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Nino climbs the lattice outside Rebecca's window at eleven at night, red-cheeked and puffy-eyed, army jacket over nightgown, sneakers and no socks. She taps on the window as her text goes through, Rebecca's phone buzzing on her nightstand.
Rebecca gets up from her desk and slides the window open. Nino climbs in and toes off her sneakers, and drops a backpack on the floor. The floorboards in the house creak as she buries her face in Rebecca's shoulder. Rebecca's father is downstairs in his office, and doesn't hear the noise of the window shutting, nor the creaking of Rebecca's bed frame as the two of them climb into bed.
It's happening more often lately. She'll text or call, sometimes, and then she'll be here with her backpack. And Rebecca says yes. She always says yes.
In the morning Nino wears one of Rebecca's basketball jerseys over the shorts she packed. Rebecca's father makes breakfast for three; pancakes and scrambled eggs and sausage links. Rebecca pours two glasses of orange juice, and puts three spoons of sugar into her father's coffee. Nino pets Rebecca's dog. Rebecca sees her smile.
Nino's still raw from last night. She scrolls through the text chain with her father. He's begging her to come home. Saying he's going to divorce her mother, finally, and then it'll all be over, and they can be a real family. She says she'll text him back, once she figures out what she wants to say.
Rebecca borrows the truck. They drive around town. Wander around the Walmart. Their soda bottles sit in the truck's grimy cup holders, carbon dioxide bubbles slowly seeping out from the liquid, drops of water condensing on the plastic. They sit in the parking lot of the local Walmart, unrepentant July sun slowly baking the truck and the asphalt. Cicadas whir outside. Nino wipes the sweat from her forehead, taking a swig from her Sprite. Rebecca's root beer fizzes in her mouth.
Nino's knee rests on the dash. She has her hair tied up in a ponytail. Her foot bounces, worn purple shoelaces laced into a pre-teen's teal sneaker, just a touch too small because her mother won't take her shopping. Rebecca's shoulderblades stick to the fake leather seats where her tank top doesn't cover. Her phone buzzes. She ignores it.
"You'll have to text him back eventually," Rebecca says.
Nino hums. "You heard back from any schools yet?"
"Nowhere I want to go." She washes her words down with a swallow of root beer. Nino's not ready to talk about it. Rebecca wonders if she'll ever be. "Dad and I toured Lycia State, which seems nice, but it's so close, and if I'm going away for college, I want to really get out of here. You?"
Nino shakes her head. "The guidance counselor said if I buckled down I could get into Etruria next year."
"Wow, early admission, huh?" Rebecca says. "What'd you say?"
"It's still up in the air, with, you know, stuff," Nino evades. "Money. Health. Mom and Dad."
"My offer to kill your mom's still open," Rebecca offers.
Nino laughs for the first time that day. "I'll think about it."
They drive half an hour to downtown Pherae and window shop in districts they can't afford to shop in, and they talk about lighter things. School and friends and shows and music, pretending to be normal teenagers during summer break. They drive to the seaside and get fish tacos on the boardwalk, and walk holding hands, the beads of the friendship bracelets they made two years ago at summer camp clacking together. Rebecca waits in the truck for Nino to take a long phone call with her dad in the early evening, and holds her when she cries after it's done.
It's dark when they drive home. Rebecca's dad is in the living room with a beer in his hand and a cold cloth over his eyes. They walk up the stairs to Rebecca's room together, and draw the curtains, and close the door, and kiss.
They tangle together under Rebecca's cotton top sheet, faded baby blue. Rebecca looks at the uneven spin of the ceiling fan and its shadows from the outdoor security light, triggered by a deer or something, casting light on her posters and pictures and the Polaroids on her cork board, glinting off the medals and trophies on her shelf. She'll have to decide on a school to go to next year. Write essays, fill out applications. Pack up all her stuff in plastic tubs and drive with her dad out to some campus, meet her roommates. Leave Nino behind.
Nino dozes with her head on Rebecca's chest. Skin stuck to skin, hair sweat-slicked. Strands of hair stick to Nino's forehead, escaped from her ponytail. Clothes pile around the foot of the bed. Rebecca feels at once young and old.
She watches Nino untangle herself and pad over to her shorts, discarded on the rug, and fish her phone out of her pocket. White light illuminates her face, her blue eyes.
"I'll go home tomorrow," she says. "Drive me there?"
They kiss again.
And in the morning Rebecca will drive up to Nino's mobile home, and see Nino's father sitting with his head in his hands in a plastic chair, beer bottles by his feet. She'll watch Nino give him a hug. He'll tell her he loves her, and she won't say what she's thinking. They'll go inside, and Rebecca will drive away. And in a few days it'll happen again.