Best Friends Forever Part 14

"Which friends?" Jordan asked.

"The football guys. Russ and Kevin Oliphant..." Her face went into a brief spasm of distaste. "He let himself go. Big-time."

"Did Mr. Swansea talk to anybody? Dance with anyone?"

She tapped her fingers against the countertop. "Different girls."

"Which girls?" asked Jordan.

More tapping. "I was running around a lot last night, so I can't really swear to any of this. Kara Tait, I think. Um. Lisa Schecter. That's her maiden name, I'm not sure what her married name is. She hyphenated. Oh, and I thought I saw him talking to Valerie." She raised her shoulders in a shrug. "So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everything's fine with the two of them. Val's a meteorologist now. She's on TV."

"On TV," Jordan repeated as his cell phone started buzzing. He excused himself, stepped into the foyer, and lifted the phone to his ear. "Yeah?"

"Chief? You told me to call you if we got any 10-57s," said Paula. She paused. "Missing person reports."

"Right. Did someone call one in?"

"Yes," said Paula. Jordan braced himself for the words "Daniel Swansea," but Paula said, "It's Adelaide Downs. Her next-door neighbor's reported her missing."

Jordan pulled his coat out of the closet where Christie had hung it, pointed at the door, then waved at her before telling Paula, "I'm on my way."

THIRTY-TWO.

By the time Jordan rolled up to Crescent Drive, it was just after six and already dark. The sky was dotted with stars; a brisk wind rattled the tree branches as Addie's next-door neighbor, Cecilia Ba.s.s, came thumping down her front steps to meet him. She was an aged party with a wrinkled neck, a hawklike profile, and stringy gray hair pulled into a knot at the nape of her neck. She frowned at his badge, her bony, veined hands protruding from the cuffs of her floor-length down coat. Her legs were bare, traced with bulgy blue veins. Her feet were jammed into fur-lined boots, and she had a four-p.r.o.nged metal cane in one hand.

"I understand there's a problem?" Jordan said once she'd handed his badge back.

"My neighbor is missing." Mrs. Ba.s.s raised her cane and swung it toward Addie's darkened house, narrowly missing Jordan's nose. "Adelaide Downs of Fourteen Crescent Drive."

"For how long?"

"Since four o'clock this afternoon. Perhaps earlier. Four o'clock was when I called and got no answer on either her home phone or her cell." Mrs. Ba.s.s swung open her door and led Jordan into a warm, cluttered, book-lined living room that looked oddly familiar. It took him a minute to place it, but finally, he realized that he'd seen the room-the red-and-white fleur-de-lis wallpaper, the heavy wood furniture-in the framed photograph in Jon Downs's bedroom. This was where Addie and Jon had once posed in front of the Christmas tree.

Mrs. Ba.s.s settled herself into a recliner bracketed by teetering stacks of Agatha Christie paperbacks and National Geographics, raised the footrest with a whoosh, and waved her cane at a loveseat covered in slippery-looking cat-scratched beige satin. Jordan perched on its edge, swiped at his watering eye, and pulled out his notebook. "Normally, the department requires an adult be missing for at least forty-eight hours before we can file a report."

"These are special circ.u.mstances. Addie is definitely missing."

"How do you know?"

"Because," she answered, "Addie is always home. I have been her next-door neighbor since her birth, and Addie is always home."

"She never takes vacations?" Jordan asked. "Never travels? No boyfriends?"

Mrs. Ba.s.s shook her head. "Her brother is unwell," she said. "She stays here in case he needs her. She goes out in the afternoons for a few hours-swimming or shopping. And she always answers her phone."

Jordan nodded. With a brother in Jon's condition, he could see why she'd be attentive to her telephone ringing. "No boyfriends?" he asked again, a.s.suring himself that he was asking out of professional curiosity. Mrs. Ba.s.s paused before she said, "None that I've met." She hesitated again. "Addie was very heavy for a number of years. I always believed it would take a special man to see past that. Men of your generation are dismayingly superficial. But I always hoped..." Her voice trailed off. "She's missing," she finally said. "And I am concerned."

