Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

DUTTON BOOKS

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0RL, England

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the

author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2008 by Jennifer McMahon

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and

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magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party

websites or their content.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

eISBN : 978-1-101-04348-6

[1. Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. 2. People with disabilities—Fiction.

3. Emotional problems—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Bands (Music)—Fiction.

6. Jazz—Fiction. 7. Homosexuality—Fiction. 8. Family life—Connecticut—Fiction.

9. Connecticut—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.M225375My 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007028276

Published in the United States by Dutton Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

www.penguin.com/youngreaders

http://us.penguingroup.com

For all the Dahlias

and Maggies out there

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to my agent, Dan Lazar, and to my editors, Mark McVeigh and Maureen Sullivan.

Above all, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the writers, artists, and activists whose strength, courage, and determination have made books like My Tiki Girl possible.

1

All the girls in tenth grade hate Dahlia Wainwright. They say she’s a witch and that if you touch her, you’re cursed. They say she’s so fugly the boys have to put a bag over her head to bone her. But as far as I can tell, Dahlia doesn’t waste her time with boys. And the truth is, the girls hate her because she’s prettier than any of them and it’s not that all dressed up with blue mascara kind of pretty like Sukie Schwartz or Heather Tomasi. It’s the kind where she could be covered in mud or stung from head to toe by bees and her beauty would still turn heads. The girls hate her because the boys all want her. The boys hate her because they can’t have her. So Dahlia hangs out alone between classes, sneaking out to the soccer field to rest her back against the goal and smoke. Today, during lunch period, she’s right where I knew she’d be: braced against the white goal frame, the net behind her like a spiderweb, while she watches to see who might wander in.

I had walked into the cafeteria, and the first thing I saw was Sukie Schwartz holding court at a long, rectangular table. I heard the buzz of their talking, laughing, teasing, and it mixed together in this sickening way with the gray-meat smell of overdone hamburgers, perfume, sweat, new sneakers, and floor wax. I hurried to the nearest exit before Sukie could catch my eye, and now I’m hobbling my way out to the soccer field where a single girl stands smoking and reading.

I say hobbling because I am a Frankenstein girl. The bones in my right leg are held together with screws and a metal rod. I walk with a stiff-legged limp. I used to use a cane, but don’t anymore. My father says I still should, that I haven’t healed completely from my last surgery, but he’s not the one who has to deal at school. I mean, the movie-monster limp is bad enough, right?

Dahlia, I’ve learned from the gossip, just moved from Delaware. I’ve lived here in Sutterville, Connecticut, my whole life. It’s where I lost all my baby teeth. Where tiny hamster, gerbil, and bird skeletons lie in rotted-out cardboard coffins beneath the oak tree in our backyard. Also where, if some future archaeologist goes digging, they’ll find the remains of a plush toy: a gray terrier named Toto I buried after the accident.

Sometimes it seems like my life is divided into two halves. I call them BTA (before the accident) and ATA (after the accident). I don’t say this out loud or anything, but it’s how I’ve got things arranged in the file cabinet inside my brain. It’s been less than two years since the accident, so the ATA file is pretty small.

If I were giving you a tour of my Sutterville, I’d show you the Elff Soda factory where my dad is sales manager, the big blue Colonial house we live in, the town pool where I used to go to swim and flirt with boys with my ex-best friend Sukie Schwartz, the Paramount Theater where I had my first kiss with Albert Finch during some sci-fi movie, and the bench in front of Tip of the Cone where my mother and I would sit and eat our brownie sundaes with mint chocolate chip ice cream and extra nuts whenever we had something to celebrate.

I’d also show you an intersection three blocks from the junior high, and it would look like any regular four-way stop to you, traffic moving north and south, east and west. But it’s not just any old intersection. It’s where my mother died.

“Hey,” I say to Dahlia as I limp straight toward the net. She keeps reading and smoking her sweet-smelling, crackling cigarette all the way down to the filter before crushing it out under one of her worn combat boots.

The truth is, in my old life, my best-friends-with-Sukie life, I would have thought a girl like Dahlia was a total freak and probably made fun of her behind her back, rolling my eyes at her clunky boots, Salvation Army wardrobe, and pinup girl lipstick, which is way too dark for her complexion. But in my new, ATA life, things are different. I have no friends. Not real ones anyway. No one gets me. I spent all last year being the freakiest girl in our class and everyone walked around me carefully, holding their breath like I was made of smoke—one wrong puff and I would disintegrate.

I want tenth grade to be different. I want someone to get me, not just pretend to out of pity, but to really get me. I’ve been watching Dahlia Wainwright for two weeks now—long enough to think that maybe she’s the one.

Dahlia’s wearing a black beret and these red-and-white-striped tights with a pair of torn-up jeans over them. The jeans are more hole than fabric. She wears a hippie-dippie Indian print shirt with little bells on the strings used to tie the V-neck closed. Her pale face is made paler still by the blood-red lipstick she’d expertly applied in a neat bow. She’s reading Sylvia Plath. Clearly, this is a girl who out-freaks even me. One who isn’t going to be scared off by my sorry-ass limp and tragic dead mother story. Now, if I can just not blow this by saying the wrong thing. But Dahlia saves me.

“Listen to this,” she says, without looking up from the page. She starts to read in a theatrical voice, clear and crisp. It’s a poem, but it’s like no poetry I’ve ever heard. It’s all about being broken, asking if you have a glass eye or a hook, stitches or scars. It’s mean, but sort of funny.

Dahlia snaps the book closed, and looks at me.

“ ‘The Applicant,’ ” she says, in a normal voice. “The opening stanzas. Freaking amazing, yes?”

She reaches into her huge patchwork purse and pulls out a bag of candy.

“Licorice allsorts?” she offers.

It’s like she’s been waiting for a broken girl with a limp to come along to read those lines to. Like she’s been expecting me.

Now, the truth is, I’ve always hated licorice, and the candy she holds out is black and white with pastel colors mixed in. I can’t imagine anything less appealing.

“Sure,” I say, opening my hand, taking a few pieces gratefully, popping them into my mouth like, well, like candy.

“Sylvia Plath is my second-favorite poet. She put her head in an oven, did you know that?”

“No,” I mumble. My mouth is full of candy that is grossly sweet and bitter all at once.

“My first favorite, is, of course, the Poet God Himself: Jim Morrison.”

I nod like I’ve heard of him.

“Hey, I’m starting this band. A beatnik, rock, jazz fusion kind of thing. You play any instruments?”

I shake my head. “Just the clarinet. I was in marching band in junior high.” I roll my eyes like, Can you believe it?

“Perfect!” she squeals.

“But I’m not really that good. I haven’t played in forever.” I am officially in panic mode now. My throat feels tight, and when I speak, the words come out high and breathy, like a dog’s squeak toy.

“You’ll be great. I can tell,” she says, then gives me this smile that makes me almost believe her.

“So what happened to your leg?” she asks, and I have to admire her for having the guts to actually ask the question that every other stranger who sees my limp-walk is wondering. The other tenth graders all know the story; half of them sent cards and flowers saying Get Well Soon back in eighth grade when I was stuck in the hospital forever. Now they can’t even look me in the eye. It’s like they’re scared of me. Like tragedy is catching.

I think about lying to Dahlia, saying I was shot from a cannon or kidnapped by aliens and experimented on.

“Car accident,” I say, unable to lie in the end.

“Let me see,” she says.

I’m wearing this totally embarrassing pink skirt my father got me that screams of my old life, my pre-Frankenstein girl life, and I lift it up, pull down my kneesock, and show her the long, ragged scar that runs from my knee to my ankle.

“Jumping catfish!” she says, then reaches out to touch it.

I don’t even think of stopping her.

2

Dahlia’s mom, Leah, has been to the loony bin, and it’s there, she tells us, that she was given her first doll. She holds the doll in her hands, fingers stained with nicotine from smoking unfiltered cigarettes all the way down, and tells the story for what must be about the millionth time, but we never get tired of hearing it. She makes it sound like it’s not her who’s telling the story, but Birdwoman. The doll is a woman in a calico dress with the head of a bird. I don’t know my birds real well, but this one doesn’t look like a songbird or bird of prey. It looks like a crow or a raven maybe, its head all glossy black feathers, its eyes two tiny glass beads. When Birdwoman speaks, Leah’s voice is a cackle, and I inch nearer to Dahlia. Our bodies are pressed close now, side to side like Siamese twins, and Dahlia’s brother, Jonah, is lying stretched out like a snake on the back of the couch behind us. His breath is faint, so faint that I think he’s holding it, waiting for the story to be over so he can exhale, finally relax.

“I am Birdwoman,” Leah croaks. “I once was human, but a human life is no place for a bird’s spirit, so I released myself of earthly burdens.” Leah closes her eyes when she speaks, holds the Birdwoman doll so that it’s facing us, the beaded eyes staring, glossy in the light, two tiny crystal balls.

Leah got Birdwoman in the loony bin, a gift from her friend Pam, who had a tattoo of an ankh between her thumb and pointer finger. The ankh, Leah explains, stands for everlasting life. Leah’s painted the symbol on the front of the doll’s dress with gold fabric paint. Dahlia and I draw it on our hands in permanent marker, our own little tattoos. The kids at school say, What’s that supposed to be? You two in a cult or something? Dahlia laughs and says, Yeah, we are. The cult of Birdwoman. Caw! We’re total freaks to them anyway. The tattoos are just further proof.

The ankh looks like a cross with a loop on top. The loop reminds me of the hole in a sewing needle, like the ankh is supposed to be used for mending. Not for mending the holes of dresses, but holes in your spirit, which is, according to Leah, what Pam suffered from until she threw herself off the top of the hundred-foot tower in Lake Crest Park.

“She spent the night there,” Leah explains, “then jumped as the sun was rising.”

It seems to me that this is backwards somehow. Like if you were really going to off yourself, you’d do it with the setting sun in front of you, but I’m no expert. I’ve never known anyone who killed themselves before. Only famous people like rock stars and Marilyn Monroe. Pam feels more real to me than these people. When I look at the doll she left behind, it’s like I knew her too; like I would know just how to describe her to a stranger. I’d begin and end with the ankh. Everlasting life, I’d say, proving my point by explaining how her spirit slipped so easily from human to doll, the way a hermit crab finds a new shell. It’s that easy. This is the first lesson we learn from Leah, from Birdwoman: the dolls are vessels, waiting.

“No,” Leah corrects, still making Birdwoman do the talking, “Pam didn’t jump, she flew. You don’t know you’ve got wings till you have to use them. You just have to trust they’re there. Believe in the power of flight. Do you believe, birdlings?”

We nod our heads. We’re all real quiet when Leah tells her stories. It’s like being in church. And it’s not just Jonah who is holding his breath—all three of us are, because we’re never sure of the ending.

Jonah believes, like we all do in a way, that Leah can make things happen when she pulls out her dolls. Like she can use them to predict the future, or maybe even control it. Leah says that on the morning Pam threw herself from the tower, Birdwoman jumped too, falling off Leah’s dressing table for no apparent reason. It was then that the power of the dolls was revealed to her, and she’s been collecting them ever since.

Leah has a doll for each person in her life, and dolls for people she hasn’t met yet too. Like my doll, for instance. She picked it up at a flea market last year and put it on her dresser with the others, not knowing who it would come to be. The doll sat there, waiting, a rag-doll clown with a porcelain face full of hairline cracks, two blue tears painted on its white cheeks. She says that in that way, she invited me into their lives, and when I first came home from school with Dahlia three weeks ago, Leah knew the flea market clown was me. A few days after knowing me, she named it—named us both, really. I am LaSamba, the worrier, the sad clown.

Dahlia’s breath is sweet, like the clove cigarettes she smokes: Djarums from Indonesia that crackle and pop as they burn. Her fingers are long, the nails perfect, unlike my own—fingernails chewed to the quick, cuticles swollen and bloody. Dahlia says she used to bite her nails too, but cured herself of it by taking up smoking. Her body is all smooth curves and freckles. Her eyes are grayish blue, the kind of eyes that change shade with her mood or depending on what color shirt she wears. Her dirty-blond hair is straight and thick—she wears it back in a ponytail or tucked behind her ears under the beret. I like the feel of her beside me when we sit like this on the couch listening to Leah talk the doll talk. Dahlia’s got on the Catholic school uniform she found at the thrift store: a pleated navy blue skirt with a crested blazer that says St. Christopher’s. She wears this with her combat boots, a Doors T-shirt, and a pink plastic rosary around her neck.

Maybe later we’ll put on our grass skirts and hula dance, compose a new song for our band, or listen to Jim Morrison (I know who he is now, I know all about The Doors).

Birdwoman didn’t have much to say tonight, which could be a good omen, but may be a bad one too. We’ll just have to wait and see. Now Leah is up, spinning in circles around the room, Birdwoman in her outstretched hand flying up by the ceiling. It’s Jonah who’s off the couch first, running behind his mother, flapping his arms like wings, his blue and gold magician’s robe trailing behind him like the tail of some tropical bird. Dahlia and I join the dance, and soon we’re all there, running in circles around the living room floor, flapping our wings, caw-caw-cawing, and I’m getting dizzy, staggering around like a drunk. I’m spinning with Dahlia, Leah, and Jonah, Birdwoman soaring above. I’ve forgotten all about my limp, the dull pain that radiates from my knee to my ankle. I’m thinking this is it, we’re flying and we may never come back down.

“What shall we do now, my little birdlings?” asks Leah.

We’re all lying collapsed on the floor. The steel gray carpet is full of faint stains and cigarette burns. In the corner next to me is the mark left by an iron put down when it was still too hot. Leah is clutching Birdwoman, but she’s holding her face-down, which means the doll is done for now. Dahlia is on her back, breathing hard, and Jonah is nestled against her, his head on her arm, his robe covering both of them like a beach towel. Like maybe they’ve just come out of the water and have had too much sun.

“A trip to Jupiter,” suggests Jonah.

“The mall,” says Dahlia.

Leah laughs. “Aren’t they one and the same?” she asks, and we all agree, so we’re off to the mall.

“Keys, keys!” shouts Leah as she’s putting on her old navy peacoat. The coat has holes in all its pockets, so she can never keep anything in them. Dahlia and I scramble around, looking in all the usual places for the car keys: on the kitchen table, in the dove-shaped vase by the front door, in the holeless pockets of other coats.

Jonah shuts his eyes, says a key-finding spell, his fingers moving like sea anemones.

“Keys that are lost will now be found, by the power of Merlin, by the force of the River Nile, so mote it be!” Just as he’s opening his eyes, Dahlia shouts, “Found them!” and there they are, pulled from a boot in the closet. Jonah smiles.

“Boy magician strikes again!” shouts Dahlia.

“All hail the Great Zamboni!” calls Leah.

“Zamboni, Wizard of the West Winds!” cries Dahlia.

“Zamboni, bringer of rains that make floods, finder of lost keys!” I cheer.

Jonah pulls his robe around him tighter and grabs his magic wand for our trip to the mall, because who knows what evil forces we might encounter on the way.

The Wainwrights live on the third floor of the only apartment building in town. It’s a big brick building that used to be a dynamite factory. No kidding. Canal Street Explosives turned into the Canal Street Apartments, the factory boxed off into four floors of little homes, the ghosts of explosions and careless workmen missing fingers long gone. We’re the only noise now. We sound like thunder racing down the stairs, Birdwoman taking flight in the lead. We’re cawing and laughing, Jonah is chanting a safe-journey spell as we leap down the steps two at a time. The stairway smells like curry and men’s aftershave, no trace of gunpowder left. Just when I think the heavy air may suffocate me, we’re out the door, running down the sidewalk that leads to the back parking lot where Leah’s yellow VW bug named Gertrude waits. The magician rides shotgun because he’s the best navigator; Dahlia and I take the back, sitting close.

“Share a clove?” she asks me, and I nod. Dahlia takes a cigarette from the pack in her coat pocket and lights it as we’re pulling out.

“Mission Control, we have liftoff!” shouts Leah, who lights one of her own cigarettes, an unfiltered Camel.

We know all the dark parking lots for siphoning gas. The best one is behind Our Lady of Redemption. They have AA meetings there three nights a week, and when there’s no meeting, there’s Bible study and choir practice. We call it Our Lady of Perpetual Motion because we always get lucky here.

Dahlia taught me the principles of siphoning gas. She showed me the fine points of getting just enough suction, then pulling the tube down and into the gas can quickly. Leah keeps the four-foot section of cut garden hose on the floor in the backseat, along with the dented red metal gas can. If you suck too hard and don’t pull away in time, you taste fire. You spit and cough and think you’re gonna puke. Leah keeps a bottle of flat Coke in the car and we use it to rinse out our mouths if we taste gas. We swish the soda around like sweet mouthwash and spit and spit.

Tonight’s an AA night, and we fill the can with gas from some poor old alkie’s Caddy. He’s got a FRIEND OF BILL’S bumper sticker on the back of his car and a plastic Virgin Mary on his dash. Leah picks this car because of Mary. The Holy Mother is a sign and we are lucky. No close calls. Dahlia gets the flow going, sucking expertly on the end of the hose, and I hold the gas can, waiting for her to drop the hose into it. You have to keep it low once it gets going. It’ll only flow down and if you lift it up, you’ve wrecked the whole thing and have to start over.

When the can is full, we dump it into Gertrude’s tank and we’re off and running. It’s a twenty-minute drive to the mall, and Leah has the classic-rock station on. She says it’s the only music worth listening to, and she and Dahlia know all kinds of trivia about every singer, every band. Sometimes it seems like they both take rock ’n’ roll as seriously as they take the dolls. It feels like the two are connected somehow, like one wouldn’t matter so much without the other. Right now, we’re all singing along to “Me and Bobby McGee” as we drive out of the suburbs and past the airport, where the planes come in so low you think they’re gonna land right on the highway. Birdwoman is resting on the dashboard, but unlike the drunk guy’s Mary, she faces forward. Birdwoman likes to see where she’s headed.

Leah tells us that Pam, who gave her Birdwoman, was a huge Janis Joplin fan.

“It’s a sign, birdlings,” Leah tells us as the song comes to a close. “Pam’s watching over us tonight. She and Janis both. It’s going to be a big night!”

Gertrude’s heater doesn’t work so well and it’s October, so we’re glad we have coats on. Dahlia has an old sheepskin coat. Mine is denim with a fake sheepskin lining, not nearly as warm as hers. There’s an army blanket in the backseat that we use to cover up with and we sit closer together, shivering a little, maybe from the cold, maybe from the excitement of what might happen next. If I had to tell the truth, I’d say it’s just being next to Dahlia that makes me tremble, makes my heart beat some crazy island mambo song inside my skinny chest.

“Tiki, what’s the game tonight?” Leah asks Dahlia, using her special name, her doll name, and this is a signal that things have really begun—we’re not ourselves anymore—anything goes.

It’s always up to Dahlia to make up the games we play at the mall. Sometimes she gives us entire scripts to memorize, and we practice in the car like we’re rehearsing for a play. Last week, she had us go from store to store, saying we were from a children’s home and asking for gift certificates to raffle off to make money for a camping trip. Sometimes she has us shoplift, but it’s more like a scavenger hunt, really: find something red and under five dollars in Fox’s department store, a wig from a mannequin in Fashionbuzz, a jockstrap from Valley Sports. Jonah is the best shoplifter—maybe because he’s a magician, maybe because of the robe. People are so amazed by the spectacle before them—the little boy in a hooded blue robe with gold stars—that they don’t notice what his hands are doing. That and he’s just fast. His fingers move swiftly and carefully and he’s got this killer, ten-year-old smile that makes people believe he isn’t capable of doing wrong.

“Tonight’s game is this . . .” Dahlia begins, pausing for dramatic effect. “Shopping for the end of the world.” Here she pauses again, knowing we’re all hanging on her every word, gobbling them up.

“The world, as we know it, will be destroyed by the end of the night. We will survive, but other than the clothes on our backs, we are only allowed to keep one thing with us, and it should be a thing that will help us in some way. Our mission is to each go off and find our one thing. We have an hour, then we meet by the skating rink and see what we’ve all chosen.”

“Positively brilliant!” squeals Leah as she pulls into the parking lot of the Farmcrest Hills Mall. The parking area is a maze of lots labeled with color-coded letters so you’ll be able to find your car when you’re done inside. After circling a few minutes, we find a spot in lot D. Leah likes to be able to park close, so close that sometimes, when she can’t find a spot, she takes the handicapped place and puts a note on the dash saying she left her permit at home but is transporting her crippled daughter. She has me accentuate my limp when we get out of the car in case anyone’s looking. I’m happy to do it. Proud that she’d call me her daughter, even if it’s just pretend. Sometimes she gets tickets anyway, which we tear into a hundred pieces and drop out the window on the highway on the way home. Making confetti, Leah calls it.

Jonah is quiet as Gertrude rolls to a stop; he’s concentrating, his brow furrowed the way he gets when he’s thinking hard.

“I think I’d want my wand to be my thing,” he says at last.

“No can do,” says Dahlia matter-of-factly. “All our worldly possessions are destroyed except for the one thing we each take from the mall tonight. Find a new wand if that’s what you really want, kiddo.”

“A magic talisman,” suggests Leah.

“A flying carpet,” I say.

Jonah scrunches up his face again as we lock Gertrude’s doors. Lot D is right next to the movie theater. There are steel doors down the gray cement wall, away from the yellow entrance, which lead directly out of the theater. Sometimes we stand by them, waiting for people to come out, then we sneak in, moving through the crowd like salmon swimming upstream. Once we’re inside, it’s easy to walk casually down the hall, mixing with the paid-ticket crowd, and sneak from theater to theater. One Saturday, we watched four movies in a row. But tonight there will be no movies. Tonight we’re on a serious mission. The end of the world is coming, and we want to be ready.

3

As I walk around the mall looking for my one thing, I’m thinking that there’s still a long list of things Dahlia doesn’t know about me. Like that I had the lead in the school play back in junior high: Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I mean, it’s hard to believe looking at me now, but once, I was the kind of kid who didn’t just act in some play but was the honest-to-god star.

And Dahlia has no idea that Sukie Schwartz, the most popular girl in the tenth grade, used to be my best friend. Dahlia knows nothing about how we got our ears pierced together at this very mall, drooled over magazines full of boy band pictures, and made friendship bracelets out of braided embroidery floss.

I’m afraid that if I told Dahlia all of this, she wouldn’t get it. She’d think less of me and say there was no way a girl like that could ever be LaSamba. She hates the popular girls so much, and to know that I was one of them, even back then, might tarnish me in this totally unfixable way.

Sukie was in The Wizard of Oz, too. She was Glinda, Good Witch of the North. She wore this beautiful silver gown and carried a wand my mother had made with a huge star on the end covered in silver glitter. She spent downtime during rehearsals waving it over me, saying, Poof! You’re in Oz. Poof! You’re going to get an A on your history test. Poof! We’re going to the movies Friday night.

My mother did the sets for the play. She was an artist. She made her living designing greeting cards: Happy Birthday, Thinking of You, Get Well Soon. I have a stack of them in a cardboard box under my bed. She made sympathy cards, too. After she died, we got a card from my dad’s second cousin saying how sorry he was, we were in his thoughts and prayers and all that. He wrote it all down in a card my mom had designed, covered in watercolor lilies. He’d picked it out in the drugstore and had no idea. Life is full of these strange little coincidences. The thing is, some of them come at you like the right hook of a boxer, knocking you down for the count.

Sometimes, when something exceptional happens, I pull out that box of cards and pick one that suits the occasion. I imagine my mom has sent it to me from all the way up in heaven. It’s dumb, I know. When school started, I got a Good Luck card. The day I met Dahlia and she asked me to be in her band, I got a card with a picture of a shooting star that said, An unmade wish will never come true.

But just what was I wishing for?

Did my mother up in heaven know something I didn’t?

Jonah is the first one back to the ice rink and I find him there, waiting alone in his robe, watching the skaters. It’s a small ice rink in the middle of the mall. Families come to rent skates and soar around in circles, always going the same way, never changing direction, poor dumb birds. I used to skate here with Sukie. One time in eighth grade, just before the accident, we went on this double date—her and Troy and me and Albert. We held hands while we skated like couples do in movies. Sukie and I had matching purple laces on our white figure skates. The world was ours then and we didn’t even know it; we didn’t know how easy we had it down there on the stupid skating rink as we moved beside the boys with their sweaty hands and rough wool sweaters, the purple laces on our skates proudly proclaiming that we were best friends forever. What a crock.

Jonah’s favorite part of watching the skaters is the machine that cleans the ice: the Zamboni, which is where he got his wizard name. He thinks it’s magic the way it makes the cut-up, scarred ice smooth as glass again, always has.

I want to ask Jonah what he’s chosen to be his one thing, but we’ll have to wait for Leah and Dahlia. The mall smells like popcorn and plastic, leather and perfume. The noise around us is a steady hum of elevator music, shoppers’ chatter, skaters’ laughter.

“If it was really the end of the world, I would have my wand,” says Jonah, never taking his eyes off the skaters. He’s left his wand in the car, so he can’t turn any of them to mice or toads. He can’t say a spell to make them fall or to turn the ice to quicksand. Jonah believes he has some powers without the wand, but he needs it to pull off the really big stuff. Sometimes I want to say to him, “You know you can’t really do that, right? You know it’s just a game?” But that’s clearly against the rules, and Dahlia, who loves her little brother more than anything, would never forgive me.

Leah’s next. “Good hunting, birdlings?” she asks. Birdwoman is with her, sticking her head out of Leah’s pocketbook so she can see. Jonah and I nod.

Dahlia’s last to meet us, the soles of her heavy boots stomping across the polished floor, the pink plastic rosary swinging crazily against her chest as she hurries toward us. I can see from her smile she’s had success. She has her best shoplifting bag tonight—it’s a huge shoulder bag in a patchwork pattern. Once, she fit a whole turkey dinner in it—bird, cranberries, and all. Dahlia’s the one who takes the biggest chances—she surprises us every time.

“Well, what did everyone choose?” she asks. “Jonah first.”

Jonah looks shy, hesitant, like he isn’t sure if he wants to share it.

“A magic ring,” he says reluctantly, pulling a silver band with a garnet stone out from his pocket. “It’s a ring of invisibility.”

It’s a cheap ring, the kind made for little girls and displayed by the cash register at gift shops and drugstores—easy to steal.

“Put it on, put it on!” urges Dahlia.

“No. Not now. It’s only for very special occasions. It won’t work unless you really need it to,” Jonah explains.

“A ring of invisibility will come in handy at the end of the world,” says Leah, and we all agree.

“Leah’s next,” says Dahlia, and we watch Leah pull two gray plastic walkie-talkies from her bag. Leah doesn’t usually shoplift; it’s too risky. See, she went to jail once (it was a total setup) and the cops look at that as having a record, which means she has to be really careful—if she went to jail again, Dahlia and Jonah could end up in foster care, or worse, with their Aunt Elsbeth in New York.

Leah probably bought the walkie-talkies at the high-tech outlet with one of her credit cards. She has a ton. One gets rejected and she just pulls out another.

“It’s so we can stay in touch and give each other important messages when the end of the world comes,” Leah explains as she takes the walkie-talkies from their box. She shows us how they even have a button that makes a beeping alarm, and there’s a guide to Morse code on the side.

“Now you, Maggie,” Dahlia says, and I reach into my pocket and pull out the knife I swiped from the case at Valley Sports. It’s a hunting knife, with a locking blade folded into the curved wooden handle. It feels heavy, covers the length of my open hand. I pull open the silver blade carefully; this knife is razor sharp. It’s for gutting deer—slicing through skin, muscle, and tendon.

I chose the knife because it was the most dangerous thing I could think of. It seems to fit my new life. My life where I do dangerous things like shoplifting and siphoning gas. BTA Maggie would never have carried a knife. ATA Maggie is an outlaw girl. The knife is a symbol that anything goes.

“Jumping catfish!” says Dahlia, her eyes wide as she stares at the knife, reaches out to touch the polished brass end. “You could kill an army of bears with that thing! You’ll use it to build us a shelter; hunt and gather; defend us from the marauders. Such a practical tool for the end of the world. LaSamba, the practical clown.”

I push down on the safety catch, close the knife, and slide it into my pocket. I’m blushing like some kind of idiot just because some crazy girl with pink plastic rosary beads called me a practical clown.

Dahlia reaches into her bag and pulls out a Polaroid and several packs of film.

“It will be important to document the end of the world,” she explains. She’s ripping open the packet of film, loading the cartridge into the camera. She points the camera at us. Jonah, Leah, and I are leaning against the wall of the skating rink. Shoppers are walking past us. Behind Dahlia are the escalators, carrying an endless stream of people up and down, up and down. It reminds me of watching ants in an ant farm.

“Smile and say ‘apocalypse,’ ” says Dahlia.

“Apocalypse,” we all say in unison, singsongy, grinning, as the flash goes off in our eyes. We hear the camera’s motor working and the picture is spit out. We gather around Dahlia to watch it develop. It’s all cloudy at first, then we can make out forms. The forms turn into people and suddenly, there we are, looking up at ourselves as Dahlia holds us, waves us around a little to help bring us into focus.

There’s Jonah, magic ring in one hand, a gray walkie-talkie in the other. He looks small for a ten-year-old, skinny, with dark brown hair and eyes, just a sprinkling of freckles. Maybe it’s the oversize robe that makes him look so tiny. It’s dark blue terry cloth with a hood, and Leah has sewn gold lamé stars to it. His gold belt is a thick, tasseled rope that used to hold a curtain open. You can just see the toes of his black Converses peeking out from under the hem of his robe.

And there’s Leah, holding the second walkie-talkie in her hand, Birdwoman hanging out of her low-slung pocketbook. She’s wearing the old peacoat; her hair is bleached blond and straight like Dahlia’s. She’s got bangs that nearly cover her eyebrows. She cuts her own hair, and Dahlia’s and Jonah’s too. Leah looks more like a teenager than a woman about to be forty. I know she’s thirty-nine because she tells us she’s going to have a big fortieth birthday party in June. She’s going to rent a riverboat and we’ll all go riding up and down the Connecticut River, drinking champagne and launching firecrackers off the side.

I’m standing between them in the photo, my hands dug deep into the pockets of my jeans, touching change, a house key, and the new knife. My own hair is dull brown and straight, not as long as Dahlia’s, just long enough to tuck behind my ears. I’m skinny—too skinny, everyone says. Before the accident, it was a good thing—God, you’re so thin, Maggie, you can wear anything! Must be nice, Maggie! Now that I’m a cripple, suddenly it creeps people out. Plus maybe I lost some weight after the accident. It’s true—in the picture, I’m hardly there. I look as lost in my white fisherman’s sweater and denim jacket as Jonah does in his robe. Behind us are the shadows of skaters going in circles. I think I look a little like one of those shadows when I see myself next to Leah and Jonah. If Dahlia was in the picture, you probably wouldn’t see me at all.

We play the photo game next, where we go around the mall putting Birdwoman different places and taking her picture. Dahlia takes pictures of Birdwoman sitting on the shoulder of a mannequin, riding alone on the step of an escalator, resting in a display of fine china, and—my favorite—Birdwoman sitting on the second-story railing, getting ready to jump. Leah lets go of her, and Dahlia takes another one of Birdwoman in flight while Jonah gets ready to catch her. Birdwoman lands safely in Jonah’s hands, but the picture just shows a dark blur. The camera can’t freeze motion.

We make fun of the skaters, drop popcorn on them from up above until a security guard chases us away. While we’re up there looking down, I’m kind of almost wishing I was there on the ice again, showing off my moves. I want to show Dahlia how close skating is to flying. I want to lean into her on the turns, to laugh until our teeth hurt as we hurtle through space on metal blades.

In the car on the way back, we sing “We Will Rock You.” It’s by Queen, who Dahlia says is a totally underrated band. Jonah whispers to his ring. Dahlia rests against me, her head on my shoulder, the blanket covering us both. She puts her hand on my knee, then slides it down, reaching for my scar, only my jeans are in the way.

My scar is like a magnet to Dahlia. She wants to see it all the time, and she always looks sort of relieved each time I pull up the leg of my pants, like maybe she was worried it had gone away.

The backseat smells like gasoline and we’re cold, but happy with the success of our mission. We’re heroes going home.

Back in their apartment, I call my father to ask if I can spend the night. I tell him Dahlia and I are having band practice.

“I guess you forgot,” he says.

“Forgot what?”

“Pizza night.”

How could I forget? I should apologize, hang up, and hurry home to him. But not yet.

“I’m sorry. Can’t we do it tomorrow? Tomorrow will be okay, right?”

“I picked up the pizza on the way home,” he says.

There’s a pause that seems to go on forever. I can practically hear the pizza getting cold, the greasy cheese congealing.

“I’ll put it in the fridge,” he says. “It’ll keep till tomorrow. We can heat it up.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Do you have your pills, sweetie?”

“Yup.”

“Don’t forget to take them,” he says just before hanging up.

Dahlia thinks it’s cool that I take antidepressants. I tell her the pills don’t do much except make me thirsty. She says it’s good that they don’t turn me into Suzy Sunshine. “If you weren’t depressed, you wouldn’t be LaSamba,” she says, and I think of those two blue tears on my doll’s cheeks, of how Leah calls me The Sad Clown, like everything that’s happened the last two years is written all over my face in bold print.

I’ve never talked about the accident to Leah. I told Dahlia the basics, but not the whole truth. My mom died, my leg got messed up. How when I came back to school, none of the kids knew how to talk to me. Then last year, when I started high school, everyone thought I was going to magically be over the whole thing, and when I wasn’t, people started avoiding me, saying I was a downer. One girl said she didn’t know how I could go on living. If my mother died, this stupid girl said right to my face, I’d kill myself.

About halfway through ninth grade, when it became clear I wasn’t going back to my old, cheerful, BTA self, my father and my psychiatrist had a meeting and decided antidepressants were in order. Happy pills, I call them. Only they haven’t done a thing to make me happy. Which I guess means that deep down inside, I really am like my doll self, a clown of sorrow, and no pill in the world can change who you really are.

Leah has a prescription for lithium, but she never takes it. When she does, the dolls stop talking. She says it turns life into a merry-go-round when what she wants is a roller coaster.

Once I’m off the phone, Leah gives us each a glass of champagne, the smallest glass for Jonah, and we make toasts, put on a Janis Joplin CD in honor of Pam, and dance around. Dahlia takes pictures with the Polaroid. We talk to each other from room to room with the new walkie-talkies. Jonah gets into the bathtub, closes the curtain, and pretends he’s radioing us from space.

“This is Zamboni, passing Saturn, on my way to Uranus,” he says into the walkie-talkie. We’re sitting at Mission Control, on the living room floor beside the iron mark.

“Roger that, bring back some stardust,” says Dahlia, pushing the red talk button.

When he comes back from space, Jonah gives his sister a pinch of sand taken from the jar on the back of the toilet full of beach treasures they collected one summer in Cape Cod: sand, shells, well-worn pebbles, and sea glass. Dahlia rubs the tiny grains between her fingers and smiles like it’s a gift straight from heaven.

I have this idea of heaven as being a real place up in the stratosphere where dead people go, and sometimes they look down. I think it must be a little like us watching the skaters earlier. It freaks me out to think that my mother can see me now, here, beside Dahlia, my hand on this scorched iron mark, the stolen knife in my pocket. What must she think? Her daughter drinking champagne, shoplifting, tasting gasoline. Would she throw popcorn if she could? Does she still recognize me? Am I going to go home and find a card pulled from the stack under the bed, one I didn’t know existed, that says something like, You are a complete and utter disappointment?

We dance some more, this time to Elton John. My dancing is clumsy, limping. My leg throbs, but I don’t slow down. “Rocket Man” is blasting from the speakers, and it’s a song to celebrate the safe return of Zamboni, boy magician and astronaut. The four of us hold hands and spin in a circle the way you do in kindergarten. Birdwoman is on the floor in the middle and it’s her we’re dancing around. She’s the maypole. She’s birdie in the middle. She’s a small fire we’re dancing around to stay warm. We’re kicking up our heels and laughing. I’ve got my new stolen hunting knife in my pocket, making me feel all bad-girl dangerous. Dahlia’s put on a long silk scarf and some of her red lipstick. She kisses us each on the forehead, leaving her mark. We hold hands and dance some more. We wait for the end of the world to come, but it doesn’t, so we just keep dancing.

4

Leah is sleeping in—Dahlia, Jonah, and I are in the kitchen. The boy wizard has his gold-starred robe on over his pajamas, and Dahlia and I are wearing the pale blue hospital scrubs we slept in. Dahlia’s got a drawer full of them, stolen by Leah on her various trips to the state hospital back in Delaware, which, according to Dahlia, is where they send you when you’re a mental case and poor. DSH, they say on them in thick black letters, branding us, making us feel close to crazy while we sleep nestled together on her single futon mattress on the floor. There’s a poster of Jim Morrison tacked to the ceiling above us. He’s wearing leather pants, no shirt, beads around his neck. He’s like God up there looking down. Some curly-haired, bare-chested poet God.

“Isn’t he gorgeous?” Dahlia asks all the time. “Aren’t you just totally in love with him?”

