Big Girl Small Part 3

Ms. Vanderly knew I practiced down there more than anyone else. But she couldn't have known why. She was almost as popular with us as Ms. Doman. Ms. Vanderly was black with long, braided hair, broad shoulders, and a walloping alto voice. She had wanted to be an opera singer, but maybe that industry's as racist as every other, or her voice wasn't good enough, or she had had kids. Or maybe she just wasn't pretty in the right way. It's surprising to some people, but video killed the opera star, too. It used to be enough to be morbidly obese and have a fantastic voice, but now you have to be ravis.h.i.+ng, too, or you can't get cast in an opera. So Ms. Vanderly, who's a huge person in every way, became a huge teacher. Unlike the skinny Ms. Smith, who considers herself too good for us, Ms. Vanderly used to be a fanatic about her own career and now she's one about ours. And she isn't bitter about the whole thing. She loves us and takes us seriously. In fact, now that I think of it, the teachers at Darcy were really good. Ms. Doman was like that too. Unpatronizing, I mean. I wish they'd gotten to have what they really wanted-Ms. Vanderly to be a professional singer and Ms. Doman to teach at the University of Michigan. I think they'd both have been good at those things. It's a horror that I also disappointed them.

I worked really hard those first few weeks of voice, singing my b.u.t.t off and getting the best solo spot in the fall show. Ms. Vanderly announced that Carrie and I would walk out first, start the jazz medley, and then the rest of the group would join us, snapping and singing backup. Then, after that number, six of us got to do "real solos," and I was first. I swear, when Ms. Vanderly said my name, Amanda looked over at Carrie and sighed like, "More of this affirmative action bulls.h.i.+t?"

But then Carrie talked to me after cla.s.s, so maybe I was just being paranoid. She walked out with Chris Arpent. He was carrying a cardboard box, and she said, "Thanks for hauling that around for me all day, Arp," and I couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like to call him "Arp" and have him carry my things around like a 1950s boyfriend. He said, "No problem," and then she saw me, and said, "Hey, Judy!" And I looked up like, no way is she actually going to talk to me, and what if it's to say something mean? And in front of her handsome senior Arp? I sucked a lot of breath in and got ready, and then what she said was: "That's really cool that you got the first solo-are you nervous?"

So maybe all that time she'd just been waiting for a chance to be nice. I have a good sarcasm radar and I couldn't detect even the smallest hum of it, so maybe she was just friendly or shy and I'd been wrong. Chris s.h.i.+fted his weight around with the box, and said, "Hey, Carrie, I'm going to go put this in my car-I'll take you after school," and she nodded, but stayed there with me, like she was going to finish the conversation. Alan and Amanda were already long gone. I didn't want to respond to her question if she was going to rush after her friends, but she made it totally obvious that she wasn't in a hurry.

"Thanks, Carrie," I said. "What are you going to sing?"

" 'Summertime.' I love that song."

"Yeah, wow, that's hard."

She smiled. "I'm going to do it all Janis-style," she said, and then she put her hands on her hips, thrust them forward, and shouted out, "Your daddy's rich, and your mama's good-looking!" Her voice sounded like a ton of gravel. It was pretty amazing. I mean, I knew she could sing a nice, clear soprano line, but I'd kind of thought she was a lightweight. This made me think she had real pipes. I laughed.

"Eat your heart out, Janis!" I said. "I'd love to hear you do 'Bobby McGee.' "

"I love that song!" she said.

We stood there for a moment, feeling cool together.

"So, what are you doing?" she asked.

"I don't know yet," I lied.

"Oh, really? There's a bunch of sheet music in the library, if you want to look through things. I could help you."

"Really?"

"Sure."

"Thanks for offering. I-"

A cell phone rang in her purse and she pulled the phone out and looked at the number. Then she rolled her eyes as if to say, "Ugh, but I have to," and picked up. "Oh my G.o.d, no way!" she said, "I'll be right there!" She waved to me and took off.

I hurried into the stairwell and down to the first practice room in the row. I closed the door and sat at the piano, feeling so safe in the quiet it was like sinking into a bathtub. I took out my sheet music and pink pen, and plunked out a few notes. My voice was still warmed up from cla.s.s, and the truth is, I had picked my song-Rickie Lee Jones's "We Belong Together"-and been practicing it in my bedroom the entire year before I even got into Darcy. I used to imagine auditioning for American Idol with it, knew every note so well I could have done the entire thing a capella and not been even slightly pitchy.

