She put everything back as she’d found it except her mother’s expired driver’s license and Jon Wycliffe’s—which she slid into her back pocket. The last place she looked was in the large armrest between the driver and passenger seats. Popping it open, Summer stared inside: it was messy, unlike everything else in the RV: a polaroid camera, a pack of Doublemint gum, a handheld voice recorder and two pairs of rolled-up white socks. She heard a door slam and instinctively ducked her head, thumping the armrest closed and sliding down in the driver’s seat so that her body was half under the steering wheel and her legs jutted awkwardly toward the pedals. Footsteps and voices. Summer made a mewling sound in the back of her throat. If she were to be caught... She tallied up her crimes, knowing the harshest punishment would come from the stolen items in her pockets. They’d be angry she’d used the key and snuck out, even more that she’d gone through the RV without permission, but Taured hated stealing—said it was the most dishonorable of all the sins.

  The driver’s-side door was still open and unlatched; she pushed on it roughly with her shoulder. It would leave a bruise, but it opened enough for Summer to wriggle out from under the wheel and drop to the asphalt. She hit the small of her back on the step as she went down, landing on her haunches. The pain was sharp and she gasped from it, clapping a hand over her mouth. They were on the other side of the RV now, and any minute one of them would walk around the front of the vehicle and see her, crouched and panting. She pushed the door closed silently with her palms, but there wasn’t enough force to latch it. Two men: Taured and someone else. Real fear flowed through her now, making her tremble, as if she were cold. But she wasn’t cold, it was a hundred and four degrees outside. The only option was under, so she dropped to her belly and rolled. Summer came to a stop faceup, the underbelly of the RV staring back at her. Her heart was hammering and she’d swallowed a good amount of dirt, but she lay as still as she could, afraid the slightest movement would alert them to her presence.

  “The money is under the seat, passports and IDs in the glove box.” The voice belonged to Sammy, one of the men who went on the mission trips with her mother. Sammy did most of the driving, her mother had once told her. His boots stopped on the passenger side, so close Summer could see the yellow stitching on their soles. She blew out her cheeks, holding her breath, her hand still over her mouth, and followed the other set of shoes to the driver’s-side door. Nice boots: gray snakeskin.

  “The photos?” Taured’s voice this time.

  “In your car,” Sammy said. “Front seat.”

  The driver’s-side door didn’t open as suddenly. Taured was hesitating. Summer breathed through the hand cupped over her mouth. It was the door. He never missed anything that was half-finished, half-closed or half-assed.

  “You didn’t close the door.”

  “What—yeah, I did. I always—You’re right. I probably didn’t. It won’t happen again, boss.”

  Summer couldn’t hear what Sammy said after that, because both doors to the RV were now fully closed and the engine had started, with her still underneath.

  9

  Now

  Ursa was taking her bags from the Lyft driver, her eyes hidden behind the largest sunglasses Rainy had ever seen. Her shoulders were hunched forward, and the rain pounded her back as she sprinted for the lobby. A woman jogged past them in a dress so short Rainy could see her underwear. She was barefoot and clutched her Louboutins against her breasts as she screamed, “Javi! Let me have my bird!”

  Only when they were in the hotel’s lobby, the air-conditioning chilling the raindrops on their skin, could Rainy relax. By force of habit, she reached up to make sure her necklace was still there, flat against her skin. Her fingers caressed the metal as she watched Ursa dust raindrops from her clothes.

  “Do not play with me, rain! I am a pro.” Mackenzie, whose blond hair was plastered to her face, shot Ursa a woeful look and escaped to the bathroom, presumably to dry herself with paper towel. They had come to escape a snowstorm and had found a rainstorm instead. As an artist, Rainy appreciated the comedy of the situation, though she’d never say so; the rest of them looked ready to cry. Didn’t most of what happened in Vegas happen indoors, anyway? They could still gamble and see shows while the desert got her watering.

  “Will you watch the bags? I’m getting a drink,” Ursa said. Rainy followed her eyes to the hotel bar and nodded. “Want anything?”

  Rainy shook her head and watched Ursa’s leggy stride as she made her way to the bar. Braithe and Tara stood in front of the check-in counter, their shoulders pressed so closely together they looked like conjoined twins. Not for the first time, Rainy noted that two of them seemed to have nothing in common but time—a grandfathered-in friendship. She thought of Sara then, wondered what had happened to her; it was fleeting and uncomfortable, and she pressed it to the far back of her mind. Sara didn’t belong in this world with these people, and Rainy had practiced hard at separating that life from this one.

  A check-in attendant became available, and they shuffled forward together. Rainy might not have grandfathered-in relationships, but if Viola were here, she’d be standing with Rainy, making sarcastic comments about the whole situation. As Rainy stood in the center of their little luggage brigade, she slipped her phone from her back pocket and texted her friend. If partners existed in this strange Tiger Mountain square dance, Viola was hers.

  The hotel is gold.

