Nina was glad they didn’t have to go back to the bedrooms, where there might be padded walls or sinks chained to the floor or patients strapped into straitjackets, all of which would undoubtedly also burrow their way into her dreams.

The girls had stork legs and satin hair. The guys exuded the cocky nonchalance of the chosen. Everyone glowed with crazy good luck and yellow brick road futures.

Which confirmed Nina’s decision not to tell them she’d been doing cocaine. Drinking was fine with them, even a hit off a joint at a party, but serious drugs were trashy. They had no tolerance, much less appetite, for trouble. They weren’t even curious, which Nina considered a lack of imagination.

But like most Upper East Side girls, Nina thought, she was too coddled to be wily.

What, she chided herself, you believe in signs now? On the other hand, as signs went, this was pretty hard to ignore.

It wasn’t so easy, she’d explain to Stephanie tomorrow night, to tell someone something you knew would smash their world into pieces.

Now was the time to say something, tell Stephanie the truth, or at least what she believed to be true, if she could just summon the courage. That they weren’t invincible, and there wasn’t always a second chance. That life wasn’t always long. That Patrick would drag her down and strangle her spirit. That the things that had hurt them weren’t their

Funny how someone who dropped into your life from out of nowhere could make more sense than the people entrenched there from the start.

more cramped than she’d expected, with almost no windows, and the walls were covered with dozens of framed photographs: smiling babies, boys playing various sports, young men graduating and driving a car. Oh, they were all Gardner. Every photo. Gardner, Gardner, Gardner. “Is your mom home?” she asked, suddenly terrified of running into her. No