I also had two other songs absolutely polished, in case Ms. Vanderly turned down "We Belong Together." They were "Blue Velvet" and "Blue Valentines." Something about the texture of those songs was so longing that they made me feel old, wise, deep. Every time I listened to Tom Waits sing "Blue Valentines," I cried. I never played it in front of anyone, because that way it was like my own private blues. Plus, I had found it in my parents' moldy record collection, so I hardly wanted to arrive at D'Arts all like, "I love my parents' old favorite, Tom Waits; don't you dig his records too?" "Blue Velvet" was from that horrifying movie about the guy who huffs gas and molests Isabella Rossellini, who looks more gorgeous and heartbroken than ever. I saw that when I was like ten because Chad was watching it once when my parents were out.

I lied to Carrie about my songs so she could feel like she was helping me. I knew I would even take her up on the offer of the library, would look through sheet music with her, lead her to the Rickie Lee or Tom Waits, and make her feel she had picked them for me. Then she'd have something invested in my doing well. I turned my iPod on and the first chords came into my ears: the light, hollow drums, then the twinkling piano notes, more chords. I started with the second verse, because it had my favorite part, about the girl who wrote her name forever: And now Johnny the king walks these streets without her in the rain Lookin' for a leather jacket And a girl who wrote her name forever A promise that- We belong together We belong together.

I knew the piano parts, had studied cla.s.sical piano with my bizarre teacher Mr. Mivicks, who came to my house twice a week from first grade until sixth grade to teach me scales and etudes and Suzuki studies. Then in sixth grade I graduated to a new teacher, named Mrs. Rosenstock, whose house always smelled warm and tasty like meatloaf. She taught me "Ragtime" and "The Entertainer" and Chopin nocturnes until last year, when my mom managed to convince Ras.h.i.+d Karim, a musical prodigy at the University of Michigan, to be my private teacher. He came to our house, since my parents had bought a used grand piano with money they sc.r.a.ped together for years.

I like Ras.h.i.+d, because he told me to call him Ras.h.i.+d right away, and because whenever he plays, he hunches his shoulders and his hair flops all over the place. He's always dressed immaculately, but his shoes are never properly tied. He loves music so much that even now that I'm almost seventeen and know better, I still have that little-kid suspicion that he never leaves the bench. Like in kindergarten when you're shocked to run into your teacher at the grocery store, because doesn't she live at school and sleep behind the chalkboard? Ras.h.i.+d always appears to have climbed straight out of our piano, and to live on concertos or nothing at all. My mom is constantly trying to feed him during our lessons, but he's not interested in food. He's thin as a pipe cleaner and has superhero ears. Since Ras.h.i.+d started teaching me last year, my mom has had to have the tuner come four times, even though he used to tune the thing once every four years.

On Friday, I showed Ras.h.i.+d my sheet music for the Rickie Lee Jones song, because I wanted to be able to accompany myself. It was pretty easy anyway, but I thought I'd play it for him and see if he had any pointers. He was not impressed.

"You should be focusing on the nocturnes we're doing," he said.

"But I have to do this for senior voice, for our upcoming concert."

"Why not sing opera? At least something cla.s.sical? Verdi?" he asked me. I shrugged, put the song away, and vowed never to tell him anything about school again.

On Sat.u.r.day I woke up early, brushed my teeth before putting three pieces of spearmint Eclipse in my mouth. I did some stretching exercises while I chewed, and then finished The Great Gatsby, all before nine. I had nothing to do. My parents were at the Grill, so I put a parka on, and an old Michigan hat of Chad's, got my bike out of the garage, and rode down Londonderry to Devons.h.i.+re, turned right, and took Devons.h.i.+re all the way to Geddes. It was cold and bright out, Ann Arbor crisp. I crossed Geddes and rode into Gallup Park, still orange and red from autumn. I sat for a few minutes on the chilly bank and watched ducks attack toddlers holding bags of bread. By eleven I was freezing and hungry, so I walked over to the concession stand and bought popcorn and a hot chocolate. As I was pouring loose change back into my purse, I saw Amanda Fulton and Gary Sorenson walk by. I ducked behind the door and watched them-they were laughing and holding hands, headed for the pedal boat docks. She had a white parka on, with a fur collar, and a striped hat. What a cute date, paddling around the cold pond at Gallup Park. They would have to snuggle in the boat to keep warm. I imagined myself in a boat with Kyle, trying to reach the pedals, failing, and having to sit on the floor, pedaling with my hands. Perhaps not for me. I felt suddenly embarra.s.sed to be in the park alone, even though I often rode to Gallup by myself. I had never before thought it was a sign that my life was a terrible black hole but now that seemed obvious. I didn't want Amanda or Gary-or anyone else-to see me. I sneaked back to my bike, finished the cocoa in one gulp, poured the popcorn out for the overfed ducks, and rode home.

