Elvia heard the speed in his voice, saw the red mesh inside the corners of his eyes. The trees he hadn't touched were still shifting and rustling. Michael said quietly, so no one else could hear, "Hundreds of palms on the rez. The old people said spirits lived up there. So they could watch us. Down on the flats, people said it was rats."

"What do you believe?" Elvia said, brushing the slivers of bark from his wrist.

"Both," he said. "Come on. I saw Caveman's money roll. Time to be an Indian."

They walked through the brush along the riverbank to a large field. "You didn't find her, huh?" She shook her head. "You need some help, to see her. In the other world." He knelt near a sprawling vine, a kind she had seen in vacant lots near Sandy's house and in Tourmaline.

"Jimsonweed?" she said, disappointed. "That's the dreaming plant?"

"If you know what you're doing," Michael said, digging around the roots in the sandy river soil. "If you don't, it's the killing plant. Mess up your brain forever." He handed her two huge trumpet flowers, big as her wrist, faint purple at the throat but white glowing brighter than the moon. The blooms wilted in her palm, closing even while she breathed their strange scent.

"Don't put them near your mouth," Michael said. "They're strong." He cut two roots deep in the soil, pulled khaki-green leaves from the stems, and wrapped the roots in newspaper. "Don't tell nobody where we got this. They have to pay me. And if they try to make it, they'll do it wrong."

"Who taught you?" In Elvia's hand, the milky blossoms were limp as tissue now.

"My grandpa," Michael said. She looked at the roots dangling from the newspaper bundle, felt the scrunchie on her wrist, and thought about the dime-eyed girl. What had the speed vapors done to her own baby, that night? This was only a plant. An herb.

"I better not drink it," she said.

"What?" Michael whirled around. "All this time, you said you wanted to do this. Pray about her, dream where you should look."

Elvia shouted, "I said that a long time ago. Now I'm talking about the baby."

He glanced down at the big tee shirt still hiding her belly. He didn't remember most of the time. She couldn't do like women in commercials, hold his hand to her belly and say, "Feel him kicking, honey?" so he would smile and run out for watermelon ice cream.

"It's not drugs," he said then. "It's medicine. Sometimes they gave it to women when they were having the baby. To help them. Tonight I'll take you to Dos Arroyos and you can see."

"I don't need help yet," she said. "I'm not having it yet."

Caveman and the others were drinking beer. "Jared, Ricky, Shawna," he said, pointing to the boys and a girl with a yellow bruise on her forearm and a purple crest of hair. He called, "What'd you bring back?"

"Buried treasure," Michael said, ducking into the shelter.

She sat on the sand after he left again, trying to picture her own insides. Her abdomen. What exactly was that? She tried to remember science class. She'd paid much more attention to igneous and metamorphic rocks than to the body. There were tubes, an egg, and it grew inside a sack. So her stomach was right next to the sack? How did the food and drink get to the baby? Did everything drift into the sack somehow?

Michael came back inside with several large, flat stones. He laid them in a circle, stacked wood, and lit a fire. "Takes a while to dry," he said, arranging the roots and flowers and leaves on the stones. "Then a while to brew. They're all impatient. They want to erase their brains."

Elvia saw the leaves already curling near the flames. "Erase? Nothing left?"

"You won't get erased. I'm not gonna let you mess up. You'll dream to the next level."

She shook her head. "I can't." She wouldn't let herself cry. She was scared. "I breathed vapors in that speed lab. And who knows what else I did."

Michael was silent, poking the fire. Finally he murmured, "I probably fucked up, too. When we did it, I was sketchin big time. And I drank all that Everclear."

Elvia tried to picture the biology book again. "Drugs aren't in sperm."

"Yeah, they are. Your whole life's in there." He poked a shriveling leaf. "Maybe the kid's all fucked up. Like me."

