“Yeah,” Bobby said, “me neither. I mean, I guess my mom told me, but I wasn’t really listening. It’s fucked up. I don’t know, maybe now’s a bad time.” A great chorus of shouts carried over from the living room. “We’ll talk about this later, okay?” He didn’t wait for her to respond, and pushed past her back into the living room. Carmen sat by the window and watched the rain, all the while trying to figure out a way to make a bolt of lightning go through the window, through the walls, and directly into Bobby’s chest. She was only trying to help. They never spent more than an afternoon with her family, and they were twenty minutes away. Carmen thought she might make a list of everything she did for him, just to have it written down on paper so that she could actually see it in black and white. The Posts weren’t that great, if they’d never taught Bobby how to treat a girl. The rain didn’t stop until after the sun went down.

Bobby needed to get out of the house. After the Scrabble tournament (Lawrence in first place, Charles in second, a reluctant Jim in third after a single high-scoring game, Bobby in fourth, and Sylvia in a distant fifth) and a low-key dinner, Franny was in high gear about a movie marathon starring someone Bobby had never heard of and was sure he couldn’t give two shits about. He needed to get out of the house. Carmen was ignoring his little touches, still irritated, and so he asked his mother for the keys.

“Sylvia,” he said. The thought of a night out alone in Palma was intoxicating, but he didn’t know where to go. “Send your tutor an e-mail and ask him where the best bars in town are. Somewhere fun.” Across the room, he saw Carmen’s eyebrows flicker upward, but he chose not to acknowledge it. She wasn’t invited.

Joan was quick—he sent over a list of three spots in a place called Magaluf, a town just outside Palma known for its clubs. They were for tourists, he said, but when there were really good DJs, all the Mallorcans went, too. The best one, Joan said, was called Blu Nite, and tonight there would be a DJ called Psychic Bomb. Sylvia begrudgingly admitted to having heard of him, and Bobby had seen him spin lots of times at home.

Bobby didn’t like going out by himself—in Miami, if he wasn’t with Carmen, he’d be with a whole posse of his boys from the gym, other trainers and some select clients, or sometimes even his college friends, though he didn’t see them as much as he used to. Some of them had gotten married, and one had even had a baby. No, thank you—that was Bobby’s philosophy. The idea of Carmen coming along and harping on him without his mother around to muzzle her up was so awful that Bobby really had only one choice in wingperson. It was hilarious how the Posts all probably thought that Carmen was mute, when all she did was tell him what he was doing wrong. At the gym, at the laundromat, in bed.

“Syl, you want to come with me?”

Sylvia was locked again into her computer screen, marveling at the thought of Joan somewhere nearby doing the same thing. Bobby had never asked her to do anything with him before, except maybe order burritos from the place around the corner, and she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard him correctly.

“You want to come with me?” he repeated himself.

“Um, yeah, sure,” Sylvia said, slowly closing the lid of her laptop. “Give me a minute to get dressed.” She hurried upstairs and threw open her suitcase, rooting around like a pig in hopes she would find a treasure trove of things she hadn’t actually packed. The thought occurred to her that she could find something truly perfect to wear to a cheesy nightclub if she snuck into Carmen and Bobby’s room, but Carmen had been acting like a freak all day, and if she wasn’t going with them, something must be weird. So Sylvia picked out her tightest jeans and a T-shirt she’d had since the fifth grade with a picture of the Jonas Brothers on it and hoped for the best. She hadn’t even meant to pack it, but it was small and tight, and she hoped the Spanish were as into nostalgic irony as she was.

Blu Nite was on a corner, down the block from a sushi restaurant and a bar that promised karaoke. Sylvia was wearing her nicest shoes, a pair of black ballet flats, and she couldn’t help but notice that every other woman she saw was stalking around on a pair of stiletto heels like they were trying to irrigate the sidewalk. It had stopped raining, but the streets were still slick with water, with lots of little reflective pools just waiting to soak your feet. Bobby didn’t seem to notice that Sylvia kept leaping over puddles, and was hurrying to keep up with him.

“Do you have a fake ID?” he asked, barely turning around to look at her.

“I only have to be eighteen. Which I am. So, no.” Sylvia jogged for a few strides until she was next to him.

Bobby was wearing what he would wear out in Miami—a nice pair of dark jeans, an untucked button-down shirt with the top two buttons undone, and a silver necklace that Carmen had given him for Christmas. He glanced at Sylvia, clearly regretting his decision to invite her along, and then nodded toward the door of the club. “Whatever. Let’s go in. I need a drink.”

Blue neon tubes lined the walls, which struck Sylvia as a little bit too obvious of an interior decorating choice. It was still early, and so the crowd was fairly thin, but there were several clumps of girls dancing together in the center of the large room.

“Is this all a club is?” Sylvia asked, but the music was loud enough that her brother either couldn’t hear her or could ignore her without seeming rude. She’d been expecting a light-up dance floor like in Saturday Night Fever, or, at the very least, a velvet rope. Blu Nite was one giant room with black leather sofas along the walls and a cluster of high glass tables near the bar, where the single men seemed to congregate. They were all dressed like Bobby, with shirts covered in printing at odd angles, as if all the clothing in Spain had gotten mangled in the printing machine, and now the logos were creeping over everyone’s shoulders instead of being square in the middle of their chests. It was the classic Euro look—shiny and well groomed to the point of New Jersey. She was still looking around when she realized that Bobby was across the room, belly up to the bar.

“Get me something,” she said, hurrying behind him.

Bobby nodded and raised two fingers at the bartender. “Dos!”

The DJ booth was at the far end of the bar, on a raised platform. Sylvia could see only Psychic Bomb’s head bobbing in time to the music—he’d just faded from something into a Katy Perry song she recognized, and the girls on the dance floor all squealed.

“Here,” Bobby said, pushing an enormous glass into her hands.

“What is it?” Sylvia sniffed at the rim—it smelled like cough syrup.

“Red Bull and vodka.”

Bobby had one, too—they stood there for a minute, Sylvia sucking the sweet drink through a long straw, and Bobby gulping his back with large swallows. Bobby’s glass was empty almost immediately, and he returned to the bar to get another.

“Thirsty?” Sylvia said, when he came back.

“I was just really needing to get out of the house, you know?” Bobby spoke without looking at her. He scanned the room, his head moving in time with the music. “Carmen was driving me fucking crazy.”

“And Mom?”

“And Mom.” Bobby looked at her, finally. “I can’t believe you still live with them.”

“Only for another month.” Sylvia tried to sound chipper.

“Honestly?” Bobby said. “I have no idea who they are. When I was a kid, they fought all the time, and when you were a kid, it was like sunshine and rainbows. I have no idea. At least now they’re looking more like people I recognize.”