“Yeah,” I say. “He’s so hot, it’s unreal.” And we talk about what we’d do if he climbed down off the ceiling, who’d be the first to jump his bones. The little fact that he’s long dead doesn’t seem to put a damper on our Jim Morrison fantasies.

Dahlia has read his biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive, a thousand times. It sits on her cinder-block-and-board bookshelf with its torn cover and dog-eared pages, next to books of poetry by Sylvia Plath, The Little Prince (a gift from Leah), and Memories, Dreams, Reflections, by Carl Jung.

The only books I have on the shelves in my bedroom are a set of World Book encyclopedias my dad got me when I turned ten. I really wanted those books. It was all I thought about for weeks. How embarrassing is that?

Jonah has the wooden tray out and he’s arranging it for his mother. He’s chosen the prettiest plate and folded a real cloth napkin under the silverware. The coffee is perking and the toaster is spitting out waffles like it doesn’t like the taste of them. Dahlia is melting a clump of frozen strawberries in a saucepan, and I’m searching for the can of whipped cream in the fridge. We’re being quiet so we don’t wake Leah up. Dahlia pours the rest of last night’s champagne into a goblet half full of orange juice and puts it on the tray. Jonah mixes the coffee just the way Leah likes it: black with three sugars. He stirs the sugar in like he’s mixing a potion—he’s that focused. I squirt the whipped cream from the red and white can onto the waffles and strawberries. Dahlia gets to carry the tray in, with Jonah and I creeping behind. It’s like Christmas morning.

You’ve got to be careful in Leah’s room—there are mounds of clothing covering the floor and towers of battered cardboard boxes leaning against the walls. She calls the boxes her files, and they hold all kinds of junk: old bills, coupons, photos, broken necklaces, and recipes cut out from magazines that she says she’ll make one day. Sometimes things get filed accidentally, like Jonah’s report on snakes before he turned it in, or the light bill that never got paid—the power company turned off the electricity for a few days until Leah got her next check.

Leah’s on welfare, plus she gets child support from Dahlia’s and Jonah’s fathers. They don’t have the same dad. Dahlia’s father lives in California picking fruit—tangelos, blood oranges, things you never see at the A&P. Jonah’s dad is an Air Force pilot and lives in Arizona with a wife and kids of his own. That’s what Leah says anyway. There are no dolls for these men, which shows how tiny they are in the big picture.

When Leah sleeps, she makes funny noises. She mumbles and gurgles, sounds like she’s on the verge of laughter. In her dreams, she goes to giant parties and drinks cocktails with famous people. She sees her old friend Pam, who wears a calico dress and has her hair decorated with black feathers. We’re there too sometimes—Dahlia, Jonah, and I—but we’re all our alter egos, our doll selves. I’m LaSamba, face painted white, ever silent, doing my mime routine and juggling. Dahlia is Tiki, the hula dancer in a grass skirt who hypnotizes people when she moves. Jonah is the Great Zamboni, boy wizard, who can turn men to lizards with a wave of his wand.

On her dresser, in front of the mirror, Leah has the dolls lined up on a silky cloth. Every other surface in the room is littered with tattered paperbacks, half-burnt sticks of incense, a pair of reading glasses with one lens—but the dresser is pristine. It’s like a shrine up there, and none of us are allowed to touch it. It’s only Leah who can take the dolls down, arrange them, have them act out scenes of what is to come.

I study my doll, the sad clown no more than four inches tall, with a rag-doll body in a blue satin suit and porcelain face full of hairline cracks. My soft-bodied doll is stuck in a perpetual slump, never really straightening up. The doll looks old, like a hundred children have played with it, but I know they haven’t because I’m sure kids aren’t that careful—the head would be smashed by now for sure. It’s a delicate head, my doll’s.

Zamboni is a plastic wizard with a blue robe and wand. He has a long white beard and pointed cap. He’s from a medieval play set that Dahlia had when she was younger. Some of the toys survived and live in Jonah’s room now: the plastic dragon, the princess, a knightless horse. The castle broke long ago, and the king was lost.

Tiki’s doll is a small, hard plastic figure of a hula girl wearing a grass skirt and a lei. In her hands, she holds a tiny ukulele. She’s smiling and dancing a hula dance, one hip raised slightly above the other. She doesn’t like to be still, this doll. She wears a cardinal-colored bikini top that shows her bronze belly. The doll was a cake decoration from a Hawaiian-themed party Dahlia had when she was seven. She is long and tan—even all plastic, she seems exotic. She is the most beautiful of the dolls, but she is not the most important. She stands with the others, always dancing, while my doll looks on and Zamboni the wizard holds his wand in the upright position forever, some new spell always being cast. It is the figure who sits on the shelf above them who has the most power. She’s the one to watch.

The doll Leah has chosen for herself is the best of all: she is Mother Mary, the chipped plaster figure of the Blessed Virgin from their old family Nativity set. She is kneeling, bare-foot, wearing a pale blue dress and white kerchief. Her eyes are closed and her hands are clasped in prayer. Mother Mary sits carefully perched on the edge of an old fruit crate turned on its side. She hovers above the other dolls, keeping watch. She is separate, but not distant. Her eyes are closed, but she sees us all.

Circled around the group of dolls are three trolls, because, as Leah says, there must always be evil and you might as well give it a name and be able to look it in the eye. I don’t know where the troll dolls came from, but they are gruesome. They are carved from wood and painted in dark colors. They are hunchbacked and bearded, have open mouths with pointed yellow teeth—you can almost smell the rotting meat of children on their breath. The clothes they wear are rags, and their hair is a painted-on mass of tangled snarls.

In Leah’s world, trolls can be hiding anywhere. They live in sewer systems, lurking in tunnels under metal grates. They also work security at the mall. You may not know a troll right away: they are stupid, but tricky with disguises.

“Trolls will eat you alive,” Leah warns, so we’re always on guard. Jonah wears a special necklace Leah made to protect him. She made it when the trolls started invading his dreams, when the nightmares made him scream himself awake. It’s a talisman, powerful magic: a pouch sewn from white cloth with a clear piece of crystal and a dried pink rosebud inside. Trolls hate anything beautiful.

Dahlia nudges aside a book about astral travel and a copy of TV Guide from last year and gently sets the tray down on the bed. Leah mumbles, stirs, sits up slowly. It’s the coffee smell that gets her, and she lifts the purple satin mask up away from her eyes, pushing it up so that it holds her hair back like a headband. Leah smiles sleepily, and we know the dreams have been good.

Leah says she has something to show us, something special, and after breakfast we gather around her as she sits up in her bed like royalty, all her pillows fluffed behind her, a soft and perfect throne. She asks Jonah to get her pocketbook, which he does, and she rummages around for a minute, then pulls out a clump of white tissue paper, which she unfolds to reveal a small ceramic figurine. It’s a dog. A brown dog with a white chest and a foolish smile. He’s standing on his hind legs, upright like a person. He wears blue overalls and carries a stick with a red-checked bandanna tied at the end like a hobo’s.

“Who is this?” asks Dahlia, the only one of us brave enough to speak.

“I don’t know yet,” Leah says, “but he’s coming, I can feel it.”

Leah picked up the dog in the gift area at Penney’s last night after she got the walkie-talkies. She says she walked by the glass shelves with the ceramic figures, and this one called out to her.

“He’s coming,” Leah says, rubbing the dog’s head, touching the bundle he carries over his shoulder.

“Should we name him?” asks Dahlia, forgetting she knows the rules.

“No,” says Leah. “It’s not time. We have to wait for a sign. We have to meet him first.”

“Are you sure he’s a he?” asks Jonah.

“Mmm, yes. I think it’s a he this time. And I think he’s going to change things. There will be more to this dog than meets the eye.”

5

Halloween is a week away, and today we’re making costumes. Dahlia and I are fifteen, too old really to trick-or-treat, but Leah says no one is too old and she has the whole night planned. First, all four of us will hit the rich neighborhoods, using pillowcases for our loot, our pockets stuffed full of toilet paper, soap, and firecrackers. Jonah will bring his wand. When our pillowcases are full, it’s off to the cemetery to have a tea party with the dead, which is an official Wainwright Halloween tradition. We’ll bring a thermos and eat special cookies decorated with skeletons. A cup of tea will get poured out on the ground, and some cookies will be set at the base of tombstones for our dead companions. Leah tells us this is called “leaving libations.” She says the veil between the worlds is thin on All Hallows Eve, and we need to treat the spirits with respect. If we bring them offerings, they’ll be on our side in the year to come.

Last Halloween, I stayed home with my dad watching old monster movies and passing out candy. The year before, Sukie, Troy, Albert, and I went to see Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3-D. We wore those cardboard goggles with red and blue lenses, and Albert tried to explain to me what made 3-D work. Having a tea party with the dead kind of blows my last two Halloweens out of the water. This will be a Halloween to remember.

Leah has the sewing machine going, her foot pumping a steady rhythm on the pedal. She’s sitting at an old wooden table in the living room, a wicker basket beside her overflowing with half-finished projects, crumpled patterns, and mismatched scraps of fabric. She holds a lit cigarette between her lips as she works, and soft gray ashes fall onto the shiny blue fabric.

Leah’s making a wizard hat for Jonah, who is looking over her shoulder expectantly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He doesn’t want to be anything else for Halloween. He’s a wizard every year. Every day, even. And he’s always the same wizard, but this year, he’ll have a blue peaked satin hat with gold stars sewn onto it instead of one made from a cone of stapled poster board.

Dahlia and I are going through all the closets, looking for costumes. The apartment is full of them—grass skirts, silk scarves, gypsy dresses, cowboy hats—there’s even a beekeeper’s suit Leah picked up at a yard sale back in Delaware. The suit is a light cloth like muslin, bright white. There’s a pith helmet covered in a head net and thick leather gloves that still hold stingers, but smell sweet.

“I want to wear this,” I announce, and already Dahlia is helping me into the suit, zipping the front up, adjusting the helmet so that it fits my small head. The netting is like a wedding veil, I think, and it makes me feel farther away from things. Dahlia is standing in front of me adjusting the white suit. Her hands are sure and quick. She passes me the heavy gloves and I put them on; they cover my arms all the way to my elbows. Immediately, my hands are sweating.

“It’s perfect, Maggie!” Dahlia exclaims. “Sylvia Plath was a beekeeper, did you know that?”

Dahlia’s smiling, and I’m staring through the netting at her mouth; her full lips, the way her teeth are like movie-star teeth—they’re that white. She’s all around me now, surrounding me the way she does, fixing the zipper of my thin white coveralls, straightening my veil, and I’m staring at her mouth wondering if that’s where all this sound in my ears is coming from. This pounding buzz, this whirring sound of danger and movement. I hold still, too afraid to move. Afraid, for the first time, of the way Dahlia makes me feel.

Is it my imagination, or are her hands lingering a little longer than necessary at my hips? And did she hear my stifled little intake of air when she reached inside the suit to fix the zipper and the back of her hand brushed across my left breast?

I think I’ll die if she keeps her hands on me much longer, but it will be even worse if she stops.

I bite my lip and make myself concentrate on being as still as the store mannequins at the mall. Dahlia’s hands are all over me like a swarm as she pulls out old stingers, straightens seams, moves my arms this way and that, making me—limping, undeserving, secret-licorice-hating, girl-with-a-dead-mother me—her doll.

“Bring in the bees!” Dahlia shouts, stepping back from me, still buzzing softly, so softly I think I’m the only one who hears it.

The sewing machine stops. Leah looks up. I let myself breathe.

Jonah’s hat has a cone of cardboard inside to make it hold its shape. He puts it on and bounces around, casting spells. The hat shifts, covers his eyes, and he has to keep stopping to push it up.

“Maybe it needs a chin strap,” suggests Leah.

“A real magic hat does not have a chin strap!” Jonah says back, still dancing around the room, bumping into things, shoving the hat back.

“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s perfect!” Then he’s off to his room, where no doubt he’s standing in front of his full-length mirror, the magic looking glass he uses to see into other worlds. Jonah can stare at himself for hours in that mirror, and he claims that if he looks long enough, he sees visions. Last night, he used the mirror to practice using his ring of invisibility, which, he promises us, works very well indeed and will come in handy one day.

Now there’s this huge crisis: Dahlia does not know what to be for Halloween. She’s tried on all the costumes, raided both her closet and Leah’s, torn through the heaps of clothes on Leah’s floor, and still she’s not inspired. Jonah’s back in the living room now, watching his sister carefully, knowing he has to do something before she gets into a mood. He hates it when she’s quiet and sulky, her eyes the color of storm clouds.

“Come with me,” he says, taking her hand. I follow, too, still in my suit, walking like an astronaut, crinkling with each step. Jonah leads Dahlia to his room and puts her in front of the mirror.

“Stay here and hold still,” he instructs. I’m behind her, looking over her shoulder at the both of us in Jonah’s mirror. Jonah shuts the door to his room, runs to the window, and closes the blue plastic slatted blinds. It’s still not dark enough, so he takes a blanket from his bed, stands on a chair, and uses it to cover the window.

“Now look in the mirror and ask what you will be for Halloween. Keep asking the question until the mirror shows you.”

Jonah’s room is pretty dark now, and our reflections in the mirror are just vague outlines.

“What will I be for Halloween?” Dahlia asks. I move closer until I’m right behind her, breathing on her neck through the net that covers my face. She reaches out and takes my hand in its heavy leather glove, gives it a squeeze. I’m staring at us in the mirror, still thinking about the soft shape of Dahlia’s mouth, of the live-wire feeling I got when she accidentally touched my breast. I catch myself and stop. This is Dahlia, not some boy I’m all crushed out on. I take a step back, glaring at my freakish self in the mirror. She doesn’t let go of my hand.

I look like a monster hovering, taller than Dahlia and glowing in my suit. I’m like one of those people sent to clean up radiation spills. Reactor leaks. Chemical calamities. The buzzing in my ears starts again, and I think I may faint. It’s the closeness of Dahlia that does it. It somehow hurts to be this close to her. It’s like being in the thick of a nuclear meltdown and just staring at the beautiful glow, not caring if you’re radiated to death in your stupid white suit.

“Dead Aunt Mary!” Dahlia shouts, dropping my hand as she runs from the room, flinging the door open. Light from the hallway spills in. I turn to Jonah.

“Who’s Aunt Mary?” I ask, sure she must be some crazy, sad relative of theirs I haven’t heard of yet. The only relatives I know of are Dahlia’s and Jonah’s missing fathers and Leah’s sister, Elsbeth, who lives in Ithaca and sends grocery-store gift cards on birthdays and holidays.

Jonah shrugs. “No idea.” And he’s following Dahlia out and into the living room, where Dahlia is explaining the vision to Leah, who is at the machine working on her own costume now. She won’t tell us what she’s going to be, but she’ll wear a dark purple dress, this much we can see.

“She’s not my aunt,” Dahlia gasps, nearly out of breath with excitement, “just somebody’s aunt. Anybody’s aunt. And she died this terrible, gruesome death.”

“Did she kill herself?” Leah asks.

“No,” answers Dahlia. “She was murdered.”

So Dahlia starts to work on her costume, telling us, in bits and pieces as she works, the story of Dead Aunt Mary, which she makes up as she goes along.

“Aunt Mary was an old-maid aunt who had a terrible secret that no one knew.”

“What was the secret?” Jonah asks.

“It was the secret that got her killed,” explains Dahlia as she picks one of Leah’s black dresses to be her Dead Aunt Mary costume. The dress is missing buttons and ripped under the arm. It’s been filed in the mending box, probably for years.

“Aunt Mary was in love once, but it was a forbidden love to a married man.” Dahlia is telling the story as she walks to the bathroom with the dress. She closes the door only halfway so we can still hear her talk while she changes.

“It was her sister’s husband,” Dahlia calls out, her voice as theatrical as she can make it, “and they had an affair. Aunt Mary got knocked up, and her brother-in-law gave her money for an abortion, then she left town. When she returned two years later, her sister and brother-in-law had had a little girl. Aunt Mary was totally resentful of her sister, jealous of the child they got to raise together. Her brother-in-law was in actual pain when he watched his daughter and Aunt Mary play. See, he realized it was Mary he truly loved, not his stupid, kind of ugly wife, and he felt terrible about the child he and Mary had aborted. And Mary’s sister was miserable, too—she was no dummy. She saw the look in her husband’s eyes when he watched Mary and the little girl play.

“So one day, during this we-can’t-go-on-this-way argument between Mary and her brother-in-law, it came out that Aunt Mary didn’t go through with the abortion but went and had the baby, a little boy, and put him up for adoption. Mary threatened to tell her sister the whole story, just to put an end to all the secrets.”

Dahlia comes out of the bathroom, her mother’s black dress fitting perfectly, making her already pale skin seem to glow white. She’s teased her dirty blond hair so that it is all snarls and put black eyeliner on thick beneath her lower lids. Her eyes are a murky gray.

“Did she tell?” Jonah asks.

“Did he kill her?” Leah wants to know.

“No.” Dahlia shakes her head slowly, almost sadly. “Come on, you guys, he was in love with her, remember? He didn’t do it. It was her sister. She overheard the argument and knew the truth. Mary’s sister stabbed her with a kitchen knife.”

Dahlia reaches down and touches her chest, just between her breasts.

“Right here,” she says, pointing to the spot. “I’ll need a knife. And some blood. Fake blood. Lots of it.”

Sometimes when I watch Dahlia, I know she’s the powerful one. She stands in the middle of the living room in her black dress, the center of everything. She has Leah’s gift for storytelling, but there’s this sense of desperation when Dahlia tells things. This crazy urgency. She’ll do and say anything to get your attention, then leave you hanging so that she knows you’ll come back for more. I imagine that one day her powers will far outshine those of her mother and wizard brother. She won’t need dolls to make things happen. She’ll be able to do it with the wave of her hand; it’ll be as easy as putting on thick black eyeliner, as pointing to her chest and saying, Here. The knife should go here.

We have band practice in our costumes. Dahlia makes up a song about Dead Aunt Mary. The chorus goes, “I’ve got a knife in my heart, a knife in my heart, a knife in my heart.” I blow on my clarinet, the bee veil pushed up over the top of my plastic helmet.

We practice almost every day after school now, and I guess I’m getting better.

I dug my old band clarinet out from the back of my closet the day Dahlia asked me to be in her band. I soaked the reed and tried a few scales. It was bad. All I could play were some scales and a few bars from “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “The Pink Panther Theme.”

My dad stuck his head in when he heard me playing. He looked overjoyed.

“Thinking about joining the school band?” he asked.

When I told him this girl at school asked me to be in her band, he practically did a backflip.

“I suck,” I told him. “I can’t remember anything.”

“It’ll come back to you,” he said. “You just have to practice.”

That’s my dad. He always thinks I can do anything if I put my mind to it, but that was BTA Maggie. This Maggie is lucky if she can get herself a bowl of Lucky Charms and make it to the bus stop in time each morning.

So I practiced for a week, then brought my clarinet to Dahlia’s after school and played her some scales, and she was totally impressed. When I asked if there was going to be sheet music for the songs we’d be playing, she laughed.

“We’re doing original compositions,” she said.

“But . . . but I need music,” I told her.

“Just make it up,” she said. Then she took out her notebook and started reading this poem she wrote about how people were just like jigsaw puzzles. She told me to play along. So I played as quietly as I could while she read. I tried to improvise, but my fingers kept going back to the music I knew.

She closed the notebook and scowled. “You’re playing marching band music.”

“I can’t help it,” I told her.

“You’ll get better,” she said. “You just need to loosen up a little. Try to forget everything you once knew.”

So that’s been my goal these past weeks: to try to forget everything and start from scratch. Not just with the music, but with my whole life.

Now I play along the way a snake charmer does. Sometimes Dahlia sings, sometimes she reads poetry in this dramatic voice. Sometimes she just dances with her eyes closed and says whatever words pop into her head. I watch and I listen, and I try not to screw up too bad. But now it seems like I’ve blown it, because Dahlia has thrown up her hands and screamed, “Cut!” which is what she always says when she means stop playing, like she’s a movie director, not the lead singer of a band.

“Oh, LaSamba,” she says. “I’ve got it! I know what we need. What’s been missing all along.” She’s chewing on her lip like she does when she’s got one of her big ideas.

“A guitarist,” she says, dreamily fingering her teased Dead Aunt Mary hair. “Then we’ll be a real band.”

6

We’re eating reheated pizza in our lemon yellow kitchen, and I’m shaking my good leg, the ball of my foot resting on the floor, my heel thumping on the bright checked linoleum. It drives my father crazy when I do this, but I can’t seem to stop. I’m all twitchy, the way I imagine drug addicts get when they need a fix. Being home does this to me. My dad has taken his contacts out and is wearing his black-framed, Buddy Holly glasses with thick lenses. The contacts were my mother’s idea. She said they made him look younger. He only wears the contacts to work now, and puts on the glasses as soon as he gets home. The Coke-bottle lenses have this unfortunate way of magnifying his eyes, which are always red and runny from allergies. I feel obligated to do whatever I can to make him smile. I picture his face on a poster somewhere: HOWARD KELLER: SADDEST MAN ALIVE.

My dad is so excited that I’m here, that we’re actually having pizza night at last, that he’s hardly eaten a thing. He burned the pizza by accidentally turning the oven to broil. Then he set the oven mitt on fire.

My dad is dressed in his weekend outfit: clean blue jeans and a freshly pressed yellow oxford shirt. He wears running shoes, really expensive ones, even though he gave up running years ago when he blew out his knee.

He stares into his yellow-and-white-checked coffee mug filled with Diet Pepsi. Everything in our kitchen matches, even my father in his carefully ironed shirt.

“How’s school, Mags?”

“Fine.”

“Seen much of Sukie and Albert?”

I cringe. “Uh, yeah. In the halls and stuff. We say hello.”

“You should ask them over sometime,” he says.

“Maybe,” I tell him, but actually I’m thinking, When hell freezes over. I know he’s bummed about not seeing them anymore, which is weird because they were my friends, not his.

“You given any more thought to Cedar Brook?” my dad asks.

“Nope.”

I can’t believe he’s still bugging me about switching schools. I mean, I know he was disappointed when I told him I just wanted to go to a normal school, that I wasn’t going to be the drama-star girl anymore, but that was over a year ago. Time to get over it.

“I’m happy at Sutterville High,” I say. The truth is, I’m not. But now, Sutterville High is where Dahlia is, so I can’t imagine going anywhere else.

“How’s the band going?”

“Okay. Dahlia says we need a guitarist.”

He nods. “I’d like to hear you guys play sometime,” he says.

I cringe a little. I don’t know which part worries me more: him actually hearing us, or introducing him to Dahlia.

“Sure,” I say. “Sometime. When we’re a little better.”

“Hey, I got you something.” He gets up and practically runs out of the kitchen. When he comes back, he’s holding this big paper bag and is just beaming. “A present,” he says, handing it over to me, “from an old musician to a new one.”

See, my dad used to play piano. Howard Keller: sales manager by day, jazz musician by night, hammering out Cole Porter kind of stuff. He’s still got his piano set up in the living room, but I don’t know why. He hasn’t touched it since my mom died. Sometimes she’d sing along. Sometimes we all would. Just picture it: me singing “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “Anything Goes.” When I look back on my old life it’s like watching a movie starring some other girl.

I look in the bag. Two CDs, one by a guy named Artie Shaw, the other by Benny Goodman. Jazz. Big-band stuff.

“Thanks,” I say, trying to conceal my disappointment with a smile. My dad knows I hate jazz. Why couldn’t he have picked out a Rolling Stones or Doors CD? It’s not like I haven’t told him about all the cool old music I’ve been listening to at Dahlia’s. The fact that he tries so hard and still gets it wrong makes my stomach hurt.

“These guys are masters of the clarinet,” my dad explains. “Just give them a listen. I thought they might inspire you.”

“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.”

Now he looks disappointed.

“Really,” I say. “Thanks.” I manage a bigger, brighter BTA Maggie Keller smile.

He shuffles his feet, pours himself another cup of soda.

“So how’s the leg?” he asks, clearly relieved to be changing the subject. “Have you been doing your exercises?”

“It’s fine. Yeah, I do them every night.”

Of course my leg is killing me lately, and I haven’t done my exercises in like a month—but it’s not like I’m actually going to tell him this.

I watch my father pull a piece of pepperoni off his slice of pizza and pop it into his mouth, chewing slowly and carefully. A string of cheese is hanging off his stubbled chin, and just now, he seems more like a nervous little boy than somebody’s dad.

When I really think about it, there’s a lot that’s wrong between my dad and me—things that all the pizza nights in the world could never fix. First off, there’s the fact that I feel like I have to lie to him to keep the peace. And then there’s the big unspoken problem. The famous elephant in the room.

The little fact that I killed his wife.

My mother and I were on our way to The Wizard of Oz dress rehearsal in the junior high auditorium—we were already late. There I was, in my stiff blue-and-white-checked farm dress, my hair braided in pigtails, when I called out in a very un-Dorothy-like way, “Oh shit!”

“What is it?” my mother asked.

“Toto! I forgot Toto!”

And she did a U-turn in the middle of the intersection, not seeing the truck coming at us from the left. Then everything went black and poof! I woke up in Oz for real.

My dad would never come right out and say I killed her, see, but I know he thinks it. He thinks it and feels guilty for thinking it. For blaming me. He tells me he loves me, but really, what he wants to say, the words I see hovering in the air above him like a cartoon bubble, is We had it so good, Maggie. I was happy, you were normal, we all loved each other. But you had to forget that goddamned dog. And now look at us. Just look at what you did.

It’s there above us as we eat our pizza with extra pepperoni, sip our Diet Pepsis while I make up lies about how great school is, how excited I am about my new jazz CDs. I tell him Dahlia is not only the best singer-songwriter out there, but also a straight A student. That her mother is a gourmet cook and when I go over, we spend all our time playing great music and studying while her mother cooks fancy dishes with French names and that they’re the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted. After his head is full, and he’s convinced that things are A-OK with his murdering Magster, I am excused from the table to my room, leaving him to do the dishes, then turn on one of the gritty cop dramas he loves. The programs where life is cut-and-dried. There’s a good guy and a bad guy. The murderers always get caught. Justice triumphs. End of story.

Back in the safety of my room, I put on headphones and pop in the Doors CD Dahlia lent me. I’m listening to “People Are Strange,” with the volume cranked up to 10.

I close my eyes and picture Dahlia’s face and I’m almost happy again. I’m almost able to forget that I killed my mother with a simple mistake.

What would I be doing if I was at Dahlia’s now instead of trapped here in my dumb room full of relics from some other girl’s life? Working on the new Dead Aunt Mary song, probably. We’d be Tiki and LaSamba and nothing else would matter.

Dahlia’s never come over, so thankfully she’s never seen the pink quilt and matching ruffled curtains. The unicorn poster I’ve had since I was ten. The bottle full of layers of colored sand I made at the fair with Sukie, who made a matching bottle using the exact same colors. The ridiculous clown lamp with a red nose and happy painted smile, not at all like the sad LaSamba clown who I now understand myself to be.

There, beside the lamp, is a photo of my mother in a gold frame. Even here, on my bed with my eyes closed, I can feel her smiling out at me, all radiant and perfect in her best summer dress. Her skin bronze from the beach, a necklace of shells dangling just below her collarbone. She’s smiling, saying I’m her best girl, her beautiful swan, and all the while those laughing eyes are asking, Why did you have to forget the dog?

When I get tired of The Doors, I thumb through my other CDs, my BTA collection: pictures of pretty boys on the covers, girls who sing bubblegum songs about feelings they’ve probably never felt. I’m not in the mood for any of these, so I take out the Artie Shaw CD and play the first song, “Nightmare.” I slide the headphones back on.

It’s not what I expected at all. The music is sultry and brooding. Kind of eerie. And damn, the guy can play. I can hardly believe he’s playing the same instrument as me. He makes the clarinet cry out and wail. It whispers warnings, then takes you straight into a carnival funhouse where nothing is what it seems. There’s a beat like the footsteps of a giant behind him. I turn it up and close my eyes. Just when I think he’s winding down, the music builds again. Cymbals crash. Horns join in. The giant gets closer. I’m moving my fingers, nodding my head, floating up on some cloud of notes hanging in the air. I don’t even feel the bed beneath me. I’m not in my room anymore. There’s no box of cards a dead woman painted underneath me. There’s no pain pulsating in my ruined leg, reminding me of all that I’ve lost. Before I know it, the song is over, and I’m hitting the button to play it again. I listen to it eight times, then pull off the headphones and move like a sleep-walker into the living room, where my dad is on the couch with a bowl of peanuts.

“I listened to ‘Nightmare,’ ” I tell him as I collapse on the couch beside him. One of his cop dramas is blaring on the TV.

“I told you it was good stuff,” he says, smiling, passing me a handful of peanuts.

“Way good,” I tell him.

I don’t know what else to say, or how to put into words how the music made me feel, so I just sit here, cracking open peanut shells with my dad, both of us smiling like we’ve just won the lottery.

But like I could have predicted, the moment doesn’t last.

On the TV, a car chase ends in a crash—tires squeal, the windshield shatters. My entire body goes rigid. My father clears his throat, switches channels, then lifts his glasses and rubs his watery red eyes. I let the rest of the peanuts he gave me fall back into the bowl.

Just like that, I’m murdering Magster again.

7

Dahlia made flyers to put up at school today. GUITARIST WANTED, they say. ECLECTIC PLAYER AND POETRY LOVER. BIG EGOS NEED NOT APPLY.

Dahlia’s got on the Dead Aunt Mary dress, with the big rips safety-pinned together, and I’m trying not to notice the way her breasts practically burst through.

We’re taping one of the flyers up outside the band room when Sukie Schwartz comes over with her perpetual sidekick, Heather Tomasi.

Sukie and Heather are almost identical. They both have fluffy blond hair. They’re the same height. They wear the same clothes, right down to their bright white sneakers with pink laces. The only difference is that Heather has braces, which she doesn’t seem self-conscious about at all. You can tell by the way she smiles this glinting metal grin, like she’s proud of all the hardware in there.

It’s weird to think that back in junior high, Heather was a quiet, bookish girl with flat hair, old-lady glasses, and buck-teeth. She was someone Sukie and I used to make fun of. We called her Granny Gopher. Not to her face or anything, but behind her back. Then she showed up at the beginning of ninth grade with braces, contacts, and a spiffy new wardrobe. Somehow or other over the course of freshman year, Granny Gopher turned herself into a princess who just happens, by some strange coincidence, to be Sukie’s clone. As I pulled away from Sukie, Heather saw her chance and moved in, taking my place as Sukie’s new, improved best friend.

I read once in a magazine that in every relationship one person always has more power. They were talking about guy/ girl relationships, but I think it works for friends, too. When I was best friends with Sukie, I was the one with more power. I didn’t know it then, never thought about it, but I see now that I could always talk her into doing whatever I wanted. She would pout and sometimes throw a hissy fit, but I always got my way. Like when I wanted her to audition for the play back in eighth grade, she dragged her heels and only went with me when I told her that if she didn’t get a part, I wouldn’t see her until after Thanksgiving because I’d be too busy with rehearsals.

It must be kind of nice for her now to have clone-girl by her side, ready to follow any order with obvious pleasure. But the thing is, Sukie sucks at giving orders. So Heather just makes her think she’s the one calling the shots, to give her this illusion of being in control and actually thinking for herself. It’s kind of creepy to watch. Like if they’re talking about going to the movies, Heather will say something like, “Didn’t you want to see that new Tom Cruise movie?” and Sukie will go along with it, like it was her idea to begin with, when the truth is (and I know this for a fact) Sukie couldn’t care less about Tom Cruise and would much rather choose the cheesy romantic comedy playing next door.

“Hey, Maggie,” Sukie says, nodding hello.

She reads the flyer, then turns to Dahlia, her eyes moving from Dahlia’s face to her dress with the safety pins.

“So you’re starting a band?” Sukie’s expression looks pained. She so doesn’t approve of Dahlia. She tells me whenever she catches me alone in the halls. The other day, she said, “You know, Maggie, I’m a little worried you’re falling in with the wrong crowd.”

“I have one new friend,” I told her. “It’s not exactly a bad-girl posse.”

“Why don’t you stay inside for lunch today? Come and sit with me and Heather,” she said.

“Thanks anyway, but I’m meeting Dahlia. We’ve got stuff to do.”

I was too polite to say what I was really thinking, which was that I’d rather eat ground glass than sit at a table with her and Heather. I mean, Heather obviously despises me. And Sukie has no clue who I am anymore. No clue at all.

“Nice dress,” Heather says to Dahlia.

Then Dahlia does this killer thing. She looks up, right into Heather’s eyes, and smiles real big—a warm, genuine, all’s-well-with-the-world smile. “Thanks,” she says. “I’d offer to let you borrow it, but I’m afraid it would be a little too baggy in the chest. Don’t you hate it that all the really sexy stuff is made for girls with tits? It must be hard to find stuff with your figure.”

I see Heather’s chin quiver and she opens her mouth to say something, but no words come out. It’s not like she’s totally flat-chested, but compared to Dahlia, she doesn’t have much going on in the tits department. Sukie puts her hand on Heather’s arm to lead her away. I am so proud of Dahlia I could kiss her. Seriously. I imagine it for a second, my lips touching hers while Sukie and Heather look on, Sukie finally getting a clue and giving up on saving me once and for all.

Shop class is horrible, but it’s one of those things they make you take before you can graduate. It’s taught by this hulking man with a last name so complicated, no one can say it, so everyone just calls him Mr. G. You have to wear these dumb plastic goggles and earplugs. You run big machines like the table saw and drill press, and the whole while you’re sure you’re not going to make it to your next class with all your fingers attached.

I’m making a letter holder for my dad. It hangs on the wall and has five slots to sort your mail. Mine looks nothing like the carefully drawn plan Mr. G handed me. It’s lopsided and the slots don’t line up. A carpenter I am not.

Heather Tomasi is in Shop with me. She’s making the same letter holder as me, only hers is perfect. It’s not perfect because she’s a great woodworker, but because she knows how to bat her eyelashes and wiggle her butt. She might have been Granny Gopher back in junior high, but now she’s got the look and the moves down. Last year, when she started hanging around with Sukie, I thought she was just this total ditz who couldn’t think for herself. Now I see she’s way smarter than that and she knows just what she’s doing. She’s got the guys in Shop doing the work for her, and Mr. G doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he’s helped her himself several times. The other girls contribute by oohing and aahing about what an awesome job she’s doing—and where did she get that cute purse?

Seems that everyone in the class is falling all over themselves to help Heather and her metal mouth. Everyone but me and the kid in the corner, that is.

The kid in the corner is already at work every morning as we file in when the bell rings. When it rings again and we all put away our goggles and earplugs, he just keeps working. Mr. G never talks to him—in fact, he doesn’t even pass by that corner of the room when he makes his rounds. I’ve been watching this kid for weeks. He looks older, probably a senior. He’s taller than Mr. G, but not as chunky. He’s got muscles, though. I can see them under the too-tight shoulders of his faded flannel shirts.

The kids in the class don’t pay much attention to him. I’ve heard them call him a retard a couple times, but the boy doesn’t look up from his work.

His clothes are rumpled, and he wears the same heavy work boots with worn red laces every day along with a wool watch cap that he never takes off. But the most striking thing about this kid is the scar. He has a thick, raised red scar that seems to divide his face in two. It starts someplace under his cap, crosses his forehead, goes down over the bridge of his nose and over his left cheek, then to his chin, which is covered by this thin, wispy wannabe beard.

He just sits there quietly tapping away with a mallet and chisels. He’s dragged a three-foot-long piece of hollow log in and is carving designs in it. Only they’re not just designs. They’re animals. Dogs and roosters and snakes, all with these crazed happy faces, and they’re all dancing, or flying. I can’t describe it, really. It’s like they’re leaping out of the wood, happy as hell because this boy found them trapped in there and is setting them free.

I know about the animals because today I looked. I actually walked over and bent down to see.

“It’s beautiful,” I told the boy. He didn’t look up. He smelled like wood smoke and autumn leaves.

A couple of guys over at the belt sander snickered.

“Hey, check it out, Joey’s got a girlfriend,” they said. Then Heather looked over and giggled.

Mr. G said, “Get back to your project, dear,” which is what he calls all the girls. I don’t think he knows our names. The boys are all son.

So now here I am, back putting clamps on my crooked letter holder, thinking about those happy animals, and before I know it I’m not only smiling but whistling this quiet little tune while I work. I stop when I realize that it’s “Over the Rainbow,” and I must not actually have been all that quiet because it seems like half the class is looking at me. So I do what any mentally unbalanced person taking pharmaceuticals would: I stick out my tongue and blow them all a big, wet raspberry.

Dahlia and I are out on the soccer field when we see Troy Farnham coming toward us. Great. One of my all-time least favorite people. Just what I need.

Dahlia’s got her tiny pair of scissors out and is engaged in one of her favorite pastimes: making paper dolls.

She has Day-Glo orange paper folded accordion-style and is snipping away, a clove cigarette dangling from her lips.

“Hey, Dahlia!” he shouts.

“You’re kidding,” says Dahlia, barely looking up. “Here we go again.”

