And when the end had come, her father ranted about how he'd never liked Grayson, sent her peonies and a whole salted caramel chocolate cake, emailed Grayson's parents and told them that he'd cover the lost deposits-how much did he now regret that oversize gesture?-told her to keep the ring and throw it out the window. But he'd never asked why. For all Saina knew, one of his friends had seen the Page Six item and told him about it. Maybe he thought that he was saving face for her by not mentioning the betrayal, just like he'd never mentioned the backlash to her last installation even though he and her stepmother had flown out for the opening and held court at the Hermes party, going drink for drink with her old sculpture professor and telling her gallery owner that she should be selling Saina's work for more. He'd been a charming embarrassment and Saina had been glad when he'd packed up and flown back to Bel-Air after an obligatory Peking duck dinner.

That was it, then. She started up the stairs. Grayson had to leave. It wasn't going to last anyway. She couldn't keep him in hiding forever.

Just say it, she told herself. Just do it. It would be worse if she waited until the last minute, until right before her family got here.

"Hey, baby, we have to talk about something," she said, pushing open the door to her bedroom.

Grayson sat naked and cross-legged on top of her comforter. He held his cell phone up to his left ear with his right hand and held out his left hand, index finger up, to shush her.

"Oh my little darling," he said to the phone, "and I wasn't there for you." A pause. "Yes. Yes, yes, yes."

Saina went cold.

"Grayson."

He looked up, annoyed, and shook his head wildly, waving his finger. "Wait, how big? Nine pounds? Nine? Wow."

And then something happened: Grayson got beatific.

She had heard of people looking like they were lit up from within, but this was the first time she'd seen it. With that "wow," all his edges and wrinkles smoothed out and the air around him thrummed, like he'd found a note on some universal chord that she still couldn't even hear, much less play.

"I'll be there," he said to the phone. "A few hours. Don't do anything else yet, okay? Just wait for me, I'll be there. Yes. You're amazing." And then whispering it again. "So amazing."

He dropped the phone and looked at her.

"Saina, I know I'm an asshole and I bolted and then I lied to you and she never had a miscarriage, but I'm a dad! I have a son! And I know you're going to hate me, and I'm going to have to fix that at some point, and we can probably never be together again, but I . . . I have to go. And that's all I can say right now. Okay?"

She was choking on something. Or she would be choking if she were breathing. Was that right? Maybe it was the other way around.

"Not okay. No! I can't believe you're doing this to me again. How could you say that she'd lost the baby? Is that what you wanted to happen?"

"I thought I wanted you."

"And now?"

"I'm a father." He glowed again, just thinking about it. "I have a child. Can't you see? This changes everything! I can't wait to see him. Maybe you'll understand when you have kids."

"Fuck off. You don't have kids, you had a phone call. So you're transformed just like that? In a minute? That's all it takes? And Sabrina?" Just saying the name made her feel seasick, made the world shift and sway for a minute.

Grayson kneeled up on the bed and grabbed both of her arms. "She just had my baby." Again, the glow. Like a firefly. Like a glowworm. A lying little glowworm.

In a minute Saina was going to hate herself, but she said it anyway. "And that makes you not love me anymore."

He shook his head. "It's bigger than that, hon. I mean, procreation, that's the whole point of being a man, of being human. This is like the best piece of work I've ever made, or better than that. You'll see, you'll see. You're going to be an amazing mother someday, too."

That was it. Saina did the only thing she could think of. She reached out and stroked him, taking some satisfaction in his stiffening, and then tried to smile as she tightened her grip and shoved him as hard as she could back onto the bed. His head clunked against the wall.

"I was going to break up with you anyways," she shouted. "I was just about to, and then you had to do this! Why couldn't you just let me break up with you? You couldn't just give me that?" Wild, disbelieving, she ran to the bathroom, locking the door and leaning against the vintage claw-foot tub. A minute passed in silence, and then she heard Grayson start to pack up his bag. When he knocked on the bathroom door, she opened it and threw his leather Dopp kit at him and then slammed it shut again.

"So, no chance of a ride to the train station, then?" She stayed silent, no longer even surprised at what he could say. "Okay, I know, of course not. And you probably don't want to lend me your car, right?" Or maybe his advanced degree of fuckery could still surprise her. "I'm kidding, Saina. A little levity. You always like that, don't you?" She sat on her fingers, smashing them against the penny tiles, examined a crack in the grouting between the basin sink and the wall, looked at her toenails, still pink. "Saina, please don't hate me forever. Please try to be a little happy for us, for me and the baby. I think we might name him James. Good name, right? Solid." He rattled the doorknob. She stayed very still. "Okay, I'm leaving now. You'll understand someday." He rapped on the door. Another moment. "I'm not sorry that I came up."

And then he was gone.

Santa Barbara, CA.