"Had Addie had trouble with anyone?" Jordan asked.

Mrs. Ba.s.s frowned. "Not for years. Not since high school. There was a situation involving Addie's friend Valerie..."

He took notes while she gave him a version of the same story Christie Keogh had told him: a wild party senior year, Val and Dan Swansea off in the woods, Addie's accusation, Val's denial, and the months of hara.s.sment that had followed. Addie had gone off to college and come home weeks later, after her father died. She had stayed to take care of her mother and had been in Pleasant Ridge ever since. Addie worked from home, had no boyfriends that Mrs. Ba.s.s mentioned and no friends that Mrs. Ba.s.s was aware of, although she allowed that "perhaps Addie does her socializing online." Either way, Addie Downs was always available to sign for a package or help shovel a driveway or unlock a frozen computer, which was why Mrs. Ba.s.s had called her in the first place.

"I spoke to Ms. Downs this morning," Jordan said. Mrs. Ba.s.s's bushy gray eyebrows lifted.

"And she seemed well?"

"There was a high school reunion last night," he said.

"I doubt," said Mrs. Ba.s.s, "that Addie would have any interest in attending."

"We found blood and a belt in the country club parking lot."

The eyebrows shot up even higher. "You can't possibly believe that Addie was involved in a crime."

"We have to investigate every lead. And this morning, I saw Addie leaving Crescent Drive, in a green station wagon."

"Her father's car," Mrs. Ba.s.s murmured.

"She was with someone. Another woman," said Jordan, "A blonde."

Mrs. Ba.s.s looked thoughtful. "I wonder if it could have been Valerie," she said in a low, musing voice. Then she surprised Jordan by lifting her big, spotted hands and clapping them together in a noisy volley of applause. "Well, good for her! Good for both of them!"

"Except," said Jordan, "I have a crime to solve."

Mrs. Ba.s.s gave a definitive shake of her head. "Addie's a good girl."

"Gets the mail when you're away," he said. "Signs for packages. Shovels your driveway."

"Addie would never..."

"... hurt a fly?" he said.

She snapped the recliner's bottom down and pushed herself to her feet. "Young man," she said, "you may be an officer of the law. But, may I humbly suggest, you have a great deal to learn about human nature."

THIRTY-THREE.

Jordan ended up fixing Mrs. Ba.s.s's computer-it turned out to be a simple matter of hitting "restart"-then made his way through the darkness, over the frost-crunchy lawn, to Adelaide Downs's front door. It was locked. No one answered his knock or the doorbell. He walked around to the back of the house, where he stood on his tiptoes and shone his flashlight through the windows. Laundry room: unremarkable. Dining room: ditto. There was a light on in the kitchen, s.h.i.+ning over the sink, and he could see the kitchen table, with a teacup and what looked like a water gla.s.s on top. A woman's coat was draped over one chair, and on the refrigerator, stuck in the middle of what looked like coupons and shopping lists, was a laser-printed piece of paper. He squinted to make out the words: I WENT TO MEET MATTHEW SHARP ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23. IF ANYTHING HAPPENED TO ME, IT'S PROBABLY HIS FAULT. There was a Pleasant Ridge address and telephone number, and a postscript: I WOULD LIKE A MILITARY FUNERAL.

Jordan pulled out his cell phone and called the station as he walked around the house. "Hey, Holly, did we get anything on that Matthew Sharp?"

"Didn't you get my text?" Jordan gave a vague kind of grunt, a noise that could have meant "yes" and could have meant "no" and could have just meant "my lunch didn't agree with me." "He's the one who calls the station every time there's a full moon to complain about the alien s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p outside his window," Holly said. "He said he and Addie Downs left the restaurant at nine-thirty, and then he went home and was online in some psychic phenomenon chat room. There are date-stamped messages that prove it."

"Good work," he said, and peered into the garage, where a silver Jaguar sat like it was preening. Addie drove a Jag? "Hey, Holly, run a plate for me, okay?" He recited the number, then waited until Holly came back on the line.