Troy keeps pestering Dahlia to go out with him and she keeps brushing him off. The guy just won’t take no for an answer. His interest in Dahlia is one of the reasons Sukie hates her so much. Troy dumped Sukie last year, and she’s been trying to get back with him ever since. She’s been showering him with gifts, including this sort of dangerous-looking necklace with real shark’s teeth on it. The sleazy thing is that Troy accepted the necklace and actually wears it. I feel bad for Sukie when I see the way she looks at him in the necklace, all proud and hopeful, like she’s sure they’re on the road to getting back together. Meanwhile, Troy is bird-dogging the new girl. It makes me kind of homicidal, if you want to know the truth.

I never approved of Sukie going out with Troy, but it was the one thing there was no talking her out of. It’s just too ironic that I’m the one who brought them together back when she and I were still in eighth grade.

I’d heard about a keg party from Simon, who played the Cowardly Lion. Sukie and I weren’t really the types to go running off to a keg party, but Simon pointed out that a lot of kids from Cedar Brook would be there, as well as kids from Sutterville High, so it would give us a taste of what we were up for next fall.

“Besides,” Simon pointed out, “no one has to know we’re eighth graders. That’s the cool thing about huge parties where you don’t know anyone. You can be anyone you want for a night.”

This was how I talked Sukie into it.

“Think Cinderella,” I said.

And so Sukie agreed, put on a tight black dress, and poof!—she met the guy of her dreams.

They flirted from across the room half the night, until finally he came sauntering over in his blue and white football jacket, drunk and superconfident in that way only Troy Farnham can be, and said to her, “Where have you been all my life?”

I laughed out loud, but Sukie batted her eyelashes, giggled. He was smitten. She neglected to mention that she was only an eighth grader, and by the time I saw fit to bring it up in a desperate attempt to head him off at the pass, it was too late. They were already making plans for dinner and a movie the following night.

“Earth to Sukie,” I said. “We are going to the auditorium to work on sets with my mom tomorrow night.”

“You guys will do fine without me,” she said as she came up for air after a marathon make-out session. “Besides, you know I’m no Matisse.”

By Monday, everyone in junior high knew Sukie was dating a hunky high school sophomore. And just like that, he became her whole world, leaving me in the dust. It was Troy this and Troy that whenever we talked, and she couldn’t even put on a pair of shoes without wondering what Troy would think.

The whole reason I started going out with Albert was because he was Troy’s best friend and I was tired of being left at home while Sukie ran around with her new beau every waking moment.

Troy Farnham is now the most eligible bachelor at Sutterville High. He’s not only gorgeous in that sculpted Greek god kind of way, but he’s also on the football team, the Rams, and to hear the other kids talk, he’s the star—which is no surprise, really, because Troy is one of those sickening kids who is the best at whatever he does.

He’s trotting over to us, holding a piece of paper in his hand, smiling real big.

“If you’re here to ask me out again, don’t waste your breath, Farnham,” Dahlia says. She’s still snipping away at the orange dolls-to-be, barely acknowledging his presence.

I can’t help but smile. Then I look at the paper in his hand and my jaw goes rigid. It’s one of Dahlia’s flyers.

“It just so happens I’m a kick-ass guitarist,” Troy says. He pushes his long, curly hair back away from his forehead.

I forgot he played the guitar. That was one of the many things Sukie found supersexy. She had this eight-by-ten picture of him and his shiny red guitar on the wall of her room, and I’ve got to admit that in the picture, he looked like someone famous. Like Sukie’s boyfriend was someone you’d seen on MTV or the cover of Rolling Stone.

“Bull,” Dahlia says. “You’re just looking for a new way to get in my pants.”

“No, no, really. I’m good. I’ve been playing since I was like ten or something. Ask Maggie. She’s heard me play. I’m good, right?”

I shrug. “I guess,” I say. I remember the way he closed his eyes when he played, how the shiny guitar hanging from the strap around his neck made him look like a rock star. When you’re Troy Farnham, everything is just an accessory to show how perfect you are. Now, for some reason, he wants Dahlia to be his newest flashy trinket.

“Well, no way,” Dahlia says. “The band is going to take up a lot of time, and last I knew, you were at football practice almost every afternoon.”

“I’ll quit,” he says.

“What?” She seems genuinely shocked and looks up, the scissors still in her hand.

I’m a little shocked, too. If he’s willing to stop playing football, then he’s got it worse for her than I imagined. The stupid team is all he ever talks about.

“Truly. I’ll quit the team if I have to. I’ve been thinking about what you said. How football is for fascist animals. Anyway, I’ve been thinking you might be right.”

Right. Like Troy even knows what fascist means. And when did they have this big discussion anyway?

“I don’t believe you,” Dahlia says.

“Truly. And you’ve gotta hear me play. I’ll blow your mind.”

“I doubt that, Farnham.”

Troy Farnham is all muscles, and he reminds me of a weird curly-haired bulldog, looking all pouty with his lower lip pushed out, his voice muffled and wet.

“I’m a poetry lover,” he tells her.

“Yeah, right,” Dahlia says.

Then he clears his throat and recites a few lines.

Dahlia snorts. “That’s pretty good. ‘Poppies in July.’ One of my favorites. But you knew that, didn’t you? You did your homework, Farnham, I’ll give you that. Since you’re such a fan, name five other Sylvia Plath poems.”

Troy’s olive-skinned face reddens a little.

“I thought so,” Dahlia says. “Now get lost.”

Troy shoves his hands into the pockets of his blue and white jacket and walks away, defeated.

“Pathetic,” says Dahlia as she watches him, but she’s smiling a little, like maybe his desperate attempt got to her somehow.

I find myself wanting to wad up his stupid football jacket and shove it down his throat.

Okay, I admit it: I’m jealous and I don’t do jealousy well.

Dahlia puts the tiny scissors away and unfolds the orange paper, revealing four skinny girls playing clarinets. “For you, LaSamba,” she says, handing me the paper.

“They’re me!” I say, delighted. “Oh, Tiki, they’re perfect!” I feel the jealousy slipping away, and I’m as warm and bright as my Day-Glo dolls.

As we walk back into the school, we meet up with Sukie and Heather.

“How’s your new boyfriend?” Heather asks.

Dahlia looks at me, raises her eyebrows. I say nothing.

“You and Joey are quite a pair. You know, they say there’s someone for everyone, and I’m thinking maybe that’s true after all.” She gives this sad attempt at a Sukie snicker.

“Seriously, though,” Sukie says, reaching out to touch my arm in this over-the-top concerned-friend kind of way that she picked up from watching Lifetime movies, “he’s a mess, Mags.”

I cringe a little to hear her call me this. Especially in front of Dahlia, who has no idea who I used to be.

“I heard he used to be totally normal,” Heather pipes up. “When he was like eight, he was in this car wreck. His mom died. His sister ended up in a wheelchair. And Joey went through the windshield and totally screwed up his brain.” She giggles a bit, glances at Sukie for approval, but Sukie is looking at her like, Would you shut up already? Heather realizes her faux pas, but too late—she giggles some more, really nervous now. “Uh, anyway, he’s kind of wacko. I’d, um, stay away from him if I were you.”

“Wow, thanks for the tip, Heather,” I say, just dripping fake sincerity. “I totally appreciate your input.” Heather reddens a bit, which thrills me no end, but my heart is still hiccupping —car accident; his mother died. I know I have to talk to Joey.

“See ya later, rock stars,” Heather says. She winks before following Sukie off down the hall.

“Joey, huh?” Dahlia says once they’re out of earshot, making my face burn.

“He’s just a kid in Shop class,” I say, my voice coming out more defensive than I meant. “He has a scar.”

“Whatever you say, Mags,” Dahlia says with a sly smile.

8

My dad and I are in the living room eating dinner on wooden TV trays pulled up in front of the couch. Big bowls of beef stew are steaming in front of us, and the evening news is on. They dump all this really depressing stuff on you about wars and genocide and corrupt politicians, then, at the end, they do this cutesy little human interest story that’s supposed to make the world seem okay again.

Tonight it’s about this girl my age who is walking across the country to raise money for the homeless. Her dad is walking with her, and they’re already halfway across. The girl says that you can’t think about the whole journey—you have to go day by day, step by step. She’s says God gives her the strength to keep on going.

“Well, how about that?” my father says, clearly moved by this girl’s dedication.

“Whatever,” I say, trying to sound unimpressed, but the truth is, I have this big rotting lump in my stomach because I feel like a complete loser. This girl is doing something important, something great. Something no one (except God maybe, if you believe that) told her to do. And me, I can barely get myself out of bed in the morning.

I wish I could tell my dad all this. I want to open my mouth and tell him everything I long for, right now at this moment: to do something great; to make some kind of difference in this sorry-ass world. But the thing I long for most is to turn back time to the night of the accident, only this time around, I’d remember the dog.

And while we’re on the subject of longing (and since this is a total fantasy), I’d also tell him the truth about my best friend, Dahlia Wainwright. How she’s invaded my every thought; how little pieces of her have made their way into each cell of my body like some crazy disease, leaving me achy and feverish. I’d tell him about the way I catch myself staring at her mouth, wondering what her lipstick would taste like.

But I can’t say that, can I? So I’ll play it safe and stick to music, which is pretty much all my dad and I talk about these days.

I’ve been asking him all about Artie Shaw, about jazz. My dad has kind of an encyclopedic mind when it comes to jazz, and he’s been telling me all about Shaw’s career. Last night he told me Artie Shaw played with Billie Holiday, and they toured together throughout the South. Today at school Dahlia said she’d never heard Billie Holiday, and when I described her voice, said that she had died of a heroin overdose, Dahlia begged me to bring one of my dad’s CDs over. Who’d have thought I’d be borrowing my dad’s music?

Tonight he’s explaining improvisation.

“It’s all about letting go,” he says. “Letting the music take over, just flow through you.”

“I’ll never learn how,” I tell him.

“It’s not something you can learn,” he says. “It’s something you feel. Like falling in love.” He smiles at me, his eyes watery behind the thick glasses.

My face burns a little.

“Go get your clarinet,” he says.

I push aside the TV tray, go to my room, and when I come back, my dad is sitting at the piano. He stares at the keys a minute, blinks real hard like he can’t make sense of what he’s seeing, then puts his fingers down and starts to play.

My dad is actually playing the piano, and I’m so startled, I forget all about Dahlia and how freaked out I am about the way she makes me feel. I even forget the accident. I watch as my father’s whole body changes. He looks loose, like a puppet man. He’s playing “I Got Rhythm,” and he nods at me to join him. I lick my lips, pick up the clarinet, and start to play. It’s like that girl on TV said, you can’t think about the whole journey. I’m just going step by step, note by note. I’m following along the best I can, and my dad’s hammering at the piano, shouting, “That’s it, let it flow, Mags! Let the music take over!” And I relax a little until the music really is just pouring out of me. I’ve got magic fingers. I feel like I’ve just heard a secret that someone promised never to tell, and when I look over at my dad, he’s smiling like he’s heard it, too.

9

Dahlia Wainwright is my best friend and will be forever. The tea leaves told her so. Dahlia and I brew pots of green tea that Leah buys at an Asian market in West Hartford. We drink the tea in cracked thrift-store cups and when we’re through, Dahlia reads the leaves left on the bottom.

Leah keeps a shelf in one of the kitchen cupboards full of loose teas and jars stuffed with Chinese herbs: roots and powders that are supposed to give you strength, stamina, and vitality.

“What’s my fortune today?” I ask Dahlia, pushing my cup her way across the table in her kitchen.

It’s the day before Halloween, and Dahlia and I are sitting at her kitchen table with the teacups and a bag of licorice allsorts. The GUITARIST WANTED flyers have been up all week, and if anyone other than Troy has approached her about joining our band, she hasn’t mentioned it. This afternoon we’re supposed to be working on our science project, but she’s reading our fortunes instead. She’s wearing a hippie skirt covered with elephants over a black bodysuit. Strands of straw-colored hair have fallen out of her ponytail and down over her forehead and eyes. She’s so beautiful, so perfect right now, that I could scream. She pushes the pieces of hair back, tucks them behind her ears, and takes my cup in both hands, holds it like it’s extra-fragile. It’s thin beige china with a delicate ring of blood-colored roses. None of the teacups in the Wainwrights’ cupboard match. Each cup abandoned, the one remaining piece of a set whose mates broke long ago. Salvation Army teacups: wedding gift china; cups from the attics of dead grandmothers; cups rescued, pulled dusty and forgotten from the backs of pantries.

“You will fall in love, LaSamba,” Dahlia says, her blue-gray eyes narrowing, then growing wide as she searches the bottom of my cup for the future.

My heart drops into my stomach like a cannonball.

Shit, I think, looking away from her face, down at the elephants marching in perfect lines across her skirt.

I think I already have.

It’s not like this is the first time I’ve considered the possibility, but hearing it out loud, I realize it’s true. For weeks the idea of being in love with Dahlia has been there like a toothache I’ve been trying to ignore.

A girl. I’ve fallen in love with a girl.

This is not the way it was supposed to be. I mean, this is not the big moment I’ve been waiting for all my life, the one all the magazines, books, and movies prepared me for. This is not some cute boy who is going to offer me his class ring and take me to the prom. This is a girl. And not just any girl, but dark, intense, freaky outcast poet girl Dahlia Wainwright.

I’m officially panicking now, because it seems pretty much for sure that I, Frankenstein girl, have gone and turned queer, which is the second-biggest shock of my life next to waking up in the hospital and being told about my mother. And now, just when I think things couldn’t get much worse, my face has turned beet red, and Dahlia is looking up from the cup and smiling like maybe she already knows.

Dahlia and I have only one class together, Earth Science with Mr. Knapp, who wears tight polyester suits, his small head appearing to sit right on top of shoulders sprinkled with dandruff. He has chronic bad breath and a white film that sticks to his lips and gathers at the corners of his mouth when he talks. No-Neck Knapp, Dahlia calls him, but I feel sorry for the guy. It’s the only class I ever raise my hand in.

For the most part, I’m in the classes with the smart kids. Dahlia takes the easy classes, but not because she’s dumb. I mean, she reads Sylvia Plath and Carl Jung for fun. She’s smarter than I am. Anyone who knows anything can see that, but she just doesn’t try. She’s got her mind on other things, bigger things than algebra and sophomore English. She’s writing songs, memorizing poems. She doesn’t believe in putting time into homework. She does hers on the bus on the way to school and hands in pages of incomplete problems, essays consisting of only one or two paragraphs, the margins full of scribbled lines of poetry.

Meanwhile, there I am like a sucker diligently doing my homework at our yellow kitchen table every night while my dad watches his cop shows. Some nights, if I’m at Dahlia’s late, I’m up until midnight working on it. Sometimes I wish I could be like Dahlia and care less about grades because, to tell you the truth, it’s kind of exhausting to try to keep up with homework, Dahlia, and the band.

In Earth Science, we’re studying rocks and minerals. Dahlia and I are lab partners, so we’re doing this rock project together. We have to collect specimens, mount them on a sheet of cardboard, and carefully label each one. After school, we go for walks to find the rocks. Dahlia picks up anything she thinks is pretty. I go for variety. I know we can’t hand in a collection of all quartz and mica.

Dahlia says the stones I choose are ugly—chunks of granite, smooth feldspar. I tell her what the rocks are when I hold them in the air in front of her, small offerings. Igneous. Sedimentary. Metamorphic. She says I’m a show-off. A suck-up to No-Neck Knapp. Last week, I caught her writing Maggie loves No-Neck on the desk. It was in pencil, so I erased it before anyone saw.

Jonah knows about rocks. He collects them, too, offers us some of his best specimens. He says that different rocks have powers, like the quartz crystal he wears to protect him from trolls. Jonah spends a lot of time collecting, and it’s not just rocks he finds, but oddly shaped sticks, tufts of moss, giant hard fungus pried off dead trees, puffball mushrooms that make clouds of smoke like atom bombs if you step on them. He’s gone for hours after school and comes home just in time for supper with his black knapsack loaded with finds—old railroad spikes, pieces of broken reflector, corroded pennies, the skull of a squirrel. Each of these objects has powers, and he lines them up carefully on his bookshelves. His room is like a museum.

Jonah’s out on one of his excursions now, and Leah is in bed. It’s one of her sick days where she spends the whole time either in bed or on the couch with the TV on. We have to be quiet so she can rest. We want her to gather her energy so she’ll be well enough to go trick-or-treating with us tomorrow.

Dahlia and I are at the table in the kitchen. Between us are rocks, cardboard, and glue. Our half-finished mounted collection has a teapot resting on it, making a circular water stain just below the row of metamorphic rocks. It’s due tomorrow, and I’m thinking there’s no way we’ll get it done. I’ve never handed in anything late in my life, never got a grade below a B, so the idea of a big red Incomplete is stressing me out.

“So, we’re going to Troy’s Saturday,” Dahlia says matter-of-factly as she pours herself another cup of tea.

“What? Why?”

He got to her, I think. Maybe I should memorize some Sylvia Plath poem if that’s all it takes.

“To hear him play. See if he’s any good.”

“But you said there was no way. You said he was pathetic.” I’m practically whining now.

“I know. But there are other factors.”

“Like what?”

“Like that he’s got a basement to practice in. He’s got amps and microphones. And, best of all, he knows the manager at Terrapins. They have all-ages shows, the battle of the bands, all that. If we get good enough, this guy can get us gigs there.”

I don’t like this. I don’t want gorgeous, hotshot Troy Farnham ruining our band. Mostly, I don’t want him stealing Dahlia away from me like he once stole Sukie, but that wasn’t the same at all—I wasn’t in love with Sukie.

I’m about to object to Troy, to remind Dahlia what a poser he is, when we hear the front door open, and Jonah comes flying in, his knapsack making a thud as it hits the living room floor. He tears around the corner into the kitchen without slowing.

“I’ve discovered something,” Jonah blurts out, his voice all wheezy, like he’s been running for miles.

“What is it?” Dahlia asks, setting down her cup of soggy leaves.

“A cave,” he says in a whisper, his eyes huge. “The cave of the String Man.”

“What do you mean?” Dahlia asks.

“I’ll take you. You have got to see this, Tiki. We have to hurry before it gets dark.”

“This better be good.” Dahlia eyes Jonah as she rises from the table, but I can see she’s happy to leave the rock project behind.

“What about the rocks?” I ask.

“They’re rocks, LaSamba,” she says like I’m the biggest idiot on earth. “It’s not like they’re going anywhere.”

10

Dahlia and I follow Jonah across town. We take Canal Street to South Street, then go right on Main, where we walk past Ferraro’s Market, the 5 & 10, and Lucky’s House of Spirits, where an old man with one arm sells booze. Jonah leads us down the sidewalk, and he’s waving his wand in the air like he’s conducting all the action on the street: the women stopping for groceries on the way home, the dog sniffing the potted chrysanthemums in front of the 5 & 10, one-armed Lucky staring out the plate-glass window and seeming to give Dahlia a quick wink.

We pass by Tip of the Cone, and I see Sukie and Heather sitting at a table inside. My first thought is God, please don’t let them see us. My second is that I know exactly what Sukie’s having: a caramel sundae with French vanilla ice cream and no nuts. It’s what she always gets. But when I chance a second glance through the window, I see I’m wrong. Milk shakes. They’re each drinking a milk shake—something Sukie would never even think of ordering.

We cross Main Street without being spotted and go through Atkins Memorial Park, which is really just some scraggly flowers planted around a peeling white gazebo—a pretty pitiful gesture for poor old Mr. Atkins, whoever he was. On the other side of the park is School Street, and once we cross it, we’re at the low brick prison where Jonah spends his days. We cut across the playground, over the blacktop colored with bright lines of chalk from games of hopscotch and hangman, until we reach the chain-link fence at the edge of the schoolyard. Jonah shows us the break in the fence, hidden by the high shrubs in front of it. We crawl behind the shrubs, pull back the woven metal, and squeeze through to the railroad tracks. Jonah says that fifth graders sneak through the fence to smoke at recess, which is just what they did back when I went to school here. This is also where they drag kids to beat them up. Jonah knows from experience.

The three of us walk along the tracks for a while, Jonah in the lead bouncing from tie to tie, Dahlia balancing on the rail in her clunky combat boots, and me watching my feet, crunching gravel and stumbling.

We’ve been walking about ten minutes when we come to the Elff Soda factory, down the steep bank on our left. We can see men in blue uniforms walking around the trucks pulled into the loading dock, but can’t make out any details. I scan the parking lot of matchbox cars, looking for my father’s gray Saab. I think I spot it parked near the front entrance, and I’m sure he got a spot so close because he went in early. He goes in early and stays late. He’s what you would call a company man, my father, eager to impress. I stare at the massive single-story cement building, at the rows of tiny windows, and wonder if he can see me. If he could, I would just look like any kid from this distance, not a kid even, just a person walking with two other people, we’re that far off. Would my limp give me away?

Does my dad’s office even have a window with a view of the tracks? In all the years he’s worked there, I’ve never been inside. My father doesn’t say much to me about his job at Elff, which could be because I’ve never asked. I make a mental note to bring it up at our next pizza night.

Jonah believes my father is like a god, even though he has never met him. See, my father knows the elves who make the soda, which, Jonah informs me, is not just ordinary soda but magic elixir, each flavor its own potion. Black cherry, for instance, gives you the power to fly. Cola wards off evil spirits, even trolls. Grape heals you when you are sick or injured. And orange, Jonah’s favorite flavor, increases psychic abilities, which is how, he explains, he was led to the String Man’s cave.

We’re climbing down the left bank now, not far beyond the soda plant but before we get to the green metal bridge that takes the tracks over a stream.

“There aren’t any elves in the factory, Jonah,” I tell him. “Just regular people like my dad.”

“That’s just what they want you to believe,” Jonah says. “Why do you think it’s called Elff if there aren’t any elves?”

“It’s named after a guy. Ronald Elff. He started the company a long time ago.”

Jonah snorts. “And I suppose you’re gonna tell me he was really a normal guy, too?”

“He wasn’t a little creature with pointed ears, if that’s what you mean,” I say, then Dahlia shoots me a look to tell me to leave it alone, to let him believe what he wants, so I don’t argue. It’s a free country. We’re all entitled to our own little delusions.

As we clamber down the bank, we can hear a truck pulling out, can faintly smell the diesel of the engine. I wonder if Jonah thinks there are little pointy-eared men working the foot pedals of the truck, pulling the cable that sounds the horn.

Jonah moves quickly but carefully along in front of us, his wand in one hand, the other making magic signs in the air. He’s drawing symbols with his pointer finger, letters maybe, then he uses his whole hand to wipe away what he’s written like he’s erasing a blackboard.

We stumble down the hill, blue-robed magician in the lead because he knows the way. Dahlia is second, breaking twigs and branches that threaten to jab her. She’s the one who makes all the noise and leaves signs that we were here. Dahlia leaves traces of herself wherever she goes, the way a shooting star leaves a streak of light behind it.

The ground is thick with thorny raspberry bushes and skinny maples that whip at my face. It’s steep and rocky and only Jonah seems sure-footed, Dahlia and I stumbling down behind him, slipping, causing little avalanches as we make our way along what seems to be a seldom-used path. My leg is throbbing, and I know my father would kill me if he could see what I’m doing. The doctors and physical therapist said to take it easy, that if I don’t give it time to heal, the bone could reshatter.

“You okay, LaSamba?” Dahlia’s beside me, looking vaguely concerned.

“Fine,” I lie, cold pain-sweat gathering between my shoulder blades. “Come on, we’ll lose Jonah.”

The boy wizard has trotted off ahead of us like some kind of hound on a String Man hunt.

I hear running water in the distance, the sound of the stream that gets closer as we keep going down.

The slope levels off, and we’re in a thicket of tall weeds and saplings. It smells rich and loamy here, and all the fallen rotting leaves under our feet are spongy. When we reach the stream, we follow it up a little ways to a clearing. In front of us, the stream opens into a large pool before narrowing again. If we look up to the right, the railroad bridge hovers a good thirty feet above the water. Beside the pool, on its sandy bank, are the remnants of a campfire. There are empty beer cans and bottles scattered around, brown glass smashed against rocks. Cigarette butts are everywhere. A glossy magazine lies open to a naked girl on a motorcycle. The only thing she wears is lipstick and plenty of it.

Dahlia catches me looking at it. My face burns and I turn away.

It’s not like I’ve never seen a magazine like that up close before. Sukie and I used to steal porn magazines from under her brother’s mattress and hide in her closet with them, giggling over the pictures. Our favorite part was the letters people wrote in about their supposedly true experiences. They usually started out something like “I never thought anything like this would happen to me, but . . .” and go on with some totally unrealistic story, involving a hot stewardess or twin sisters. Sukie and I were pretty sure the guys who wrote in probably made it all up, but there, straining to read in the dim light of Sukie’s closet, the stories left us feeling flushed and embarrassed and we just couldn’t get enough of them.

I wonder, was I a lesbo then, too?

“Teenagers, probably,” Dahlia says after assessing the scene, kicking at the glossy magazine. She says it with disgust, like she’s not a teenager herself. Like she’s something else altogether. She spits, then takes a clove cigarette out of her coat pocket and lights it. “Bet this is a great swimming spot in the summer,” she says, blowing the sweet smoke out, walking to the water to put her hand in.

Jonah is jumping from rock to rock to cross the stream. Once across, he walks along the edge of the water to the right, toward the railroad bridge overhead. The embankment is covered with huge masses of broken rock. I want to tell Dahlia that this was done by glaciers, to remind her we learned about this in Earth Science, but I doubt she’d remember or care. She has little interest in things that happened so long ago—in tons of ice that changed the face of everything around us, only to melt away. Thinking about the size and power of the glaciers makes me feel small, insignificant, and dizzy. I’m afraid that if I shut my eyes and let myself really imagine what it was like, I might pass out.

Dahlia’s always telling me I think too much.

Maybe she’s right.

I wish I could turn off my brain sometimes. Especially lately, when it comes to all the thoughts I have about Dahlia. I close my eyes hard, think of the glaciers.

“You okay, LaSamba?” Dahlia asks.

“Fine,” I say.

Jonah struggles up the hill, navigating his way around boulders, stopping now and then to turn and look down at us on the other side.

Dahlia and I share the cigarette and stare at the water flowing past us. I’m putting my mouth on the filter stained with Dahlia’s lipstick, and thinking this is the closest I will ever get to kissing her.

“Come on, you guys!” shouts Jonah.

We look up to see he’s almost to the bridge, just to the left of it, beside the giant concrete blocks it rests on. He’s on his knees in front of three large boulders. Two of the huge rocks are side by side; the third, a flat rock, is balanced on top of them. Jonah’s head is stuck into the crack between the two rocks.

Dahlia leaps from rock to rock across the stream, playing her own kind of hopscotch. I follow carefully, being sure of my footing, even stepping in the cold, shallow water a few times just so I won’t fall. We scramble up the embankment to where we last saw Jonah. He’s gone now, his whole self having disappeared into the crack. The rocks ate him, just gobbled him up. I imagine finding his robe and bones in a pile in the cave. Dahlia gets down on her knees, peers into the crevice, calls to her brother.

“Zamboni, you in there?”

His voice comes back to us, small and echoey. “This is it. This is where the String Man lives.”

Dahlia crawls partway in for a better look, then she’s gone, too, her feet disappearing last.

“Jumping catfish!” she cries. “Come on in, LaSamba, you’re not gonna believe this!”

So I squeeze between the rocks like some kind of animal, following my pack home. The crawling is hell on my leg, but I follow anyway. The ground is soft and mossy, then turns to smooth dirt inside. Once I’m through the opening, the space opens up into a sort of cave, big enough for the three of us to sit and crawl around, but not high enough to stand. There is a narrow beam of light coming through a crack in the cave’s ceiling where the boulder on top doesn’t quite meet.

It’s a cozy den, this place, and instead of bones we find string. Lots of string. There are rolls of it stacked here and there. Thick string. Thin string. Yellow string. Old dirty string. Garden twine. A rough piece of rope is coiled in the corner like a snake.

There is a flat rock used for a table. On it is a half-burned candle, some matches, a glass Elff Soda bottle full of water, some bent screws, bits of glass, pebbles, a blue jay feather, and some loose change.

The cave is full of creatures: figures made from string, sticks, and bits of collected junk—animals, people, houses, birds. There is a mobile hanging from a tree branch stuck in the crevice at the top of the cave. It’s made of sticks lashed together with heavy thread, and dangling from the sticks are small figures—people made from twigs and string. Dahlia pushes on it to make the stick people dance in the air above her head. The sunlight coming through the crack above them makes their shadows whirl in circles across the floor. Dahlia sits among the dancing shadows and smiles like she can’t help it; it’s a whole-hearted I must be seeing real magic kind of smile. Jonah is wearing the same grin on his own face as he scuttles across the floor of the cave, picking treasures up and setting them down, running his fingers over each item like he’s petting the string, the sticks, the bottle of water, and the box of wooden matches.

Jonah touches one of the stick people hanging over his head.

“This is powerful magic,” he says.

“Good or bad?” asks Dahlia.

“Good. Definitely good. A benevolent wizard is at work here.”

Benevolent, he says. Jonah’s vocabulary surprises me sometimes. The way he gets such big words out of his small mouth, sounding out each syllable carefully. It’s like he’s got a dictionary in his head—one of those big fat dictionaries at the library that you can hardly lift.

In the corner, there is a sleeping bag rolled up. Jonah unrolls it slowly like there might be a snake inside guarding its master’s nest. The boy wizard slides his hand gently into the top of the bag, gropes around for a moment, then pulls out a bundle. There’s a flashlight, and a crude hammer made from a rock lashed with a bootlace to the top of a Y-shaped maple branch. It’s more like a tomahawk than a hammer, really.

The last thing Jonah pulls out is a book. It’s an old brown hardcover, the spine broken from being opened so many times. Jonah thumbs it open eagerly, like he thinks it might contain spells and magic recipes. What it really turns out to be is a medical textbook—a guide to human anatomy. It’s full of drawings of organs, the circulatory system, lymph nodes, colored pictures that label the valves of the heart. Tucked among its pages are more bits of knotted string like they’re marking special places. Like the liver is an especially important organ, and the network of occipital nerves hold the secret to the very meaning of life. It kind of creeps me out, seeing our insides laid out and diagrammed, like we’re nothing but complicated pieces of meat.

A photo falls out from between the pages—a black-and-white photo of rows of women in crisp white nurse’s uniforms standing in front of a brick building. None of the women are smiling. Studying medicine is serious business; you can see it in their faces. These women have had their hands inside deep wounds, they’ve reached into cadavers and touched cold hearts. They will never be the same.

Also tucked into the pages are grungy, crumpled bills—ones, tens, and fives. Lots of them. There must be over two hundred bucks stuck between the pages. Jonah replaces the treasures, closes the book slowly, making sure nothing falls out.

There is a row of people by the sleeping bag—a man, woman, boy, and girl—with stick arms and legs, bottle cap heads, clothes made from old candy wrappers. There is even a dog with them—he’s made from sticks wrapped round and round with brown string.

A family of dolls, I think, knowing Leah will be pleased when we tell her this part of the story. I pick up one of the dolls—the girl; her dress is made from Milky Way wrappers tied at the waist with a belt of green thread. Her head is a flattened Coke bottle cap with holes punched through it. Tied into the holes are small bits of red yarn for hair. Dahlia and Jonah just can’t seem to stop smiling, and as I hold the stick girl in my hand, study the careful way she was put together, made from little bits of nothing, I realize I’m grinning, too.

“We should make sure to put things back exactly the way we found them,” Jonah says as he tucks the book back into the sleeping bag. “We don’t want to spook the String Man.”

He says it like the String Man is some skittish animal—half wild, half tame. I put the doll back down where I found her, between her mother and brother.

Jonah says it’s time to go, we’ve been here long enough, and Dahlia and I know better than to argue. We leave the cave slowly, reluctantly, one at a time. Jonah is last, and he dusts away our footprints as we go.

“Do you think he really lives there?” I ask as we are climbing back down the hill, moving around the massive hunks of rock to get back down to the stream.

“Hard to say,” answers Dahlia as she leans against a boulder taller than she is. “It seems like more of a hideout than a home.”

“But he sleeps there, at least sometimes,” adds Jonah.

“I wonder what he eats, if he really does live out here in the woods,” Dahlia muses.

“There’s lots of food around if you know how to find it,” explains Jonah. “Berries, roots, the stuff Indians lived on before white people came.”

“Speaking of Indians, did you get a load of that tomahawk?” Dahlia asks. “I guess he wants to be ready in case any uninvited guests show up.”

“He probably just uses it as a tool,” guesses Jonah, eager to defend the String Man.

“A knife is a tool, and look what it did to Dead Aunt Mary.” Dahlia raises her eyebrows knowingly, and suddenly, we’re all talking about Halloween again; we’re talking this ninety-mile-an-hour kind of talk, our sentences rolling into each other’s as we guess how much candy we’ll get, what neighborhoods Leah will take us to. Dahlia tells us the story of Dead Aunt Mary again, giving more details this time about the way her sister plunged the huge butcher knife into Mary’s chest, how she hit major arteries, making the blood come out in buckets.

We talk about what Leah’s costume might be. Jonah thinks she’ll go as her doll self, Mother Mary, but Dahlia says that one’s too obvious, and Jonah looks a little hurt, like maybe being a wizard each year is too obvious also.

Once in a while, as we walk the long way back to their apartment, we wonder out loud about the String Man. We even guess that maybe he’s not a him but a her. Maybe she’s one of the nurses in the photo. A nurse gone crazy who lives in the woods eating wild greens and chipmunks. Dahlia’s eyes light up as she spins the story of how the nurse got to be so crazy and describes how she walks the forests at night now in her dirty white uniform, looking for victims for surgery.

“She carries a scalpel with her wherever she goes. She removes body parts from passing strangers. She drugs them, puts a rag soaked in ether over their mouths, then takes whatever she’s hungry for: a spleen, pinkie, eyeballs. The surgery is brief but bloody, and the victims always live but have to go through the rest of their lives with parts missing. The parts the nurse gobbled down.”

Jonah and I shudder. It’s just starting to get dark, and we’re both scanning the sides of the railroad tracks for a figure in white. Dahlia is describing what the nurse looks like—her white dress covered in blood, nails dirty, hair a mess of tangles with twigs woven in.

“Now that,” announces Dahlia, pleased with herself, “is a great idea for next year’s Halloween costume.”

11

“I think the String Man is some homeless railroad tramp,” Dahlia says. We’re back at the apartment now, filling Leah in on the details of our adventure. Jonah, Dahlia, and I are sitting on the couch with Leah, who doesn’t feel well at all. She’s wearing her orange robe with fake fur around the cuffs and neckline. It’s worn through in places and full of small cigarette burns. Her hair is dirty, the purple sleeping mask she wears pushed up like a headband, making her bleached hair stick out at funny angles. She hasn’t showered for a couple days, has barely left the bedroom where she lies, smoking, in her robe, listening to call-in shows on her crackly AM radio. She doesn’t play music when she’s like this, and the dolls sit quiet and motionless on her dresser.

When Leah doesn’t feel well, she believes she is under psychic attack. Someone, or something, is out to get her. Jonah makes rings of salt around her bed. He casts spells while she sleeps.

Sometimes, the psychic attack gets so bad, she doesn’t leave her bed at all. Once, it lasted for three weeks, and Dahlia had to call Aunt Elsbeth, who drove all the way from New York to bring them food and get Leah back on her medicine.

“I think you should stay away from that cave,” says Leah, and with this, she’s off to bed again, the end of her orange robe trailing sadly behind her. Jonah follows, leather pouch of salt in hand.

Dahlia and I sit together on the couch, listening to Leah as she adjusts her radio and Jonah as he tells her he’s going to banish all evil from the room. Dahlia closes her eyes and leans her head back against the worn-out fabric of the couch.

“Do you ever just wish things were different?” she asks.

“Different how?”

“I dunno. Easier. Normal, I guess. Do you ever wish things were just a little more freaking normal?” Dahlia asks, then she jumps up and heads into the kitchen before I have a chance to answer.

“Yes,” I say even though the only one who can hear me is myself. “All the time.”

I hear her open the fridge and rummage around. I know there’s not much in there—I saw when I looked for a soda earlier. Leah’s been too sick to go out and it’s the end of the month, so all the money’s gone. Dahlia says they’ll get another check and food stamps in a few days.

“Stay for supper, LaSamba,” Dahlia calls out, her head still in the refrigerator, her voice sounding like she’s calling to me from someplace far away—the bottom of a well maybe. “We can finish our rocks after.”

I call my father to say I’m eating at the Wainwrights’. He hesitates before responding, like he feels a little let down. Like maybe he was planning something special for dinner.

“More of Mrs. Wainwright’s French cooking, huh?” he asks.

“Mmm-hmm,” I say, thinking how funny it is to hear Leah referred to as Mrs. Wainwright.

“Are you sure you’re not overstaying your welcome there, Maggie?” he asks, and it’s clear that he just doesn’t get it—how much more I feel a part of things here than at home.

“They really want me to stay,” I tell him. “And Dahlia and I have to finish up our project for Earth Science. It’s due tomorrow.”

There’s a long pause. “Be home by nine, Mags,” he says.

“Will do.”

I don’t ask him about the view from his office. I don’t think of it until I’m off the phone.