  Stop bragging, came the quick reply. One corner of Rainy’s mouth lifted at Viola’s snarky humor.

  Anything yet? Rainy asked.

  The only thing arriving today is four inches of snow. This baby is stubborn. How are things there?

  There’s a really bad rainstorm. Girls are freaking out.

  Rain is better than snow, Viola texted back, and Rainy scrunched up her nose in disagreement. Sitting by the fire while the world outside was still and white sounded nice.

  Is Tara still acting weird?

  Rainy glanced over at the check-in desk, where a receptionist was handing Tara their room keys. She was gesturing wildly, probably making jokes about how she was going to get lost every time she left the room. She sent one last text to Viola.

  It’s like she’s mad at me about something.

  She slid her phone into her back pocket and smiled at Tara and Braithe as they made their way over. Tara didn’t make eye contact with her as she passed Rainy her room key. Rainy looked around their little group to see if anyone else had noticed, and then felt foolish. Braithe caught her staring at Tara and gave her a weird what’s going on? look.

  Rainy shrugged, embarrassed at being caught. She was being crazy; of course she was. Making things up in her head. She got like this with relationships sometimes, trying to find things wrong that weren’t there. How many therapists had confirmed she had trust issues? Not that she needed to be told that, but it stung a little every time she had to hear it. The truths you didn’t want to hear, right? She could accept that she avoided most relationships because of what she’d experienced. What she could not accept was when a well-meaning therapist tried to tie that distrust to her mother, painting her as weak and unable to protect her daughter. Rainy did not have trust issues because of what her mother had done; she had issues because of what was done to her mother. If they started in on her mother, she’d look for a new therapist. That’s how it went.

  “Up, up and away!” Braithe called. With the grace of the former dancer she was, she wove through the crowded lobby toward the elevators. They followed behind her single file, like little ducklings, Tara in second place, Rainy at the rear. When they crowded into an elevator, Mac had a sneezing fit that lasted four floors and made the other six people in the elevator scootch to the far side. By the time they reached their floor, they were giggling uncontrollably. Mac’s face was shiny with embarrassment as she whacked her friends playfully on the arms.

  “Ya’ll don’t understand. I get nervous around this many grown-ups and then I hiccup and sneeze!”

  That sent them into a fresh round of laughter with Mac admitting that she hiccuped through parent/teacher nights.

  Their suite had four bedrooms, a communal living room and a kitchen. They oohed and aahed over the view while Rainy shrank back from it. She didn’t want to see the desert. Beyond the colored pinnacles of a castle and the pyramid-shaped tourist traps were several fucked-up years of her childhood. From the plane, everything had looked like a sandbox, sectioned off into smaller sandboxes with houses dropped in the middle of them. Grant thought that it was Las Vegas that she hated, but it wasn’t the Shangri-La-ness of the city that got to her; she’d only driven by it as a girl. All the snakes were in the desert, and from their room, she could see clear across it.

  “Holy mother of all slots this view is amazing!” Ursa said. “But only three of the rooms have a view.”

  “I’ll take the viewless room,” Rainy said quickly. When they all looked at her, she shrugged. “I’m afraid of heights and won’t be looking, anyway.” She hoped they wouldn’t call her on that; after all, she lived on a mountaintop like the rest of them. But no one said anything—they were probably relieved that she had volunteered to take the crappiest room.

  Ursa and Mac paired up in the largest room and Rainy, Tara and Braithe each got their own. Rainy dropped her bag on the bed and had a quick look around. The room was simple, in sharp contrast to the garish strip outside: creamy whites and dull gold accents. As Ursa had indicated, her view was obstructed by the Eiffel Tower, which suited her just fine; she was going to keep the drapes closed, anyway. At the moment, the rain angled harshly toward the window, slapping the glass rhythmically like she was in a car wash. When nature imitates life! Rainy thought. She had the urge to pull up the corners of the linen and hide herself under the covers like the antisocial person she was.

  When she wandered back into the living room, Ursa was standing with her nose pressed against the window, whining mournfully. “It’s pouring!” She had a habit of stating the obvious, but in a gloriously funny way. Once, when they’d sat down to a meal of dry chicken and burned rice in the dining room of the blue rambler she’d bought with her fiancé, she’d announced, “The chicken tastes like shit but I’ll be offended if you don’t eat it.” It was funny and true, and they’d all cleaned their plates, smiling through the burned pieces of rice like supportive friends. Rainy had been even newer to the group back then, and she’d been charmed by the beautiful gazelle with no filter. This time, however, Ursa sounded genuinely deflated. Her weekend plans had been derailed, and she was a hundred percent not okay with that.

  “So what?” Tara shrugged.

  So what? Rainy mimicked to herself. Then, Stop. Be nice. She massaged her temples as a headache tightened behind her eyes.

  “The restaurant I booked is an outdoor venue.” Mac was staring at her phone, her thumbnail between her teeth. On the drive from the airport, they had discussed two things: the rain and their hunger.