"We're not fucked up," she said. But they were. What did she have now? Not even root beer and Cap'n Crunch, not her father's smell beside her in the truck. Suddenly she wanted to be at Sandy Narlette's. She wanted the laundry room, where the full moon always came up in the window, the gleaming washer turning pale blue as the Mason jars on the shelf. Pillowcases in the dryer, with thread-stitched names that she could read with her fingers in the dark.

She felt nothing under her ribs, and she saw her own face, inside a cage of glittering string. Sandy had said something about a foster kid's ribs. A Christmas ornament. On Sandy's tree. Something she'd made in the third grade?

Michael lit a cigarette. Then he kissed her. "Tina Marie had a baby," he said softly. "That's why she's all messed up. Shawna said she heard Tina Marie had a baby three weeks ago."

Elvia remembered the blood on Tina Marie's leg. From a baby? "Where is it?"

Michael shrugged. "Who knows?"

She wouldn't let herself see it-a baby in the trash. Wrapped in a bag. She tasted the smoke on her tongue, the bitter ashes on her teeth.

Outside, Hector had started a fire, too. He took tortillas, a block of cheese, and salsa from a paper bag that said MERCADO APARECIDA. He blistered the tortillas over the fire, and when Elvia ate one she tasted corn and smoke and warmth inside the slightly charred holes. Tina Marie ate a quesadilla dripping with soft white cheese and salsa. Caveman said, "Why didn't you just get three tacos for thirty-nine cents? It's Taco Tuesday."

Hector handed two quesadillas to Elvia. He said, "You're Mexican, you like tacos? That's like saying, you're American, you only eat hamburgers. But I picked tomatoes in Florida, and we ate grits and chicken-fried everything."

"You were in Florida?" Tina Marie said dreamily.

Hector nodded, tucking his black hair behind his ears. "Mexico's a big fuckin country. My mom is from Veracruz people. She eats fish. My dad's from Tijuana. He'll eat anything."

Tina Marie ate two more quesadillas. Elvia hadn't seen her eat at all before. Caveman drank another beer, then said, "Only faggots get off on cooking."

Hector spat into the fire. Elvia could tell Caveman wanted to rule everything, even the food. Michael came out of the shelter and asked, "What smells so good?"

Caveman got out the cookie tin. Tina Marie put her head in Caveman's lap and fell asleep. Caveman said, "This one wants Indian brew right now. Wants out of her head. Thinks she's fat." Caveman touched Tina Marie's matted hair. "But she just had a baby."

Elvia stared at Tina's pale, plump arm thrown over his leg. "Where is it?" she whispered.

"We sold it."

"Sold it?" Michael said. "To who?"

"Everybody wants a white baby," Caveman said. "This one had blue eyes. Bald as a bowling ball. A lady I know gave us three grand for it. She gets like ten grand when she does her deal."

Elvia couldn't stop staring at Tina, her lips pursed against his thigh. "Was it your baby?"

"Hell, no," he said. "She was knocked up when she got here. You couldn't tell, cause her clothes were cool. Baggy, you know." Like mine, Elvia thought.

"Who was the father?" Hector said.

Caveman shrugged. "Whoever paid for it. That's the father now."

Michael said, "How you know they'll take good care of it? A baby-that's already a person, like with feelings and all, but you don't know what the feelings are. They can't tell you." Elvia felt him going rigid next to her, and she silently pleaded, Don't tell him. Don't say it.

She was angry. It was his baby, too. But he didn't want it. Every time he opened his mouth, he sounded afraid. He wasn't afraid in the desert, in Tijuana, even dangling from palm trees. He was only scared of what he couldn't even see.

"They scream and cry," Caveman said. "This one. All of them."

Michael's forehead creased in lines like fingernail scratches. "No, man, I mean you gotta know what to do, figure out what their feelings are, so you don't fuck them up."

"Hey," Caveman said. "If you paid ten thousand bucks for something, wouldn't you take care of it? A car, a motorcycle, a kid. Whoever bought the baby has to be better than Tina. Or some fuckin foster home, some witch mom."