"Car is registered to Valerie Violet Adler," she said.

Bingo, he thought.

"And guess what?" said Holly, her normally alto voice high and squeaky with excitement. "She's got a gun."

"What?"

"Well, at least she's got a permit to carry one. To carry, concealed. She got a.s.saulted in the TV station's parking garage... or at least she said she did, but she never called the cops, so there's no report, but the station did a series about it last February. 'I Walk in Fear.' There was theme music and everything. You can get it on YouTube."

"How'd you find that out?"

Holly paused minutely. "I did a Google," she finally said. Jordan winced. One little mistake, one tiny screwup, one single reference to "doing a Google" when everyone knew you were just supposed to say you'd googled so-and-so, and his patrol-people would spend the rest of their careers treating him like he was an old dog, good for nothing but lying on a mat by the door, farting and licking the place where his b.a.l.l.s used to be.

"Thanks," he said to Holly, and flipped his phone shut. Old Mrs. Ba.s.s had nailed it. Val had been here. Val was probably the other woman in the car; Val and Addie were together, and Val had a gun. And theme music to go with it. So now what?

Pocketing his phone, he walked to the back door. He was going in. He had to. "Official business," he said out loud. "Reasonable expectation." That was what he'd tell the D.A. if the admissibility of the fruits of this search ever came up in court. Addie was not answering her door or her telephone. Her neighbor had reported her missing. The note on the refrigerator suggested that she might have been harmed, and Valerie Adler had a gun. It was his duty, his sworn obligation, to make sure that Addie was safe. Then he reached under the welcome mat and pulled out a key. He shook his head as he unlocked the door-he always told the women who came to his Safe Home seminars that a key under the welcome mat was as good as just leaving the door open-and stepped inside. First, he trotted up the stairs, calling Addie's name, moving quickly from room to room, opening doors and shower curtains, sticking his head into the crawl s.p.a.ce above the closet, working his way down to the first floor. On a table just inside the front door was a painted clay bowl with pocketbook detritus-he poked around and found a nail file and a half-empty packet of cinnamon gum. He could hear the furnace rumbling in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and he could smell the ghost of woodsmoke from the living room fireplace.

The living room was to the left, the dining room to the right, a staircase straight ahead of him with the kitchen beyond that. Addie's house was warm and cozy, just as nice as he'd remembered. It looked like it had come out of one of those decorating magazines that Patti used to read when she still read things that weren't baby-related. She'd stick Post-its to pages about retiled bathrooms or overhauled kitchens. Maybe someday, Jordan would tell her.

Jordan sat down on the couch and surveyed the living room again: the paintings and drawings on the walls, the flat-screen TV, the bra.s.s tub full of split wood next to the fireplace, a pile of heavy, oversized art books centered on the coffee table. He leaned back with a sigh. It was a place where a man could watch the game, have a beer, relax by the fire. It was...

He shook his head. So Addie Downs had good taste in couches and pretty paintings on her walls. That didn't mean anything. Get a grip, he told himself, and proceeded to the dining room. Addie had filled the windowsill with plants and set up a wooden easel in front of the window, and a tilted architect's desk next to that. Arranged on the dining room table were a stack of creamy paper, palettes of watercolors, and three empty coffee cans stuffed full of brushes and sharpened colored pencils. A Macintosh computer with an oversized screen occupied the far end of the table. Next to it was a watercolor painting of a small white bird flying over a blue ocean against a pale-blue sky.

He pulled on a pair of thin plastic gloves and tapped the Mac's mousepad. The screen flared to life, and hallelujah, finally some good luck. Addie had left her e-mail in-box open. He scrolled through a month's worth of e-mails, looking for something from Matthew Sharp or Dan Swansea, or Valerie Adler, or anyone connected with Pleasant Ridge's cla.s.s of 1992. He didn't find anything. There was a note from an editor at Happy Hearts Greeting Cards thanking Addie for turning in something called a page proof before the holidays ("We can always count on you!") and a solicitation from the Crossroads, asking for Addie's continued support of the important work they did on behalf of clients living with brain damage and mental illness. Other than that, zip. No dirty jokes (Jordan could count on at least one of those in his own in-box every day, courtesy of his brother, Sam, who communicated primarily through blow-job jokes, probably because he had two kids and a functional marriage and didn't know what to say to Jordan anymore). No all-caps e-mails about how Barack Obama was a Muslim or how your cell phone would give you cancer if the fluoride in your toothpaste didn't give it to you first (Jordan received those on a weekly basis from his grandmother in Miami, who'd discovered the Internet at the age of ninety-two and had become a devoted conspiracy theorist).