  “Just call them and see if they have a table inside,” Braithe suggested.

  Mac’s face was red. “Yeah, okay. I’ll call.” She disappeared into her room with her phone, shutting the door behind her. Everyone busied themselves, either heading to the bathroom or checking their phones while they waited; when Mac walked out of the bedroom ten minutes later, she didn’t look happy. “So, due to the lightning storm, the restaurant we were going to has closed their patio and they don’t have any tables inside.”

  “Baaa!” Ursa threw up her hands in defeat.

  “Relax, I got us in somewhere else—”

  They all cheered, but Mac was holding up her hands to quiet them. “But only at ten o’clock...so I ordered pizza.”

  Rainy smiled at Mac’s handling of the situation: bad news delivered by semigood news with a snack as consolation. It seemed to work; everyone accepted the news with optimism, and an hour later they were drinking and scarfing down barbecue chicken pizza like they hadn’t eaten in a week. Ursa put on the hotel robe and was digging around in the minibar while the others propped themselves in armchairs, slices drooping in their hands. To Rainy, it looked like a scene out of a magazine: Tiger Mountain Takes Vegas. The city was the backdrop, spread beneath the windows like a neon quilt. Tara had not looked at her once since they arrived, and it irked the hell out of Rainy, who still remembered the urgency with which Tara had invited her all those weeks back.

  “This is just my luck. First getaway in a year and we’re stuck in a monsoon.” Ursa uncorked a minibottle of vodka and sipped miserably from it as she stared at her magenta toenails. Rainy sat in the only armchair with its back to the large expanse of windows. She was trying not to look anxious.

  “We should play a game,” Braithe suggested. “Until this clears up.”

  “Like what kind?” Mac asked.

  “Leave it to the kindergarten teacher to vet the game!” Tara sang. “Might as well play something good, since this isn’t going anywhere.”

  “We could do dares!” Ursa chose a bag of M&M’s from the minibar and studied the wrapper.

  “Stop counting calories!” Braithe threw a pillow at the younger woman, who started, then smiled.

  “I’m too old for dares,” Braithe said. “Maybe something more...inspiring.”

  Tara chortled from where she sat on the sofa. “Who wants to play an inspiring game? This isn’t a women’s conference. I thought we were here to have fun.” To emphasize her point, she raised her arms above her head and shook her hair around like a dancer in an eighties music video. In her year of knowing them, Rainy had never witnessed Tara mock or question anything that Braithe did. Braithe was staring at Tara, equally as disturbed. She looked around to see if Mac or Ursa had noticed, but they were alert and interested in the game idea, not the sharp tones in which it was presented.

  “That’s right,” Ursa agreed. “Why don’t we each ask a question that everyone in the room has to answer. That way, you can customize your game-playing experience and ask inspiring or nosy questions.”

  “Ooh, I like that,” Mac agreed.

  From across the room, Tara rolled her eyes and mouthed, “Of course she does.” At some point, Tara had changed from her jeans into cotton shorts and a tank top. She strolled over to the chair next to Rainy, considered it and moved to a chair on the other side of the room instead.

  Rainy felt uncomfortable with the game right away. Being forced to answer personal questions directed at her by Tara, Ursa and Mac? No, thanks. But the rest of them were reluctantly crowding around the suite’s living room, finding chairs. Braithe was ripping the hotel’s notepad into thin strips of paper.

  “Here,” she said, handing them around. “Write your question on this paper and try to disguise your handwriting!”

  They all took a slip and one of the pens Braithe passed out and stared at her expectantly.

  “Do we all have to answer the question, or is it one person per question?” Mac wanted to know. Ursa yawned and Mac said, “No, you have to stay awake. Dinner is at ten.” Rainy scratched her foot with her other foot and tried to pretend she wasn’t terrified of what they’d ask her. Let it be one question per person, she pleaded mentally.

  Tara settled it. “One each or it’ll take forever.” They’d each draw a question and, unless it was their own, they’d have to answer.

  “They can’t just be any questions. You have to ask really prying questions,” Tara emphasized. But they all knew each other—had known each other for years. They’d only be prying into Rainy’s life with their drilling nosiness. You only have to answer one, she reminded herself, tapping her foot with the pen.

  She scribbled down her question, hoping the others would be just as straightforward, and tossed her slip into the ice bucket Mac had put on the table for that purpose. Maybe she shouldn’t have drunk her wine so fast; she was feeling weird. She wished Grant would call her so she’d have an excuse to leave the room. It would be a great time for Viola to go into labor, she thought miserably.

  “Okay, okay,” Mac called. “Here it is...first question.” She held the slip of paper up, reading it carefully to herself before her face underwent several expressions, one of them embarrassment.

  “Spit it out, Mackenzie,” Ursa said, and then added: “I hope it’s mine!” She rubbed her hands together theatrically.

  Mac cleared her throat. “What was your first sexual experience? Describe in great detail.”