No one called me that night, so I called my friend Stacy from Huron. She didn't pick up. I began to think I had made a giant mistake going to Darcy, that I would never make a friend, and that I might die in isolation my junior year of high school. Of course I never even factored in the possibility that it would happen at a creepy dump in Ypsi where they once found a dead baby. (Did I forget to mention that there was once a dead baby thrown behind the Motel Manor?) In those, my more innocent days, even dying of loneliness took place in a cozy purple bedroom with books and a beanbag chair.

My mom came home from the Grill and asked what I was doing, so I lied and said I didn't feel well. I went to my room, where I read The Bluest Eye, even though that unit was still three weeks away, looked up theme, figurative language, symbolism, imagery, characterization, flashback, tone, and style. I identified pa.s.sages that ex-emplified the terms. It would save me time then, I thought, in case I was hugely popular by the time we read Morrison. I mean, what if by then Kyle and I were in love and I was the star of the huge winter show and had no time for homework? At 8:30, I finished rewriting 1 over x to the seventh and 6 over x to the fifth and 4 over 2x to the third as expressions that didn't look like fractions. I looked around my room: lavender walls left over from when I was seven and asked for a purple bedroom and my parents compromised; curtains my mother had sewn, with tiny buds on the fabric blooming into a line of actual flowers across the top. She had added lace to the bottom edges, and my bedspread matched. There were teddy bears flopping off the top shelf, books on the first tier, and on the middle one, a h.e.l.lo Kitty alarm clock, my cell phone charger, and a framed picture of Chad and Sam and me at Mount Tam in California five years ago. Chad and Sam have me on a little chariot they made by crossing their wrists and hands into a seat. I look pretty, in a pale pink T-s.h.i.+rt and white shorts, my hair pulled back by a pair of cat-shaped sungla.s.ses. I also have a garland of wildflowers around my head, tangled into the gla.s.ses. I am laughing, and so are my brothers. I can still feel that day; we bought dried kiwis and strawberries from a fruit stand on the way up the mountain, but I can't remember what we were laughing about. I looked up at the Little Shop of Horrors poster from my eighth grade at Tappan; I had played a shabop girl and our drama teacher, Ms. Bickle, had the brilliant idea that in the opening scene, I should be carried in by the two other girls, on a kind of sedan chair they made out of their arms, like the one Sam and Chad made on Mount Tam. But the two other shabop girls, Christie Krutchen and Liz Schaberg, had no confidence that they could hold me, so they were terrible at it, plus they were supposed to be singing and dancing while they were carrying me. It was obvious from the first rehearsal that the whole thing was just a disaster. We were all panicked that I would fall off, but Ms. Bickle couldn't let go of her directorial vision, so we did it, and missed half the notes in the opening sequence because our throats were tight with fear.

I went to sleep at 10:30, listening to James Taylor. I would never tell anyone at Darcy that I like James Taylor, by the way. It would be incredibly embarra.s.sing.

The next morning, my room was so bright at 6:00 that I sat straight up in bed wondering whether the house was on fire. As soon as I realized the only emergency was that I was awake that early on a Sunday with nothing to do except practice nocturnes for Ras.h.i.+d, I went downstairs and poured myself a bowl of cranberry nut crunch.

"Hi, honey," my mom said. She was in her nightgown, drinking coffee.

"Why aren't you at the Grill?" I asked.

"Dad's there. I have stuff to do here today. What are your plans?"

"Um, some homework. Whatever. Not much."

She picked up a copy of the Ann Arbor Observer from the counter in a gesture that struck me as overly casual.

"Things okay at school?"

"They're fine, Mom."

"We're so proud of you."