"You ever been in a foster home?" Elvia asked angrily, seeing Sandy's hands on the gold-flecked Formica counter, her nicked fingers, her thumb for a handle to help you jump down.

"Me? Nope. I don't need a rent-a-witch, cause my real mom's the worst one." He looked at the dark trees. "This one was a mom for a minute." He nudged Tina Marie. "Not anymore."

Tina Marie woke up, her eyes clouded like dirty marbles. Caveman put his arm around her.

Elvia heard a rippling call from a tree. "Barn owl," she said, almost to herself.

"How do you know?" Caveman said, grinning at her.

"My sister," she said, without thinking. "She knows the name of every bird, lizard, and bug in Rio Seco."

Michael pulled back to look at her. "Your sister? She's got a place? A house?"

"My foster sister," Elvia said.

"Foster." Jared shook his head. "If I counted that, I'd have a hundred brothers. Shit."

Everyone laughed. Caveman said, "You're Indian? What tribe has green eyes?"

"Crazy-ass tribe. Like my dad," Elvia said. She heard the barn owl call again, remembered the white-faced owls swooping into the field, Rosalie pressing her face to the screen to see.

"If your fosters are so fuckin great, how come you're down here with us?" Jared said.

"Because she's looking for her real mom," Michael said, and their eyes shifted.

Tina Marie's eyes were like blue-burned holes in her face. Like the hottest embers. "Why?" she asked. "No such thing as a real mom. Only fake ones."

"Hell, no," Elvia said, standing up. "Some people are better than blood." She went inside the shelter and opened her backpack. The folded, faded print dress from Tia Dolores. Elvia touched the too-soft material. Tia Dolores had said that whoever feeds you, takes you for shots, combs your hair-that's the real mother.

Michael came inside to move the jimsonweed leaves and roots. "Tina Marie's like a zombie." He looked up, eyes glittering black as rainy streets. "Talk about sellin it-" He turned away. "It's there now. Nothing we do is gonna be right. Nothing. We gotta go to Dos Arroyos."

At the crest of the foothills, Elvia saw the brown veil of smog turning violet in the sunset, and the lemon groves in blurred patches below. Sandy's house was in the lemon groves-Elvia had seen these mountains from the yard, brown hills topped with white boulders. "The Sugar Springs Mountains," Sandy said. "Like toast with cinnamon sugar."

Pepper trees loomed ahead while Michael drove faster and faster to one of the green valleys where she'd always thought there must be water. Two bullet-pocked metal signs stood at a junction-COUNTY WASTE FACILITY and DOS ARROYOS INDIAN RESERVATION.

Michael said, "Right here is where I first saw Hector. He was riding this old bike, and these three skinhead dudes were racing a pickup, chasing him with a baseball bat out the window, yelling about killing wetbacks. I was hunting rabbits for my grandpa, so I shot out their tire. Told them Mexicans were part Indian so fuck off. Told em they were illegals on rez land."

"They didn't fight?" Elvia looked at the broken glass along the road.

"Hell, no. They screeched outta here. And Hector yelled, 'Punkass rednecks!' Shit, I thought he only spoke Spanish. He told me about his college class and showed me his maps. We been hanging out ever since."

A guard shack squatted at the dump entrance, a lit window with a face peering out. "On the other side of the mountain, they grow avocados. The Mexicans living in the grove come over and go through the dump. They recycle for free, but the county gets pissed."

"Like Tijuana," Elvia said, thinking of people sifting through the smoking mounds.

"But way better trash," Michael said grimly, pulling onto the reservation road. "My grandpa works the shack, day shift. Seems like Indians get casinos or dumps. My grandpa picked a dump, forty years ago."

The steep cliffs along the road were covered with brittlebush hanging like small, silvery clouds. After a few miles, the valley widened, and Elvia saw four house trailers perched beside a dry creek bed. Silver shutters blinded their windows, and their walls were rusty and pockmarked. "My uncles are all gone," Michael said. "I haven't seen them in like, five years. They went to LA or San Francisco. Nothing here."