“Maybe the String Man is one of the losers who hangs out in the clearing,” Dahlia starts in without prelude when I join her in the kitchen. “Did you see the girls in that magazine they had? What hornballs!”

“Yeah, pretty sick,” I say, not looking her in the eye.

Dahlia takes a little ground beef from a package in the fridge and puts it in a bowl. She adds the last two eggs, bread crumbs, oatmeal, a can of Spam, a whole bunch of ketchup, and an ancient-looking package of onion soup mix. Then she gets a can of chickpeas down from the cupboard, mashes them up and throws them in, too. I watch as she mixes the mess up with her hands.

I try to imagine what Dahlia will be in ten years. A rock star. A famous poet. She’ll be something great. This much I know. She’ll outshine us all. She’s meant for better things than making end-of-the-month meat loaf.

“What are you thinking?” she asks. “You look like a worried clown.”

I’m thinking that I love you.

“Nothing. I’m not thinking about anything at all.”

She puts the meat loaf in the oven and gets out a nearly empty bag of freezer-burned French fries.

“Don’t worry so much, LaSamba,” she says, touching my cheek, making me nearly jump right out of my skin. “You’ll get an ulcer or something.”

Jonah won’t eat his meat loaf. He nibbles at the shoestring fries (there were only enough for his plate) and drinks a glass of powdered milk that Dahlia mixed up in a pitcher.

“Don’t like meat loaf anymore, champ?” Dahlia asks.

“I can’t eat it.”

“No problemo. I thought it was your favorite.”

“Not today. Not anymore. I got a message that if something was once alive, had a heart and blood, I shouldn’t eat it.” He doesn’t look up when he speaks, just looks down at his plate like he’s counting the salt crystals on his fries.

“A message from who?” Dahlia asks, staring at her brother with narrowed eyes.

“A spirit guide. It’s been talking to me all afternoon.”

Dahlia is quiet for a minute. She chews on her meat loaf, still looking at Jonah.

“Well, shit,” she finally says after swallowing, “I guess we’ll have to feed you tofu.”

Jonah smiles at this.

“Toad food would be fine, I think,” he answers.

“A fit meal for a wizard,” Dahlia declares, tousling his hair with her hand.

Sometimes, the things Dahlia does make me want to cry. Right now, it’s the way she loves Jonah so completely, the expression on her face when she runs her hand through his hair. It’s an expression that says, I would do anything to keep you from harm. Unconditional. I guess that’s what it is. Her brother can say a spirit guide talked to him, can insist trolls are out to get him, and Dahlia listens, believes what he says, loves him all the more for it.

Dahlia clears the table, then fixes a tray of food to bring Leah. She goes in to Leah’s room alone. When Leah is having a day of psychic attack, it’s best not to overwhelm her.

Dahlia stays in the room for what seems like a long time. I wash the dishes, then go out to sit on the couch. Jonah runs his bath. For him, bath preparations are lengthy and intricate. He has a huge collection of toys he brings with him: plastic boats, frogs, swans, sharks, octopuses, even a windup scuba diver. He’s probably too old to take baths with all those toys, but no one seems to care, least of all him.

I watch him bring the pouch of salt in along with his magic wand. He must cast spells in the tub. Water spells where he asks for rain or makes it so no one he knows will ever go thirsty. Maybe he casts a spell over his plastic animals and brings them to life. He’s got to be doing something for all that time in there—Jonah can spend two hours in the tub easily. When he gets out, he’s cold and his skin is pruny and white.

Dahlia comes out of Leah’s room and sits down on the couch with me. She pulls out her pack of cigarettes and hands me one. She seems tired, preoccupied.

“Let’s finish up the dumb rock project,” I say. She seems to stare right through me, and I’m not sure she even heard what I said, but I don’t want to seem anal, so I don’t repeat myself.

“Tiki’s gonna make drinks.” She jumps up and heads back into the kitchen. When Tiki makes drinks, you never know what will be in them. She’s famous for her secret ingredients: orange marmalade, cinnamon, Tabasco. They’re usually frozen, frothy cocktails, heavy on the vodka and crushed ice, each one her own invention with names like Novocain Nightmare, Bloody Mary’s Revenge, or the Death of the Sugarplum Fairies. It’s alchemy the way she turns what’s in the fridge into potions that soothe, potions that make you want to put on grass skirts and dance until it’s way past time to go home. There’s no way the rocks will get done now and I should be worried or pissed off or something, but what I really am is all nerved up and jumpy, because the night is in Dahlia’s hands now and anything can happen next.

When she comes back out of the kitchen, she’s wearing a frilly apron with roses all over it. She’s got two tall glasses full of something white and foamy.

“Taste, LaSamba, taste. It’s a cure for ulcers. A cure for your LaSamba blues.”

I taste sweet bananas, the quiet burn of the vodka on the back of my throat.

“Bananas, milk, and Mrs. Butterworth’s,” she says before I have a chance to ask for the recipe.

She goes over to the shelves along the wall and thumbs through the stack of CDs. It’s Leah’s collection mostly—classic rock from the sixties and seventies. Anything from that point on is crap according to both Leah and Dahlia. In the eighties, Leah says, music lost its soul. Leah believes that songs have power and meaning and that there is music for every occasion.

“Songs are portals,” Leah is always saying, and I don’t exactly get what she means, but I know a portal is a doorway. Maybe what she’s saying is that music can take you places if you let it.

Dahlia chooses a CD and puts it on. It’s her favorite: The Doors. Their first album. She puts on “Soul Kitchen,” turning it up just a little, not wanting to bother Leah. She steps back and dances in front of the stereo, still not turning around, the banana drink in her left hand. “Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen,” sings Jim Morrison. Dahlia is dancing, swaying really, and when she turns around, I see her eyes are closed. She’s someplace else. She’s Tiki drinking a magic elixir that she blended up in her own soul kitchen.

“Dance with me, LaSamba,” she calls, opening her eyes, and I hesitate, nervous that if I get too close to her, she’ll somehow know how I feel. I take a few quick gulps of my drink and start to back away, but then she reaches for me, her fingertips touching mine, and I can’t refuse. She pulls me in front of her and we dance a slow snake dance, my body following hers. It’s the dance of banana cocktails with Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup. It’s a milky dance, slow and smooth. I think that maybe if I follow her, if I mimic her movements, I might learn grace. I might be more beautiful. This limp just might go away. But really what happens is that I nervously spill my drink, stumble a little, don’t dare to move with my eyes closed the way Tiki does. I feel like I’m falling more than dancing. The song is over now, and Dahlia moves to the stereo and hits the button to play it again. She goes through phases like this, where only one song will do.

I take several more swallows of my drink. It warms my whole body, makes me feel like I’m glowing from the inside, lit up like a jack-o’-lantern with a stupid grin.

“I light another cigarette/Learn to forget, learn to forget,” Jim Morrison sings, and I dare to close my eyes this time around. I’m moving, listening, learning to forget. God, it’s a game I’m good at. Forget your other life. Forget how you were Dorothy strapped into the front seat of your mother’s blue Volvo.

Oh shit. I forgot Toto.

I’m sipping what’s left of my drink and forgetting. I’m forgetting all about Troy Farnham. Forgetting the way Leah looked so defeated this afternoon, unwashed in her dingy robe. Forgetting our unfinished Earth Science project. I’m finishing my drink, thinking only of bananas. Tropical things. I’m on a beach with Tiki the hula dancer. We’re both tan and beautiful. The sun is setting and the waves are crashing all around us.

I dance until I’ve forgotten everything but Dahlia, who is pressing her body against mine, driving every spare thought away.

Why is she dancing so close? Is she just messing with me, or does she feel it, too? Her stomach and chest seem to radiate heat, and I’m thinking about those people who burst into flames and seconds later, all that’s left is a pile of ashes. Spontaneous human combustion. I’m thinking it could be like that for me here now, that I might ignite at any minute and go up in a puff of smoke, leaving only ashes, and some screws and the metal rod holding my shinbone together.

And then, just when I think I can’t take any more, that the moment of ignition is upon me, she pulls away.

Dahlia lets the CD go and sits down on the couch, where she concentrates on her drink, ignoring me. She drains it, gets up, goes to the kitchen, and pours herself another. She comes back without the apron and sits down beside me on the couch. She’s through being Tiki for now, and I know we’re all done dancing. But the aura of the dance is still hanging over me, making me giddy and stupid. The vodka isn’t exactly helping.

“Remember before Jonah came home, when you read my tea leaves?” I ask, blurting out the words fast before I have the chance to change my mind.

“Yup.” She doesn’t look up from her drink.

“I was wondering if you knew who it is I’m supposed to fall in love with.” I look away as I ask it, terrified of how she might answer.

“I don’t know,” she says, then eyes me, smiling this adorable coy little smile. “Who do you think LaSamba could love?”

Then she does it again, traces her fingers over my cheek, and in my head, I’m screaming, Tiki! LaSamba loves Tiki! and I want to kiss her so bad it hurts. For just one second, our eyes are locked, and I’m thinking I’m actually going to do it. I’m thinking she actually wants me to. That’s what her eyes are telling mine.

But what if I’m wrong?

“I don’t know. No one. LaSamba won’t love anyone,” I lie, pulling away from her.

“Maybe LaSamba will love the little smiling dog,” Dahlia says, inching over to her side of the couch.

My heart sinks. She doesn’t know me at all.

“Maybe Tiki will,” I say, sounding more pissed off than I meant to.

“It wasn’t Tiki’s fortune,” she says. “Tiki doesn’t fall in love. LaSamba does.”

I take this in for a moment. I think maybe she’s right. Maybe Tiki doesn’t ever fall in love. Tiki is smarter than that. Above it somehow. Tiki has other concerns, like finding just the right combinations for the blender.

LaSamba is a fool to even hope otherwise.

I look at my watch, see it’s nearly 9:30, and know my father will call soon if I don’t hurry home. I say good-bye, leaving Dahlia to her drink, the unfinished rock collection, the dim crackle of Leah’s radio, and the splashing of a wizard in the tub.

The walk home takes fifteen minutes. I can see my breath and I’m feeling a little drunk, worried that my father might be able to tell, even though Dahlia swears that no one can smell vodka on you. Instead of worrying about my father, I think about being with Tiki on the beach, and I manage to convince myself that just for a few minutes, she felt something, too. And that she really did want me to kiss her. Before I know it, I’m dancing, I mean actually spinning and gliding down the street, remembering the way her body felt pressed up against mine, and it doesn’t matter that I might get busted for drinking, get an F from No-Neck Knapp, or that we’re going to Troy Farnham’s house Saturday. I’m doing the banana-and-Mrs.-Butterworth’s-island dance, the LaSamba-is-in-love-with-Tiki dance, and I’m just floating. For the first time in nearly two years, my leg doesn’t hurt at all.

12

Dahlia’s mixed up a big batch of fake blood and I’m spreading it all over her chest, down the front of her black dress. Her hair is teased into snarls, and she wears white pancake makeup with thick streaks of black eyeliner.

She’s broken off the tip of a kitchen knife, stuck what’s left of the blade through the fabric of her dress, and held it in place with hidden cardboard and duct tape. The handle sticks out, so it looks like the knife’s buried deep in her chest.

“More blood,” she’s saying, and I’m squeezing the corn syrup and food coloring out of a plastic bottle, watching it drip over her bare chest above the V-shaped neckline of her dress and down between her breasts, my breath catching a little.

I take a deep breath, make myself think of something else. Rocks. I’m thinking of our unfinished rock collection that should have been turned in today but wasn’t. Of me having to explain to No-Neck Knapp with his dandruff that we’d hand it in Monday. He didn’t ask for any explanations. He just smiled this weird, sleazy kind of smile and said that would be fine and he looked forward to getting it. He actually said that. I’ll look forward to it, Maggie.

“Suck-up,” Dahlia had whispered when I got back to my desk. I shot her a look that said we wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for her. I mean, if she’d help out just a little instead of distracting me with drinks, dancing, and the String Man, the project would be done.

Another big thing happened at school today: I learned what that kid Joey is making back in his corner. I watched today as he stretched a piece of leather over one end of the carved log and started tacking it on with these little brass nails.

A drum!

He’s making a drum!

I had to go over for a closer look—which, of course, got me a whole chorus of whispers and giggles, especially from Heather, who started singing, “Maggie and Joey up in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

Very original and mature.

I told Dahlia about the drum when I saw her later at lunch.

“It’s like a conga drum or something,” I said excitedly. “It’s got this totally tribal feel.”

Dahlia just nodded.

“Maybe we can ask him to be in our band,” I said.

“Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes. My heart did that familiar sinking thing it does whenever she shoots me down.

“But it’s a beautiful drum,” I told her. “He’s carved all these crazy animals into it. You’ve gotta see it.”

“I don’t even think the kid knows how to talk,” Dahlia said.

“But he doesn’t need to talk to join,” I told her. “He just needs to play.”

“I doubt he can even do that.”

“But how can you say that when you haven’t even given him a chance? It’s totally unfair!” For the first time, I was actually kind of mad at her. “You’re going to let Troy Farnham try out, and believe me, if he joins you’re going to be wishing he didn’t talk.”

Dahlia narrowed her eyes and smiled at me. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “You’ve actually got a thing for the Little Drummer Boy?”

“No!” How could she think that? Wasn’t it painfully obvious who I had the thing for?

“Forget it, Maggie. We don’t need a drummer anyway,” she said, and that was it. Case closed. It was clear who had all the power in our relationship. But wasn’t I the one who gave it to her?

Now I watch how the corn syrup concoction spills out over Dahlia’s neckline, running down the black fabric of the Dead Aunt Mary dress and onto the linoleum floor. We’re standing in a pool of blood, creating our own kitchen massacre.

“MORE BLOOD! MORE BLOOD! MORE BLOOD!” chants Jonah as he ducks in for a closer look.

Jonah’s in an absolute frenzy, running circles around us in the kitchen, so excited that it’s Halloween, that he gets to wear his blue wizard hat all night.

“Tiki, LaSamba, Zamboni! It’s time!” calls Leah. She’s been in her room all evening, preparing her own costume, with a pitcher of margaritas to help battle the psychic attack. We all race to her, leaving a trail of fake blood, when she calls. It’s dark; only the lamp by her bed is turned on, and there’s a black silk scarf draped over it. She’s burning incense. The room smells of cigarettes, tequila, and patchouli.

Leah is headless. She is wearing an old-fashioned dark purple dress with a very high collar. The dress has big, square football-player shoulders that come up above Leah’s head. She peeks out through a slit between pearly buttons just beneath the starched collar. The worst part of the costume is this: she’s carrying her head in her hands. It’s the head of a mannequin with bleached blond hair cut just the way Leah’s is. Leah clutches a fistful of hair and holds the head swinging at her side, the painted-on blue eyes staring out at us.

“Now it’s true, my scary monsters, I really have lost my head.” Her voice is cheerful, but muffled.

“Jumping catfish!” is all Dahlia can say.

“I don’t like it,” says Jonah. “I don’t like it one bit.”

“You’re not supposed to like it, duckling,” Leah says. “It’s a Halloween costume. It’s supposed to be scary.”

Zamboni’s not convinced. “I still don’t like it.”

“Lighten up, Zamboni. It’s not like Dead Aunt Mary is much less gruesome,” says Dahlia. She reaches up to her chest and adjusts the knife, jiggles the handle back and forth.

“‘Dying/is an art, like everything else,’” she says in her poetry-reciting voice.

“Sylvia Plath?” I ask.

“You guessed it. Lady Lazarus herself.” Dahlia plays with her knife handle some more, then concludes, “It’s fun to be dead for a night.” With this, she twirls out of Leah’s room and back toward the kitchen.

“Put on your beekeeper’s suit, LaSamba,” she instructs. “Hurry. I think there’s a swarm coming.”

I find my bee suit hanging in the back of her closet and slide it on over my clothes.

The kitchen smells like Christmas from the gingerbread men we baked earlier. We decorated them with white icing, turning them into goofy, cartoonish skeletons with little cinnamon red-hot candies for eyes.

Dahlia helps me lift the veil so I can taste one.

“My beekeeping clown,” Dahlia says, smiling at me as I nibble on the arm of a skeleton. Then, as she holds the veil up over my head, she leans in and kisses my cheek.

“Happy Halloween, LaSamba,” she whispers.

The cuckoo clock in the kitchen says it’s about 6:30 when Leah announces it’s time to hit the streets. We each take a couple of skeleton cookies wrapped in wax paper to bring to the cemetery. Leah’s got a thermos full of special Halloween tea with mugwort that’s supposed to make you see visions.

It’s hot in my suit and I’m happy to get out into the cool air. Dahlia links arms with me and her walk is more like a dance. We’re practically skipping along the sidewalk, our feet hardly touching the ground, my bum leg not hurting a bit.

I keep reliving the kiss, the throaty sound of her voice so close to my ear. Sure, it was just a friendly little peck on the cheek, but still, Dahlia Wainwright’s lips touched my skin. If lightning struck me down now, I would die happy.

Leah leads us, carrying her head, holding it in front of her like some gruesome lantern. She takes us down to Main Street, which is crowded with trick-or-treaters. It’s early yet, so it’s mostly little ones out so far, kids young enough to be guided by parents, pushed in strollers, picked up and carried when they’ve had enough.

Some of the shops are still open. We see through the windows that the checkout girls at Ferraro’s are dressed as three witches. One-armed Lucky is a pirate with a black eye patch and hat with skull and crossbones.

We cut through the park and head down School Street to Elm with its rows of stately Victorian houses. The beams from flashlights held by tiny goblins dart back and forth across the street. Porches have jack-o’-lanterns with beckoning smiles, bunches of dried cornstalks leaning around the doors. There are kids dressed as aliens, cats, and ghosts. They carry bright orange plastic pumpkins loaded with treats. We carry empty pillow sacks like we’re looking for kittens to drown. We don’t stop at every house on this street, just the few Leah chooses. There doesn’t seem to be any formula for what makes a house good, but she must be seeing signs of some kind, signs I don’t know how to read.

“I’m Dead Aunt Mary!” Dahlia’s calling. “Screw the living! Being dead is where it’s at!”

There is a man walking with two young children dressed as bumblebees in front of us, and he herds them across the street.

We’re a motley crew. Dahlia’s damning the living. I’m limping along beside her in my beekeeper’s suit like some honey-loving, secret-lesbian zombie. Leah is quiet, swinging her head around, stumbling over curbs because she’s had a pitcherful of margaritas and it’s hard to see through the slit in the neck of her dress. Jonah is walking well behind, waving his wand, maybe pretending not to know us, maybe doing a spell so that we might disappear.

“I’m Dead Aunt Mary! No one can mess with me. I’ve got a fucking knife in my heart!” Dahlia jabs a finger at a passing princess. “Top that, will ya?”

We crisscross various streets, take inventory of neighborhoods we’re not used to seeing, notice how some have more streetlamps than others, more carefully manicured lawns. We’re on a street I don’t recognize now, and three kids ahead of us are soaping a car, decorating a lawn jockey with toilet paper. They wear long cloaks with hoods, white Phantom of the Opera masks that just cover half their faces. Dahlia rummages around in her pillowcase, brings out a pack of firecrackers and a book of matches. Leah, Dahlia, and I each light one, throwing them into the street. Jonah does his last, dropping it into a sewer grate to scare the trolls away, to keep them at bay.

“Dead Aunt Mary blows up the world!” Dahlia shouts, lighting a bunch at once, tossing them into a mailbox where their explosion echoes, is amplified. Dahlia howls. Leah stumbles in the street, laughing. The strange half-faced kids ahead of us run off, frightened of what we might do next.

We stop at every few houses to ring bells, say “Trick or Treat” like it’s a threat, then hold our pillowcases open wide. We smash pumpkins at houses we don’t like the looks of.

Now we’re on a long, wide street called Stony Brook Drive. I’ve been down this street a thousand times, but tonight, through my beekeeping veil, it’s like I’m seeing it with new eyes. The houses are farther apart here, and each one is as big as an apartment building. They’re all pretty new houses, like hundreds of people got rich all of a sudden and needed someplace to live. These houses have roofs with lots of angles, extra chimneys, and walls that seem to be all window. Even the pavement feels new and clean, like the men from the houses come out every night with hoses and brushes to scrub it down.

Stony Brook Drive is crowded with trick-or-treaters going from door to door. It’s getting late, and the little kids have all gone home to gorge on candy. The trick-or-treaters are older now—the costumes more gruesome. There’s a girl dressed as Carrie, her pink prom dress drenched in blood. There are several Jasons, tall kids with white hockey masks looking for teenage campers to kill.

Stony Brook Drive is nightmare country. You’d think the most gruesome sights would be in the poorer parts of town, but the truth is, the scariest monsters live in the fanciest houses.

“Be on guard,” Leah warns, her voice muffled as she swings her head in her hands. “We’re in troll country now.”

Across the street, two devils are sharing a cigarette. They look our way and lean in to whisper to each other. I think for a minute that maybe those aren’t just masks: maybe two devils really came up to play with our fates tonight. The masks are scary as hell, if you want to know the truth. Bright red faces, black arched eyebrows, pointed chins, and curved horns like goring bulls’.

We spend the next hour trick-or-treating and the whole while, I’m sure those devils are following us. I say so to Dahlia, and she keeps looking behind us.

“I think you’re right, LaSamba,” she says.

“So what do we do?”

“Ignore them. We just ignore them.”

Right. Like you can ignore the devil.

We fill our sacks with M&M’s, small candy bars, lollipops, and Bit-O-Honeys. We’re done pulling tricks, so now we just haul in the treats. Occasionally, we catch a glimpse of the two devils. Leah and Jonah have seen them, too. Jonah’s got his salt out. Leah says they’re trolls for sure.

It’s quarter to nine, and we’ve made our way back to my neighborhood, but Dahlia doesn’t know it. She has no idea where I live, which is weird, but it’s just never come up. All she knows is it’s a fifteen-minute walk from her place. The houses where I live are nothing like the mansions on Stony Brook, but suddenly I see them through the Wainwrights’ eyes—the freshly painted siding, the clean two-car garages, the carefully landscaped yards. Dahlia smashes a couple of garden gnomes to show how disgusted she is with the bourgeois suburbs. I’m just praying she won’t take us too close to my house. All I need is for my dad to see me and come out and make a fool of himself.

Then we catch sight of the two devils a block down the street, moving in our direction.

“Come on,” Dahlia says, taking my hand.

Now we’re running, cutting across yards, around swimming pools, over long driveways. Dahlia’s got her hand wrapped tight around mine, and I’m limping along as fast as I can to keep up with her. Jonah’s right behind and Leah’s bringing up the rear, her head swinging in her hands.

My leg is screaming, and I’m sure I can feel the metal grinding against bone, but I won’t slow down. When I’m with Dahlia like this, anything is possible.

Finally, we reach the cemetery and go in through the back gate. Dahlia stops and leans against a headstone, getting her breath. She still has hold of my hand, and I’m thinking I could run miles more if she just promised not to let go.

“I think we lost them,” Dahlia says.

“Yeah, we outran the devil,” Jonah says.

“Two devils,” Leah corrects.

We eat candy and dance around on all the dead people. Leah pours us some mugwort tea, which tastes awful, but I gulp it down, thinking maybe I’ll see ghosts. We pour tea into the ground, leave small piles of brightly colored candies on the graves. Our skeleton cookies are broken, but we leave gingerbread body parts scattered around tombstones: a head here, a leg there.

We talk about what it must be like to be dead for real—if it’s quiet or you’re in a world of bright light and noise.

“It’s a place where irises and lilies of the valley are always blooming and angels play trumpets all day long,” I say, thinking that’s the heaven my mother would choose, the heaven she painted on those stupid sympathy cards.

“The hell with the trumpets—there’s a big mariachi band up there and everyone’s dancing like there’s no tomorrow, because there really isn’t anymore,” Dahlia explains.

“It depends how you die,” Jonah tells us. “My spirit guide says you have to wait for your soul to be released if your death wasn’t meant to be. Until then, you’re stuck between the two worlds a while.” He leans back in the grass to commune with his invisible guide some more.

I wonder if that’s where my mother is: stuck in limbo-land, all because I forgot the damn stuffed dog. She probably would have lived to be a hundred if I hadn’t been so stupid and careless.

“I think death is what you make it,” says Leah. She’s got the top of her dress unbuttoned so that her face sticks out. The mannequin head lies off to her side, its eyes focused up into the sky, stargazing.

“Maybe it’s quiet, maybe you meet God or the devil,” guesses Leah. “Maybe you meet your old friends. Maybe you just stay for a while, then move on, your spirit turned into something else. One thing I know for sure, though,” she adds, slapping at the ground, “these people are finally at rest. It’s the ultimate peace. No more earthly burdens.”

“I’ll drink to that!” proclaims Dahlia, taking the cup of terrible-tasting tea from her mother’s hands and chugging down a few deep swallows.

“To no more earthly burdens!” Dahlia says, and passes the cup to me. I take it in both hands, drink slowly, the mugwort tea bitter in my mouth.

“No more earthly burdens,” I echo, thinking that at least my mother doesn’t have to deal with dumb crap like grocery lists, oil changes, and having a screwed-up lesbo daughter anymore.

I pass the cup to Leah, then lean back on the grass, my head touching a gravestone, my body in its white beekeeper’s suit laid out right on top of the bones underneath. Dahlia lies down next to me, and she’s laughing, but no one asks why. She’s got her head resting against my shoulder. I watch the sky spin above me, or maybe it’s the ground that’s spinning. I hear that hum in my ears, the familiar drone of a thousand bees inside my own head. I see the String Man’s cave and the family of dolls he created from nothing but trash.

But mostly what I see is Dahlia, and I don’t need to turn my head to look at her. It’s like she’s everywhere, her laughter drowning out everything, even quieting the buzz in my ears. But I think maybe she’s the cause of the buzz, that she emits some kind of electricity, like static that gives you shocks, raises the hair on your skin, shoots sparks. You can’t be near her without picking up on it. And you feel like maybe it’s dangerous, like you can almost hear the bones in the ground beneath you whispering a warning, but you don’t want to run. It’s like the way kids put their hands on an electric fence even though they know what will happen. And when they get that first jolt and the tingling subsides, they see they aren’t dead or even harmed, so they do it again. That’s what it’s like. Dahlia’s still laughing and I’m still here beside her, my hand gripping the wire, letting go, then reaching out to touch it again.

13

It’s the day after Halloween, and we’re back on Stony Brook Drive, here on legitimate business. Troy Farnham lives here in a huge white house with an acre of lawn in front of it. I’ve got my clarinet, and Dahlia’s brought along the notebook she keeps her poems and songs in. She’s got on a shimmering lime green dress and these huge fish earrings. She looks like some kind of alien mermaid.

“Ninety-two,” Dahlia says, checking the number on the mailbox just to make sure.

I’ve been here a million times, of course, but I don’t let on. Sukie, me, Troy, and Albert used to hang out in the basement doing dumb stuff like watching TV and playing Clue. I was always Mrs. White. Sukie was Miss Scarlet.

I know I’m being kind of an idiot not telling Dahlia all this. It’s not like she’s not going to find out. I’m just putting it off as long as possible, hoping like hell that by the time she learns who I used to be, who I am now will matter more to her, and she’ll be able to forgive me for once being exactly the sort of person she hates most.

Music is seeping through the front door. Some kind of gangsta rap, turned up real loud. I can’t make out the words, just the thumping bass, the threatening snarl of vocals.

I want to say it’s not too late—we can turn right around, go back to the apartment, and have band practice just like always, just the two of us. I want to remind Dahlia how last night she was making fun of the people who lived in these houses, mocking all the rich idiots with lawns like golf courses.

Dahlia explained on the walk over that Troy’s parents are away in Greece. Troy told her they go away a lot. They own a bunch of hotels. Troy’s house has a hot tub and a full bar. I did my best to act surprised, like I’d never been there before. Like it was some other girl who used to go to Troy’s to watch cable and play Clue.

Maybe, I tell myself, I can get through this without getting busted. I doubt Troy is going to bring up anything having to do with the old days and his ex-girlfriend Sukie when he’s doing his best to woo Dahlia.

Dahlia told me all about Troy’s house in this totally envious way, not all pissed off but more like, Wouldn’t that be nice?

Dahlia says she hates rich people. She’s always going on about the waste, the arrogance, the mindless consumption that wealth breeds. But at the same time, I can see a little spark in her eyes that tells me that along with hating it, she wants it more than anything. It’s the same way she talks about Sukie and Heather and that whole popular girl clique. She hates them and says stuff like, “They’re just like cattle—all the same, mindlessly following each other around.” But I can tell some little part of her is envious and wants to join the herd.

Over the past two years I’ve learned that the things we want most, the things that we long for secretly, are usually the things that are the most impossible: like me wanting my mother back, or wanting Dahlia to love me. To Dahlia, the most impossible thing in the world is being rich and popular. It’s way easier to say she hates it than to admit to wanting it.

“Remember, LaSamba, just keep an open mind. If he totally sucks, we’ll forget the whole thing, okay?” She takes a deep breath, tucks her freshly washed hair behind her ears, then pushes the lit doorbell. Troy opens the door real fast, like he’s been waiting right behind it. It’s kind of creepy.

“I was starting to think you might not show,” he says. When I see his chest and arms through the tight black T-shirt, I think of comic book heroes in formfitting costumes with impossibly sculpted muscles, necks thick as tree trunks. His jaw is large and square and his nose has this Roman-god-like bump in it.

I hate him. I can’t help it.

I hate him because I know that eventually, the good-looking, persevering, rich, guitar-playing guy gets the girl. I’ve seen it in a thousand and one movies and gagged each time. I watched it happen back in eighth grade with Sukie—how he totally won her over and became her whole world in the course of just a few days.

“Haven’t you ever heard of being fashionably late?” Dahlia asks him. I follow her into the dimly lit wood-paneled hallway. There’s a carpeted staircase in front of us, but Troy turns to the left and takes us through the living room with a cathedral ceiling and a wall of windows to the steep wooden stairs that lead down to the basement, which has been turned into a rec room complete with a bunch of guitars and amps, Ping-Pong table, stereo, TV, a stack of board games (Clue is on top), and a beat-up leather couch where my ex-boyfriend, Albert Finch, is sitting.

Déjà vu.

“Hey,” grunts Albert, who looks all dressed up. He’s wearing tan chinos, a clean white button-down shirt, and cherry brown loafers. He’s kind of cute in that geeky-boy-with-glasses kind of way. Albert’s into video games and sci-fi movies. He and Troy seem an unlikely pair, but they’ve been best friends since second grade. Troy’s always trying to get Albert into the gym and Albert’s always trying to get Troy to read The Lord of the Rings.

Looking at Albert now, I just bet Troy told him I was coming, so he got all dressed up just for me. I bet he’s even got on that stinky old cologne of his dad’s that he used to wear when we went on dates.

“Look who showed,” Troy announces as we enter.

“What’s he supposed to be, your agent or something?” Dahlia asks.

Troy laughs. “Nah, just a music lover.”

Albert stands up, like the men do in old movies when ladies enter the room. He looks all twitchy, like he doesn’t know quite what to do with himself. I catch a whiff and realize I was right about the cologne. It’s eye-watering. The poor kid must have used half the bottle.

“How about some Cokes?” suggests Troy.

“Sounds good,” says Dahlia as she slips out of her sheepskin coat.

“Finch, four Cokes,” orders Troy as he hurries to take Dahlia’s coat.

“A little cold out to be walking,” Troy says. “You should have let me pick you up.”

“We like to walk. Don’t we, Maggie?” Dahlia nudges me.

I nod.

“You’ve gotten so quiet, Maggie,” Troy says, and he gives me this look of pity. Poor Frankenstein girl with the dead mother.

I shrug.

“It’s okay,” he says with a smile. “It’s just different from how you were before. But different is cool. I mean, things change, right? The world is in flux.”

I try to smile back, but feel a little sick. I bite my lip and look down at my feet.

I was Mrs. White. Sukie was Miss Scarlet. Sometimes, after we’d play, the four of us would sit making out on the couch. I’d let Albert put his tongue in my mouth.

Troy’s right: the world is in flux.

Albert comes back with four cans of Coke. We all sit on the couch. Dahlia and I are in the middle. Albert is beside me, Troy beside her.

“Smoke?” asks Troy, pulling out a pack of Marlboros, which he so did not ever do when he was with Sukie. I think the cigarettes are just another prop to impress Dahlia.

“Got my own,” says Dahlia, reaching into her bag for her pack of cloves.

Troy takes a lighter shaped like a silver bullet from the table and lights her cigarette for her, filling the air with a mix of acrid lighter fluid and sweet cloves. He takes a cigarette from his own pack and lights up.

Dahlia holds out her cigarette, offering me a drag. I’m crazy nervous and inhale way too deeply, the harsh smoke burning my throat and lungs, making me cough. Albert pats me on the back, a little too hard, his hand like a wooden paddle. Then he does this creepy thing and leaves his hand on my shoulder.

“How’s your dad, Mags?” Albert asks.

“Fine,” I say, shifting away from him, toward Dahlia. He takes his hand back.

“You know her dad?” Dahlia says.

“Sure,” says Albert. “Howard. He’s really cool.”

“How does he know your dad?” Dahlia asks me, suddenly acting like Albert isn’t even in the room.

“He used to come over sometimes,” I say, my voice small and squeaky.

“They used to go out,” Troy says.

“You and Albert went out?” Now Dahlia’s the one with the squeaky voice.

I don’t say anything.

“Well, isn’t that sweet?” Dahlia says, all sarcastic.

We sip our Cokes.

“So what kind of music are you into, Wainwright?” Troy asks.

Dahlia kicks off her shoes. “Classic rock all the way,” she tells him. Then before I know it, she and Troy are off naming bands, arguing about who is more of a genius, Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison. Dahlia is impressing him with her Jim Morrison facts.

“Damn, girl,” Troy says, “you know your stuff. Truly.”

I start coughing again.

Dahlia squeezes my knee, asks if I’m okay. I nod.

Albert offers to get me another Coke, but I tell him I’m fine.

“So when did you two go out?” Dahlia asks.

“We started in eighth grade,” Albert tells her.

“And who broke up with who?” Dahlia asks.

Albert’s face reddens, starting with his ears.

“Well, someone must have broken things off. Unless, of course, you’re still together. Are you still going out, Maggie?”

She’s got an odd look on her face, half amused, half furious, and there’s a long silence while I try to figure out why she’s being such a bitch about this. Is it a) because I’ve kept a secret from her, or b) because she’s actually jealous, which means that maybe she’s got feelings for me, too? Albert clears his throat awkwardly.

“We broke up a while ago,” I say quietly. “Okay?” She narrows her eyes at me, but drops it.

Troy is putting on a Jimi Hendrix CD. He tells Dahlia she should really listen to the way he makes his guitar talk. I try to catch Dahlia’s gaze to give her a big eye roll, but she’s watching Troy.

Albert goes to get us these little bags of chips, and when he comes back, he hands me mine first and flashes me a smile that makes me feel kind of queasy. It’s an Isn’t it nice to be together again like this? kind of smile. I take the chips, but my hand doesn’t really feel like it belongs to me. It’s like a pale ghost arm sticking out in the air, thin, brittle fingers wrapping around the crinkly plastic bag. I have this sense that I’m not here on the couch at all, but somewhere up over us, a fly on the wall watching the four of us on the couch. But I’m not sure which me it is I’m watching: BTA Maggie or ATA Maggie. I feel a little like both. Like time has looped around in this room, doing a crazy figure eight, which is, I saw in a textbook once, shaped just like the sign for infinity.

“Infinity.” I whisper the word, thinking if I hear myself talk I’ll be back in my own body.

“What?” Albert asks.

I shake my head.

Dahlia and Troy are getting along like a house on fire, swept up by the flames Jimi Hendrix sings about. “Somebody’s house is burning down, down, down, down,” Hendrix wails. Troy is playing air guitar with his eyes closed in mock concentration, and Dahlia is keeping the beat with an invisible drum set, smiling, her eyes wide open as she watches him, listens to the music for cues to when to bang harder, faster.

We seem to be sitting like this forever on the couch, me listening to Troy and Dahlia, only half paying attention to poor Albert, who’s going on about some sci-fi convention he went to over the summer, but before I know it, I glance at the clock and an hour’s gone by.

“So, Farnham, are you gonna play or what?” Dahlia asks, and Troy smiles real big like he thought she’d never ask. He picks up his red guitar and plugs into one of the amps.

“Stratocaster,” he says. “Like Hendrix.”

He plays a few notes and makes them stretch and waver by wiggling the whammy bar. He plays pieces of songs I recognize from the radio, top-forty crap.

“So whaddya wanna hear, Wainwright? Blues?” with this, he plays a few low, wailing notes and sings, “I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees”; then his fingers dance up the fretboard. He’s bending the strings, making them moan.

“How about country?”

He plays some country twang and sings, “My dog died, my woman left me, my truck broke down, I got tears in my beer,” and this gets a laugh from Dahlia.

“Your flyer said you wanted eclectic,” he tells her with a wink.

Then he just starts jamming, playing whatever comes into his head, and much as I hate to admit it, he’s actually even better than I remember. And when he plays, he acts like he forgets we’re here watching him. He actually stops drooling over Dahlia and concentrates on his guitar. It’s kind of a miracle.