84 Miles.

NOBODY CAME UP to say goodbye to Grace. Maybe no one knew. Her best friends, Cassie and Lo, were out of school at the moment-in Athens with their Greek class-and the thought of telling anyone else felt exhausting. Later, other students would drop out, their families bankrupted by Bernie Madoff and bad real estate, but right now there was only Grace, and she stood in the front vestibule alone, a pile of bags at her feet.

She wasn't really used to being alone. That's what happens when you're the youngest child and every space you occupy already belongs to someone else: your sister's clothes, your brother's old kindergarten teacher, you as the tagalong, like a Girl Scout cookie, waiting to see if you'll be included in their games. And then you're the only one to be sent off to boarding school, where every moment is communal: breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the same 125 people who know exactly how you butter your toast and how high you roll up your uniform skirt.

Now this. Everything bad was happening to her before anything interesting happened. She sighed. Wasn't that just the way life was.

"Hello, dear." It was Dr. Brown, the headmistress.

"Hi, Brownie."

Brownie raised an eyebrow. "You know we're very sorry to see you go, dear."

Shrug.

"But I'm sure that everything will be alright. Your family will find a way through this."

Grace turned away. The school was built on a hill that sloped up gently from rows of red-roofed houses. A long driveway wound towards the front arch where they stood; over the suburbs and the cypress trees Grace could see a glimmer of ocean and town, and the highway that led south to home. Except it wasn't home anymore. She wondered which car they'd be driving to Saina's and how there'd be enough space for all of their things.

Or maybe all the cars were gone, too. Her dad tended towards small, fast vehicles-he was dismissive about the SUVs that crowded the parking lot on Parents' Weekend: "Gei bai pang zi," he'd whispered to her stepmother, and then said loudly, for Grace, "Fat white man, fat white ladies, only they need such big cars. Ha!" Never mind that she'd understood the Chinese-he always doubted her ability to understand the simplest words and then expected her to get allusions to old Chinese poems and pointless ancient sayings-or that everyone would hear him. Grace couldn't care less if other people's fat parents heard themselves get called fat. No, what completely annoyed her was that "Ha!" Any time her father said something that he thought was funny in English, he had to add that "Ha!" at the end. Totally irritating.

Brownie tapped her on the shoulder, trying to get her attention.

"What?" Was she expecting a hug? Grace hoped not, fake hugs were so gross.

"Grace, dear, I'm afraid I'm going to have to take your laptop, you know that it's school property."

Grace stared at her. "It's not! We paid for this!" It was supposed to be part of the tuition package-a new laptop for each student, each year, with last year's donated to the teen center. Except, oh god, now she was a poor at-risk youth. Maybe she could go to the center and find her laptop from last year.

"I'm sorry, dear, but unfortunately it's the property of the school."

"Brownie, you can't take it away. My life is on there! And my dad paid for it, it's not the school's!"

"Well, Grace, unfortunately you have not paid for it. You actually began the year without any tuition being paid. We had no reason to doubt your family's ability to do so, and we know that some accountants are not as vigilant with regards to tuition as they might be, so we chose not to press the matter, which clearly turned out to be a mistake." She placed a hand on Grace's laptop case. "It's too bad that you have to be affected by these adult matters, but I do hope you understand."

Oh god. This must be what a heart attack felt like. Something seizing her inside, pinching off her veins. Blood kept flowing out but no oxygen could get pumped in; it would keep on happening like that until her heart shriveled into a tiny thing and rattled right out of her chest.

"Fine," said Grace, shoving her whole laptop case at Brownie. No crying. No. Crying.

The headmistress pulled out the laptop then held the case-really Saina's old Marc Jacobs satchel-out towards her. Grace shook her head. Brownie sighed.

"Please, Grace. Your attitude won't make this any better. You know we don't want your bag"-they stared at each other for a moment, Grace refusing to move-"but we will need the power cord."

"I know. Fine. It's in here." Grace dropped to the floor in lotus position and pulled her checkered rollie down so that its outstretched handle clanged into the brick floor. Jamming her hand into the side of the bag, she felt her way past the soft layers of her tank tops and dresses and jeans, searching for the white cord. "Wait, it's not here. No, I know it is." She looked up. "I'm not lying, okay?" Tears prickled against the back of her nose, crowded towards her eyes, threatened to pool over and spill. It took three more tries before her hand connected with hard plastic and she pulled out the cord.

Grace looked at Brownie again. The headmistress was staring at her cryptically. It wasn't pity on her face. She wasn't looking at Grace the way that Rachel had, with that totally cloying combo of pity and guilt. This was something different.

"Are you going to let me download my stuff, or does that belong to the school, too?"

"Of course you can download any personal information. I know you probably have quite a lot of photographs of, well, of yourself."

"Yeah. So?"

Brownie sighed. "Grace, just go ahead and do whatever you need to do."

Weird. She was acting weird, like she was the one who deserved to be upset or something. Maybe she just didn't understand style blogs.

