Virgo got through the rest of the day stumbling from one uneasy social interaction to the other. She exchanged glances with Quinn 'Quinn Bee' Mayfield during passes through the halls. Apparently, all the upperclassmen frequented the upper floors in the early hours and the underclassmen took over for the final periods of the day after the work-study students had departed for work. That was when she ran into Girl and Girl's constant companion, her attitude.

"Still looking lost, I see. Should I put a chip on you?"

"I'll take a chip out of your teeth if you talk to me like that again."

Girl recoiled at Virgo's tone but she managed to catch herself. Didn't think you were that brave, sweetheart. Virgo reluctantly respected Girl's determination to hold her position in the face of somebody she found intimidating.

"Do you need helping finding AP US History?"

"How do you still know my schedule?"

"Eidetic memory—and I wrote it down. You spent a long time counting cuckoo birds, sweetie."

"Don't call me sweetie."

"Would you prefer 'babyface'?"

"I'd prefer my name."

"Valerie?"

"That's my name."

Girl's lips twisted to one side. "Sure it is, babyface. APUSH is this way. Hurry up. He's a dick about attendance."

Girl was tall. Tall for fifteen, tall for seventeen. She walked like nobody was going to get in her way, and nobody did. Virgo wasn't sure if she should be jealous or worried. The funny side eyes Girl got made Virgo's nerves hum. She hated being looked at, Girl didn't give a shit who looked. She had places to be and had already decided how she'd go about getting there. Virgo could come aboard or stumble behind; it made no difference to her.

"What's your name?"

"What's in a name?"

"It's something to call you by. What am I just supposed to call you, 'Girl'?"

"Don't care."

"Is that why you don't call me Val?"

"I don't call you anything, we just met."

"You laughed when you heard my name. Do people laugh at yours?"

"I don't care." Her face was turning red.

"You'd tell me what it was if you didn't care. You think I'm going to laugh."

"I think you won't understand, but I don't need you to get it, I need you to let it go."

Girl was one of those kids, the ones who poured Pine Sol in the fruit punch just to see what happened. She didn't know what she was doing, but she wasn't sorry when it was done. Virgo was just the opposite.

Girl walked her to her locker after class. She hadn't said more than a handful of words to Virgo all class period. She hadn't raised her hand. She hadn't addressed the other students and none of them had had more than a cold look for the girl who had to be too young for all the classes they'd shared so far.

"Here you are, safe and sound. Bye."

"You're really just gonna make me call you Girl?"

"Don't call me anything. Don't speak to me. Don't bother me. Bye."

"I thought you wanted to show me around."

"You don't want to see anything I have to show you. Besides, Quinn Bee would have my head in her royal guillotine if I stay where I'm not wanted."

Weird as shit.

Girl had left Virgo on her own for lunch, which meant eating outside on the grass because all the other seats were taken. Virgo was cool with it, having endless sunlight after years of limited quantities made her thirsty for it. She stuck her head out of windows all the time to let rays soak her face. She hung out of cars and climbed shoddy roofs to warm herself. She hadn't known she was cold until she felt her blood run hot for the first time since she was a little girl. Now she was addicted to the great outdoors, to the welcome embrace of Father Sun and Mother Moon. Who needed shade when all you wanted was light?

*

Virgo returned to the Sage Residence on Broadstroke Circle, a fuzzy little cul-de-sac half an hour from Nevada Lights and forty-five minutes from the Las Vegas Strip. It was a cookie cutter townhouse. Two floors, Spanish colonial style. Bought with cash, she imagined, from a real estate developer whose coffers had run dry before he could finish installing the plumbing and Moroccan-tiled the outdoor pool. The family didn't swim and all anybody here took was showers (imagine big gaping holes where the claw foot tubs were meant to be). The three-car garage held three cars: one totaled, one operational, and one that was under threat of repossession because somebody (Virgo's money was on her new foster brother Eustace, or Useless as she thought of him) had mislaid their car payments for the past seven months.

