I locked myself in the bathroom and peeled my clothes off, grateful to finally be not smelling like smoke and liquor. Bette had given me a white t-shirt and white pajama pants. After my shower, I put them on and was pleased to find that they certainly belonged to her, because the pants were a little too long and I had to fold them a few times at the waist so that they wouldn’t drag on the floor. I was a little more inclined to believe they were Bette’s clothes than, say, another tall person who maybe had lived with her or what-have-you, especially since the t-shirt smelled like she did, all expensive and mysterious and ***** me up in the head.

“Alice?” There was a knock on the door.

“Yeah, I’m almost finished.”

“I have a plan.”

I peered into the mirror distractedly, attempting to make my hair do something more useful than hang around and look stupid. “Yeah? What?”

Bette paused. “What if we went by Kit’s really early tomorrow?” I opened the door. Bette stood there in a white tank top and white pants like the ones she’d given me, which is why I decided then that there was far too much white in her wardrobe. I also decided that her arms were so nice they should’ve been illegal.

“And I, uh, apologized?” she finished.

“To Kit?” I asked.

Bette nodded.

“Why early?”

“Well, she’ll be relatively hung-over,” she said, reminding me that I probably would be too, “and I know from experience that she’s a lot more receptive when she’s not paying attention.” She thought for a moment and then added, “And I’ll bring her coffee.”

“This is your plan?”

She folded her arms. “Yes. What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” I said, shrugging and moving past her. “Just that it’s not so much a plan as it is a really detailed idea.”

“That’s what plans are.”

“No, plans-”

Bette started toward the kitchen. “You should drink some water.”

I followed her. “Plans are ideas that have like, theorized all the different outcomes and stuff. I should know. I’m brilliant with plans.” Bette turned the light on in the kitchen. “Like, ‘I’m gonna go rob a bank’. That’s an idea. ‘I’m going to rob a bank by holding up the bank teller with a gun’. That’s a plan.”