Grace powered the laptop on and plugged in her backup drive.

Finder > Grace Home > Photos > Morning > September.

Select All.

3,212 photos.

She dragged the folder over to the icon for her drive and dropped it in. A progress bar popped up. Two percent. Three.

Grace looked up at Brownie, who was tapping at her phone, probably trying to figure out text messaging or something. "You don't have to wait out here. I'll bring it over to the office when I'm done."

Brownie hesitated. "It's alright. I'm sure you'd rather not be on your own at the moment."

Ha. "Um, I don't mind being on my own. And it might take half an hour to copy everything over."

"Then that's what it takes."

"Hi, Gracie, Daddy here now!"

A car door slammed, and Grace looked up from the screen to see her father climbing the brick steps towards her, arms outstretched, shouting loud enough for the whole school to hear.

No! She wasn't done yet. There were still five more folders of self-portraits, plus a bunch of street style shots that she took of kids at school. Maybe it would go faster if she copied a few batches at a time. Quickly, before her dad could get all the way up the steps, Grace dragged two more of the folders in the Morning file over and tensed as she waited for another progress bar to pop up.

"Xiao bao! What's wrong, heh?" Charles put a hand on Grace's head and then slowly crouched down next to her, using her shoulder for balance. He was out of breath from the sprint up the stairs but, Grace knew, he didn't want to get his linen pants dirty. "Hey, don't sit like that, Meimei," said Charles, pointing at her outstretched legs. "Always cross knees, okay?"

Suddenly, Grace felt deeply embarrassed. She didn't want her father to know what she was doing, didn't want him to know that he hadn't paid for the computer. He must know, of course, but he didn't have to know that she knew that he knew.

"Welcome, Mr. Wang." Brownie rose from the bench across the entryway, where she'd been sitting for the past twenty minutes. Grace felt her father wobble and kept her head down, willing the computer to go faster. Half a moment later, he had sprung up and was heading towards Brownie, hands outstretched.

"Ah! Headmistress Brown! It is lovely to see you again, though the circumstances are quite unfortunate! Is Grace giving you any trouble?"

"Dad! How is any of this my fault?"

"No, not your fault," said her father quickly.

"Oh no, Mr. Wang, Grace has been handling herself in a way that befits her name."

Still spinning. The little Mac wheel of death. The files were never going to finish copying over and her father probably wouldn't wait. She could see Babs in the station wagon-why the station wagon?-staring straight ahead.

"That's the car that you kept? Why, Dad?"

Her father shrugged. "Ama gave back to us."

"Are we going to switch to Andrew's car?" It was a Range Rover. That probably made more sense.

"No, no. Ama give this back, we give that back."

"Dad, what do you mean? Give it back to who? Isn't it his?"

"Gracie. Bu yao zai shuo le, okay? We talk later."

Rebellion burned in Grace's chest. Her father wanted her to be on his side, to smile and wave and skip in front of Brownie so it would look like nothing was wrong, but he was the one who sold her out first with his "Is Grace giving you any trouble?" Of course she wasn't. He was the one who was giving them all trouble, all the trouble was always about him. He was the one who'd freaked out and packed her off to boarding school two years ago just because she'd fallen for a boy. Diva Daddy, Saina sometimes called him-she and Andrew had a whole song about it, complete with jazz hands. Babs should have been the diva, but instead it was her father.

The laptop burned through her jeans, making her legs feel itchy and constrained. Both of the adults looked at her, not talking to each other.

"Gracie, what are you doing? Time to go now, okay?" Again, accusing.

Fine.

Then she wasn't on his side at all; everything was his fault.

"Dad, is it true that we didn't pay for this?" She jutted her chin towards the computer. "They're making me give it back to them, but I have so much stuff on here, it's going to take forever to copy it all over and I didn't know that I couldn't keep it."

"What you need to copy?"

"Stuff for my blog, my photos, important stuff."

Expansive, proud, her father beamed. "Gracie! You have the blog? Why you don't tell Daddy? Good, good, now you can be Internet millionaire! No problem!"

Nice try, Daddy. "Well, maybe, but it's a style blog. I didn't invent Facebook or anything. But it does get a lot of hits, and people link to my stuff a lot."

"That's okay, you become Internet star! So you need this computer?" Charles turned to the headmistress. "Dr. Brown, we can pay you for this now and then take it with us? How much does this cost?"

"Well, I don't know if that will work, Mr. Wang. It really remains the property of the school and-"

"This Apple Mac Pro laptop, right? You buy in the summer, I think it probably $1,100 new?" As he spoke, her father turned towards her and gave her just the slightest smile, really more a wrinkle of the eye and a tug of the lip. Grace felt her heart leap and swell so that it stopped being a tiny heart-attack heart and filled up to its proper size. Brownie was the enemy, after all! Grace rushed to cancel the file transfer and started to shut down her computer. "But you get school discount, about 10 percent, so that make it $990-"