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and happy his whole life, thus proving the absolute unfairness of the cosmos?”
    “He just looked sort of desperate,” I said.
    “Whatever. We’re going to Karin’s house. It’s on Pennsylvania, by the ABC Liquors.”
    “Don’t be pissed at me,” I said. “I just had a guy point a freaking shotgun at me for helping you, so don’t be pissed at me.”
    “I’M NOT PISSED AT YOU!” Margo shouted, and then punched the dashboard.
    “Well, you’re screaming.”
    “I thought maybe—whatever. I thought maybe he wasn’t cheating.”
    “Oh.”

    48/307
    “Karin told me at school. And I guess a lot of people have known for a long time. And no one told me until Karin. I thought maybe she was just trying to stir up drama or something.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    “Yeah. Yeah. I can’t believe I even care.”
    “My heart is really pounding,” I said.
    “That’s how you know you’re having fun,” Margo said.
    But it didn’t feel like fun; it felt like a heart attack. I pulled over into a 7-Eleven parking lot and held my finger to my jugular vein while watching the : in the digital clock blink every second. When I turned to Margo, she was rolling her eyes at me. “My pulse is dangerously high,” I explained.
    “I don’t even remember the last time I got excited about something like that. The adrenaline in the throat and the lungs expanding.”
    “In through the nose out through the mouth,” I answered her.
    “All your little anxieties. It’s just so . . .”
    “Cute?”
    “Is that what they’re calling childish these days?” She smiled.
    Margo crawled into the backseat and came back with a purse. How much shit did she put back there? I thought. She opened up the purse and pulled out a full bottle of nail polish so darkly red it was almost black. “While you calm down, I’m going to paint my nails,” she said, smiling up at me through her bangs. “You just take your time.” 49/307
    And so we sat there, she with her nail polish balanced on the dash, and me with a shaky finger on the pulse of myself. It was a good color of nail polish, and Margo had nice fingers, thinner and bonier than the rest of her, which was all curves and soft edges. She had the kind of fingers you want to interlace with your own. I remembered them against my hip bone in Wal-Mart, which felt like days ago. My heart-beat slowed. And I tried to tell myself: Margo’s right.
    There’s nothing out here to be afraid of, not in this little city on this quiet night.
    5.
    “Part Six,” Margo said once we were driving again. She was waving her fingernails through the air, almost like she was playing piano.
    “Leave flowers on Karin’s doorstep with apologetic note.”
    “What’d you do to her?”
    “Well, when she told me about Jase, I sort of shot the messenger.”
    “How so?” I asked. We were pulled up to a stoplight, and some kids in a sports car next to us were revving their engine—as if I was going to race the Chrysler. When you floored it, it whimpered.
    “Well, I don’t remember exactly what I called her, but it was something along the lines of ‘sniveling, repulsive, idiotic, backne-rid-den, snaggletoothed, fat-assed bitch with the worst hair in Central Florida—and that’s saying something.’”
    “Her hair is ridiculous,” I said.
    I know . That was the only thing I said about her that was “true. When you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, 50/307
    because you can’t really fully and honestly take those back, you know?
    I mean, there are highlights. And there are streaks. And then there are skunk stripes.” As I drove up to Karin’s house, Margo disappeared into the way-back and returned with the bouquet of tulips. Taped to one of the flowers’ stems was a note Margo’d folded to look like an envelope.
    She handed me the bouquet once I stopped, and I sprinted down a sidewalk, placed the flowers on Karin’s doorstep, and sprinted back.
    “Part Seven,” she said