The night before Jen touched down on Earth, I was holed up in Rachel's bedroom in Houston. We had both made a valiant, fruitless effort to sleep; now it was three in the morning. Sometime around one ... [+]
In the glow of this neon mountain, framing her face like a fluorescent halo from behind the bar, she glances now and then out the window to the highway. Near sunset, the air is dry. Dusty with cigarette smoke that settles into the silky remains of unkept promises. She's nearly forgotten the orange taste of hope – Instead – compromised, bartered, given, what mattered. Her life is divided decidedly in two: who she is and who she used to be. Thin skin, her face has aged too quickly. Her hair stopped growing once it snaked to somewhere past her hips. And now she sometimes notices that it is