the Persian boys feel her up behind their daddy’s stores. Billie also claimed that her mother met Denny McLain at a nightclub, and that he was gambling in the back. Billie threw a pink fedora around her dirty yellow shirt and red shorts. She put on a white fur pillbox hat, and said, “Don’t I look glamorous like Joan Collins?” I wondered then why Billie wanted to be something that she was not.

“I don’t know, maybe.” Billie nodded her head. She looked over at me.

“Who do you want to be when you grow up?” 

I looked in the mirror. There was no one like me so I shook my head no. Billie shrugged her shoulders. She walked into her mother’s bedroom and opened the closet. I followed behind her. Her mother’s closet was filled with fedoras, hatboxes, coffee cups from cities around the world, clothes and boxes of candles. 

“What are you looking for?”

“A map so I can route where I am going on Halloween.”

“Where are you going?”

“Away from here.” 

She knocked over a box filled with photographs. They scattered across the floor, and I scrambled to pick them up. I asked her if she was running away. No, she said, she was not running away, she was running toward the city. I asked her why she was running toward a city that people hated. She said that she was going to find her missing father. I had never met my real father. 

            Billie’s mother said that Billie’s father was Persian, sometimes Italian. That story keeps changing. I knew who my father was—someone who didn’t want

to be around. I hadn’t lived in the city since the summer and Billie had never lived in Detroit. Her entire life she had been raised to be someone else. 

            A photograph caught my eye. A baby with hair like wool and eyes the color of brown tea looked back at me. He was smiling as I held the picture up to Billie.

“Who is this?” I said.

            “That’s my baby brother. He’s dead.” Billie had stolen a tube of lipstick from her mother’s top drawer. I grabbed the bottle from her and blotted my lips. My lips were fuller than hers were; I had an easy time putting lipstick on.