On the other side, an adobe house was nearly invisible on the canyon wall. Michael parked below it, where a small tent trailer sat under a cottonwood tree. Inside, the linoleum floor was clean, the bed was made with an old wool blanket, and a skim of dust covered the little table. "I live here in summer," he said. "It's cool, like being half inside, half outside."

Elvia sat gingerly on the bed, touching the screen windows. "Half is your favorite way."

"When it gets cold, I go see my cousins in Tourmaline. Stay there and go to school. Sometimes. When it warms up, I come back here and work trees."

Elvia heard someone shout outside. "Hey, now! I thought maybe you were asshole teenagers I didn't know. But it's an asshole teenager I do."

The old man's face was brown and wide-jawed, square as a giant walnut. "You steal this truck, Michael? Or she did?"

"It's hers," Michael said. "Not stolen, Pops." He walked around behind the cottonwoods.

His grandfather humphed, looked at Elvia. "Nice braids, Pocahontas. I hope you're not lost up here, looking for Grandmother Willow. We only got palm trees. A few oak."

Elvia felt her braids loosened from the long day, felt her chest tingle with anger. How the hell did she look? Hands scarred by grapes like a Mexican woman. Eyes pale green like an American. And inside? Distant memories of Indian words from a place she'd never seen.

"I can't be lost if Michael brought me up here." She glared at him.

The grandfather's face was so wide on his thin, slump-shouldered body that he didn't look like Michael at all. He shrugged and grinned. "Sorry. But kids come up here, think they're gonna see buffalo and Indians. We don't eat buffalo. Acorns. Chia seeds. You ever see a Chia Pet? Little smaller than a buffalo."

Michael came back to the trailer and said, "I need my equipment, Pops. Me and Hector are gonna work trees." He fixed his eyes on Elvia, and she knew he wasn't going to tell his grandfather about the baby.

A palm-roofed ramada surrounded the adobe house. Blue and green bottles lined the windowsill, glowing from the kerosene lantern inside the single room. "You're half what?" the grandfather said, serious now.

"Mexican Indian," Elvia said. "From what I know."

"Huh. His mother was pretty," the grandfather said. "She liked Mexican guys with low-rider cars." Michael's cheeks were hollowed and dark as he listened near her. Elvia touched his blank forehead. Where was his soft spot, the bones that closed after his mother was already gone?

The grandfather pointed to clay shards, arrowheads, bowls, and baskets on wooden shelves around the adobe walls. "I know Mexican women make a basket like that pale one. Pine needle. Their people are cut off from California by a line. But they talk the same."

Michael said, "When the dozer guys find something old in the dirt, they bring it to him."

"All this junk is mine," the grandfather said. "From my dirt."

Michael moved impatiently. "I just need the chainsaw and the gaffs and my rope." He watched intently as his grandfather went outside. Then he quickly took a red clay bowl from the shelf near him, slipping it into his jacket. When his grandfather came back with a coil of yellow rope, Michael said "Cool" and went down to the truck.

Elvia hovered near the table, where a bowl of hot cereal steamed. "It's not Cream of Wheat," the grandfather said, grinning again. "Michael hates it. Nobody like you likes weewish."

"Like me?" Elvia said angrily. "Not Indian?"

But he said, "Young like you. Young people like Wonder Bread. They like to eat air." He held out a spoon in challenge.

The nutty bitter grain made her throat rise, but she swallowed and her stomach was quiet. "Acorn porridge," he said. "Look, you're not old enough for that truck. Somebody took it. Michael doesn't need more trouble."

She ate another spoonful. "I'm not trouble," she said.

He surveyed the shelves, touching the empty space where the red clay bowl had been. "Don't let him lose the bowl. If he sells it or uses it wrong, somebody up there will punish him. Not me." He stared down at the truck, then said, "He doesn't have a mother. I tried my best."