He walked back to the kitchen. There was a copper teapot on the stove, a blue-and-white sugar dish beside it, paintings of different flowers on the walls-he recognized irises and lilacs and couldn't name the rest. In the sink he saw the dishes he and Addie had used, one with a few doughnut crumbs still clinging to it. On the table he found a mug of tea, half-full, ice-cold, and, across from it, an empty water gla.s.s. Jordan lifted it in a gloved hand and sniffed. Vodka. He went methodically through the cupboards, examining boxes of pasta and crackers, plates and gla.s.ses and mugs, many of them hand-painted, decorated with flowers or birds. The fridge and freezer were the inverse of his own: instead of being filled with single-guy food (Swanson and Stouffer's frozen meals, beer, whole milk, and red meat), Addie's were heavy into single-lady stuff, low-fat this and whole-grain that, the groceries of a person who lived alone and didn't have to worry about anyone else's tastes or preferences... although there was also real cheese and real b.u.t.ter and a six-pack of beer with two beers missing (was Addie a beer drinker? Did she have a boyfriend? Had Mrs. Ba.s.s gotten it wrong?). Hanging over the back of one of the chairs was a trench coat, Burberry, size two. Jordan squatted, knees popping, and used his pen to lift the sleeve of the garment, which was stiff with a tacky dark-brown substance that had the unmistakable look and smell of dried blood.

He poked at the stain, then stared at it, trying to imagine the scenario: Addie is sitting at the kitchen table when Val drives up in her silver Jag, asks for a drink, and says, Guess who showed his face at the reunion, and Addie says, Let's go get him. Or: Val arrives, shaken and b.l.o.o.d.y, and says, Guess who I just hit, or shot, or stabbed, or drove over, and Addie puts down her tea, pours her best friend a shot of vodka, and says, You'll need some help getting rid of the body. Or: Addie can't sleep, makes herself some tea, upgrades to vodka, cuts her leg while shaving, tries to stop the bleeding with the itty-bitty trench coat she'd bought on sale in hopes of squeezing herself into it someday (every March, Patti used to tape her bikini to the fridge as inspiration), then gets in her dad's old car and drives off on the spur of the moment to visit Disney World or Dollywood or some f.u.c.king place he'd never think of in a million years.

Jordan stomped back up the stairs to take a closer look, now that he was fairly certain there wasn't a dead body in the house. There were three bedrooms. One was set up like a guest room, with a half-dozen uselessly small pillows on top of a bed that didn't look as if it had been slept on recently, if ever. A second bedroom had been converted into a gym. There was a fold-up treadmill, and one of those ab rollers you could buy on TV sat beside it on the floor, along with a yoga mat. Hot-pink hand weights, stretchy resistance bands, and a stack of DVDs: Gentle Yoga for Beginners, Pilates for Weight Loss, and Skip Your Way to Fitness! At the end of the hall was the third bedroom. Addie's bedroom.

Here, for the first time, was the appearance of disorder. The king-size bed was rumpled, as if someone had lain on top of it, and one of the pillows had fallen onto the floor. Jordan picked up the pillow in its crisp cotton case. It was surprisingly heavy, dense with feathers. He set it on top of the bed. White sheets, a tan comforter, a scrolled, painted metal headboard (Bra.s.s? Iron? It was the kind of thing his ex-wife would have known). There was a table on either side of the bed, both with reading lamps, one of them stacked high with books, the other with a gla.s.s of water and a tube of hand cream (Vaseline, $7.49, from Walgreens; Jordan approved). He slid open the drawer of the nightstand closest to the unmade portion of the bed. There was a box of condoms, half of them gone, and he found himself suddenly, ridiculously, hotly jealous.