"Thank you," I said. I took my cereal upstairs to my room and ate it sitting at my computer, looking up Kyle's Facebook page. He was friends with everyone at Darcy, especially all the girls. Not to mention the millions of girls from his old school in Boston who are still posting messages on his wall like every two seconds. And who all have their perfect-looking pictures linked to his page. Kyle's picture of himself was even better than what you would expect: get this-him, age nine or ten, in soccer shorts and cleats, an absolute afro of silky hair, laughing into the sun and kicking a ball. It was everything a Facebook photo should be, sweet, cute, modest-it suggested the Greek G.o.d of a high school boy he was now, but he wasn't self-loving enough to put even a current photo up, let alone a good one. Whereas most kids post such a great picture of themselves that when you meet them, you're like, "Wait, I thought you were a supermodel." And I'm one of those kids. In my picture, I might as well be six feet tall, for all you can tell-smiling in a way that shows no teeth, kind of like a model smirk, all seductive and smart and flirty. I have Meghan's mom's "wicked" lipstick on. And the music I list is way cooler than what I actually listen to on a daily basis.

But Kyle's too genuinely awesome to have to overcompensate on his Facebook page. You could tell from it that he liked kids, was the kind of guy who wanted to have five, and as soon as you saw it, you wanted to have five kids with him. His favorite books were like that too, he put comic books first, showing that he was lighthearted and in touch with his younger self. He liked Dune, which I hate-that's a brown, boring book for boys-just the thought of it makes me thirsty. But he also put, right at the end, as if they were afterthoughts: Catch-22 and The Catcher in the Rye. I made a mental note to bring those up subtly one day and test him. Of course, Ginger Mews and Amanda Fulton and Carrie Shultz and Elizabeth Wood and Stockard Blumenthal were all his friends, along with everyone else who had ever gone to Darcy, which was impressive considering he'd only been there since last year.

I looked at Chris Arpent's, which was pretty likable too, I have to admit. He liked Chris Ware, that hip cartoonist, and half of his profile pictures were a fat, kind of schlubby cartoon character that Chris Ware draws. In the only one that was actually Chris, he was staring into the sun, with his shadowy eyes looking especially dark and tortured. There were some pictures of him with his mom, who was very pretty, but I didn't see a dad in any of them. Other people had also tagged a bunch of pictures of him with a baby-his niece or cousin or something. She had cheeks so huge they appeared to be full of food for the winter, and he was laughing and kissing her in one picture. There was something about it that made me catch my breath-maybe the contradiction between the way he looked, all, I don't know, GI Joe, and the fat baby in her wool hat. It was very appealing. His page said he was "in a relations.h.i.+p," but didn't say with who. Maybe Carrie. Her page had a million things that she had written on Chris's wall, all like, "How are the Colts doing? How's your mom? Say hi to Alan," and other stupid s.h.i.+t that was definitely about him and his friends and whatever he was out doing and his interest in sports or whatever. There were barely any responses back from him. I felt bad for her.

Elizabeth Wood's page, by the way, was the perfect example of what I mean about Kyle's being so great. Elizabeth lacked his knack for making herself casual-she had a whole gallery of herself "modeling" and even put "modeling" as her "profession." I mean, come on. At least hers said "single," so maybe she and Kyle were just friends. Then my cell phone rang and I snapped my laptop shut, like someone could see me looking at Kyle or Elizabeth or something. (734) 201-5580. I didn't know the number. I paused before picking it up. I know it sounds stupid, but I felt like maybe it was Elizabeth Wood herself. Like, maybe she had heard me stalking her on Facebook, or thinking sarcastic things about her stupid bikini and smooth, long legs. I picked up.

"Um, hi," said a voice. "Judy?"

"Yeah?"

"It's Sarah, Sarah Taylor." Goth Sarah.

"Oh, hi."

"I got your number from the directory."

"Oh. Okay. So, hey."

"So, um. I'm not doing anything today, and I was just calling to see if you maybe wanted to come over and hang out." She didn't even wait long enough for me to respond before she was like, "If you're too busy that's cool-we can do it another time."

"No, no, I'm free. I'd like to. What time?"

Her voice had lifted. "Whenever? I mean, I'm just hanging out, reading Gatsby."

"Me, too," I lied.