Dahlia gets up with one of her notebooks and starts singing the “Dead Aunt Mary” song, and Troy plays along. He fools around with different chords until he finds something that actually sounds kind of decent.

“Come on, Maggie,” Dahlia shouts between verses, taking my hand to pull me up from the couch.

I stand too quickly, and stumble as I struggle to get my clarinet from its case. Dahlia puts a hand on my hip, steadies me.

Finally I get the instrument out and put it to my lips. Maybe it’s being at Troy’s like this—feeling all floaty and strange and not placed in time—but the clarinet and I are one today. I get into the groove right away and Troy joins me, backing Dahlia, dancing our music behind her words, doing this beautiful ebb and flow thing. Troy might be a total jerk, but it’s like he’s got musical ESP—he knows what notes I’m going to play before I play them; he makes these subtle little changes in the rhythm that suddenly make the whole song work perfectly.

We finish, and Albert applauds. He’s looking at me all wide-eyed and puppy-doggish, like it’s the good old days and I’m gonna go make out with him on the couch after. Troy goes and gets a microphone for Dahlia, which he plugs into a small amp. Dahlia smiles and accepts the mike, caressing it a little, testing it by blowing and moaning into it, making my heart skip a few beats.

We play “Dead Aunt Mary” again. This time, Troy adds a guitar solo, and he has me do a solo, too, and while I’m playing Dahlia starts to do a low moan into the microphone, and it’s the saddest and sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. I play back to her, closing my eyes, imagining my notes and hers entwining, caressing each other, while Troy gives us a quiet strumming rhythm. Dahlia’s moan turns into a howl and the music builds, then she screams, “I’ve got a knife in my heart, a knife in my heart, a knife in my heart,” clutches her chest, and drops to the ground with the microphone.

“Some ending, Wainwright!” Troy says, a wide grin showing off his perfect teeth. “This is good. We are gonna be so hot. Truly.”

And Dahlia says, “Yeah, we are,” and just like that, Troy’s in the band.

“So do we have a name for this band or what?” Troy asks. Practice is over and we’re sitting on the couch eating chips and salsa.

“Don’t know yet,” Dahlia says. “Anyone got any ideas?” She looks right at me when she asks, like I’m the only one who matters. Having her and Albert together in the same room makes me painfully aware of just how stupid it was that I ever went out with him. I never felt anything even close to what I feel for Dahlia when I was with him. I was just going through the motions.

If I ever had any doubts, they’re gone now. I am in love with Dahlia Wainwright. Watching her here with Albert and Troy just makes the whole thing worse. Loving her actually kind of hurts.

“I’ve got an idea,” Troy says, jumping up. “Come on, we’ve gotta go to my room.”

We follow him upstairs, practically running through the living room, where we lose him around a corner. Without thinking, I lead the way through the front hall, up the stairs, and down a long, carpeted corridor and take Dahlia to the last door on the left.

She gives me a puzzled look and says, “Let me guess, you’ve been here before?”

I shrug.

“You’re just full of surprises, LaSamba, aren’t you?”

Troy’s bedroom hasn’t changed at all since last time I was here. It’s huge, with a set of weights and a bench in the corner, a stereo that would make any music lover drool, his own wide-screen TV, posters of Jimi Hendrix on the wall. There’s a massive oak desk that seems to be just a place to throw dirty clothes. Troy pushes some of these aside and pulls out his Magic 8 Ball, which Sukie gave him for his birthday two years ago. It’s just too weird to be here again like this, Dahlia by my side while Troy shakes the very same oracle that once told Sukie she and Troy were going to get married one day.

“Shout out a possible name,” Troy says.

Albert laughs. “Alternate Universe,” he says.

Maybe that’s where I am now, I think.

Troy gives the ball a shake, then reads, “Very doubtful.”

Dahlia’s looking around, taking everything in, when all of a sudden her eyes get huge and pissed-off-looking. I follow her gaze. There, draped over the weight bench, is a rubber devil mask.

“You,” she says accusingly to Troy. “It was you guys who followed us last night in those dumb masks.”

Troy shrugs. “Just a couple devils out looking for a good time.”

“Kind of twisted, Farnham,” she says.

“No more twisted than killing poor innocent garden gnomes,” he says, reminding her of her own crime.

She turns away from him, pulls a cigarette out from her bag, and digs around in there for a lighter. She’s taking everything out and setting it on Troy’s unmade bed. Cigarettes, pens, lipstick, licorice allsorts, the little scissors. She pulls out one of her notebooks and gives it a shake, like a book of matches might be hiding in there. What falls out is a sheet of paper dolls: girls in grass skirts holding ukuleles, arms linked in a chain.

Troy leans over, holding out the silver bullet, which he flicks with his thumb, lighting her clove like the gentleman I know damn well he isn’t.

“The Paper Dolls,” I say, my eyes going back to the row of Tiki dolls Dahlia’s made.

“What?” Troy asks.

“A band name. The Paper Dolls.”

Dahlia’s eyes light up. “It’s perfect, Maggie! We’ll be The Paper Dolls!”

Troy gives the Magic 8 Ball a shake.

“Yes—definitely,” he reads, and it’s decided.

I’ve named our band.

14

“I’ve met the String Man,” Jonah confesses in a whisper.

The boy wizard has been doing a weird thing lately: he comes home from school, dumps the books out of his knapsack, then grabs a dusty rejected can from the back of the cupboard—fava beans, mandarin orange slices, cheddar-bacon soup—something given to them when they pick up boxes at the food shelf in the basement of the Congregational church during times of true desperation. Once he’s got his can, he leaves the apartment and doesn’t come home until dark.

“Are you feeding animals or something?” Dahlia had asked the first afternoon he did it.

“Sort of,” he had said, shrugging his shoulders and escaping before she could question him further.

So today, after watching him drop a can of creamed corn and two Twinkies into his bag, Dahlia demanded to know what was going on and said she hoped for damn sure that Jonah wasn’t wasting Twinkies on raccoons.

“The String Man?” she says, narrowing her eyes like she doesn’t quite believe him.

Jonah shifts from foot to foot, fiddles with the straps of his knapsack.

“Honest,” he says. “And I was right, he is a wizard. I was scared of him at first, I thought he was crazy or something, but it turns out he’s smarter than anyone I know. And he knows things.”

“What kind of things?” Dahlia asks.

“All kinds. Like when it will rain. How to fix a bird’s broken wing. What makes engines work.”

“Take us to meet him,” Dahlia says.

“I can’t,” Jonah says, looking away.

“Why not?”

“I promised I wouldn’t bring anyone.”

“Well, you’re bringing us,” Dahlia informs him.

“But I promised,” Jonah whines.

“Well, if your String Man is so smart, he’ll understand you had no choice. Now come on.”

With this, Dahlia’s out the front door with Jonah right behind, begging her not to make him do this. When his pleading does no good, he runs ahead of us, walking quickly, pretending we’re not right behind him.

We follow Jonah through town, around parked cars, past the 5 & 10 store, where Thanksgiving decorations line the shelves in front of the window. The boy wizard never looks back, just marches onward through puddles left by this morning’s rain. He’s mad at his sister, you can tell.

Dahlia’s wearing this crazy gypsy dress with a thousand bright, shimmering colors like a peacock’s. She has an emerald-colored silk scarf tied on over her hair, completing the gypsy look. Everyone stops to stare at her as we move through town; she’s that dazzling.

Eventually, we slip through the fence to the railroad tracks behind Jonah’s school. Dahlia pulls out her pack of clove cigarettes. Then she produces Troy’s silver bullet lighter.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask, as if I don’t know.

“Farnham gave it to me,” she says. “It’s pretty cool, huh?” She lights her cigarette, then drops the silver bullet back into her bag.

The sad truth is, Dahlia seems to think a lot of things about Troy are pretty cool. Like his car, for one. She used to call his vintage Trans Am an idiot muscle car, but now she accepts rides to and from school, which has every girl at Sutterville High talking, which seems to amuse the hell out of Dahlia.

Jonah is ahead of us, walking tightrope along the tracks.

“I still can’t believe it about you and Albert Finch,” Dahlia says.

“Like I’ve told you a million times, it’s no big deal,” I say. “We went out back in eighth grade.”

“So you hung out with Troy then?”

“Sometimes.”

“When Sukie was going out with him?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“So what, were you and Sukie, like, buddies?”

“Kind of.”

“You and Sukie Schwartz were friends?”

“Weird, huh?” I say. I try a casual little laugh, but it comes out nervous and idiotic.

“Yeah, LaSamba.” Dahlia’s not laughing. “It’s definitely weird. Why were you keeping it a secret? Were you two queer for each other or something?”

“No!” I say, a little too defensively maybe. “It wasn’t anything like that.”

But we sat in the closet and read those magazines. Sometimes we slept all curled up against each other. Did I have the hots for Sukie and not even know it? Is that even possible?

“Good,” Dahlia says. “She doesn’t seem like your type.”

I laugh. It sounds better this time. “What is my type?”

“Not Albert Finch, that’s for sure,” she says.

“Well, who then?”

My stomach is doing flips because I think maybe she’ll say it. Maybe she’ll open her mouth and say, Me, LaSamba. I’m your type. But she just smiles and drops the subject entirely.

“So, Jonah,” she calls, “does your String Man live there in the cave?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes he goes to his other home.”

“Does he have a job?”

“He does odd jobs. Mows lawns. Fixes stuff. That kind of thing.”

“What does he look like?”

“You’ll see. We’re almost there.”

“He’s not a pervert or anything, right?” Dahlia asks.

“Not at all. Just a little odd. You’ll like him. I promise.”

We walk the tracks past the soda factory—I never did ask my father about his office window. The sun is out, making it feel like fall, but the wind, when it comes, is a brisk reminder that winter isn’t all that far off. We follow Jonah all the way to the bridge, where we make our way down the steep, muddy path until we get to the stream, which is swollen and brown, rushing violently by.

In the clearing, we can see someone’s been here recently. The place is a mess with cigarette butts and beer cans. The muddy ground has dozens of footprints, all huge and smeary. We stand silently for a while, surveying the stream, the footprints, the rocky bank on the other side. The stream looks too swollen to cross, like we might be swept away. The stepping stones only show their very tips, which look slippery and unsafe. I doubt I’d make it across with my bum leg. I’m thinking the boy wizard might just have to levitate across when, all of a sudden, a man comes crashing down the hill across the stream and stops just on the other side. No, he’s not a man, but a boy—big, but awkward with his size, like his body is just an outfit he’s trying on, some Sunday clothes that itch behind the neck, the sleeves a little too short.

He’s wearing torn jeans, a flannel shirt, and dark brown leather boots with red laces. His hair is straight and sandy brown where it sticks out from under his black watch cap, and even from here I can see the dark purple scar that seems to divide his face in two.

Jonah shouts, “Hello!” across the stream. “It’s him,” he tells us excitedly. “It’s the String Man.”

“It’s Joey!” I say. My mystery man from Shop class is Jonah’s new best friend!

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Dahlia says. “Joey is the String Man?”

“You know him?” Jonah asks.

“He goes to our school,” Dahlia says.

“He’s in my Shop class,” I say.

“I . . . I told you—come alone!” Joey shouts over the roar of the stream as Jonah raises his hand in greeting.

“Hi, Joey!” Dahlia calls, waving. “So he talks after all,” she says to us.

“Of course he talks,” Jonah blurts out.

“Go-go-go a-way!” shouts the boy. He’s putting his hands over his face, trying to make us disappear the way a little kid might.

“But I have Twinkies!” Jonah says, sliding the knapsack off his back, pulling the snack cakes out to show the strange boy. “Come on, it’s just my sister and her friend. They wanted to meet you. They made me bring them.”

“Really,” Dahlia says. “We made him. It’s our fault he broke his promise. Now come on over here and have a Twinkie, will ya?”

Joey considers for a few seconds, then comes bounding sure-footedly across the rushing stream. Once he’s across, he looks all nervous and out of place. He goes and stands beside Jonah, who gives him a Twinkie. Joey just plays with it, crinkling the wrapper.

“This is my sister, Tiki, and her friend, LaSamba,” Jonah says.

Joey bows to Dahlia. He gives me a nod.

“Jesus, I didn’t think you even talked,” Dahlia says to him. “I’m totally tripping here. You live in that cave up there?”

Joey nods, studying the Twinkie.

“I want to take him home to meet Mom,” Jonah says, mostly to Dahlia.

“I don’t know, Zamboni . . .”

“Please, Tiki,” Jonah begs.

Dahlia looks over at me, like my opinion might matter.

“I think we should,” I tell her.

Joey is dancing around nervously, like a little kid who has to pee.

“Okay. Come have supper with us,” Dahlia says, touching Joey’s arm. He holds still and nods, as if Dahlia’s touch was all he needed to be calm. Then his face breaks into a broad smile, and I’m afraid it’s going to split in two along the dark raised scar. It’s hard to notice anything else about his face. It’s like the scar has taken over completely.

Joey leaves us to go back to his cave to get his jacket.

“He’s seventeen,” Jonah says once Joey’s crossed the stream. “I didn’t know he went to your school. He never said. He has an older sister—Constance—in a wheelchair who is real smart—she goes to college in New Hampshire, where she’s studying to be a doctor. They were in a car accident when they were younger. Their mother—one of the nurses in that picture—died. Constance is paralyzed, and Joey went headfirst through the windshield, which is how he got that scar. He says his brain got bruised and it made him sick in weird ways. Like he’s kind of slow about some things. And he has these bad headaches. He can’t look at bright light. Sometimes he pukes when he rides in cars or buses.”

“Motion sickness,” I say. Jonah nods, then keeps talking.

“His dad is the only one who got out of the accident okay, but he drinks bad. He’s a bottler at Elff. He used to drive a delivery truck, but he got a DUI ticket, so now he helps the elves fill the bottles and put caps on them. Joey’s dad can get mean when he drinks, especially since Constance went away, so Joey stays in the cave whenever he can.”

“Wait,” Dahlia says, interrupting Jonah, who is talking ninety miles an hour he’s so excited. “Joey told you all this?”

Jonah nods. “Pretty much. Some of it I figured out.”

“I can’t believe that accident thing Heather told us was actually true,” Dahlia says to me.

“Me neither,” I say, more sure than ever that Joey and I were destined to meet.

Leah lights a cigarette, her eyes fixed on Joey when we present him to her in the living room. Joey keeps his eyes down on his shoes, just like in school with me.

“Joey’s staying for dinner. Is that okay, Mom?” asks Jonah.

Leah nods.

“We’re having meat loaf,” Leah says, more to Joey than to Jonah. “Are you hungry?” she asks the strange boy. He looks up from his shoes and smiles at her. She can’t help but smile back.

Joey has three helpings of meat loaf. Jonah just eats salad, but doesn’t get much of it into him because he’s the one doing all the talking.

He’s telling Leah all about the cave and the dolls Joey makes from trash he picks up.

“I hear he’s also making some kind of fancy drum,” Dahlia says, and Joey’s eyes meet mine for the first time.

“It’s incredible. You should see it,” I say. “It’s covered with these carved dancing animals. Incredible. You’re an artist,” I say to Joey, and his scarred face flushes.

“Hey, he should be in your band!” Jonah practically shouts.

Dahlia shoots me a look.

“Can you play the thing?” she asks Joey.

He just nods.

“Well, why the hell not? Every decent band has a drummer. Maybe you and your magic drum will be just what The Paper Dolls need. What do you say?”

“Don’t know. . . .”

“Sure you do. You know. Just say yes. Right, Maggie? Tell him. Tell him how great we are.”

I smile at the String Man. “Please,” I say.

He nods. “Okey-dokey.”

“It’s decided, then,” Dahlia says. “Meet us after school with your drum and we’ll head over to Troy’s. He’s gonna love it when we show up with you. Man, oh, man. I can’t wait to see his face.”

Joey eats a can of cling peaches in heavy syrup while Jonah tells us about all the odd jobs Joey does.

“That’s where he gets all the dollar bills he keeps in the cave, right, Joey? You’re a hard worker, aren’t you?”

Joey nods.

Jonah tells us he has his regulars, the people who pay him five bucks for shoveling their walks after a winter storm, the lonely old ladies who invite him in for lemonade or hot chocolate when he’s through. He mows lawns mostly, rakes yards, hauls trash to the corner of the street. He built a stone wall once and knows how to fix small engines—lawn mowers, chain saws, weed whackers.

“You taught yourself everything you know, right, Joey? Tell them,” Jonah coaxes, but Joey just nods and smiles, content to let Jonah be his spokesperson.

Joey’s no dummy, that’s for sure. All those people who call him a retard are totally clueless. Jonah says he can even do a little plumbing, a little carpentry. He doesn’t mess with electricity, though—that, he says, could be dangerous.

Leah, who has said almost nothing during dinner, gets up from the table and lights a cigarette, leaning back against the red formica counter near the sink. She’s staring at Joey, blowing smoke in his direction, while he looks down at his empty plate.

I think he’s kind of handsome in a way. I mean, if you don’t think about the scar, which is pretty much impossible. His light brown hair is all shaggy and keeps falling over his eyes. He jerks his head back from time to time to move the hair. He’s as tan as Troy, and his eyes are deep brown, like chocolate Tootsie Pops. If I wasn’t totally in love with Dahlia, I might develop a secret crush on Joey. But I’d never act on it. I don’t want to kiss him or anything like that. What I want (and I know this is weird) is to hike up the leg of my jeans and show him my own scar. To say, See, we’re twins, you and I. We know each other in a way no one else can.

“It’s him,” Leah announces at last. “No doubt about it.”

“Him who?” Dahlia asks.

“The smiling dog,” Leah answers. “Joey is the smiling dog.”

At his name, Joey looks up from the table. He turns immediately to Jonah for an explanation.

Jonah looks from Joey to his mother, finally asking, “What will his name be?”

Leah puts out her cigarette in the sink and walks up to Joey. She studies him, taking his face in her hands, running her fingers along his thick purple scar.

“This scar is like a river,” she says. “A great and powerful river. A river that crosses countries. That doesn’t care which side it’s on.

“Your name will be Rio,” she tells Joey, “after the Rio Grande.”

Joey smiles up at her as she holds his head in her hands.

We’re all silent now, because Mother Mary has spoken. She’s opened up our world, added another key player. There is no way Joey—Rio—could even begin to comprehend the importance of this, just like there was no way for me to understand the night she named me LaSamba. Only by looking back can we realize that these are the moments that change everything.

15

The phone wakes me from sound sleep. I’ve had my own line in my room since seventh grade, when my mother got fed up with me tying up the phone talking to Sukie all the time.

I glance over at the digital clock. 6:15 A.M. It’s gotta be Dahlia. No one else would call me at this hour. Hell, no one else would call me, period. But when I answer, I hear I’m wrong.

“Hey,” Sukie says. “Did I wake you?”

“Kind of,” I tell her. Why on earth is she calling me at six in the morning? Is it the end of the world or something? Or did she hear Dahlia and I were at Troy’s the other day and she’s calling to say, How could you?

“What’s up?” I ask.

“I was just thinking of you. Thinking about today. How hard it might be.”

Today? We’re surprising Troy by bringing Joey to band practice, but how would she know that? And what does she care?

“Hard?”

“Yeah. The anniversary. I can’t believe it’s been two years.”

I draw in a breath. How could I have forgotten? I’ve been so busy with Dahlia and the band that I haven’t even noticed the date. November 7. The accident was exactly two years ago today.

“Sometimes,” Sukie says, “sometimes I feel like she’s just away on vacation or something, know what I mean? Like she’s going to come back anytime now and we’ll all go out for ice cream and it’ll be like she never left. Like you and I never stopped being friends.

“Remember that game we used to play where we walked all around your house holding little mirrors? We didn’t look straight in front of us, or down at our feet, just at the reflection in the mirrors in our hands. And they were angled up, to make it seem like we were walking on the ceiling. Like there was this whole other landscape than the one we were used to. Just wide-open space, and we had to step over doorways and light fixtures. Remember?”

I did. It was a silly game. Something we invented by accident.

“It’s like that, Mags. Like we’ve been walking on the ceiling and I’m just waiting for your mother to show up and tell us to cut it out and come back down. Does that make any sense? Or am I just being stupid? Mags?”

“I’ve gotta go,” I tell her, and hang up before she can say anything else, before she can hear that I’m crying.

Breakfast is awful. My father forgets the waffles in the toaster, which is turned up all the way, and they burn. His eyes are red and puffy like he’s been awake all night. Neither of us says anything about what day this is. We’re trying to pretend it doesn’t matter, I guess. That it’s just a day like any other. I’m going to school and he’s going to work.

“I have band practice tonight,” I tell him. “We have a new drummer. I’ll be home late.”

He just nods absentmindedly, staring in disbelief at the charbroiled waffles, not even asking me anything about the band or our new drummer.

“What’s eating you, anyway?” Dahlia asks when I meet her on the soccer field at lunch.

“Nothing,” I say.

“So,” she says. “Like I was saying, I think the best thing to do is to just show up with Joey this afternoon. Just walk into Troy’s like Joey being with us is the most normal thing in the world. He’ll flip his freaking lid!”

“That’s not the point,” I grumble.

“What?”

“We didn’t ask Joey to join the band just to wig out Troy, right?”

“Of course not,” Dahlia says. “It’s just an added bonus. God, what is with you today?”

Do I tell her? Or do I add it to the list of secrets I’m already keeping?

“It was two years ago,” I say. “November 7.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Dahlia asks.

“The accident.” The words fall like a bomb that just hits the ground with a quiet thud but doesn’t go off. We both hold our breath, waiting.

“And wanna know the weird part? I forgot. I just totally forgot.” I bite my lip. Concentrate on not crying. I do not want to cry right now.

Dahlia reaches out and takes my hand. “I know what you need. Come on.”

And she leads me into the grove of pine trees at the edge of the field, then pulls a joint out of her bag.

“Where did you get that?”

“Troy,” she says.

“And you want to smoke it now?” I say.

“Why not?”

I can think of a thousand reasons. Like that I’ve never smoked pot before, and I’m afraid it might make me go crazy like a kid in those antidrug videos they showed in health class. But I’m not about to admit this to Dahlia. No way do I want her to know what a goody-two-shoes I’ve been all my life.

“We’re at school. We’ll get caught.”

“Oh come on. What do you have left for classes? Earth Science with clueless No-Neck and study hall. It’ll be fine. I promise. Have I ever let you down?”

Only like a thousand times, I want to say, but it’s too late. She’s lighting the joint with Troy’s silver bullet and taking a hit. She passes it to me, and what choice do I have? I can’t say no to this girl.

I take a tiny hit, try to hold it in my lungs like she does, but end up coughing it all out.

“Hey, wanna try something?” she asks, smiling conspiratorially.

“What?”

“Just trust me, okay? It’ll get you really high.”

She takes the joint and puts the lit end in her mouth. Tiki the fire-eater. The other end is sticking out from between her lips, and she beckons me toward her. I step closer and she pulls me right up against her, guides my head so that I take the end of the joint in my mouth, and then she blows. My lips are grazing hers and she’s giving me this fiery dragon kiss that burns my lungs and makes my head spin. Her hands are firmly placed at the back of my head, fingers tangled in my hair. I take in all the smoke I can, then pull away, choking, tears streaming down my cheeks, and Dahlia takes the joint from her mouth and laughs. She’s still laughing when I wipe the tears from my eyes and see a lone figure in the soccer field, watching us in bewilderment. It’s Sukie. Dahlia follows my gaze.

“What could she possibly want?” Dahlia asks.

“Don’t know,” I say. Then it dawns on me: from that distance, she probably thinks she just saw me and Dahlia making out.

And I’m thinking I should call out to her, ask her what she’s up to, explain that Dahlia and I are just smoking pot, which is something the new ATA Maggie does, but before I get the chance, Sukie turns from us and goes back to the school.

“And according to her, we’re the freaks?” Dahlia says. “God, look at the way she walks. It really is like she’s got a stick up her ass. Do you think she’s going in there to tell someone we’re out here smoking weed?”

“I really don’t know,” I say. I’m feeling all stretchy and fluid, like Silly Putty girl, and the truth is, I couldn’t care less what Sukie’s up to or what she might think she just saw. I wouldn’t even care if we got caught. My lips just touched Dahlia’s. My lungs are full of her breath.

“Well, we better split just in case. Besides, we don’t want to be late for your man, No-Neck, do we?”

This cracks me up and I laugh the whole way back to the building, Dahlia shushing me, telling me I’ve gotta chill.

“This is a joke, right?” Troy says when we show up at his door with Joey and his big hollow log drum. “You guys are putting me on.”

“Meet the new drummer for The Paper Dolls,” Dahlia says.

“Uh-uh. No way,” Troy says.

“Yes way,” Dahlia tells him. “Now, are we gonna start practice or what? That drum Joey’s got is heavy as hell. Let the poor guy set it down, will ya?”

So Troy leads us into the basement, mumbling shocked little declarations the whole way.

“Can you really play that thing?” Troy asks as Joey sets the drum down in the corner, behind the microphone stand. He sets it on its end. It’s about three feet high, and it looks like a small tree trunk, which is what it was once—some hollowed-out deadfall he found in the woods. On the outside of the wood are all the animals Joey’s carved with chisels and mallet: dancing birds, laughing dogs, a snake as thick as my wrist that winds its way up toward the top, where Joey has pulled a circle of tanned animal skin tight over the opening and hammered it in place with little brass nails. Joey has on a navy blue hooded sweatshirt and his black watch cap. He pulls up a stool, slides the drum between his legs, gives Troy a sly smile, then rubs his hands together real fast, blows on his fingers to warm them, and lets loose on the drum. He uses his palms, knuckles, and fingertips to bang, beat, and caress the leather skin. He’s like the high priest at some island voodoo ceremony. We’re all swaying to the beat, bopping our heads like those dolls with spring necks you see in the back of cars.

When Joey finishes, Troy just says, “Damn!”

And Dahlia, who’s smiling ear to ear, says, “He’s going to give The Paper Dolls this whole new beatnik feel. And don’t you just love his look?”

She’s talking about him like he’s not even in the room, which is kind of an easy thing to do. We walked all the way over here from school, carrying on this conversation about poor old No-Neck Knapp and his dandruff problem, and I nearly forgot Joey was with us. It’s not just that he’s quiet. He’s got this weird ability to fade into the scenery and seem invisible.

I touch him on the arm and feel his bicep contract. “You’re really good,” I tell him. He stares at the ground and blushes.

“Well, let’s get this show on the road,” says Dahlia as she plugs in her mike. “We’ll work on ‘Dead Aunt Mary’ first.”

Joey may not talk much, but he sure can play. He dives right into “Dead Aunt Mary,” adding this kind of menacing beat that reminds me of the song “Nightmare.” After we’ve gone through the song a couple times, I ask him if he’s ever heard of Artie Shaw.

“No,” he says, looking at his feet.

“What kind of music are you into?” Dahlia asks.

Joey shrugs. “Radio music,” he says.

“Yeah, like what station?” She laughs.

He shrugs.

“You are a trip,” says Troy.

“No, no, I’m staying here. I’m staying,” Joey says, and we all laugh, which seems kind of mean, but Joey’s laughing, too.

On the way home, I take a detour and go to the place I’ve spent my whole day trying not to think about. And it’s worked pretty well. Until now.

The light above the intersection changes from red to green as I approach. I’m looking east, and I can see the lights of the junior high down the street. There are a lot of cars in the parking lot for this time of night. Maybe they’re having a concert. Or a play.

Oh shit. I forgot Toto.

Isn’t it funny how everything can change in the blink of an eye? How you can leave a stuffed dog behind on your bed and ruin your whole life?

“I’m sorry,” I say out loud. “I’m so sorry.”

Then I start to cry, and everything I’ve been trying not to feel all day comes rushing at me. I remember all these funny little details about that night. Like how we’d had linguine with clam sauce for dinner, and my mother and I were eating the little chalky white breath mints she always kept in the glove compartment so we wouldn’t smell like garlic. My mother was wearing overalls because she had to finish painting the inside of the witch’s castle. My dress was scratchy against my skin, and when I complained, my mother promised to wash it with fabric softener when we got home.

Here I am sobbing and gasping and pacing around like a mental case and a middle-aged guy driving a Volvo with two kids in the backseat pulls over and rolls down his window.

“Do you need help?” he asks.

Do I need help? Do I?

“No.” I wipe my face. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Can I give you a ride?”

“No, really, I live just around the corner.”

And then, to make the lie more real, I point in the direction of my supposed house, and that’s when I see it. There, at the curb where the two streets meet, something glitters under the streetlight.

“Okay then, get home safely,” the man tells me before pulling away, his good Samaritan deed for the day done.

I walk toward the glittering object, not believing what I’m seeing: it’s Glinda’s wand—a silver star attached to a wooden dowel wound round with long strands of sparkly streamers. I haven’t seen the wand since before the accident. It’s stuck in the ground with a little mound of earth surrounding it, like some crazy planted flag saying, Glinda was here. Beside it is a cheap supermarket flower bouquet of daisies wrapped in yellow cellophane. And a card. I pick it up, my hands shaking, and find a note penned in familiar, bubbly letters.

Mrs. Keller,

I miss you.

Love always,

Sukie

I lay the card back beside the flowers and look at the wand. God, I can’t believe Sukie’s kept it all this time. I pull it up, wave it through the air.

Poof.

16

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and we’re walking back to the apartment with Joey after band practice. It’s been two weeks since he joined The Paper Dolls, and I’ve gotta say that overall, it’s gone pretty well. Dahlia says our band is like one of those complicated three-dimensional interlocking puzzles, and Joey’s drum is the final piece that makes the whole thing work.

I’m dreading tomorrow—not only is there no Paper Dolls rehearsal, which means no Dahlia, but my dad and I are making our annual pilgrimage to my grandma’s in New Haven. She’s mostly deaf and puts mayonnaise and green olives in everything.

The Wainwrights don’t do Thanksgiving—Leah says it’s just a celebration of gluttony and greed.

I’m swinging my clarinet case and Dahlia is humming. We’re dressed like rock star girls. We went on a shopping spree at Goodwill and the Army Navy store. We bought only black clothes, and I found my own pair of lace-up combat boots. We’ve put thick black eyeliner on, so heavy it makes our eyes seem bruised. Last week Heather started calling us vampires. Yesterday she asked if we were in mourning.

“Somebody’s going to be in mourning for your sorry ass if you don’t get out of my face,” Dahlia said in her best tough-girl voice. Sukie led Heather away. Since seeing me and Dahlia in the woods, Sukie doesn’t stop me in the halls anymore to warn me about the dangers of hanging out with the wrong crowd. She doesn’t even meet my eye when we pass each other. Sometimes I feel like I should try to explain what she saw that day, but then I think, why bother? I wonder if Sukie’s been to the intersection and noticed that the wand is missing. And if she has, does she suspect I’m the one who took it?

Dahlia and I eat lunch with Troy, Albert, and Joey in the cafeteria every day now. Sometimes I catch Sukie looking over at us—at Troy in his shark-tooth necklace, at Dahlia, who is usually working on a song—and I feel this weird pang of guilt. It’s the same kind of guilt I feel when Albert looks at me all dewy-eyed and I just know he’s thinking we’re getting back together any day now, but I don’t have the heart to tell him that it’s never going to happen. Ever.

Dahlia complains about eating in the cafeteria, but it’s pretty obvious she likes all the attention she gets sitting with Troy. People are always stopping by the table to talk to him—guys from the football team, girls who make fools of themselves falling all over him while they ask some inconsequential question about how he answered a certain question on an algebra test. And the hot topic of conversation in the cafeteria is Just who is that new girl with Troy and is she going out with him?

Dahlia eats it up, and is always doing little things to keep them guessing. The other day, with everyone in the cafeteria watching, she painted the nails of Troy’s left hand blue. I looked over at Sukie and was pretty sure she was about to spontaneously combust.

We have this totally dorky school paper called The Chatterbox, and this year Albert Finch is the editor. He decided the paper should do a story on The Paper Dolls, and he’s been bringing his camera to rehearsal to get shots for it. He also interviewed Dahlia for an hour, asking her everything from musical influences to if she could be an animal what she would be (a dolphin, if you’re interested).

Dahlia found me a cane in the thrift store, and I’ve started using it at school. It’s made of dark wood and has a dragon carved into the handle. Dahlia says the cane makes me seem more exotic, makes my limp seem cool and mysterious. She also bought me my very own black beret.

“We should accentuate the things that make us different, not try to cover them up,” Dahlia says.

She stenciled The Paper Dolls onto the front of black T-shirts with silver spray paint and gave one to everyone in the band. Joey wears his just about every day. It got so filthy that I finally took it home to wash it for him, along with some of his other clothes. He’s been crashing in Jonah’s room lately, because his dad’s been on the mother of all benders and it’s getting too cold to sleep in the cave. I just snuck his washing in with my own and didn’t mention it to my dad, who would be totally weirded out to know I was doing the laundry of our drummer, who lives in a cave.

When we get back to the apartment, we find Leah hard at work at the sewing machine. She’s making new curtains from all of Dahlia’s old, nonblack clothes. She started with the kitchen and bathroom, then made a cover for the couch. Now she’s working on curtains for the big window in the living room. They are like little crazy quilts—none of the pieces match, they’re all different sizes, shapes, and colors.

“Good practice tonight, lovies?” Leah asks.

“As always,” Dahlia says. “Hungry?” she asks, holding out the steak Troy gave her when we left. He’s been raiding the big freezer in the basement for Dahlia since she told him food is always on the scarce side the second half of the month.

“Tiki, you always come through!” says Leah, then goes back to cutting up the skirt with the elephants.

“Thanks to Troy,” Dahlia says, and my stomach clenches. I hate all the little things he does for her. The way he sends her home with food, and always makes sure she has a pack of clove cigarettes. And all these obvious attempts to buy her seem to be working. I mean, she’s actually falling for it. She smiles at him more, mocks him less.

He’s teaching her to play guitar a little, too. He has shown her the three most important chords and told her that for now, that’s all she needs. She complained about her fingers being sore and blistered, and Troy gave her this old, beat-up acoustic guitar with nylon strings that wouldn’t hurt as bad as the steel strings. He actually gave it to her. He said it was hers to keep, and now she carries that damn guitar everywhere with her. She even sleeps with it at night so she’ll have musical dreams.

Today, at practice, her hair fell into her eyes while she was strumming away on her guitar, and damned if Troy didn’t lean over and tuck it behind her ear. Dahlia did not punch him in the mouth or rip into him. She actually smiled.

Dahlia and I head into the kitchen to cook the steak. She smears it with oil, grinds some pepper onto both sides, and puts it under the broiler.

“You should have your own cooking show,” I tell her. I flatter her, but I don’t come close to Troy.

“Great idea, LaSamba. . . . I’ve got it!” she says excitedly. “It would be called Cooking with The Paper Dolls. I think people would like it. It’s MTV meets Rachael Ray.”

When the steak is done, we eat in the kitchen. Jonah comes out of his room to see what’s going on, but soon retreats. He doesn’t approve of us eating meat and claims the very smell of it makes him sick. He’s not eating much of anything these days, and he looks skinnier than ever. His spirit guide tells him meat holds the pain of the slaughter and when you eat it, you take that pain into you. The invisible guide tells him all kinds of other things, too, and Jonah spends hours hiding out in his bedroom, receiving messages and important lessons. Once in a while, he’ll come out to tell us what he’s learned. He says his spirit guide is teaching him to be able to see into the future. Sometimes he comes out of his room ashen-faced and silent, afraid of what he’s seen.

To tell you the truth, I’m a little worried about Jonah, but when I try to talk to Dahlia about it, she brushes me off, says he’s just going through a phase. And Leah says she thinks it’s perfectly normal for a wizard to have a spirit guide and go on vision quests, so it’s obvious she’s not about to intervene.

While we eat our steak, we talk about “The Big Plan.” It was something Leah thought of—it came to her in a dream, actually—and now it’s what we’re all waiting for. We’re going to build a gypsy wagon and travel around in it, all five of us, Joey included. We’ll buy some old beater pickup truck and build a little house on the back with a peaked roof and shutters on the windows. Leah knew a man named Phoenix who had one when she was living out in California. It had a shower made from a black water tank bolted to the roof and a hose with a nozzle that came down to the back of the truck. There was a wood cookstove in it and a table that folded down.

Leah says the gypsy life is the only life worth living, that we’ll be free as birds. Each town we stop in, we’ll do a little show. Dahlia and Joey and I will play Paper Dolls songs. Jonah will tell people’s fortunes and sell magic potions. This is how we’ll earn money for gas and food. Dahlia says this is how we’ll be discovered. In order to make it big, a band has to go on the road.

There’s been no mention of taking Troy on the road with us, and I’m just fine with that. I mean, what do we really need with him now that Dahlia’s learning to play the guitar?

I try to imagine what my father will do when he wakes up one morning and finds my note saying I’ve left. Gone with the gypsies is all I’ll say, because I don’t want to get the Wainwrights in trouble. He’d probably think they brainwashed me or something, when the truth is, I want the gypsy wagon as badly as they do, maybe more so. I’d do anything, go anywhere, to be with Dahlia day after day.

“How come you haven’t brought Dahlia home yet?” my dad asked this morning.

