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as
Lizzie rolled onto her belly.
    “ Don’t be such an idiot,
Deena.”
    She dug into the miniature
pocket of her shorts and retrieved a pack of Juicy Fruit. She
unwrapped a piece and stuck it in her mouth, before tossing aside
the packet. Lizzie plopped down on her bed.
    “ He told me that he’s got
money. And that’s exactly what I want to hear.”
    Lizzie fluffed her pink
pillow and stretched out on her back. Hands folded over her
abdomen, she crossed her legs and bounced a foot midair.
    “ Money? Money for
what?”
    Lizzie shot her a look of
impatience.
    “ Same thing you need it
for. Stuff . I see
you got Gucci and Prada. I’m a get mine, too.”
    “ Gucci and Prada are my
reward for hard work,” Deena said. “Damned hard work.”
    “ Well, I work hard for
mine, too.” Lizzie said. “Damned hard.” She took a glimpse at
Deena’s face and laughed as if delighted.
    “ And how do you do that?
Cause I don’t see any job uniforms around here.”
    The teen grinned.
    “ Girl, I’m wearing
it.”
    Deena’s stomach pitched. The
room was suddenly too tight and bright, with all of its hot pink
and fuchsia, coral and salmon. How could a girl, a child with a
Hello Kitty throw on her bed and a mammoth collection of
teenybopper posters, talk like this?
    “ I can’t do this,” Deena
said. She threw up a hand. “I can’t listen to this.”
    Lizzie stared at
her.
    “ Look, it’s not that big a
deal. The way I figure it, you’re gonna have sex anyway. So, you
might as well get something for it.”
    Deena blinked back fresh
tears. “Yeah. You do. It’s called love. And it’s supposed to be
reciprocal.”
    Lizzie shrugged. “Well what
you call ‘love’, I call clothes, purses and shoes. I want what I
want and I do what I gotta do to get it. So, deal with
it.”
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER TEN

    Weather in Miami rarely took
dictation from a calendar, and this winter’s day was no exception.
The air was thick and the heat smothering as ocean waves crashed
and receded in a natural spring sonata. Sun and moon worked to
trade places in the sky as Tak and Deena walked, footprints
trailing along wet sand, faint glimmers of day receding in a
rush.
    “ God, you know what? I tell
you everything,” Deena said. “And I have no idea why.”
    Tak shrugged.
    “ Just one of those things.
Like figuring out where we all came from, and what we’re doing
here.”
    Deena’s eyes widened. “You
kidding me? My family’s got it all figured out.”
    “ And you? Have you got it
all figured out?”
    She frowned. “No. It just
seems to me that if you’ve already made up your mind then you can
find evidence corroborating whatever it is you believe.”
    “ So what are you telling
me? That you’re an atheist?”
    Her eyes widened. “It’s not
God that I doubt, its people.”
    They continued in
silence.
    “ And what about you?” she
said.
    Tak sighed.
    “ I’m sure you’ve heard of
cafeteria Catholics,” he said.
    “ Yeah?”
    “ Well, I’m an ambivalent
Buddhist. You know, it’s more about family ties than any clear and
all-encompassing notion.”
    “ Hmm,” she said in quiet
understanding.
    On they went.
    “ You know what I wish?”
Deena said suddenly.
    He shook his
head.
    “ I wish that I didn’t want
my family’s love so bad. I wish I could be one of those people who
wore leather jackets and just didn’t give a damned.”
    He shot her a look. “You’d
be musty if you wore a leather jacket in this heat.”
    She grinned. “You know what
I mean.”
    He shrugged. “Who doesn’t
want a decent family, Dee? It’s not much to ask for.”
    He paused to pluck a
seashell from the sand. Chipped and polished by time, it shone
under the glint of a fast setting sun.
    “ I don’t know the answers,”
he said. “But they seem to be in things like this.” He held up the
shell.
    She frowned. “I don’t
follow.”
    Tak simply shrugged. “Well,
think about it. What’s a shell? It’s just a—a hard,