The Sages weren't doing so hot and that's why they needed her and that money that came with taking care of her. Financial support for taking in foster kids was an old school get rich quick scheme for the moderately paternal. Virgo had passed through a couple of foster homes when she was a little girl and her mom was running away from herself. The System was quick to tell a black girl her child was better off without her but was damned slow about letting her change her mind. That was about all Virgo knew about her mother for sure anymore. She'd gotten knocked up at sixteen by a hustler driving a hoopty selling mixtapes outside the corner store. He wore fur in the summer and a Yankees ball cap with half-laced Air Jordans. Virgo never even learned his name, just that her mother regretted him. She was a woman who lived long enough to have a lot of regrets.

Just long enough.

Virgo helped herself to the bowl of bibimbap leftover from dinner the night before. If the parental fosters asked who ate it, she'd blame Useless. He was shitfaced and burnt out more hours of the day than he was lucid. Between bags of Cheetos and Sun Chips he might have helped himself to the family takeout. She wasn't going to help him out if he asked, anyway, not after he'd called her a freeloading charity case the day the social worker and police escort dropped her off on the doorstep with her bag of hand-me-downs and a set of care & feeding instructions.

His idea of a hello involved the words, "Listen, freaklet, stay out of my way and I won't tell your little fan club where to find you. Get on my shit list and I'll doxx you from Snapchat to Facebook."

She hadn't answered his threat. He was a bloodshot speed freak in need of a shower and an intervention nobody seemed to care enough to stage. He was already a waste of space. He didn't need to be a waste of her time, too.

"Freaklet, where's the bibimbap?" Useless hung over the rail of the upper floor that was exposed to ground floor and the rest of the house. His hair stuck up in every direction, a hurricane of L'Oreal Paris #11 Cool Black, which was...a choice, but not one Virgo would have made. Useless had inherited every Irish Catholic, English rose gene possible on his father's side. Black hair emphasized his pallor and left him look like an undead survivor of Spanish Influenza. Minus the sparkles.

"Bibim who? Never mind, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't care either. Ask your mom where your dog is, you ask her for everything else."

A flash went off in Virgo's face. "This is going on Insta right now."

"How's your little racist dickbag clique gonna handle you posting my face. Gonna tag me as your Woman Crush Monday? Am I the sister you never had? Gonna caption it 'down with the #swirl'?"

"What's the swirl?"

"I'll add it to the library of stuff you don't know." She looked back. "You have heard of libraries, right? Those big, public buildings with all the books."

"Bitch."

"Ooh, burn. What else you got?"

"Your parole officer called. You'd better give her a call before she get the po-po after you."

"It's a welfare check, dick cheese. They want to make sure I'm still alive."

"Who gives a shit about you? They just dumped you on us so they wouldn't have to deal with you."

"Probably they did. You'd better lock your door before I deal with you like I dealt with every shitty, lazy, fucknut who messed with me at all the houses before."

"They'll know you did it if I turn up dead."

"If you turn up dead, dirk, they won't be able to tell the difference." Useless was aging like a methhead. He was gaunt, thin as the walking dead but hungrier somehow. His teeth, he had meth teeth, brown and yellow and worn to nubs in his gums. Are meth girls into that shit? She didn't know one way or another whether Eustace was a girl's guy or a guy's guy or some other kind of dude. They weren't exactly exchanging GSA membership cards here. He thought she was a cannibal who'd eaten the child she'd dropped at fifteen or running from a drug kingpin who must have pimped her out. (Eustace wasn't that creative at the best of times. He couldn't come up with anything more creative than Dick Wolf had concocted in twenty seasons of Law & Order, and Breaking Bad was above his reading level.) "Bet I wouldn't be the first suspect either, shit for brains."

"Whatever, ho-bag."

"Ho-bag? You stealing insults from Mean Girls, now, Shit for Brains?" She cut him off before he could explain not getting the reference. Eustace thought reading the back of baseball cards qualified as an acceptable literary pastime. What was she expecting? "Never mind. Never mind. I don't care. I'm going to my room, get out of my way." She ascended to the second floor, determined to be done with her latest, douchiest foster brother once and for all. She much preferred it when he ignored her existence.

She held her door open to stare at Useless on the landing. "You spend so much time trying to make me feel worthless to cover up how trash you feel. That's sad, huh? And, by the way, I don't think you're actually allowed in the house. Take it back to the garage, fuck stick."

She slammed the door in his outraged face.