“I don’t know. We’re always so busy with the band and stuff,” I said.

He’s been bugging me about wanting to meet Dahlia for weeks. And now, between the beat-up-girl eyeliner and the closet full of black clothes, he must feel like I’m slipping away into this whole other Dahlia-centered universe that he’s desperate to get some kind of handle on. I think he’s also bummed that I’ve been too busy with the band and Dahlia lately to play music with him in the living room. Some nights, I hear him out there, banging away at the piano, and I know he’s hoping I’ll come out and join him with my clarinet, but I’m always so behind on homework that I just can’t do it.

“How about having the whole band over for a special after-Thanksgiving pizza night on Saturday? Everyone will want a break from turkey and stuffing by then.”

“Sure,” I said, knowing I couldn’t put it off forever. “That would be great.”

I haven’t told him Troy Farnham is our guitarist. He knows we have a guitar player and drummer, but I’ve been a little shaky on the details. Troy used to come over the house sometimes with Sukie. My dad loved him. All parents love Troy. It’s kind of revolting. My dad’s going to be thrilled to learn the identity of the as-yet-unnamed guitarist. He’ll be happy, but he’ll think it’s weird that I haven’t told him, which maybe it is. I’ve gotta say, I feel like the queen of secrets these days. Once you keep one, especially a huge one, like me being in love with Dahlia, it acts as a sort of magnet, and before you know it, your life is full of secrets, big and small.

Joey goes in to Jonah’s room after supper. He’s the only one allowed in there these days. Joey brings little gifts: trash dolls he’s made, a penny smashed on the railroad tracks. His sleeping bag is now a permanent fixture on Jonah’s floor.

Leah’s in her room with the dolls getting ready to make something new happen. She picked up this big toy truck at the 5 & 10, and it sits on her altar now, too, representing the gypsy wagon that we’re all going to run away in.

Dahlia and I are on the couch. She’s braiding my hair, and I’m thinking that I live for moments like these: times when we’re alone and there’s some excuse for us to touch each other.

“My dad wants to have the band over Saturday for pizza,” I say, my voice all fuzzy from the buzz of having Dahlia’s fingers in my hair.

“Wow, LaSamba, you mean I actually get to come over to your house?” I turn to look at Dahlia. Her eyebrows are raised and her mouth is open in this over-the-top look of shock. She even clutches at her chest for emphasis.

“Oh yeah, like you’ve just been dying to.”

“I think it’s a little weird that you’ve never offered. That I’ve never seen where you live, where you sleep every night. You could be going back to the mother ship when you leave here for all I know.”

“I wish. Don’t tell me you’d actually want to see my stupid old boring house and meet my geeky dad.”

“Sometimes, LaSamba,” she says as she finishes braiding my hair and lets it slide from between her fingers, “I don’t think you have any clue what I want at all.”

She brushes my cheek with her fingers, gives me this sly smile, and my heart, which is going about ninety miles an hour now, drops like a bowling ball into my stomach.

I think—no, I’m sure—Dahlia feels it, too.

17

“There’s no smoking in this house,” my dad says as soon as Dahlia pushes her plate away and goes for her cigarettes.

My dad hates her. I can tell. He knew right off that she wasn’t the goody-goody, straight A student I’d made her out to be. Then, during dinner, there was this terrible moment when he was passing her a slice of pizza and said, “I hear your mom’s quite a gourmet.” I held my breath. Dahlia just said, “Huh?” and my dad dropped the subject without even shooting me a look.

“I guess I’ll have to smoke outside then,” Dahlia says—politely, but giving him a pursed-lipped smile. She gets up from the table and Troy is right behind her, flashing my dad a grin and saying, “Excuse us,” leaving me in the kitchen with my dad and Joey, who has said maybe two words all night.

“Bathroom?” Joey asks. That is word number three.

I tell him where it is and he practically runs off down the hall.

“It’s nice of you guys to let him be in the band,” my dad says.

“We’re not just being nice. He can really play, Dad.”

“I’m sure he can. Poor kid.”

“He doesn’t need your pity. He kicks ass on the drum. And you should see the stuff he makes. He can fix damn near anything. He’s way smarter than a lot of people I know.”

“Mmm,” my father says, clearly not buying it.

When Troy and Dahlia come back in, Troy says to my dad, “Do you still play the piano, Mr. Keller?” and my dad’s face just lights up.

“Why, yes, I do as a matter of fact. I took a little hiatus, but I’m back at it.”

“I’d love to hear something,” Troy says. He is such a suck-up. I grab Dahlia’s arm and lead her to my bedroom while Troy and Joey follow my dad into the living room.

I spent yesterday and today getting ready for this. I took down the pink curtains in my room, moved the clown lamp to the basement. My dad took me to the mall, where I picked up lots of candles, an Indian print bedspread and black sheets, a beaded curtain to hang in the tall window, and a poster of Jim Morrison. I packed away the World Book encyclopedias and replaced them with some slim volumes of poetry I picked up at the used-book store.

Here I was imagining that we’d light some candles, read some poetry, and she’d look around my room and think that I must be her soul mate. What really happens is that Dahlia takes one look at my room and just gives a noncommittal “Huh.” She doesn’t even lean down to check out the poetry.

In the living room, my dad starts hammering at the piano. He’s playing “Anything Goes.”

“What’s wrong?” I ask Dahlia. I sit down on the bed, hoping she’ll sit beside me, but she just hovers near the door.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve been in a crappy mood all night.”

My dad is singing now, and Troy joins him. I look at Dahlia, thinking she must surely find the singing amusing, that we’ll at least get a good laugh out of it, but she’s stone-faced.

“I’m gonna go get a soda,” she says, and is gone before I can stop her.

Now here we all are in the living room gathered around the piano, where my father and Troy are side by side on the bench, playing and singing. Who knew Troy could even play the piano? Dahlia is thumbing through my dad’s jazz CDs, looking pissed off and disgusted by god-knows-what. Joey is perched on the edge of the couch cushion, listening to my dad and Troy.

At last it’s over, and my dad gives Troy a hearty pat on the back. “Where’d you learn to play, Troy?”

“Well, Mr. Keller, my parents had me taking lessons when I was six. I took them until I was ten or so, then took up the guitar.”

“I hear you’re a whiz at that, too.”

“I do okay,” Troy says.

“I’m surprised a kid with your talent isn’t at Cedar Brook.”

“Yeah,” Troy says, “we looked at it. But Cedar Brook didn’t have a football team. And you know what they say about the guys who go to an arts school like that,” he adds, smiling.

“My friend Simon went there,” I say, remembering my old pal the Cowardly Lion.

“I’m sure he fits in fine,” my father says. “As I recall, Simon’s kind of a . . . sensitive type.” My dad and Troy exchange knowing glances. Troy laughs, and my dad grins at what a funny guy he is.

I’m going to puke.

It’s suddenly crystal clear that my dad doesn’t get anything at all. I can’t believe I was once actually considering telling him how I felt about Dahlia.

My dad went to college. Played jazz in clubs. He married my mom, who was pretty much the coolest, most open-minded person I know. And now here he is calling Simon sensitive, which is code for he’s a big fag, which is apparently hilarious.

If a gay guy is sensitive, what stupid stereotype would he use to describe a gay girl?

My stomach hurts.

“I’ve gotta go,” Dahlia says. “Thanks for the pizza, Mr. Keller.”

My dad smiles and waves, thanks her for coming. Joey gets up to go, too. Then Troy’s running around fetching coats. He gets Dahlia’s and actually helps her into it.

“I’ll give you guys a ride,” he says. I shoot laser beams with my eyes, frying a hole right through his muscled chest.

“That would be great,” Dahlia says. “ ’Night, Maggie.”

My dad slaps Troy on the back, says, “Come by again, son. We’ll tickle the old ivories.”

Son. He called Troy Farnham son. Troy smiles and says he will. Then he shakes my dad’s hand like a man’s man. Joey is dancing nervously from one foot to the other by the door, which Dahlia opens, and just like that, they’re gone, leaving us with empty cups and pizza crusts. My dad looks so disappointed, like he hates to see Troy go. He starts picking up glasses and plates, putting them in the sink. I decide to help.

“It was good to see Troy again,” he says. “Kind of strange to have him here without Sukie. He and Dahlia are a cute couple, though.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“They’re not a couple!” I throw the plate I was holding into the sink.

My father just smiles. “Oh come on, Maggie. I’m not blind.”

“God, Dad, you just don’t get it, do you?”

“What? What don’t I get?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Forget it.”

I limp-stomp my way out of the kitchen and get my coat in the hallway.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“Dahlia’s.”

“Now? She just left.”

“Exactly,” I say, and then I’m out the door.

18

When I limp up to Dahlia’s building, I see Troy’s Trans Am parked on the curb, and Dahlia and Troy are still inside. Joey either walked or jumped out already. I stay in the shadows and watch a minute.

They’re talking. Then Troy leans in and they kiss.

They actually kiss!

I’m ready to smash the windshield, firebomb the car.

KAABOOM! If I can’t have her, you can’t either, Prince Charming.

Dahlia jumps out of the car and goes into her building. I wait for Troy to pull away before I follow, making a trail through the Trans Am’s exhaust.

Dahlia opens the door and doesn’t seem surprised at all to see me.

“What’s up, LaSamba?” Her voice is all low and secretive.

“Nothing, I just thought—”

“Shh. My mom’s asleep. I don’t want to wake her. Let’s go to my room,” she says, and I follow.

She lights a bunch of candles on her bureau, bookshelves, and floor. She’s got a small CD player in her room, and only one of the speakers works, but it sounds okay. She puts an early Rolling Stones CD on, then goes over and lies down on her bed.

She reaches over and gets a cigarette from the pack on the milk crate next to the bed, which is a futon on the floor covered with a blanket from Mexico and an Indian tapestry bedspread. She lights the cigarette by picking up a candle and pulling it to her, and I’m about to tell her how nervous it makes me when she does this, how I’m just sure she’s going to set her hair on fire one of these days, but I don’t want to seem like a geek. She sets the candle down, then lies back with her head on the pillow, looking up at the poster of Jim Morrison while she smokes.

“So what is it? Why’d you follow me all the way back here?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“You wanted to see me. You wanted to come to my great apartment and be entertained by my quirky mom and wizard brother, right? It’s all just a regular funhouse here, isn’t it? Dolls and magic powers and trips in a gypsy wagon.”

“What is wrong with you tonight?” I ask.

“What’s wrong? Gee, I don’t know . . . what could be wrong? Could it be that you have a piano in your living room? That you and Troy live in these beautiful, perfect houses with huge bedrooms and the fridge full of whatever you want, and I have to come back here to this?” She laughs harshly. “You think it’s all so exotic and exciting, don’t you? Well, it’s not so exotic when the food stamps run out. When my mom won’t leave her room. When the landlord comes by, like he did this afternoon, to say the rent is two months late and we have to pay it all by the first or get out.” Dahlia’s got tears in her eyes now and her voice is starting to shake. “I had no idea you lived in a house like that, Maggie. Do you know how hard it was to have to sit through dinner in your perfect yellow kitchen with your father looking at me like some trash dragged in on the bottom of your shoe? Knowing that we’re about to get evicted? God, you’ve got it so easy and you don’t even know it.”

“That’s bullshit!” I said. “Don’t talk to me about easy. You have no idea what it’s like to walk around with this stupid leg, which is like this constant reminder that I’m the one responsible for my mom dying. Yes, my dad has money, but he’s totally clueless and half-dead himself, and living in that house with him is like torture. Then, on top of that, I have to watch you and Troy day after day. To see you kiss him in the car tonight. Jesus, Dahlia!” I’m crying, and I can’t even look at Dahlia.

“Oh, what?” Dahlia snorts, all pissed off. “You’re in love with Troy now?”

My head is going to explode. I picture the top of my skull coming unhinged and flipping open, all the unspoken words I’ve been swallowing for months pouring out.

“No. I’m in love with you.” I thought I was going to shout it, but I barely whisper it.

The only thing to do now is get out fast and not look back. I’ll try to forget the whole thing. It’s not like I haven’t had experience letting go of one life and hobbling off into another. I’ll go home and tell my dad I changed my mind about Cedar Brook, that I dropped out of the band and am never seeing Dahlia or going back to Sutterville High again.

But as I turn to go, I feel a hand on my shoulder, turning me around. I look up, and Dahlia is staring right at me, moving closer until she’s just inches away. Her breath is hot and sweet on my face, and her tear-filled eyes have this strangely frightened look.

“How long have you . . .”

“Forever,” I say.

Then she kisses me.

Her lips touch mine, and inside I feel this crazy explosion like the old dynamite factory has just gone up in a big bang. I hear roaring in my ears.

The only other person I’ve ever kissed is Albert Finch, and it was nothing like this. Our kiss quickly becomes this crazy, desperate, feverish thing, and Dahlia’s pulling me over to the bed. She lays me down and I’m freaking out, terrified and ecstatic all at once.

“Dahlia, I—”

“Shhh,” she says. “Close your eyes.”

I do. I’ll do whatever she tells me to. I’d jump off a building now, stop a bullet with my heart if she asked.

“What do you hear?” she asks.

I listen carefully.

“I hear the music. I hear you breathing.”

“Don’t you hear the waves? Smell the salt water. Tiki and LaSamba are on the beach. We’re lying on the sand.”

I hear Dahlia get up and blow out the candles.

“Keep your eyes closed,” she scolds when I try to see what she’s doing. Mick Jagger is singing “Memory Motel.” Dahlia gets back into bed next to me.

“We’re at the Memory Motel,” she says. “We’re there, on the beach out front. The neon sign of the motel is flashing behind us, don’t you see it? We’re like mermaids, LaSamba, here in the sand. We’re not wearing any clothes, and our skin, our silvery fish skin, glistens like diamonds.”

Dahlia reaches over and starts to unbutton my black shirt. My eyes fly open.

“Shh. Close your eyes. Go back to the beach.”

She’s right up against me now. Her breath is hot in my ear as she whispers, “What do you want, LaSamba?”

Is this some kind of test? How am I supposed to answer?

My heart feels like the engine of a rocket ship. It’s beating so fast and hard that I’m sure I’ll either die or be launched into space.

“I don’t know,” I lie.

What do I want?

Dahlia. I want Dahlia. I want to touch her, to taste her, to lose myself inside her.

But maybe she’s just messing with me. What if her kiss was a joke and she’s just gonna get me to admit what I want, make me act like some lovesick fool, then laugh in my face. Tell me I’m some kind of sicko freak girl and kick me out of the band, out of her life, forever.

“Sure you do,” she whispers. “Come on, chicken. Tell Tiki what you want.”

“I want to go home.”

“Bullshit. Maybe scared little Maggie wants to go home, but that’s not what LaSamba wants.”

Dahlia leans in and kisses me again. It’s a soft kiss, almost tentative, and as soon as it begins, it’s over.

“You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” she asks. “I know you have. It’s okay. I’ve thought about it, too. It matters, but it doesn’t matter, know what I mean?”

“No,” I manage to say. Jesus, God. This isn’t happening.

“If you feel something, I mean really feel it, it can’t be wrong,” she tells me.

“What about if you feel like killing someone?” I ask, trying to make some ridiculous point that has nothing to do with anything. I’m in total panic mode now.

She laughs, all breathy and hot against my face.

“Is that what you want to do, LaSamba, you want to kill me?”

“No, I . . .” I can’t even say what I want to do to her. I want to do things I don’t even know the words for.

She lays a finger over my lips, shushing me.

“LaSamba and Tiki are on the beach and they’ve turned into mermaids. They dive into the ocean, swimming circles around each other. They sing songs underwater.”

Dahlia kisses me again, her mouth open a little. She tastes like cloves. She goes back to unbuttoning my shirt, kisses my neck, puts her lips against my ear.

“Do you hear the waves, LaSamba?”

I’m afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. My eyes are closed so tight I’m thinking they may never open; they’ll be sealed shut forever like entrances to little tombs. The roaring in my head has turned to buzzing and crashing. A rhythmic pounding that I feel with my whole body.

“Yes,” I finally whisper, “I hear the waves.”

She moves her head and kisses my belly while unbuttoning my jeans.

“Are you afraid?” she asks.

“A little.”

“Don’t be,” she tells me. “I promise we won’t drown.”

19

“His name is Mr. Twister and I’m keeping him,” announces Jonah, who has just bounded through the front door with what looks like an old cardboard box full of hay. Dahlia and I are sprawled out on the living room floor doing homework. I’m helping her with algebra.

It’s Monday, and Dahlia acted normal all day in school—at lunch we sat at Troy’s table and Albert came in and started passing out copies of The Chatterbox, which had a huge picture of Dahlia on the front page under the headline ARE YOU READY FOR THE PAPER DOLLS? I scanned the article, which was mostly just the interview with Dahlia, where she went off on how mindless most music was these days and how she considered herself a poet rather than a musician.

“Good work, Finch,” Troy said once he read it, and I had this sickening sense that maybe Troy had put Finch up to doing the article. Maybe it was part of his great plot to win Dahlia over. He had given her food, a guitar, and his silver bullet lighter, and now it was time to move on to the bigger gifts: fame, instant popularity. The things Dahlia wanted most and didn’t even know she wanted.

For the rest of the day, everywhere we went kids were reading copies of The Chatterbox, eyeing Dahlia and whispering, “It’s her.”

Thankfully, it seems like Troy’s plan to win Dahlia’s affections might not be paying off. This afternoon, at band practice, Troy said he had an idea for a song, and Dahlia told him he didn’t get to write the songs, his job was just to play his guitar. I was secretly ecstatic. After that, Troy was edgy, eager to please. He kept offering Dahlia different things to drink.

“Wanna beer?”

“No.”

“A Coke?”

“No.”

“Perrier water?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding!” Dahlia snorted.

“How ’bout you, Joey?” Troy asked, realizing there was no pleasing Dahlia.

“Yes,” Joey said.

“Yes to what? What is it you want?” Troy’s voice was full of impatience. I could tell he was half a step away from calling Joey a retard.

Joey just shrugged his shoulders and Troy stomped off to get him a can of Coke, which he practically threw at him when he came back in.

Since we got to the apartment, Dahlia and I have been doing homework and I’m going a little crazy, wondering if I imagined everything that happened Saturday night. Was it even real? Does Dahlia remember? Is it really possible that what she said Saturday night was true? Tiki loves LaSamba, she whispered. But she’s not acting like a girl in love now. Dahlia isn’t even all that focused on her homework: she’s taken the tiny scissors out of her bag and is making paper dolls from a page of thick blue paper she got from the art room at school. She finally puts the scissors away in her bag and opens up the folded sheet of paper, revealing two identical blue mermaids holding hands, tiny little holes in their tails letting the light through, making their scales shimmer.

“For you,” she says, smiling, and I think that maybe she does remember, maybe she is a girl in love after all.

Dahlia and I get up and peer into the tattered box Jonah cradles in his arms. TOMATOES, it says on the side in big green letters. There, in the center of a nest of hay, is not a bunch of red tomatoes fresh from the vine but a fat white rabbit.

“Where did he come from?” asks Dahlia as she stares into the box and strokes the rabbit on the head. I expect some mystical explanation—like that he’s the incarnation of Jonah’s invisible spirit guide, or he was pulled from a hat like a real magician’s rabbit—but I am mistaken.

“School,” Jonah answers. “He was living in our homeroom, but some kids were feeding him Alka-Seltzer to see if his stomach would explode. Miss Evans said he couldn’t stay anymore and someone would have to take him home. I was the only one who offered.”

Mr. Twister is a stout white bunny with black eyes and a twitchy nose. He’s chewing hay nervously while Dahlia strokes his head and ears. Jonah sets down the box and lifts the rabbit out gently, setting him on the living room carpet. Mr. Twister is frozen at first, overwhelmed by his freedom. He hops over to the couch, then to the dead brown fern in a clay pot below the window. He munches at the dry leaves.

“I think he’s hungry, kiddo,” says Dahlia.

Jonah picks him up, puts him back in the box.

“He’s always hungry,” Jonah explains. “That’s the way it is with rabbits.”

“I thought it was sex rabbits always wanted,” Dahlia says, eyebrows raised.

Jonah’s face reddens a little and he keeps his eye on the bunny in the box. His look shows he’s hurt, offended even, that she would imply such a thing about this rabbit, his rabbit. He doesn’t say a word to his sister, just picks up the box and clutches it to his chest.

“Come on, Mr. Twister,” he mumbles softly, then turns and carries the rabbit to his room; each step he takes seems to echo his disappointment. Dahlia looks disappointed, too, sorry even. But she stays where she is instead of going after him to apologize. We hear him shut the door to his room and start talking softly to the rabbit.

Dahlia shrugs, turns to me. “And what about you, LaSamba?”

“What about me what?”

“What is it you want?” she asks in a strange voice, half teasing. “Tiki wants to know.”

Her smile makes me want to melt into a hot waxy puddle right here on the carpet. I’d just be a stain people walked around. That was LaSamba, they’d all say.

“Do you want to stay out here and do homework?” she asks. “Keep finding the value of x and y and all that happy horseshit?”

She gets down on the floor, begins to work on a problem from the textbook. She’s got it all wrong; she’s multiplying when she should be dividing.

“No,” I tell her. “That’s not what I want.”

She looks up, smiling. “Let’s go to my room.”

I follow her down the hallway into her bedroom. She locks the door, draws the shades, turns up the radio.

“Sometimes,” she says as she walks toward me, “Tiki wonders what goes on in LaSamba’s head. She wonders if you really love her or if the whole thing was just some crazy dream.” Her voice is soft, calm, and familiar. It’s the voice Tiki used on the beach, full of gentle wind and luring waves.

We’re standing by the window and she puts her hand in mine, starts pulling me toward the bed.

“So tell me, LaSamba, what is it you want?”

Now, of course, there’s an obvious answer to that question, but there’s something else I want, too.

“I want to know what’s going to happen,” I tell her.

“You mean right now?” She smiles, leans in to press her mouth against my neck. “I’ll show you,” she whispers.

“I mean to us. To me and you. What are we going to do?”

We’re at her bed now and she’s laying me down gently, like I’m wounded.

“Tiki and LaSamba are going to travel around the world in their gypsy wagon. We’ll be famous rock stars. We’re going to find the Memory Motel for real.” She’s using her best storytelling voice; it’s the voice that told of Dead Aunt Mary, of the crazy nurse in the woods. It’s a voice so sure of itself that it could make you believe just about anything. But the thing is, I don’t believe her. Call me a realist, but I’m not a happily ever after kind of person.

“We’re going to sleep in the sand each night, listening to the waves. Do you hear them, LaSamba? Close your eyes and listen.”

I close my eyes and Dahlia slithers on top of me, presses her body into mine. I am listening and what I hear is the sound of Dahlia’s breath quickening in my ear, the DJ on the radio saying there’s snow coming, could be quite a storm. If I listen carefully, through these other sounds, I can hear Jonah in the next room talking away to Mr. Twister. I don’t know what he’s saying, but his voice is serious. It sounds like he’s talking to a person, not a rabbit, and like what he’s saying is urgent, so urgent that he keeps talking faster and faster until it sounds more like a hum than words.

Dahlia’s bed is a boat and there are no storms tonight, only calm waters that rock us gently in and out of each other’s arms. Then we’re not in the boat at all but swimming, swimming to shore, laughing our mermaid laughs, giving each other saltwater kisses. If I could speak, could say I love you out loud, it would come out as a low trilling sound, the song of a whale or dolphin, the language of mermaids. My fingers move over her, around her, inside her. She clicks in my ear, breathes softly, then hard, bites my shoulder as she makes little gasps that sound slightly desperate, that beg me not to stop, not to ever stop.

“You stop and I’ll kill you,” I think I hear her say.

Then I think her words have turned into a song, a chant, it’s my name she’s saying. “LaSamba, LaSamba, LaSamba.”

I remember my first dance with her in the living room, the drink she made with bananas and Mrs. Butterworth’s—how she said it was a cure for my LaSamba blues—and it occurs to me now that she’s both the cause and the cure, and I know, I mean I really know for the first time, what it means to love someone right down to the bone.

Dahlia whimpers softly, shivers, rolls over on top of me, her skin damp and salty as the sea.

“Forever,” she whispers into my hair, speaking English now, breathless but distinct. “Say it. Tiki and LaSamba forever.”

“Forever,” I whisper, wanting to believe it, and she runs her fingers over my lips, puts them in my mouth, filling it so I cannot speak, as if I would want to; as if there was really anything more to say.

20

The week has gone by and we’re living three lives now.

In school, we’re Maggie and Dahlia dressed in black, eating licorice allsorts and cheating on quizzes in Earth Science (I always show her my answers). We sit at Troy’s table at lunch, where we get envious looks from just about every girl in school. Dahlia pretends not to notice, but I can tell she’s eating it up. I mean, here she’s done the impossible, leapfrogged her way up through the social castes—freak no more. For the first time in her life maybe, she has a taste of what it’s like to be the girl everyone secretly wants to be.

At Troy’s, Dahlia and I are just two best friends in a band who maybe touch each other a little too much, but no one seems to notice.

But back at the apartment, we’re Tiki and LaSamba, locked in Dahlia’s room whispering to each other in the dark, time flying by because there’s so much to say, so much to do. We give each other energy, feed off each other’s currents.

Dahlia shoplifted two matching mood rings from the 5 & 10, and we wear them on the third fingers of our left hands, our secret LaSamba and Tiki wedding rings.

When we’re alone in Dahlia’s room, we can go anywhere we want, do anything, be anyone. With my eyes closed and my secret mermaid wife pressed into me, whispering into my ear, anything is possible.

We take a boat, which is actually Dahlia’s bed, across the ocean. Tiki and I swim with dolphins and navigate by star-light, ending up at the Memory Motel, the red neon sign guiding us to the dock. The motel part of the sign is broken, so only the red memory flashes over and over, guiding us in, a strange dream beacon. My head is full of the sound of crashing waves. I can’t see the color of my mood ring, but I know it’s dark blue, because dark blue, according to the chart, means you’re in love. I want to turn on the light to look at Dahlia’s ring, but when I reach for the lamp she stops me.

“It’s night, LaSamba,” she says, holding my hand in hers. “Don’t you see the stars?”

And I look up and it’s the vague outline of Jim Morrison’s face I see, some new constellation, bigger and brighter than Orion or Ursa Minor.

Dahlia tells me to close my eyes as she moves up against me, kisses my neck, breathes in my ear.

“Tiki loves LaSamba,” she whispers, and then we’re surrounded by waves, covered, pulled under, but I am not afraid because, just as Dahlia promised, we know we will not drown.

And always, always, when we’re close like this, we’re Tiki and LaSamba, our doll selves. That’s the biggest rule, the one we can’t break. It’s Dahlia’s rule, just like the way I always have to close my eyes—if I open them I’m scolded, and she stops whatever amazing thing she’s doing until I shut them again.

The Tiki and LaSamba rule is a good one, though. We can say or do anything we want when we’re our doll selves, and it’s not supposed to count. It’s not supposed to carry over into our real lives, but it does. Little by little, it does.

I think of the fault lines we learned about in Earth Science. Of little fissures that open into huge cracks and swallow whole towns.

I wonder if secrets can be like that.

This afternoon at Troy’s, Dahlia gets her notebook out and is making some final adjustments to the new song she’s been working on before she plays it for us. Troy’s tuning his guitar. Joey’s on the couch with a bag of chips. Albert is beside him, flipping through a comic book. He comes to practice almost every afternoon now and stares at me with these puppy-wants-a-bone eyes.

“So, Mags,” Albert says, putting aside his comic book. “I was wondering . . .”

Here it comes. The moment I’ve been dreading.

“I thought maybe . . .”

Everyone is staring at him now. Dahlia is eyeing him over the top of her notebook, and she seems to be biting her lip to keep from laughing.

“Maybe you and I could go get an ice cream sometime. Or go to a movie or something.”

Dahlia can’t hold it in any longer. She lets out a hearty chuckle and says, “What about it, Mags?”

“I don’t think so Albert,” I tell him, feeling awful. “It’s just that I’m so busy these days.”

“Yeah,” Dahlia adds. “Her social calendar is full. So now that that’s out of the way, are you guys ready for the new song?”

Dahlia straps on her guitar, strums a few chords, starts to hum, then sings, her voice a throaty murmur:

“Your kisses like waves, they rock me so deep,

I am the mermaid that haunts you in sleep.

Pull me out of the water, taste the salt on my skin,

When it’s all over, we’ll do it again,

Go down again, drown again,

I’m drowning in love for you.”

Dahlia puts down the guitar, and Albert whistles and applauds.

“It’s great!” Troy says. “Truly!” He looks ecstatic, and then it hits me that it’s not because it’s a kick-ass song, but because he thinks she wrote it for him. He’s grinning from ear to ear and looking a little misty-eyed. I almost feel sorry for him.

He picks up his guitar, asks Dahlia to play it again. He watches her fingers, messes around until he’s matched the tune; then they go through it again, Dahlia strumming the same three chords, Troy adding more layers with his Stratocaster, using the whammy bar to make the notes quiver and shake. I stand up to add a little clarinet. I play in this rhythmic, breathy way, trying to mimic waves. Joey’s over at his drum doing these gentle finger taps that build, then come back down again when Dahlia sings the last line, “I’m drowning in love for you.” Troy is behind her, strumming his guitar, when it’s painfully obvious he wants to be strumming her. And then he leans in and blows everything.

“I’m drowning in love for you, too,” he whispers, but it’s loud enough so that everyone hears it.

Dahlia bursts out laughing. “What?” she asks.

He turns so red he’s almost purple.

“You think I wrote that song for you, Farnham?”

Albert lets out a nervous laugh. Troy’s face turns purple, and I can see the veins standing out on his thick neck. His hands tighten around his guitar like he’s trying to choke it.

Dahlia’s laughing louder and Albert has joined in. Hell, even Joey is laughing, I think just because he’s nervous and doesn’t know what else to do.

“Fuck you all!” Troy says, raising his red guitar above his head, swinging it like an ax down into the floor, where the neck snaps off the body with a loud, painful crack. The amp screams with feedback. Joey jumps about a foot, knocking over the drum. Dahlia just looks disgusted.

“Way to go, asshole,” she says, then slips her coat on to leave.

It’s snowing out, and I do up the snaps on my coat, pull the black wool beret over my ears. Dahlia keeps her own sheepskin coat open. She never buttons her coat no matter how cold it is. It’s like she’s always way warmer than anyone else. Maybe she just doesn’t like the feeling of being closed in.

Joey says, “See you,” as he jogs off down the street in the other direction. I don’t know where he goes when he’s not with us. Home to see his dad, maybe. Or to check on things in the cave.

After all this time, he’s still a complete mystery to me. I’ve wanted to ask him about his accident and tell him about mine, but it never seems to be the right moment. I’m never alone with him, and it’s not something we’d talk about if anyone else could hear. Not that I know Joey would talk about it at all. I just hope he would. To me anyway.

Dahlia teases me about having a secret crush on Joey.

Do I have a crush on Rio? Can you have a crush on one person when you’re already in love with another?

I think of Joey’s scar. Of the accident that killed Joey’s mother. We’re connected, Joey and I, by our own similar tragedies. Scar siblings.

The sidewalks are covered in brown slush, and my feet are soaked through before we’re halfway to her apartment building. The tip of my cane slips and slides, so I quit using it and just drag it along next to me, making our tracks look like two girls walking a snake.

We walk almost all the way back to her apartment in silence, and only when we get to the building does she say something.

“The song’s for you, you know,” she tells me.

“I know,” I say. “Thank you. It’s a beautiful song.”

I don’t get how it’s happened, but suddenly freaky Frankenstein girl is the luckiest person on the face of the earth. Dahlia Wainwright has written a song for me. A love song.

We get into the hallway and stop on the stairs to kiss. There’s this added thrill of danger that we might be caught. Some neighbor could open their door. Jonah could come racing down the steps. Anything could happen. It makes my freak-girl heart pound all the harder.

When we step into Dahlia’s apartment, we see a refrigerator box sitting on its end in the back corner of the room, opposite Leah’s sewing table. There is a doorway cut out of the front of it, covered with a black scarf. Above the door, someone has painted in red nail polish: CONFESSIONS 10¢

Jonah comes bounding out of the box in his pajamas. He stayed home from school because Leah said his forehead felt a little warm. She does this sometimes when she doesn’t want to be alone. Mr. Twister is sitting on the couch, munching a carrot. There are small brown pellets of shit all over the brightly colored patchwork cover.

“You’ve gotta try it!” he says. “Mother Mary’s in there waiting. Hurry! Bring a dime in when you go. One at a time. Who’s first?”

Dahlia’s gaze moves from the box to me. “I think LaSamba should go first,” she says, smiling slyly. “I think she has the most to confess.”

Ever the curious girl, I put down my books, leave my wet shoes by the door, and dig a dime out of my pocket. Dahlia smiles, gives me a wink before Jonah drags her off to the kitchen, explaining that confessions are private things. I push aside the scarf and crawl into the dark box. There’s a small window on the side with another black curtain in front of it. Beside it is a slot labeled DEPOSIT 10¢ PLEASE.

I kneel in front of the window and put my dime in the slot. A light comes on behind the curtain on the other side, and the curtain is pulled away. There, in the window, is the plaster Mary figure held up by Leah’s hand.

“What is your confession, my child?” she asks in her Mother Mary voice. It’s a firm way of speaking she has, each syllable carefully enunciated. Mary sways as she talks, bobs around in Leah’s hand.

“I’m not sure.” I don’t know what she wants from me, where she’s going with this game.

“Have you sinned?”

“Maybe.”

I’m getting a little uncomfortable now, thinking about Dahlia, wondering if what we do in her room is a sin. Wondering if Mother Mary would see it that way, or if she’d understand. I suddenly have this absurd fear that Leah’s heard Dahlia’s song and knows who she wrote it for.

“Do you know what sin is?”

“I think so,” I answer, treading carefully. I think of the kiss on the stairs, how I can still taste Dahlia on my lips and tongue.

Could Leah know somehow?

She makes a tsk-tsk sound, tongue against teeth, scolding, as she waves the doll more violently around in the air. “Mother Mary sees you know the answer to the question but are afraid to answer. Mother Mary sees all. Remember that, LaSamba. Don’t think you can hide from Mother Mary. I am Keeper of the Dolls, LaSamba. I control your fate. Don’t you doubt it.”

My heart jumps up into my throat. Mother Mary turns in Leah’s hand, sways a little. I hear a small clinking sound, the rattle of ice cubes in a glass.

“Say ten Hail Marys and pray for clarity,” Leah says at last.

I scramble out of the confession booth, mumble my Hail Marys, and practically run to the kitchen, where Jonah is playing with Mr. Twister and Dahlia’s just hanging up the phone. I’m about to tell her how truly weird the whole thing was and ask if she thinks it’s possible her mother knows, but I don’t get a chance.

“That was Troy,” she reports. “He says he’s sorry for being a jackass. And that he was just joking around about being in love with me.”

“Yeah, right. I guess he was joking around about smashing his guitar to smithereens like that, too,” I say, taking the cigarette from between her fingers and having a drag. My fingers are shaking a little.

Does Leah know about us somehow? Does she suspect? Or, worse yet, is what she promised true; does she control our fate? Are we just life-size versions of our little dolls, marionette girls being pulled with invisible strings?

“That’s not all, LaSamba,” Dahlia says. “Troy had this great idea. He wants to have a huge party at his place. His parents are going to Spain next week. So we’ll have this big blowout kegger, invite the whole school, and The Paper Dolls will play. Just wait till they hear us, LaSamba! We are gonna blow them away!”

I nod and smile. I’ve been a star before. It doesn’t interest me now. All I want now is Dahlia.

“There’s more,” Dahlia says, her voice almost shaking, she’s so excited. “Troy says he’ll invite that Phil guy, the manager over at Terrapins, and if he likes what he sees, he’ll get us a gig! Whaddya think?”

What do I think? I think we’re better off staying the hell away from Troy, but I see the glow in Dahlia’s eyes and know I can’t disappoint her. I read in one of those teen magazines Sukie used to get that one of the keys to a successful relationship is being willing to make sacrifices.

“I think we have a lot of rehearsing to do,” I say.

“Yeah, we’ll start tomorrow after school. No more messing around. This is serious. If we can get that gig at Terrapins, we’re on our way!”

21

We have a total of five songs to play. It’s not much, but it’ll have to do. We’ll open with “Dead Aunt Mary.” Then a song Dahlia titled “LaSamba Blues,” all about a girl trapped inside a sad, rag-doll clown, which features a long, jazzy clarinet solo by yours truly, LaSamba herself. We’ll follow this with “The String Man’s Cave,” which tells the story of meeting Joey. “Sylvia’s Garden” is Dahlia’s ode to her second-favorite poet. We’ll close with “The Mermaid Song,” which is definitely our hottest tune and my own personal favorite, not just because it’s secretly about me, but because Dahlia rips herself open and bares her soul each time she sings it.

We have been practicing day and night. We pile into Troy’s Trans Am after school and go to his place, where we play until eight or nine at night.

