on. Get him to talk. Put him at ease. A lot of kids . . . people . . . came from really bad homes.
“I got a sister,” he continued. “Thirteen. Looks just like my mom. Doesn’t even remember her, though. Not even a fucking memory.”
“I’m sure your sister . . . really loves you, Frankie.”
He stared at his hands, corpse-pale in the moonlight. Julia could see the anger draining out of his shoulders. She thought the dangerous moment had passed.
“She hates me,” Frankie muttered. “Get me arrested if she could. Sometimes I wish I could bring her here. Show her . . .”
His voice trailed off.
Julia didn’t know what he was talking about. She just wanted out.
“Look . . .” She tried to sound upbeat, not at all afraid. “I told my friends I’d call them, you know? Would you mind—”
“You told them you’d call.”
“Yeah. Kind of silly, but, ah . . . we had a bet.”
He stared at her as if there were an insect crawling over her face, something poisonous. “A bet. About me?”
She tried to keep her mind on good things—next semester, the children she tutored, getting her own apartment and a part-time job, moving to the East Coast. All that was waiting for her, just a few miles back down the road.
“It was just a joke,” she managed.
“You bet your friends I wouldn’t be able to perform?”
“No! Nothing like that.”
He