I hung up and went to ask my mom to drive me over to Sarah's. I was overjoyed. Even though Sarah was no Ginger, I was almost as grateful as my mom that I didn't end up spending the entire weekend alone in a pathetic homework bubble or playing Guitar Hero with Sam. My mom drove me over to a two-story on Rock Creek Drive, right off of Geddes, and on the way, I saw a dead dog with its eyes popping out of its head like a cartoon. I don't even know how I saw the thing so clearly, but I guess my mom had slowed way down for the stop sign at the bottom of Londonderry and Devons.h.i.+re, and the dog was right there on the corner, which makes sense because it probably was running across the intersection when it got hit. It was a white dog, with so much blood on its fur it had a kind of neon look to it. It must have been dead only a few minutes when we saw it, otherwise all that red would have been black already, the way it looked in the pool on the pavement. My mom, who hadn't seen it, accelerated out of the stop, turning right onto Devons.h.i.+re, and I asked, "Why would getting hit by a car make you bleed that much? I mean, doesn't getting run over just crush your bones or break your neck or something?"

"What are you talking about?" my mom asked.

"Did you not see that gory thing?"

"What gory thing, Judy?" She looked at me, worried.

"Watch the road, Mom!"

"What gory thing are you talking about?"

"Road-kill, Mom. A dog. With a collar and everything. Someone's dog! I can't believe you didn't see it."

"I'm busy watching the road," she said. She seemed relieved that it hadn't been anything actually scary. She signaled to turn right from Hill Street onto Geddes.

"I'm surprised how much blood there was. I mean, don't small dogs like that only weigh like a few pounds? There were, like, gallons and gallons of blood. An ocean!"

"Maybe it had a head injury. Heads are very vascular."

When we pulled up at Goth Sarah's house, her mother was out on the lawn, raking leaves. She looked like a catalogue model, with a red parka on and medium-length sandy blond hair yanked back into a messy ponytail. I wondered if Sarah didn't dye her hair, whether she'd be blond too. Her mother walked over to the car, her duck boots crunching gravel. She had no makeup on, and a pretty face. Her teeth were all white and straight, lined up in her mouth in an obedient way. I thought of what Sarah had said about her wanting to be an artist. I wondered what kind of art she had wanted to make. I climbed out of the car, feeling inexplicably shy. The rocks in the driveway s.h.i.+fted under my feet, making me think they might become quicksand and swallow me up. I checked my orthopedic shoes; still there. My mom left the car idling, rolled her window down.

"You must be Judy," Sarah's mom said, reaching down toward me, her hand in a gardening glove. I thought she was going to shake my hand, and felt a tremor of social awkwardness, but she put her hand on my shoulder instead. She managed to do it impressively naturally. I liked her right away.

"I'm Ann. Sarah's in the living room-go ahead on in. We're glad you could come over." She made her way over to my mom's window.

"Hi, I'm Ann," she said again, this time to my mom, peeling off a glove and sticking her bare hand into the window to shake my mom's. Sarah's last name was Taylor, so I immediately thought how ridiculous it was that her mom's name was Ann Taylor. Of course now I know that her mom's a big feminist and kept her own name, so her last name is Carlton. It's funny that even though my parents lived in New Mexico once and had their whole hippie era, my mom totally changed her name the day she married my dad. Of course her last name was Haverfinder, so who wouldn't want to change that? I'm going to keep my name, even if I ever get married. It's weird to change your own name after having it for a million years. I mean, my parents didn't even get married until they were like almost thirty. That means my mom was just suddenly someone else, after a whole really long life as Peggy Haverfinder. I think that's weird.

"I'm Peggy," my mom said, "Thanks for inviting Judy today."

"She's welcome to stay for dinner," Ann said.

I wandered up a stone path to the front of the house. The living room faced out into the yard, and was walled in gla.s.s, so I could see Sarah in there, lying on the couch reading a book. Next to the living room was a screened-in porch, and the rest of the house fanned out in a mess of wood paneling and two-story predictability. I rang the doorbell, watched Sarah swing her long legs off the couch, wondered, as I often do, what it must feel like to live in an ostrich body like that. To stand up and tower over couches and chairs. To be someone else.

She waved through the window before arriving at the door and opening it.

"Come on in," she said, turning not toward the living room but straight back from the door into the kitchen. "You hungry at all?"

"I'm okay," I said.