It’s Friday afternoon, which means it’s our last day to practice. Tomorrow is the big night. When Dahlia, Troy, Joey, and I walk out to the parking lot at school, Sukie and Heather are waiting by Troy’s Trans Am. A few other girls are milling around, pretending not to watch, but it’s clear everyone is hoping for a catfight.

“Hey, Heather! Hey, Sukie!” says Dahlia, like they’re the best of friends. She knows she has an audience, and she’s playing the scene for all it’s worth. She’s gotten used to all the attention she gets now from hanging around Troy. It’s been a crazy thing, but all of a sudden, it seems like everyone wants to know her, especially since she was on the front page of The Chatterbox. Our table at lunch is always crowded, and sometimes when I meet her at her locker, she’s got a group of kids standing around her while she entertains them with one of her stories. She shoplifted a couple of packs of T-shirts from the 5 & 10, and then stenciled the Paper Dolls logo on them. She’s been selling them for five bucks each, and even before anyone’s heard us, we seem to have our own fan club. The truth is, I think if there was an election held today for most popular girl in the tenth grade, Dahlia might actually win. And she’d pretend not to care, but secretly, she’d be overjoyed.

“I need to talk to you,” Sukie says to Troy.

“We’re kind of on our way to rehearsal,” Troy says. “Have you heard about the party tomorrow night? You guys should come.”

Sukie just nods. Of course she’s heard about the party. It’s all anyone’s talking about.

“So spill it. What is it that’s so important?” Troy asks.

“It’s kind of private,” Sukie says. She gives Dahlia the evil eye. Dahlia just smiles and touches Troy’s arm.

“You better go ahead. Maybe she’s gonna tell you she’s knocked up or something,” Dahlia says.

Troy gives a surprised snort, and a couple of the girls pretending not to listen snicker.

“Oh, wait,” Dahlia says, touching her forehead, like she just remembered something important. “It couldn’t be that. You guys only went to first base. You’re saving yourself for marriage, isn’t that right?”

More snickers. Sukie turns really pale, then really red, and I wonder if she’s going to take a swing at Dahlia. Troy grabs Sukie’s arm and leads her away, back toward the school. Heather follows. We watch Troy and Sukie have an animated conversation in hisses and whispers, while Heather stands guard. They keep stopping to look at us.

“My ears are burning!” Dahlia singsongs.

Troy walks back, looking like he’s eaten something sour.

“What did Miss Stick-up-her-ass want?” Dahlia asks.

“Come on,” he says, opening the driver’s-side door. “Let’s just get to rehearsal.”

So we all pile in, and Troy doesn’t say anything the whole way to his house. He just sticks a Hendrix CD in and cranks it. Dahlia looks at me, shrugs, rolls her eyes.

He’s been on his best behavior since he confessed his love for Dahlia and trashed his guitar. He went out and bought another Strat, a dark violet one that he’s named Purple Haze after the Hendrix song.

We run through our songs and Troy seems to relax a little, but he still seems quieter than usual. He shows Dahlia the best way to play an F chord.

“It’s like this,” he says, moving her fingers on the fretboard.

Dahlia strums and sings, “F, F, F. F is for fusion, fickle, flashy, filly.”

“Flabbergasted,” I add.

“Finest fancy fish frolicking flagrantly,” Albert says.

“Fork,” Joey says.

“Fork you, too,” Dahlia says, and we all laugh, even though it’s a pretty bad joke. I catch Troy watching me and I’m suddenly self-conscious, like maybe I’m laughing a little too loud for how dumb a joke it was.

We take a break at dinnertime, and Troy microwaves us some pizza and egg rolls. We drink Cokes, then get back to work. Troy gets me a stool to sit on because I can’t stand long on my bad leg.

We’ve learned all kinds of weird things about each other this past week: like that Joey can’t stop laughing when he’s tired, Troy can belch the national anthem, and Dahlia has a secret passion for anchovies.

It’s getting late, so we run through “The Mermaid Song” one more time. When we’re done, Troy goes over the list of stuff he has to get for the party.

“So are you coming to my house?” Dahlia asks me as she puts on her coat.

“Can’t. My dad’s been all cranky about how I’m never home. I promised I’d come have a late-night pizza dinner with him.”

Dahlia leans in and whispers in my ear, “Tiki wants to lay you down on the sand and lick the salt off your skin.” I smile, but I can’t help but notice Troy watching us. His brow is furrowed and he looks like he wants to say something, but instead he turns away and puts Purple Haze in its case, taking special care to snap each clasp firmly closed, like the guitar is going to try to make an escape.

“So are you guys all ready for the big night?” my dad asks. He’s putting two slices of pizza on my plate, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that I already ate.

“As ready as we’re gonna be, I guess.”

I don’t know if we’re really ready to play for an audience, and to tell you the truth, I’m kind of worried. I mean, what if we suck? What if the whole school comes, and that Phil guy from the club, and we make total fools of ourselves?

“Maggie, I know you’ve been really busy getting ready for this party. And I know how important it is with the manager from Terrapins coming and everything, but starting next week, I’d like to see you home a little more. I’m worried you’re not getting enough time for your homework. I’m really happy about your renewed interest in music, but I don’t want to see your grades slipping.”

“My grades are fine, Dad.”

The truth is, I failed a quiz on Macbeth in English, and in Earth Science, No-Neck Knapp pulled me aside and asked if I was having some kind of personal trouble that was keeping me from getting my homework passed in. School seems so totally unimportant now that I have Dahlia and the band, now that I am finally starting to feel like maybe my freakish Frankenstein self fits in somewhere after all.

“And you’ve been doing your leg exercises?” my dad asks.

“Of course.”

“And taking your medicine?”

“God, Dad. What am I, five years old? Yes, I’ve been taking the pills.”

Another little white lie. I stopped taking my antidepressants a couple of weeks ago. My Tiki girl is the only drug for me.

When I get back to my room, I find one of my mother’s cards from the box under my bed.

There is a watercolor scene of a stage with a heavy, red velvet curtain closed over it.

Break a leg, it says. I’m not too stupid to get the irony, me being a limping girl and all.

I like the idea that you can hold back the forces of darkness by wishing someone the opposite of good luck.

Dear God, Dear Mother Mary, hear my prayer: Do not let us make total asses of ourselves tomorrow night. Please.

22

There are way too many people here. We can barely get to the corner where all our equipment is set up. There are two kegs upstairs in the kitchen. Bottles of booze are set out on the counters. Cars are lined up and down the street.

It seems like half the school is here. I see pretty much the entire football team; Sukie and Heather with their crew of shiny, flawless girls; a handful of stoners in heavy-metal T-shirts and denim jackets; even the brainy girl with oversize glasses who sits in the front row of almost every one of my smart classes.

I’ve got the Break a leg card in the back pocket of my black jeans. Dahlia did our makeup, and she and I look like identical ghoul girls: pale foundation, wine-colored lipstick, heavy black eyeliner, and gray eyeshadow under our eyes that makes our faces look sunken and bruised. Dahlia’s got on her Dead Aunt Mary dress, all ripped up and safety-pinned together; black tights; and combat boots. I’ve got on my boots, jeans, and Paper Dolls T-shirt. Joey’s wearing his usual jeans, flannel shirt, and black watch cap. Troy’s got on ripped jeans and this Hawaiian shirt covered in hula dancers, which is a weird coincidence, considering that he knows nothing about the dolls or Tiki. But every time I look over and catch sight of the shirt, I have this feeling that he knows, not just about the dolls, but about everything, and that maybe he’s wearing the shirt to let us know we have no secrets. I whisper bits and pieces of this to Dahlia, but she says it’s just a shirt and that I’m being paranoid.

My palms are sweating, and I’m sure that I’ve forgotten every song we’re supposed to play, that I’ll get up there and start playing marching band music or something.

Troy picks up Purple Haze and hits the opening chords of “Dead Aunt Mary,” heavy on the reverb—thick and humming noise that seems to cut through the crowd and makes them all turn their heads our way. Dahlia grips the microphone, then she closes her eyes and begins to sing.

Just keep your eyes on me, she told me earlier when I saw the crowd and said I didn’t think I could do it. Pretend we’re the only two people in the world.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’ve got my eyes on Dahlia, and she is the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. She’s a crazy singing angel, bruised and ragged in her torn dress, fallen from grace and trying to sing her way back.

When I play my clarinet, I play for her, to her, and imagine that we’re there on our beach, the neon word memory flashing behind us. And because it’s for her, I play perfectly. I don’t forget how the songs go. The notes carry me up and down, in and out; they are like waves threatening to pull me under, only to lift me to the surface again.

Dahlia’s singing, moaning, growling into the microphone, and the crowd is going apeshit. They love her. They love us. When Troy does his solo they nearly hit the roof.

Dahlia’s screaming that she’s got a knife in her heart, then she clutches at her chest and falls to the ground, moaning into the microphone as the song ends. She leaps back to her feet, soaking in the applause, a radiant jewel of a girl. My mermaid rock star Tiki. My secret love.

“We! Are! The Paper Dolls!” Dahlia shouts into the microphone in her raspy, rock ’n’ roll voice. Then we launch into “LaSamba Blues,” and I’m wailing away on my clarinet in a way that would make even Artie Shaw proud. All the eyes in the room are on me, giving me this familiar feeling that’s a total rush. It’s the star-of-the-school-play-coming-out-to-do-a-curtain-call feeling. Here, on the makeshift stage in Troy’s basement, the ghost of my old self is tapping me on the shoulder, saying, Welcome back.

Dahlia comes up and puts her arm around me as she sings, and I’m just floating now. With each new round of applause, I feel that old popular-girl self-confidence rising inside me and it feels good, like deep heat on sore muscles.

I can do this. I can play music in front of all these people. I can go onstage at Terrapins and rock the house with my crazy clarinet playing.

Who says a skinny girl with a limp can’t be a star?

We go through the whole set smoothly, getting more relaxed, more in tune with one another as we go. Joey’s taken off his flannel shirt, and he’s got this crazy grin as he drums. Troy’s rocking out, letting his long hair fly as he jumps up and down with his purple guitar. I look out at the crowd and see that Sukie and Heather are actually bopping along with the music, smiling like they can’t help it.

All too soon, we’re at the last song, the one about mermaids. Dahlia does this crazy thing at the part of the song about how she’s drowning in love—she kisses me on the cheek. There, in front of all the kids from our school, in front of the John Lennon- looking guy from Terrapins, she actually kisses me. And people applaud.

I glance over at Troy, who’s jamming away on his guitar and looking at us kind of strangely, like maybe he’s just now figured out who the song is for, and my heart is exploding. I have never been happier.

Chaos. Triumphant jubilation. I want to remember this night forever. Dahlia and I are stars.

Phil, the guy from Terrapins, is all over Dahlia, asking her all about herself, promising that he can sign The Paper Dolls up to play the all-ages show next week. He wants to know if we have more material, can do a longer set, and Dahlia tells him we’re working on it. Troy’s getting pats on the back from all his football buddies. Even Joey is basking in attention. He’s got a bunch of kids asking him all about his drum. And me, well, Sukie has just spilled beer on me while giving me a hug. She was talking with Troy in the corner, just gushing over him while he leaned in to whisper into her ear. Then she came right over to me. She’s patting at my wet shirt, saying something, but I can’t make it out between all the shouting and the Jimi Hendrix that Troy just cranked up on the stereo.

“Come on!” she shouts, and I follow her through the crowd, up the stairs, and down the hall to Troy’s bedroom, where she shuts the door.

“God, I’m so sorry about your shirt!” she says, touching my damp chest. I pull away.

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell her.

“You were so great tonight!” she says, her voice all chipper. “I mean it.” She fluffs her big bouncy hair with a violent nod that sends her staggering. She swigs what’s left of her beer. The girl is trashed. She can barely stand.

“Thanks,” I mumble.

“It was like the old Maggie was back.”

I don’t respond, even though I know exactly what she means.

“I mean,” she goes on, “except for your crazy new look. The old Maggie would never have gone for that.”

“What is this, Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something?” I ask.

This gets a laugh.

“Could be,” she says. “That would explain a lot.”

“Like what?”

“Like what happened to you. I mean, yes, I know your mom died, Maggie.” She gets right in my face to say this, her smell a combination of stale beer and lip gloss. “And I know you miss her. God, I miss her, too.” She totters backward and I’m afraid she’ll fall. I reach out and grab her arm, steadying her. “But I also miss you,” she says. “It’s like you died with her that night. Like your soul was sucked away into some void and left you walking around like a zombie or something.”

“Frankenstein girl,” I say.

“What?”

“Never mind. Look, I’ve gotta get back to the party.” I let go of her arm. She sways, but stays upright.

“To her, you mean,” Sukie says.

“Her?”

“Just tell me something before you go, huh? What is it about Dahlia freaking Wainwright?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“What has she got that I don’t, Mags?”

I don’t have a clue how to answer.

“Is it this?” she asks, then steps forward and kisses me. Actually kisses me on the mouth! And she keeps her lips there, opens her mouth, goes in with her tongue. I jerk away, totally freaked.

“Is this how you are now?” she asks, her voice shaking. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Is this what I need to do to get you back? To even get you to have a freaking conversation with me?”

“No, I . . .” I shake my head, take a step back. I knew that Sukie wanted the old me back, I just had no idea that she was this desperate.

When did my life turn into one insane twist after another? Maybe I could join one of those Believe It or Not freak shows at the fair.

Come see the boy with three arms, the dog who can sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the limping Frankenstein girl who was just kissed by her ex-best friend, the most popular girl in tenth grade.

“I saw you and Dahlia making out in the woods behind the school a couple weeks ago,” Sukie says.

“We were smoking pot, that’s all.”

It’s not a lie, because that really is all we were doing that day.

“So you’re gonna deny you and Dahlia are having some kind of hot and heavy thing. Come on, Mags. I’m not half the idiot you seem to think I am.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot. I’m telling you, we were just smoking pot when you saw us. Dahlia was blowing on the lit end of the joint while I took a hit. It wasn’t a kiss. It might have looked like one, but it wasn’t. I swear.”

We’re interrupted by a quick rap on the door, then Heather sticks her head in and sighs with relief when her eyes fall on Sukie.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she says.

I just bet she has.

“I’m talking to Maggie,” Sukie tells her.

“Well, yeah, I can see that,” Heather says, and comes into the room.

“Privately,” Sukie says, and I swear, if Heather could shoot laser beams from her eyes, Sukie and I would both be dead right now.

“Okay, well, I’ll be downstairs,” Heather tells her, and she backs out of the room, keeping her eyes on us like it’s a dangerous situation—like I’ve got a gun hidden in my pocket pointed at Sukie to force her to talk to me.

“So what’s up with your clone there?” I ask once Heather’s closed the door.

“My clone? That’s cute, Mags.”

“It’s not cute, really. Mostly it’s just sort of depressing.”

“Oh, and your friendship with Dahlia isn’t?”

“No,” I tell her. “As a matter of fact, it isn’t.”

“Are you in love with her?”

“Jesus, Sukie!”

“Well, are you?”

“Why does it matter so damn much?”

“Are you in love with her?”

“God! Yes, all right? Yes, I am in love with Dahlia. We’re in a thing. What else do you want to know? Want to know if I’m a dyke? If I was one back when we were friends? I don’t know, Sukie. Could be I was and just didn’t know it. Is that mind-blowing enough for you? To think maybe your best friend who you slept beside and shared ice cream with was some sick lesbian pervert all along?”

“I just wish you would have told me,” she says.

“I didn’t know,” I say.

“We were best friends,” she says.

“Yeah, we were.”

As I say these words, it really hits me that my friendship with Sukie is totally over. I mean, I knew it before, but I was never really sad over it. I think I had too much other grief to deal with. But we’d been best friends since first grade. We’d once shared everything together. Now here we were, practically strangers.

I look over at Troy’s desk and see the Magic 8 Ball there and remember her once asking it, “Will Mags and I be best friends forever?” and shaking it, then reading, “Signs point to yes.”

Now Sukie drops her empty plastic cup into the wastebasket and turns to go—which, suddenly, I don’t want her to do. I want to explain the whole thing, tell her why I couldn’t call her back all those times last year, why I pulled away, how I never meant for things to turn out the way they did.

“I have the wand,” I tell her.

“What?”

Her back is still to me, her hand on the doorknob.

“The Glinda wand. I found it at the intersection.”

“Poof,” is all she says, and then she just stands there for a second like she’s waiting. Waiting for me to say that I take it all back—everything that’s happened since the accident, that I want to be best friends again and just forget everything else, including Dahlia.

I touch my beer-soaked shirt and hold my breath as Sukie walks out of the room.

23

We’re back at Dahlia’s now after the party, and the confession box stands abandoned in the corner of the living room. It’s two in the morning and Leah and Jonah are in bed. Dahlia and I have scrubbed the makeup off our faces, but we’re still walking on air, talking about the band, telling each other again and again how great we were tonight. Dahlia’s talking about the gig she arranged at Terrapins, how it can be an ongoing thing if we bring in a crowd. I haven’t said a word about Sukie and what happened in Troy’s bedroom earlier. It’s just too weird, and I don’t want to wreck the mood by bringing it up.

Dahlia goes through her bag and pulls out her cigarettes and Troy’s silver bullet lighter, talking about what the cover of our first CD should look like, how we’ll ride around in limos when we hit the big time.

“I’ll buy a huge house for Jonah and my mom. And you and I can have a place on the beach. We’ll lie around in the sun all day, sipping drinks with paper umbrellas and pineapples. We’ll write songs while we listen to the waves.”

I want to know everything about Dahlia: the way the sea spray would taste on her skin, all her childhood secrets.

“Tell me about the Hawaiian birthday party you had,” I say. “The one where the Tiki doll came from.”

“We had shish kebabs with pineapple and listened to Don Ho.”

“Who was at your party?”

“What is this, Maggie, twenty questions? Is this practice for my Rolling Stone interview? Tell us, Miss Wainwright, about your life before The Paper Dolls.”

“No, I’m serious. I want to know. Who were your friends then? What were their names?”

“Mmm. Let’s see. There was Sue O’Bannon, she moved away later that year. And Ellie Abbott, who said her great-grandfather had been the cooper on the Mayflower or something like that, and that’s all she ever wanted to talk about.”

We laugh at this.

“Like it made her famous or something, being related to the freaking barrel guy on the Mayflower.” She passes her cigarette to me. “What about you?” she asks. “Who was at your ninth birthday party?”

“Mmm, let’s see. I think that was the year my mom made the piñata. It was way cool. It was a pink octopus, full of bubblegum, candy necklaces, and those jawbreakers that turn colors as you suck them. A bunch of girls from school came.”

“Was Sukie there?”

“Yeah, she was.”

“God, how long were you guys friends?”

“Since first grade. We met on the seesaws. I pushed her off and got in trouble.”

“Harsh,” Dahlia says. “And she still wanted to be your friend?”

“She was waiting for me the next day at recess. She didn’t want to seesaw with anyone else.”

Dahlia lights the candles on the coffee table, then takes my hand.

“I have an idea,” she says. “Go get in the confession box.”

“Why?” I ask, suspicious of Dahlia and her crazy ideas.

“Come on, humor me, will ya? I’m not the one who pushed other kids off the seesaw.”

I crawl through the curtained doorway into the dark box. I’ve got that floating feeling again, that sense that I’m somehow separating from my body, drifting up like the smoke from her cigarette. Dahlia goes around to the back and opens the small curtained window, pushing her face against it so that only her eyes and forehead are showing.

“Take off your clothes,” she tells me.

“What?”

“Just take them off. Tiki wants to watch LaSamba get naked.”

“Pervert,” I say.

“Maybe,” she admits. She doesn’t seem to feel much shame.

It’s kind of a thrill to be watched in the box like a peep-show girl. I peel off my Paper Dolls T-shirt slowly. All I can see are Dahlia’s eyes, and it’s kinda creepy because even though I know they’re her eyes, it seems like she could be anyone.

“So what ended your friendship with Sukie anyway?” Dahlia asks.

“God, you know how to ruin a mood,” I say.

“Seriously,” she says. “I’ve been wondering.”

I remember my strange kiss earlier. We were best friends.

“I ended it.”

“Why?”

“After the accident, when I was laid up, she’d call and come by all the time. She’d bring me magazines and candy and stuff. It was really sweet, I know, and she was trying hard to be a good friend. But see, she was still Sukie, all caught up in Sukie world, talking about how gaga she was over Troy, and the dress she saw at Filene’s that she just had to have. But I wasn’t Maggie anymore. Sukie was patient at first, then said I was a downer.”

“God! She said that?”

“Mmm-hmm. She was pissed because I wouldn’t go to the mall or something.”

“Some best friend,” Dahlia says. I nod.

“Ninth grade started and so did the excuses. I’d lie about being busy so I wouldn’t have to hang out with her. I’d forget to call her back. I did the same thing with Albert, but that was easier. I didn’t have much invested in him. Poor guy.”

“And Sukie kept waiting by the seesaw,” Dahlia says.

“I guess so.”

“You never kissed her or anything, right?”

“No way!” Tonight doesn’t count, I tell myself. Sukie was drunk. Trying to reach me whatever way she could. Dahlia doesn’t need to ever know about it.

“Did you ever want to?” Dahlia asks.

I think of those afternoons in Sukie’s closet reading the magazines we took from her brother. I don’t remember ever wanting to kiss her, only this vague ache to be kissed by someone. I didn’t think of the phantom kiss as coming from a boy or a girl. I just wanted lips on mine, a warm body to lie on top of me.

“I don’t think I ever thought about kissing Sukie. I don’t think I ever thought about kissing any girl until I met you.”

I slither out of my jeans. It’s awkward in the confines of the confession box; my feet and elbows graze the cardboard, threatening to collapse the walls around me. I don’t know why I’m doing this—because Dahlia asked me to or maybe because I want to. Because there’s something kind of thrilling and dangerous about getting naked here in the confession box with Dahlia watching.

“When did you first start thinking about it? About wanting to kiss me?” she asks.

“I think I always thought about it. Since I met you, I mean. I dunno. That seems kinda weird, but it’s true. Sometimes I would look at you and wonder if maybe you were thinking it, too. Sometimes I was afraid I’d go crazy wanting it so much.”

“Do you want to kiss me now?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, and she moves so that her mouth is showing in the little window, and I kiss her through the opening in the cardboard, but it seems like some crazy kind of torture because we can’t touch, it’s just lips and teeth and tongue.

It doesn’t matter that she’s a girl. I don’t think of it that way. She’s Tiki, and loving Tiki is bigger than all that boy-meets-girl crap you read about in books and see in movies.

I don’t tell Dahlia that other than Albert, she’s the only one I’ve ever kissed. I’m sure she kissed lots of boys back in Delaware, but I don’t want to know the details. There is only one kiss I still want to understand.

“That night . . . when you were with Troy in his car. Why’d you kiss him?” I ask.

Tiki pulls away. “Because he wasn’t you,” she says.

“What?”

“I don’t know how to explain, really. I guess it’s just that I’d been thinking about wanting to kiss you, and being a little freaked by it, you know? And I thought maybe if I made out with Troy, it would go away. Troy’s so . . . so normal. I thought maybe kissing him would make me normal, too.” She shakes her head, laughs. “But who wants to be normal, right?”

I shrug my shoulders, thinking, You do. You want to be normal. Popular. Rich even.

“Do you forgive me?” Dahlia asks.

I put my mouth back to the hole in the box, answering her with a kiss.

Tiki tells me I’m the only one she’s ever loved, and I believe this part of the story. I believe she knows what love is after all.

Love is a country we’re learning to make a map of. Like the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower, we think we’re the first, and the New World looks awesome and huge. This world is what we make it. It can be full of mermaids and starfish, or time bombs ready to be ignited by a silver bullet lighter. We roam the countryside as Tiki and LaSamba, two doll girls with the power to change everything. With the blink of our eyes we can change the scene from ocean to desert, we can turn from mermaids to horses, but always, always, we run together, side by side.

Our love is a secret that moves, writhes, slithers just under my skin. It makes me feel so much more alive than all the other people dumbly shuffling through what they think is the real world. It makes my heart race to think of it. We are so very lucky, Tiki and I. It’s like we get to live inside a dream. Each day we wake up and it’s Christmas and we’ve gotten each other as gifts. How could I ever even begin to tell anyone how special that makes us?

“Tell me about our house on the beach,” I say, pulling away from our kiss, catching my breath.

“Our bedroom will overlook the ocean. We’ll go to sleep listening to the waves crashing,” she says.

“Our bedroom . . . I like the sound of that.”

“Now,” Dahlia continues, “why are you still wearing your underwear?”

“What if your mother comes out?”

“She won’t.”

“Jonah?”

“Dead asleep.”

So I take off my bra and black cotton panties while Dahlia watches. It’s the first time she’s really looked at me naked, the first time she hasn’t followed the rules and closed her eyes. And maybe, I wonder, the first time she’s looking at me and seeing Maggie, not just LaSamba.

I’m watching Dahlia’s eyes watching me, studying me really, and it sounds strange, but what this really reminds me of is a stuffed mermaid I saw years ago at one of those freak shows at the fair. She had a small, shriveled, dark humanlike face and torso, and her body was fused with the tail of a fish. It was a bad taxidermy job—sewing some shrunken-headed monkey torso to the dingy scaled tail of a mackerel, but this tiny mermaid fascinated me. I stood for a long time staring down into the glass case at it, knowing it was a fake, but still unable to take my eyes away.

“I feel like a mermaid,” I say to Dahlia, knowing she’ll never get what I really mean.

“Me too,” she answers. It’s still only her eyes I see, and they, as well as her voice, are tinged with desperation. “I love you, LaSamba.” Then her mouth is in the window again and my lips meet hers. I want to get out of this box, drag her to her bedroom; to our beach, where I’ll insist that we break our rule and keep our eyes open this time.

“Abomination!” Mother Mary’s voice cracks like thunder.

Dahlia jerks her mouth away from mine.

“Mom!” Dahlia gasps. “We were just . . .”

I scramble to find my clothes in the dark confines of the confession booth.

“Mother Mary knows what you were doing. Mother Mary sees all! It’s an abomination. LaSamba, show yourself!”

I’ve tugged my T-shirt on, unable to find my bra. I’m pulling up my panties, crouching on one leg to get my jeans on. I lose my balance and topple the confession booth over. My legs are sticking out the bottom, jeans half on as I kick to right myself. I scramble out of the box and jerk my jeans the rest of the way on.

Leah is there in her dirty orange robe, holding Mother Mary in one hand, a glass of gin in the other.

“You are banished, LaSamba,” she cries. “Get out!”

“Mom, stop it!” Dahlia yells.

“Get out of my house, you filthy troll-girl,” Leah spits at me. Her teeth are clenched, her eyes wet and bleary.

I pull on my boots and grab my coat, practically running for the door. I can’t look at Dahlia, but I can hear her crying.

“Pervert!” Mother Mary shrieks behind me. “Sick, sick little girl!”

Isn’t it funny how one minute, you have everything you’ve ever dreamed of, the world is yours, then it’s all gone in the blink of an eye, the wave of a doll in someone’s hand?

24

I wake up to the sound of voices in the kitchen. I look at the clock. 7:12 A.M. It’s Sunday morning. Who is my dad talking to? We are not the sort to have friends and neighbors dropping by, and it’s a little early for Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons. Besides, I don’t think they’re out pounding the pavement on the Day of Rest.

I rise and limp over to the window and look out at the driveway to see Leah’s VW, Gertrude. Her battered yellow form looks pitiful behind my dad’s gleaming silver Saab.

What would Leah be doing at my house at this hour of the morning?

Then I remember last night.

Abomination.

This creepy foreboding feeling spreads through my body, starting in my stomach and radiating outward. Before I know it, my heart is beating double-time and my legs feel all rubbery.

I hobble down the stairs, still in my T-shirt from last night, and find my father and Leah in the kitchen at the table, cups of coffee in front of them. They both look very serious. My father seems a little puzzled when he sees me, like I wasn’t who he expected. Like I didn’t live here at all, and I’m just some random stranger barging in.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Hello, Maggie,” Leah says.

This shakes me up even more. I’ve always been LaSamba to her. I guess she’s just trying to be polite and formal in front of my dad. The regular rules don’t apply here. The world of the dolls is its own country.

I try again. “Um, what’s going on?”

Leah just nods, then stands up to go. She’s not looking me in the eye. My mouth suddenly feels very dry.

Leah looks so out of place in our tidy yellow kitchen. Unkempt, in stained jeans and her ratty old peacoat. Her hair is tangled in the back, and she’s done this botched makeup job with orange lipstick and mascara so thick that her eyelids are practically glued together. She looks more like a has-been streetwalker than the keeper of the dolls.

I watch as my father, clean-cut in new jeans, running shoes, and a college sweatshirt, walks her to the door, shakes her hand, thanks her for coming by.

Then he tells me to take a seat in the kitchen because we have a lot to talk about.

Here goes.

I sit across from him and watch as he fiddles with his empty coffee cup. Taking his cue, I pick up Leah’s, which is half full of cold coffee, the rim stained with orange lipstick.

At last, my father clears his throat and begins.

“Mrs. Wainwright told me all about your . . . your relationship with Dahlia.”

“What?” I can’t believe what he just said, his dry lips all pursed up when he said the word relationship, turning it to poison in his mouth.

“She showed up here first thing this morning after being awake all night. The poor woman is a wreck. She’s very concerned for her daughter. She doesn’t want you two seeing each other anymore, and I have to agree that’s the best course of action at this point.”

Abomination.

“Course of action? What are you saying?”

Pervert.

“I’m saying you can’t see Dahlia anymore. Your friendship just isn’t healthy.”

“Healthy?”

I feel like I’m underwater, and his words are only bubbles popping in my ears as I sink down.

Last night I was a rock ’n’ roll star. Today I’m a deviant.

Sick, sick little girl.

“Maggie, I know you’re upset about your mother. I know you’re still grieving . . .”

“This has nothing to do with Mom!”

God, how could he think that? How dare he even bring her up like this?

“Your behavior since school started has been so erratic. I know you’ve been drinking. You smell like a brewery right now.”

“Last night, Sukie spilled her beer on me. I wasn’t drinking at all!”

My father holds up his hand to silence me. “I’m not an idiot, Maggie. I know about the drinking. And I suspect you’ve been using drugs, too. I got a call from your science teacher, Mr. Knapp, on Friday. He’s very concerned about your slipping grades and the change he’s seen in your attitude. He thinks you’ve even shown up for his class high on marijuana.”

“I can’t believe this!”

My father gets all puffed up like one of those weird tropical fish. His eyes are red and runny, and when he opens his mouth to speak, all the air comes out at once, leaving him thin and drained again.

“And I can’t believe you’d lie to me, Maggie. Do you know how disappointing that is?”

Not nearly as disappointing as being betrayed by Leah, Mother Mary, the one adult who actually had a clue—my secret gypsy wagon mother. How could she?

How could it be that everyone in the world is a complete disappointment in the end? That no one is who they seem to be? No one but Dahlia, and now I’m being told I can’t see her.

“To have you tell me things are going well at school, that you’ve been taking your medicine when I know you haven’t. I found a nearly full bottle in your dresser drawer, Maggie. We had that filled a month ago.”

“Jesus! You went through my drawers?”

“I didn’t have a choice. I was worried about you.”

“You were worried, so you searched my room? Whatever happened to talking to me? Isn’t that what our stupid pizza nights are all about?”

His chin starts to quiver and his eyes actually fill with tears. I haven’t seen him cry since the funeral.

“I just can’t help but feel like we’ve both let her down,” he says.

At first, I think he means Leah.

“Who?” I ask.

“Your mother,” he says, his voice cracking. “We’ve let your mother down.”

Just say it, Dad. Say I killed her. I killed her and now I’m breaking her heart up in heaven by turning into a freak of nature lesbian. Say it.

My father’s crying full throttle now, and I can’t look at him anymore. I stand up from the table, run down the hall and up the stairs to my room, where I slam the door, lock it, and dial Dahlia’s number.

“My mom is on a total rampage,” Dahlia tells me.

“I know, she was here,” I say. “She talked to my dad.”

“No way!”

“What are we gonna do, Dahlia? They say we can’t see each other anymore.”

I listen to her take a drag of her cigarette, then blow the smoke back out.

“I don’t know, LaSamba. But they can’t keep us apart. Meet me on the soccer field tomorrow at lunch. We’ll figure it out. Hell, we’ll run away if we have to. Leave this rat hole town behind and go find the Memory Motel for real.”

25

I got to school today fully expecting to be greeted like a star. A lot of people would be too shy to come right up to me, of course, but I’d be able to tell from the way they looked at me, the way they whispered to each other. Definitely my old popular friends would gather round in excited bunches, gushing. Guys from the football team would shout, “Rock on, Keller!” from down the hall. Peace signs from the hippies. I was ready, ready to play the humble yet proud part of the discovered genius.

What an idiot.

People whispered all right. And snickered. I had almost gotten to my locker before I actually made out what they were saying.

Lesbian

Dyke

Homo

My face burned.

Had Leah told the entire school what happened in the confession booth, come to school early and made an announcement over the PA system: my daughter was seduced by that sicko pervert Maggie Keller?

I found out the truth from the brainy girl with the oversize glasses in second-period Geometry. She was the only one who would be caught dead talking to me. Sukie Schwartz had told everyone that I made a pass at her at Troy’s party after telling her all about my lesbian love affair with Dahlia. Not only that, but she’s telling the story like she feels sorry for sick little me—Sukie’s father is a shrink, after all, which pretty much makes her an expert on sexual deviants. And the fact that she and I used to be best friends now makes Sukie an expert on my character and what went wrong. She’s telling people it’s because of the accident. My bad leg made me too self-conscious to think I could be attractive to guys. My limp drove me to lesbianism. This is what the girl with big glasses says.

The first thing I did after Geometry was go looking for Sukie, who was doing a good job at keeping herself surrounded with kids, passing on tidbits about my lesbian life and how that’s what really ended our friendship last year. I tried to talk to her outside the gym, but it was no use.

“Sukie,” I said. “We need to talk.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“We need to talk about the lies you’ve been spreading.”

“She says she doesn’t want to talk, lesbo,” Heather said, and she was backed up by about five other girls who formed a line between me and Sukie, acting all tough like they expected little limping me to start attacking Sukie with lesbian karate or something. I just shook my head and walked away.

Poof. You’re not in Kansas anymore. You’re in homo exile land.

When I meet Dahlia on the soccer field she can hardly look at me. It’s so cold my breath comes out in frozen clouds. I start scrambling to explain, to tell her what happened at Troy’s party, the words moist puffs that freeze in the air between us. Dahlia holds her hand up like a traffic cop.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she says. “Not now. Meet me at Troy’s after school. We’ll talk then.”

Then she walks away, back toward the school, but just before going, she gives me this look of pity, like I have no arms and legs and am just a stump girl, smaller than ever.

This is the last thing I need now. Dahlia’s all I’ve got.

I watch her go, then start to chase after her, running as fast as I can, the pain in my leg searing and bright as lightning in a dark horror-movie sky. I get to the building and see Dahlia through the double-glass doors, moving down the corridor.

I can’t go any further. My whole body is pulsing with pain, and when I see my reflection in the glass doors, it looks all wavery and bright.

My stomach heaves and I turn just in time to throw up on the gravel next to the bike racks. I’m doubled over, gagging and spitting and wondering if I’m gonna live or die, when I hear this voice behind me.

Wouldn’t you know it, it’s old No-Neck Knapp with his filmy lips asking if he can walk me to the nurse’s office. I say no way, that I’m fine, just peachy keen. I’m crying now, even though I’m trying not to with all my might, and he takes my arm and leads me to his empty classroom instead.

“Do you want to talk?” he asks.

“No.”

I bet even No-Neck has heard the rumors by now. If he’s hoping for the inside scoop, he better think again.

“Okay then. You can rest here until you feel better, Maggie. I’ll write you a hall pass and a note to your next teacher saying you were helping me in the lab.”

“Thanks,” I say.

I can’t believe it. An adult being so cool, so nice to me.

He just sits at the front of the room grading papers while I lay my head on my desk, counting my breaths, trying to make myself calm down.

When I finally get it together and stand to leave, he writes the pass and the note, then says, “Come back anytime you need to, Maggie.” And I bite my lip and look away, because I know I’m going to start crying again just from him being so nice, which doesn’t make any sense at all, but there it is.

When I get to Troy’s, I find Dahlia, Troy, and Albert in the basement. Troy looks at me with an amused grin on his face. Albert just looks perplexed, like he’s trying to figure out if it’s really me or a clone. Albert believes that some people really are clones. Or androids. Or aliens. He’s got all kinds of ideas that I used to find sort of charming, but now I just find them kind of geeky and annoying.

Dahlia’s avoiding all eye contact with me, and I’m having serious doubts that any conversation we have right now is going to go well.

“We got a movie for you two,” says Troy.

“What movie?” asks Dahlia.

I’m still standing, too edgy to sit.

Troy goes over to the corner, reaching for a video. He’s got one of those huge entertainment centers where the stereo, big-screen television, and VCR and DVD player are all in an oak cabinet with lots of shelves and drawers. There are rows of CDs, stacks of videos and DVDs.

Troy comes over, video in hand, and shows us the cover.

There’s a picture of two half-naked, Barbie-looking blonds making out.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Dahlia says. “What the hell is this?”

