Chapter 4: Canceled

The first mother canceled by text before I finished my cereal.

"We've decided to go another direction. Please don't contact us."

The second one canceled at 10:40.

The third one didn't text at all.

I found out the next afternoon, when I rang her doorbell for her son's four o'clock session with my backpack full of practice tests.

She opened the door only as wide as her body.

Her son was behind her on the stairs, eating chips out of the bag.

"We saw the video," she said.

"It isn't true."

"Maybe not. But I can't have someone like that around my kid."

"Someone like what?"

She didn't answer.

She looked at my backpack.

Her son leaned over the banister.

"Mom, she's the one who got me a B on the midterm."

"Go upstairs."

He didn't move.

"She did, though," he said.

His mother shut the door.

I heard the lock turn, then the chain.

I stood on the porch for a second with the practice tests.

Then I walked back to my car and drove to Fifth Street.

Kendall worked the front desk at a salon between a nail place and a bakery.

I'd sat in that waiting area a hundred times.

I'd brought her lunch there when she was too broke to buy it.

I'd sat with her on the curb outside when her mom kicked her out at nineteen, and I'd given her my bed for a month.

When I walked in, the bell over the door jingled.

Three women sat in the chairs with foil in their hair.

Two stylists looked up.

Kendall was behind the desk, scrolling on her phone.

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