"I'm hungry," she said, and I liked her very much for this. I didn't know if she was or not, but it's always better to pretend you're hungry at your own house so that if your guest is hungry she doesn't have to admit it. She can just eat some of whatever snack you put out "for yourself." Sarah put some chips in a basket and poured salsa out of a Whole Foods container into an orange pottery bowl. The chips were the healthy kind, Garden of Eatin', so I figured her parents were like mine and shopped at the co-op and bought that nasty peanut b.u.t.ter with the oil floating on top. But the reason I liked her mom was also that she had brought up dinner right away. It's funny how if you're comfortable in someone else's house, you're a million times more likely to like the person. Whereas even if you love someone desperately, if you starve or freeze or suffocate when you're over at their house, you never want to go back. We're all basically animals, is the thing.

"Come on," Sarah said, handing me the chips and carrying the salsa. "I'll show you my room."

We went down a flight of stairs off the kitchen, into a bas.e.m.e.nt that was quite bright as underground s.p.a.ces go. There was a couch against the back wall, and a TV facing it, two bookshelves crowded with toys, a sock monkey puppet, and some baby dolls. There was a laundry room to the right, with a door that led out to the backyard, and two bedrooms straight to the back of the bas.e.m.e.nt. The playroom or whatever it was at the bottom of the stairs had a yellow linoleum floor and smelled faintly of mildew but also like lemons and bleach, like something old and damp but that's just been washed, the way most Midwestern bas.e.m.e.nts do, especially ones with no carpet. Sarah gestured with her shoulder to the one on the left. "That's my brother Josh's room," she said. She turned right and headed into the other bedroom, which was, to my surprise, painted pale yellow. There was a row of narrow horizontal windows along the ceiling of the room, letting a little line of light in. The floor was baby blue and plush. I considered the walls and rug. Maybe she was a big Michigan fan, but I doubted it. Then I saw that there were stenciled animals along the ceiling that broke only for that row of windows: alligator, bear, camel, dolphin, elephant, flamingo, giraffe.

I realized with glee that it was the alphabet. This was just her baby room, like mine, all those suddenly embarra.s.sing little flowers crawling up my curtains and bedspread like squeamish reminders that I'd been an infant mere moments ago. The revolting purple carpet. The white, lacy Chinese lantern. I realized, looking at her baby animal parade and yellow walls, that I had expected Goth Sarah's room to be pierced and wearing fishnet wallpaper. But being a teenager isn't gradual, that's the funny thing. It happens all of a sudden, and your bedroom can't quite catch up with you immediately.

Underneath the stencils were two punk rock posters and a framed collage of pictures of Sarah and a bunch of other goth girls I'd never seen. Next to it was a poster of Martha Graham dancing, and next to her, Isadora Duncan. Sarah had an open violin case with a s.h.i.+ny violin inside, and two huge bookshelves stuffed with books, many of them horizontal. There were books stacked on her nightstand, and some books open on the desk and others lying on the floor. Except for the scatter of books, her room was mostly neat. There was a bright red Stratocaster next to the bed.

"Wow," I said. "Can I pick it up?"

"Sure," she said. "That was my sixteenth-birthday present from my parents."

"It's unbelievable."

"You want to plug it in?"

"That's okay," I said, meaning no, not really.

I held on to it, played a few chords. She sat on the bed. I pointed the guitar at Martha and Isadora, thinking it was funny and totally predictable that she'd have them up, rather than posters of someone currently cool.

"You a fan of modern dance?" I asked Sarah.

"I'm a dance major so everyone buys me dance posters when they can't think what else to get me. I like the Isadora Duncan story," she said. "Do you know it?"

Everyone liked to talk about our "majors" at Darcy, as if. But Sarah said it sarcastically enough that I thought she had perspective on all that bulls.h.i.+t too.

"What story?"

"She died, you know, when her scarf got caught in the wheel of a convertible she was driving in."

"No kidding." I played another chord.

"She was in the car with a hot Italian mechanic. In Italy. The last thing she said was 'I'm off to love.' "

"Who'd she say that to?"

"Her friend on the street."

"I'm off to love, huh?" I could see why Goth Sarah liked this.

"Right. And then she was gagged to death by her outfit."

I wondered for a moment what I wanted my last words to be. "I'm off to love" was a pretty good choice.

"What did the mechanic do?"

"I don't know," Goth Sarah said. "He probably screamed. Or called an ambulance. Tried to unwrap her? He must have freaked out, right?"

We spent the rest of the afternoon in Sarah's room, gossiping about D'Arts. She hated Chessie and Carrie and Amanda, said they were all total b.i.t.c.hes who belonged in a B movie. I said Carrie had been nice to me and Sarah shrugged. "Whatever, watch your back."