“I thought you’d like it,” explains Troy. His voice is all sincere, his brown eyes moist as a dog’s. “It seemed like your kind of movie.”

Dahlia sits up a little straighter. “We’re not dykes, you know. What Sukie said in school—it’s all bullshit.”

“Is that right?” Troy asks. “That’s not the way Sukie tells it. I already knew, anyway. Sukie told me she saw you two making out behind the school. At first, I thought it was just one of her crazy stunts to try to get me back, but then, after watching you guys a while, I started to believe her. Then at the party, she comes crying to me, saying how her old buddy ‘Mags’ just tried to kiss her. How sick is that?”

Dahlia, for once, has nothing to say.

“So, are you like, into girls for real now?” Albert asks me. “Is that why you broke up with me?”

I roll my eyes. Please.

Dahlia stands. She’s there looking all pissed off in her crumpled Paper Dolls T-shirt, and all I can think is Goddamn, Dahlia is the most beautiful girl who ever lived.

Yes, Albert, I guess I am into girls for real now.

“I’m gonna go get some munchies in the kitchen,” she says. And without any clear sense of whether or not I’m invited, I follow her.

I stand with my back against the granite-topped counter while Dahlia opens cupboards, digs around, looking. She walks past me to the fridge, opens it, then shuts it seconds later, frustrated at not having found whatever she was searching for.

I’m wondering if I should go home. If Dahlia’s just going to go on ignoring me.

“What is up with that movie?” Dahlia finally asks, her back to me as she opens yet another cupboard. She pulls out a bag of pretzels, takes a bite of one, then drops the rest of the uneaten pretzel back into the bag and returns it to the cupboard.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Pretty sick, huh?”

“What’s sick is that they thought we’d be into it. Idiots.”

She turns to face me, her face twisted with what looks like worry.

“I mean, you’re not into watching it, are you?”

“Jesus, no!” I tell her.

“We’re not like that,” Dahlia says. “We’re not what everyone at school says we are.”

I shake my head, agreeing, but all the while I’m thinking, I am. I am like that.

“I mean, you might be, but I’m not,” she says, as if reading my mind.

“Right,” I say. “I remember. You just want to be normal.”

Dahlia shakes her head, obviously disgusted.

“I don’t get it, Maggie,” she says. “I don’t get why you had to ruin everything.”

“Me?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I can’t believe that any of this is happening, that Dahlia and I are actually having this conversation. “I ruined everything?”

She nods her head.

“How’d I do that?” My words are clipped, angry.

“When you told Sukie about us.”

She stares straight at me, and I open my mouth to explain, but she cuts me off.

“And I can’t fucking believe you made a move on her,” she hisses.

“You actually think that? You actually believe Sukie’s screwed-up little story?” I’m gripping the counter behind me, squeezing so hard my fingers ache.

“What am I supposed to believe?”

“Me,” I say, my voice tired, strained. The answer is so obvious that the very fact that I have to tell her finally clues me in on the hopelessness of our situation. “You’re supposed to believe me.” I let go of the counter, my arms falling limply at my sides.

I’ve lost her already. I can feel it.

“Okay then,” Dahlia says. “Tell me what happened.”

I take a breath, then begin. “It was Sukie who made the moves on me.”

Dahlia laughs. “Yeah, right.”

“Really. I’m not lying. One minute we were talking, the next she was kissing me. I think it was this weird desperate attempt to reach me somehow. Like she thought me being queer was this wall between us that she had to find a way to scale.”

“And is that what you’re saying you are? Queer? Because I’m not, Maggie. I can’t be like that. I can’t live with what everyone at school was saying.”

“Oh come on! Since when do you give a crap what they say? Last week they were calling us vampires. And before that we were witches. We’re freaks to them no matter what. Who cares!”

But already, I know the truth. My mind flashes to the past weeks—to Dahlia sitting at Troy’s table, Dahlia on the front page of The Chatterbox, Dahlia with a gang of kids gathered around her locker asking for Paper Dolls T-shirts, treating her like a star. Of course she cares.

“This is different,” she says, turning away from me, looking to her left, to the doorway that leads to the front hall. Troy is standing there, watching. I have no idea how long he’s been there, how much he’s heard. I suddenly have this absurd sense that I’m on a stage; this whole conversation is just a play we’re putting on for him. And I know the rest of the script. I know how it will end.

“Oh,” I say. “So that’s it? Just like that, it’s over? All of a sudden you care so much what people think that you’re willing to just give up?”

Dahlia doesn’t say anything.

“What about the song you wrote for me? And what happened to ‘There are no wrong feelings?’ Is that just some line you use when it’s convenient?”

I don’t want to cry. Not here with Troy watching. But I feel the tears starting, my face taut with the strain of trying not to totally fall apart and turn into a blubbering idiot. Rage, I think. Try to focus on the rage.

“Is it?” I ask again.

Dahlia doesn’t answer. She just looks down at her combat boots, scuffs the terra-cotta-tiled floor with them, then looks back toward Troy.

“Fuck!” I scream, kicking back with my bad leg into the cupboards behind me. The tears are coming now, there’s no holding them back. The pain in my leg is almost a relief compared to the cracked-open feeling Dahlia’s left me with. I take a few limping steps toward Dahlia, who still won’t meet my eyes. “Please,” I whisper. She doesn’t look up.

This girl who made me say the word forever. Who promised we wouldn’t drown.

“Well, I guess that’s it, then,” I say, turning to do my Frankenstein girl walk out of the kitchen. I tell myself that she’s going to stop me any second, throw her arms around me. Rescue me once more. But she doesn’t. She’s chosen normal over me. I can’t believe it, but at the same time, it makes all the sense in the world.

“Have a nice normal life,” I tell her bitterly, my once-upon-a-time mermaid wife.

26

It’s started to snow and I’m not wearing a coat, just this wool sweater that gets caught in the prickers as I make my way down the path to the stream. I left my coat in Troy’s basement, only remembering it after storming out on Dahlia. Like I would go back there.

I cross the stream, hopping along on the backs of slippery rocks, not feeling very sure-footed in the snow but not caring if I slip and mess up my leg for good. Maybe I’ll get lucky and drown.

But I’m just being sulky and melodramatic, which is more Dahlia’s thing than mine. The truth is, I don’t really want to drown. I just want to get warm. Rethink things. And mostly, what I want is to not be alone. So I’m going to see the one person who might just take me in.

By the time I clamber up through the roots and boulders to the cave, the snow has turned to wet, heavy flakes, and my hair is soaked.

“Joey,” I call at the mouth of the cave, “you in there?”

Please, God, let him be here. If he’s not, I don’t know where I’ll go.

I hear scuttling like the sound of a giant crab, and smell smoke.

“Joey?”

I crawl through the dark entrance of his hideout, which is thick with smoke. I can hardly see. I push past a blanket hanging over the opening and get to the center of the cave.

Joey’s left eye is bruised purple and red, swollen almost shut. He’s got tears streaming down his cheeks, and with shaking hands, he’s trying desperately to start a small fire in the center of his cave. He’s gathered sticks and papers and he’s lighting match after match, trying to set the damp mess in front of him on fire.

“What are you doing?” I ask, practically choking from the thick smoke that fills my throat and lungs.

“Cold,” he mumbles.

“But you can’t start a fire in here!” I say. “Jesus, it’s not safe. Your sleeping bag is like six inches away. You could die of smoke inhalation. I can barely breathe in here. Put down the matches.”

I reach out and take the box of matches from his hand, which is ice-cube cold.

“What happened to your eye, Joey?” Now that I’m closer to him, I get a better look. It’s so swollen, it turns my stomach. In movies, they put a cold steak on black eyes. This is way beyond that. I’m thinking ice packs. I’m thinking maybe he should see a doctor.

“Dad,” he says, looking down at the dirt floor.

I lean in and touch the puffy skin around his seeping eye. He flinches.

“That looks bad. I think we should get you to a doctor.”

Joey shakes his head.

“Why is your sleeping bag here? I thought you were staying in Jonah’s room.”

“Leah got mad,” he says.

“Mad at you?”

“Just mad. She was drinking bad. Yelling. Throwing stuff. I left last night. Went home.”

“When did your dad hit you?”

“Today,” he says. “After school. Today.”

“What are you gonna do?” I ask.

He shrugs.

“You can’t stay here,” I tell him. I look around at the smoking pile of tinder, the snow coming through the crack in the roof.

“Cold,” he says.

“Yeah, no kidding.” I shiver, try to brush some of the dampness off my sweater.

Joey turns, rustles around in his sleeping bag, comes back with a plaid shirt that has a quilted lining. He hands it to me.

I peel off my wet sweater and put on the shirt, which smells like earth, like being underground. It’s Joey’s smell and it’s not bad, like the smell of graves, but fresh and clean and full of possibility, like when you turn over dirt in a garden bed.

“Did you hear what everyone was saying in school today?” I ask.

He nods, not looking at me.

“Most of it isn’t true. But some of it is. The part about me and Dahlia is.”

He looks at me and says, “Okay.”

That’s all. Just a tentative sounding “Okay.” But it’s the most supportive thing anyone’s said so far, and I could just hug him.

“Joey, I have something to show you. Want to see it?”

He nods excitedly, like a little boy.

Then I do it: the thing I’ve wanted to do since I met him.

I roll up the leg of my pants and show him my scar.

“I was in an accident,” I say. “My mother died.”

Joey nods, and I know that brain-damaged or not, he gets it completely. I know because he starts to cry.

Joey’s crying, soft little snuffles, the kind of sound a dog makes looking for food that’s been dropped on the floor.

When I look at Joey now, I almost don’t notice the scar. It’s funny, because it used to be the only thing I saw. Now when I look at other people, I think something’s missing from their faces. He reminds me of some storybook hero, a knight who has gone off to slay the largest dragon and come back scarred but with a sack full of scales and treasure.

I think about how he’s never kissed any girl. Here I am all freaked out about how Dahlia and I might be over when poor Joey might go through his whole life without ever kissing anyone, and this just about breaks my heart.

He looks up at me through his good eye, the one that isn’t swollen shut, wipes his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. I put my hand on his back and rub comforting circles. He leans into me and I wrap both my arms around him. Joey’s breathing these little crying gasps into my neck, warming it.

“It’s okay,” I tell him when I know things are not okay at all. He only cries harder. I feel so helpless, so desperate.

I kiss the top of his head. His hair smells like autumn leaves. I keep kissing him there, thinking of the warm sunset colors of fall. He lifts his face, and I kiss his forehead. Then his cheek, which is salty with tears and tastes like the ocean. Before I can think about what I’m doing, I move my mouth to his, and he doesn’t pull away. He presses into me, kissing me back.

I can’t explain why I do it. Just because I can, I guess. I let my lips part a little when they meet his. Joey’s lips are warm, softer than I imagined they would be. I keep my mouth on his to show this is not just a friendly little peck, to show him what kissing is like, since he’s never done it. Here I am, giving the String Man what might be his one and only kiss, so I want to make it a good one.

To my surprise, I kind of get into it. It actually feels sort of nice. And not in this aren’t-I-so-charitable-giving-the-poor-retard-a-kiss? kind of way, but in an authentic, warm and prickly all over kind of way.

It’s stupid, kissing Joey like this. Kissing him when I’m in love with Dahlia.

I think of what Dahlia said to me once: It matters and it doesn’t matter. Then I think of the other thing she said: There are no wrong feelings.

Right now, all I want in the world is to be a normal girl. A girl who likes boys, who isn’t in love with her best friend. I kiss Joey harder, deeper, pull him closer, and the next thing I know, I’m on my back on the floor of his cave, and Joey’s on top of me, our lips cemented together.

Our kiss is like a wish.

Please, make me a normal girl.

Please, make me a normal boy.

But nothing happens. There’s no magic moment where everything changes. No poof ! So we keep kissing and wait.

There’s a stone beneath me, digging into my ribs, sharp and painful. I try to imagine the size and shape of the stone, which feels like a tiny dagger but may really be shaped more like a heart.

I close my eyes and just like that, I’m on the beach. It’s so easy to get there, and I know now that it’s because there’s a part of me that never leaves, just stays there waiting in the sand, hypnotized by the waves.

There is a storm brewing in our paradise today, a tidal wave coming. The sky is black, and the sea is, too. I look up and see that it’s Tiki kissing me. It’s Tiki in some other form. She’s got a mask on. She’s got a mermaid tail, and salt water drips from her skin onto my face. I taste the ocean.

When I open my eyes, it’s Joey’s face I see above me, and I jerk away.

What the hell am I doing?

I am in love with Dahlia. Kissing Joey isn’t going to make that go away. So I either need to get on with my life and try to forget her or find a way to go get her back. The second option sounds way more appealing.

Joey rolls over into the dirt, curls up in a ball, and starts to cry all over again. I wrap myself around him, match my breathing to his, try to keep his sobbing body still.

Above us, the ground rumbles and the sky moans, and for a brief second, I think it’s the end of the world.

But it’s just a train barreling along the tracks, crossing the bridge—clickety-clack, clickety-clack, don’t look back.

“Joey, there’s something I have to go do,” I say.

He just keeps crying.

“I want you to stay here. You stay here and wait for me. And don’t start any more fires, okay? Promise me.”

He nods.

“Good,” I tell him. “I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

27

When I get to Troy’s, I let myself in the front door, just as I’ve been doing for weeks. I’m here to get Dahlia back, to explain things and make them right. I’m not leaving without her, and we are going back to the cave to help Joey. If Leah won’t take him back at the apartment, then he’ll just have to come home with me.

I step into the hall and hear shouting from the basement. Troy. And Dahlia.

I gallop clumsily to the stairs and hop down as fast as my gimpy leg will let me go.

“What’d you think?” I hear Troy say. “That we were going to hook up now? Live happily ever after? You’re kidding, right?”

Dahlia hisses something I don’t hear.

“Wanna know the truth, Wainwright? You make me sick.”

I get to the bottom of the stairs to see Dahlia backed into a corner. Troy is pacing around in front of her.

Dahlia eyes me with a combination of relief and confusion. Troy turns and follows her gaze.

“Oh great. Your knight in shining armor has arrived. You two are pathetic. God, Maggie. I know the accident screwed you up bad, but I had no idea how bad. What is it, you’re attracted to girls because you’re trying to replace your mother or something? Your mom was so cool, Maggie. Man, if only she could see you now.”

I just stand there staring, as mute as my rag-doll clown, tears in my eyes, no sound in my throat, and a pounding, throbbing noise filling my head. It’s the noise I used to think was Dahlia, that buzzing, rhythmic and frightening, but here in the basement, I realize it’s just my own heart and has been all along.

It’s a strong heart, mine. My right leg may be mincemeat and screws, but my heart is as strong as a bear trap. When I love someone, it’s for keeps, and if anyone messes with them, they’ve got Frankenstein girl to contend with.

And no matter what Troy Farnham says, I know my mother would be proud.

“Tell me,” Troy says, “just how do two girls get it on? Like, who’s the guy?”

He turns back to Dahlia, waiting for an answer. “Well?” he asks, taking a step toward her.

Dahlia, for the first time ever maybe, doesn’t know what to say. She looks totally lost. Like she never expected Troy to turn out to be such a complete asshole. And I have to agree—he’s outdone himself this time.

“That’s enough, Farnham. Dahlia and I are going now,” I say, my voice smooth and confident, but with a touch of contempt. It’s my old popular-girl, theater-star voice, and it fills the room. “Come on, Tiki.” I push past Troy and reach out to take Dahlia’s hand.

Troy snorts with laughter. “You two are really something,” he says, stepping back and letting us pass.

“Yeah,” I agree. “We sure are.”

“I think we should run away,” Dahlia says once we’re safely outside, walking down the street. She links arms with me and continues. “Go out West where no one knows us. Find our motel by the sea.”

A little over an hour ago she was ready to ditch me because she couldn’t deal with what kids at school were calling us. And now she wants to run away.

“What if it doesn’t exist?” I ask.

“Of course it exists. We just have to find the right beach.”

“And we’re going to live happily ever after?”

“Just like in the storybooks,” Dahlia promises.

“It’s never two girls who live happily ever after in fairy tales,” I say.

Dahlia doesn’t respond. I want so badly for her to say we’ll be the first, or that fairy tales are stupid anyway, but she gets all quiet and broody, and I can tell she’s thinking maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all.

“So we have to go on a rescue mission,” I tell her, eager to break her train of thought. “Joey’s in trouble.”

I fill her in on the situation, and she agrees that we should go get him at the cave and bring him back to her place. If things aren’t cool with Leah, then he’ll come home with me.

“Will your dad let Joey stay?” Dahlia asks.

“He will if I explain things to him,” I tell her. “He’s a reasonable guy.”

“Was he reasonable about us?” she asks.

“I think he was in shock.”

“I guess we all were,” she says.

When we get to the cave, Joey’s all hopped up because he’s come up with a plan of his own. He’s going to take a Greyhound bus to New Hampshire to see his sister. He thinks he can live with her there.

“Doesn’t she go to school there or something?” Dahlia asks.

Joey nods. “Dartmouth. Hanover.”

“So what, does she live in a dorm?” Dahlia asks.

Joey nods again, hands her a photo. I lean in and take a look. There’s a girl with dark hair and eyes sitting in a wheelchair outside a brick building. It’s fall in the snapshot, and someone has sprinkled handfuls of leaves all over her, in her lap, around her feet; they cling to her hair, bright flags of color, and she’s smiling up into the camera. Dahlia turns the photo over. It was taken last year.

Joey is busy straightening the bills that he’s pulled out of the anatomy book. He seems to be running on this crazed nervous energy and won’t look me in the eye.

“Does your sister know you want to live with her?” I ask.

“Surprise,” he says, a huge grin on his face.

I might be weirdly overprotective, but it worries me to think of Joey getting on a bus for New Hampshire and just showing up at her door. I’m sure she’s got this whole other life there, this life of studying, of friends who cover her in leaves, and I worry Joey might not fit into it. I also doubt Joey has told her about the cave, about how he practically never goes home because of how bad his dad’s been since she left.

“When’s the last time you talked to her?” I asked.

He shrugs, takes the picture back from me and tucks it in the chest pocket of his shirt.

Joey’s pulled all the money out of the anatomy book, and Dahlia and I help him count it. We lay out the bills in piles of tens. He’s got over four hundred dollars here, which Dahlia says is plenty for him to get started in New Hampshire. Joey packs his trash dolls, the anatomy book, and the few articles of clothing he has inside his sleeping bag. We’re going to Dahlia’s to see if he can spend the night. In the morning, we’ll walk him to the station. That’s the plan we discuss, anyway. I’m secretly hoping that we come up with something better. I’m thinking I might bite the bullet and talk to my dad when I get home. Maybe he’ll know what to do with Joey. It just doesn’t seem right to put the poor kid on a bus for New Hampshire when his sister doesn’t even know he’s coming.

“What about your drum?” I ask as we walk through the snow along the tracks. I’m thinking he can’t leave without his drum. That he’ll see it was a silly idea to even consider it.

“You,” he tells me. “It’s for you.”

Dahlia’s apartment has been hit by a tornado. We walk into the living room to find piles of clothes, books, and CDs, half-packed bags and cartons. Kitchen drawers have been pulled out and dumped on the carpet. Leah is pinballing around the apartment, throwing clothes and candlesticks in a suitcase, sipping from a bottle of rum. She’s got the dolls wrapped in a bundle tucked under her arm. Jonah is standing in the corner, wearing his blue robe and hat, holding Mr. Twister and looking terrified.

“What’s going on, Mom?” Dahlia asks.

“It’s gypsy wagon time,” Leah says. “Come on, there’s no time to waste! We’re leaving now.”

“Now?”

“Tonight!” Leah yells. “Are you deaf? Tonight! Tonight! Tonight! So pack a bag and let’s get this show on the road!” She laughs, but not like anything is funny.

Dahlia looks over at Jonah, who is staring straight ahead, stroking the bunny with shaking hands.

“Jonah?” Dahlia says.

He doesn’t respond.

“Jonah, what’s going on?”

He looks at her.

“You can see me?” he asks.

“Of course,” Dahlia says. “Of course I can.”

“But I’m wearing my ring of invisibility,” he tells her.

She looks at him a minute, then gives him a conspiratorial smile.

“Maggie and I have magic rings, too,” she tells him, showing him her mood ring. “They let us see the invisible.”

Jonah gives her a weak smile.

“The landlord came,” Jonah whispers. “He said we had to get out if we couldn’t pay.”

“They can’t just throw us out!” Dahlia says.

“No one’s throwing us out, lovie,” Leah tells her. “We’re leaving! The gypsy wagon awaits.”

“Well, I’m not going. Not without Maggie and Joey.”

Leah narrows her eyes, stares at us a minute, her eyes moving from Dahlia to me to Joey. Then she untucks the wrapped bundle of dolls and whispers to them, holds them to her ear to hear them whisper back.

“Fine. Bring who you want. Let’s go.” Apparently the dolls have changed their position on lesbians.

I should argue. Should say this is even more insane than putting Joey on a bus in the morning. But part of the reason I don’t is that I doubt we’ll get very far. We’ll get to the mall and Leah will decide to do a little shopping or something. Or Gertrude won’t have enough gas. Something will stop us. Someone will be reasonable.

“You take the dolls, Zamboni,” Leah says, thrusting them at Jonah. He holds them awkwardly in one arm, Mr. Twister in the other.

“You can see me too?” he asks, but Leah spins away from him without answering.

So we load up Gertrude with the few things we can fit and it’s an odd assortment: Dahlia’s guitar, my bee suit, clothes stuffed in grocery bags, rabbit food, a few pots and pans, candles, a dead houseplant, and what’s left of the bottle of rum.

“You navigate, Zamboni,” Leah says once she’s started the car.

“But where are we going?” Jonah asks. He’s got Mr. Twister on his lap and is stroking the rabbit’s ears nervously and offering him a limp carrot.

I’m in the middle of the backseat between Joey, who still won’t look at me, and Dahlia, who’s holding my hand so tight her nails are almost drawing blood in my palm.

“Joey wants to go to New Hampshire,” Dahlia says. “To Dartmouth.”

I jab my elbow into her ribs. Giving Leah a real destination is not a good idea.

“Hanover,” Joey says. “Hanover.”

Now I jab Joey in the ribs, which was kind of dumb because he just yells, “Oww!”

“New Hampshire it is!” shouts Leah, taking a slug of rum. “North, Zamboni. We’ve got to go north.”

And so we’re off. The snow has really picked up, and Gertrude’s tires are spinning as we fishtail our way out of the parking lot and off on our gypsy wagon adventure.

28

“Are you sure you don’t want to call your sister?” I ask Joey. “You know, just to tell her you’re coming and all? We could stop off at the mall to call her. Get some hot chocolate. Maybe a map.”

We’re coming up on the exit for the mall soon, and I think if I can just get Leah to stop, this crazy journey will be over. She’ll get distracted and come up with some other wild idea.

“A surprise,” Joey says. “Surprise.” He’s drumming his fingers on his thigh, rocking back and forth a little. He smells like wet wood and smoke.

“A map would be good,” I say. No one answers. “There are maps at the mall. And hot chocolate.”

Dead silence. We pass the exit that would take us to the mall. I slump down in my seat.

We aren’t seriously going to try to make it to New Hampshire, are we?

The windows are all steamed up and the defroster doesn’t seem to be working. Jonah’s trying to clean the windshield with napkins he found in the glove compartment.

“It’s the end of the world, lovies,” Leah says. “Don’t you doubt it. But don’t worry, we can outrun them.”

“Who, Mom?” Dahlia asks.

“Who what?”

“Who exactly are we supposed to be outrunning?”

“The trolls,” Leah says. “Trolls, trolls, trolls.”

Leah keeps checking the rearview mirror.

“Is he behind us?” she asks.

“Who?” Dahlia wants to know.

“The goddamned whoring landlord, that’s who!”

“Jesus,” Dahlia says.

“Surprise,” Joey says.

Headlights come up behind us quickly, and only when their light fills the car do I realize how slow we’re going. We’re practically at a crawl.

“Speed up, Ma,” Dahlia says.

“What?” Leah asks.

“I said they’re behind us. Go faster.”

I give Dahlia a disgusted look.

Leah puts the pedal to the floor, and we lurch forward.

“Where the hell are we?” Leah asks.

“Just go straight,” Jonah says.

“There is no straight,” Leah says.

“Sure there is, just follow the road. Don’t turn off.”

“Gotta lose them,” Leah says, taking the next exit, which she races down, making a quick left turn onto a small country road. The car skids sideways and we nearly go off the road.

Now I’m squeezing the life out of Dahlia’s hand. My heart is racing and my leg gives a warning ache. Everything feels too dangerous. I have that sense again of time looping back around, a big figure eight. Part of me is back in the car with my mother.

“I think we should go back,” I say. Oh shit. I forgot Toto.

“The dolls, Zamboni!” Leah cries. “We need the dolls. They’ll tell us which way to go. North. We need to know which way is north.”

Jonah leans over the rabbit on his lap, rummages around in his backpack. He keeps shoving things around, then starts to take everything out, one item at a time. When the pack is empty, he stares into it in disbelief.

“Where are the dolls?” Leah asks.

Jonah shuffles through his belongings again: rabbit pellets, jar of peanut butter, hooded sweatshirt, pouch of salt.

“They’re not here!” he cries.

“But I gave them to you,” Leah whines. She takes her eyes off the road and looks down at the pile of stuff on the floor by Jonah’s feet.

“Mom! The road!” Dahlia yells.

Leah looks up, jerks the wheel, keeps us from going off the road into a tree.

“I gave them to you. I entrusted them to you.”

“I must have forgotten them.” Jonah’s chin is quivering now. “Back at the apartment. I set them down to give Mr. Twister a carrot. I set them down.”

“How could you?” Leah screams. “Of all the irresponsible, idiotic things! You’re just looking for ways to ruin us, aren’t you?”

Jonah is sobbing now, his whole body shaking as he cradles his rabbit.

“I’m invisible,” he’s sobbing. “I’m supposed to be invisible.”

Dahlia leans forward, rubs her brother’s shoulder.

“Easy, Mom. They’re just dolls,” she says.

“Just dolls!” Leah screams.

“Yes, dolls—and Jonah’s just a kid, for God’s sake!”

“Surprise,” Joey murmurs, tapping faster on his thigh.

“Mother Mary!” Leah cries. “Birdwoman! We’re coming!”

Then she slams on the brakes and does a U-turn.

Oh shit. I forgot Toto.

The car goes into a skid and I’m screaming like it’s the end of the world. I’m back in the car with my mother white-knuckling the wheel, her face filled with horror, the lights of the truck blinding me, the shrieking, crushing sound of metal on metal. The pain of impact, the entire dashboard and engine pushing forward, the car turning into an accordion that we’re trapped inside, our breath fresh from mints from my mother’s purse. I’m screaming and screaming, my eyes clamped tight. From somewhere beside me, somewhere in that backward loop of time, I hear my mother’s voice. One last word, spoken as a scream: Maggie.

And now I’m calling back to her through time and space. “Mom!”

When I open my eyes, I’m sure I’ll wake up in heaven. Or hell maybe, because, as I’m sure Leah believes, that is where girls like me belong.

29

“Maggie!” Dahlia’s yelling.

She slaps my face, like I’m some hysterical girl in an old movie. Someone with white gloves and a pillbox hat who’s just had the shock of her innocent little life.

The slap does the trick.

I stop screaming, open my eyes, and look around.

Not heaven. Not hell. Not even Oz.

Connecticut. In a ditch on a little two-lane highway off Interstate 91.

“See?” Dahlia says. “We’re okay.”

But I’m not so sure.

Jonah’s tearfully clutching Mr. Twister to his chest, and doing this frantic rocking in his seat. Leah’s taking a sip of rum. Joey’s rubbing steam off the window, trying to look out. I smell puke and see he’s thrown up down the front of his shirt. The windshield wipers are clacking and squeaking, the engine making its usual put-put-put sound.

I get my bearings enough to see we seem to be resting at the bottom of a not-so-small ditch.

“Everybody out!” Leah shouts, and one by one, we pile out of the little bug like clowns in the circus.

We walk in circles around the car, all of us assessing the scene.

We are good and stuck. It’s a deep culvert we’ve landed in, and the only way we’re going to get out is with a tow truck with a winch.

“I don’t suppose you have triple A?” I ask Leah, who totally ignores me.

Dumb question.

Dahlia’s lighting a clove cigarette. Jonah’s wrapped his robe around the rabbit to keep the snow off him.

“We’ll just have to push,” Leah says.

We all look at her, but no one tells her that it’s not gonna work. Even if we could get it rolling, there is no way to get it back up that hill. Everyone gets behind the little yellow bug and starts to rock it there at the bottom of the ditch.

Everyone but me, that is.

“Harder,” Leah’s shouting from the driver’s seat. She’s gunning the engine, spinning tires, making deep ruts in the mud and slush. “Push harder, birdlings! Let’s get this show on the road!”

I turn my back to them and climb the hill, make my way to the road, then limp-jog the half-mile or so through the snow to the closed convenience store I noticed when we passed it a few minutes ago.

The blue phone light glows at the top of the booth like a dream beacon, like the word memory that calls Tiki and me to our imaginary beach.

But this is real life, not some fantasy world. And I am no doll, but a girl in trouble.

I drop in all the change in my pocket and push the numbers.

“Hi, Dad? It’s me, Maggie. I need help. Things are all messed up. Can you come get us?”

30

The hallways are full of eccentric-looking kids. Kids wearing black, carrying instruments, wearing leotards and ballet slippers. There are no football players. No cheerleaders with big, fluffy hair. A girl in a top hat and cowboy boots is playing a trombone on the stairs.

My dad is taking it all in, asking our tour guide all kinds of questions about academics, GPAs, and student-to-faculty ratio.

“What do you think, Mags?” he asks after we’ve toured the building and sat in on a jazz improv class.

He’s been trying so hard with me lately. Doing over-the-top stuff like giving me books by Dorothy Allison and Rita Mae Brown, and tuning into this god-awful women’s-music hour on our local college station, where chicks with acoustic guitars and warbling voices sing all about how proud they are to be dykes. My face burns with embarrassment for them—not for being lesbians, but for being so cheesy about it.

I look around the hallway at all the artsy kids, then back to my dad, who is wearing this totally embarrassing tie with piano keys that I gave him for Christmas.

“I think it’s great,” I say, giving him a smile.

“I think so, too. Now you’ve just gotta dazzle the admissions committee.”

It’s the week after Easter. If all goes well, I’ll be accepted by Cedar Brook and start eleventh grade here in the fall. To be honest, I wish I could start right now, today. Then I wouldn’t have to live through two more months of Sutterville High.

Dahlia thinks me going to Cedar Brook is a great idea.

She said so when I talked to her on the phone the other day.

“It’s perfect, Maggie. You keep working on your clarinet and I’ll take guitar lessons. That way, we’ll be ready when the band gets back together.”

But that won’t be anytime soon.

Sure, Dahlia has all kinds of plans. She says she’s going to emancipate herself, get a job and an apartment for her and Jonah with space for the band to practice. She’ll have a room all set for Leah when she gets out of the hospital.

“This living with Aunt Elsbeth totally sucks,” she says. But then, in the next breath, she’s telling me all the cool things about her aunt. How Elsbeth’s set up a purple bedroom for Dahlia with her own stereo and computer. Elsbeth has a study full of poetry books and a piano in her living room.

“It’s not such a bad thing,” she says. “Getting three meals a day that I don’t have to scrounge for. And Jonah actually likes this therapist guy he sees. Elsbeth’s been his own personal hero, too, after she went out and got a special hutch for Mr. Twister. And did I tell you she’s got goats? Jonah’s totally in love with the goats.”

“I can’t wait to see it all,” I say.

But I doubt I will.

I mean, Elsbeth lives all the way in Ithaca, which is about four hours away.

At first, Dahlia and I talked every day on the phone, and most of the conversation consisted of her making mad plans to escape and run away together. We were gonna bust Leah out of the state hospital and jump a train like hoboes.

Then Dahlia called every couple of days and gradually stopped mentioning her escape plans. Now she calls once a week and mostly talks about all the cool things Elsbeth has done. Dahlia says Elsbeth’s friend Mark is giving her guitar lessons and that she’s hooked up with a drummer and they’re trying to start a band. Last week there was no call.

If this had happened back in the beginning, when she first moved away, I would have sat by the phone waiting. But now I guess I’m getting used to being apart from her. At first, it was physically painful to have her so far away. These days, it’s just a dull ache.

I’ve still got my mood ring and I wear it every day, even though it’s leaving a faint green line around my finger. And it doesn’t change colors anymore. It just stays black.

When Dahlia and I do talk, I fill her in on how things are going at Sutterville High. The big news is that Troy and Sukie are back together, which was totally predictable.

And then, last week, Albert actually asked me out again. This in spite of the fact that I have become a pariah, and the only kid at school who’ll even talk to me these days is Joey. Goes to show how desperate poor Albert is.

“Is it because I’m not a girl?” he asked after I said no.

I shook my head.

“Are you going out with Joey or something?” Albert asked. “I’m just asking because that’s what everyone is saying.”

“You know what, Albert? I am sick and tired of what everyone is saying,” I told him, shaking my head and walking away.

Joey and I are together a lot at school. He doesn’t ask me if I’m gay or straight or how many times Dahlia and I had sex. I get these questions a lot when I’m walking through the halls. Words shouted from kids at lockers, or girls snickering behind books. I just do my best to ignore it, the same way Joey doesn’t listen when people call him a retard.

Sometimes I go hang out with Joey at his place after school. It’s a dingy house that three other guys live in. It’s cramped and dark and smells like pee. He has to share a room with a guy who hears voices and stuff. There’s an office with a cot, and a staff person is there twenty-four hours a day, doling out medicine, reminding the guys to do their chores and homework. Joey doesn’t seem to mind living there, and says it’s way better than the cave, or being knocked around by his dad at home. A social worker comes to take him out for burgers once a week and buys him clothes and stuff. Joey thinks it’s a pretty good setup, and he’s got my dad to thank for it. My dad kind of took charge of things and made some phone calls, and now he’s like Joey’s biggest hero. Joey’s a regular at our pizza nights, and his drum is a permanent fixture in our living room next to the piano. After dinner, I get out my clarinet and the three of us jam until midnight. Some would say it’s a pretty geeky way to spend a Friday night, but it’s the highlight of my week. All our weeks actually, I think.

Joey’s supposed to graduate in June, and then he says he’ll just work full-time doing lawns and odd jobs. There’s this guy, Duke, who has a small engine-repair shop, and he’s been letting Joey help out there after school. He says Joey’s got a good set of hands.

The admissions committee is seated at a long table facing me. There are two faculty members, a woman from administration, and a student who I’m scared to look at for too long. She’s got short pink hair and is wearing a miniskirt with these rainbow-striped tights underneath. Every time my eyes meet hers, she gives me this smile that makes my whole body tingle.

“So what would you say are the areas you need to work on?” she asks.

They’re all taking turns asking questions, and for the most part, I think I’m acing the interview. One of the music teachers has just asked me to list my strengths—academically, musically, and personally. Pink Hair’s question is the obvious follow-up.

But I get all flustered, can’t look her in the eye. Not getting all crushed out on cute girls. That’s what I need to work on.

“Confidence,” I tell her.

“Don’t we all,” she says, smiling.

Then it’s time for me to play.

I take out my clarinet. “This is an original piece,” I tell them. “I wrote it with my best friend. It’s called ‘LaSamba Blues.’ ”

Then I play.

“Songs are portals,” Leah once said, and now I get what she means.

The notes carry me back through time to the day I met Dahlia on the soccer field. I see the past nine months in movie-scene flashes, all bright and Technicolor. There’s me being named LaSamba and meeting the dolls. Me falling head over heels for Dahlia, never daring to hope she might feel the same. But she did, I know that now. Tiki loves LaSamba, she whispered there on our made-up beach by the Memory Motel. Sometimes at night, when I’m drifting off to sleep, I can still hear her voice whispering in the waves. My mermaid wife.

But now, for what might be the first time in my life, I am making truly beautiful music on my own.

It’s like everything has led me right here, to this moment where the music can enter me, wash over me. Like I’ve been rehearsing for it all along. It was the music I played with Dahlia that led me here, the months of studying rhythm with my sweet Tiki girl, swimming through water, rocking on land. A rock ’n’ roll girl waltz, a tequila tango, our sweet sultry island limbo—How low can you go? How low can you go?—backs bent, hand in hand, we became so much more than ourselves. We played like we had wings, like Birdwoman was right all along. Sometimes the song was slow and steady, sometimes it was a wild girl, shake-everything-you’ve-got kind of tune that swept us off our feet and left us breathless.

That’s what the song I’m playing is about.

You can’t think about the whole journey. You just have to move step by step, note by note.

As I go along, I realize I’m playing a whole new song from the one Tiki and I wrote together. There are sad parts, bluesy riffs that take me way down low, but I come back up to find that it has a happy ending after all. The girl is released from the body of the doll and comes out this shiny, new thing, ready to take on whatever the world throws at her.

When I put down my clarinet and look up, the pink-haired girl is smiling at me. The whole committee is grinning. And then this crazy thing happens: they actually applaud.