Even after what happened to my sister, Laura, Wallace and I still had to hitch if we wanted to get into town. At the movie theater, we bought tickets to whatever wasn’t a kids’ movie or rated R, since I was still sixteen. Wallace pushed his black hair out of his eyes, waving at the popcorn and the candy, but I shook my head. We were both broke most of the time, and he was saving up for a car.

Laura—the other Laura, Wallace’s sister—opened the door to the projection room as soon as we tapped. “You’re late,” she said, but there was no heat in her voice.

“Sorry,” said Wallace, already nosing around the projectors in the cold, narrow room. Laura patted her jacket pocket for cigarettes, remembered she wasn’t smoking anymore because of the baby, and reached for the big bottle of iced tea Wallace had brought from their house.

“You know the deal, right? Three movies tonight, about the usual time between reels. Stephanie, come find me if there’s a problem. Wallace, you stay in the booth. Next time give her your sweater, dude.” She gave her little brother a jab on the shoulder and disappeared into the corridor, her combat boots silent on the worn carpet.

For the next hour, while Laura propped up her swollen feet and did her coursework, Wallace and I worked together to switch the reels, our labor punctuated by slow kisses. When Laura returned she’d give us the key to the back office, then drive us home after the last movie was over.

She never asked what we did in the office. “I want plausible deniability when you dopes get caught,” she said. Somehow Wallace always had a supply of condoms, which he couldn’t afford and definitely didn’t come from our abstinence-only high school. I don’t know what we would have done if Laura hadn’t taken pity on us. Between school, Wallace’s three younger brothers and his landscaping job, and my job at the gas station and my parents’ constant arguing over whose turn it was to “keep an eye on Laura” (my Laura), there wasn’t much time or space for us to be alone.

Afterward, we tugged our jeans back on and fixed our hair. I gave Wallace his sweater back, a red one with big holes where the stitches had slipped, as if his mother had been upset while she was knitting. Leaning against the cool wall, we dozed and talked idly, waiting for his sister’s trademark booming knock.

“How’s your Laura today?” he asked.

That morning I’d wheeled her down the makeshift ramp and over to the clump of cactus by our fence. They were flowering now, petals like spears shot with blood-red veins. She got around fine in the house, but the insurance company wasn’t overeager to make the rest of the place accessible.

“I got into Stanford,” she said.

I was surprised, not that she got in, since she was a hell of a lot smarter than anyone I knew, but that she’d managed to apply to college last fall when she was in so much pain she hardly spoke.

“Congratulations. You’re gonna go?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“You should apply to schools out there in a couple years.”

I kicked the dirt, harder than I meant to, and the pebbles seemed to ricochet off the sky.

“Maybe. But there’s Wallace, and Laura—other Laura—said she could probably get me her job when she finishes school. ”

I trailed off. My sister wasn’t listening anymore. In the centers of the cactus flowers, bees buzzed in the golden grit, coming up for air only once they had their fill of sweetness.

“Take me back,” she said. “I lost my EpiPen.”

She didn’t have to say when. The trucker had taken her purse, used her credit card in all these places we’d never been: Las Vegas, Albuquerque, San Diego. That’s how they found him, eventually. The credit card was her secret, one she couldn’t tell anyone about until she woke up, weeks later.

I pushed her back up to the front door, and as far as I knew, she spent the rest of the day in our room.

In the office, I realized Wallace was still waiting for me to answer.

“She’s fine,” I said.

He took my hand and we waited for his Laura, listening to the car doors thudding shut, people headed home. I traced his rough skin with my thumb. Earlier that night, the desert air had gone cold faster than usual, and I felt relief when the boxy blue minivan pulled over. Wallace sat in back with the two kids, teaching them a game that involved clapping and smacking their palms against the seats. I sat up front with the mom, sort of soft all over, with sad eyes and a nice smile. Another Laura. They were going up to the new big box store for groceries, she said. Best time for it, when everyone else was home after a long day. We all have our ways to get by.