At the foot of the bed was a padded bench, covered in the same soft fabric as the couch downstairs. A pair of flannel pajamas was tossed on top of the bench. Jordan lifted the top in his hands, then, without planning it, he lifted the fabric to his nose, inhaling the fragrance of perfume and shampoo. Jesus. There was something wrong with him. If one of the patrol-people could see him, standing in a suspect's bedroom, sniffing her clothes, for G.o.d's sake, with half a hard-on... Jordan dropped the offending garment back where he'd found it and turned away from the bed. More bookshelves against a wall that was lined with windows and overlooked the backyard. More paintings on the walls, wise-eyed dogs and sly, clever kittens. A bathroom with a deep jetted tub, big enough for two. Heated tiles on the floor. Heated towel racks on the walls. Heavy, fluffy towels, pristine white, and an oversized shower stall with no fewer than half a dozen jets embedded in the gla.s.s-tiled wall. "It's like a wh.o.r.ehouse in here," he said out loud, but he thought that that wasn't right. It wasn't like a wh.o.r.ehouse, it was a place made for pleasure. He wondered whom Addie had been entertaining, who'd been enjoying the condoms in the drawer and the beer in the fridge.

He closed the closet door and walked downstairs, turning off lights, locking the door. He bent down and tucked the key back under the welcome mat, where he'd found it, and cut back across the crackling lawn to his car.

THIRTY-FOUR.

I was never sure who started the graffiti. On the third day of my soph.o.m.ore year, almost two years after Jon's accident, I'd gone to use the bathroom and found it carved into the paint in a bathroom stall. Addie Downs stinks. My heart started thundering in my chest, and I felt nauseous, like invisible hands were squeezing my guts. I looked around, which was silly-I was obviously alone. The door was locked, and besides, there wasn't room in here for anyone but me. Tentatively, I lifted one arm over my head and sniffed. Nothing but Secret spring fresh deodorant, which I'd applied that morning. I swallowed hard, then bent my head and sniffed between my legs. At first I didn't smell anything besides the Downy my mother used to wash our clothes, but when I inhaled as deeply as I could, I smelled-or thought I did-a faint whiff of something dank and fleshy.

Oh, G.o.d. I held my breath, stuck my head out of the door to make sure that I was alone, hurried over to the sinks, grab-bed a wad of rough brown paper towels, covered them with foamy soap, dunked them under the cold water, hustled back into my stall, slammed the door, yanked down my blue sweatpants, and started scrubbing. Another peek out the door, another dash to the sinks, another wad of paper towels, this time minus the soap. Finally, I pulled a Bic out of my backpack and painstakingly scribbled over each letter of what someone had written about me.

It didn't matter. The next day, in study hall, I saw the same words on a desk, this time in black ink. ADDIE DOWNS STINKS. And underneath it, someone writing in blue had added she has big t.i.ts tho. I propped my math book in front of me, licked my fingertips, and started rubbing, managing to smear the letters but not erase them. I licked some more, rubbed some more, and looked up to find Mrs. Norita standing over me and frowning.

"Miss Downs? Would you mind telling me what you're doing? Because it's clearly not your math a.s.signment."

From the seat beside me, Kevin Oliphant snickered.

"Let me see," said Mrs. Norita. I knew it was hopeless. I slid my math book aside. She looked at the words, then looked at me. "We'll have the janitor take care of that" was all she said. "Okay," I whispered, and slumped down as far as I could in my seat, my belly pus.h.i.+ng against the elastic waist of my skirt, my chest straining at the fabric of my top, wis.h.i.+ng I could sink all the way down to the floor and then through it.

I didn't understand what I'd said, what I'd done, that had turned me into a target. I hurried to cla.s.s in a head-down shuffle, clinging to the left edge of the corridor, with an eye on the open doors, the bathrooms I could duck into when I heard the hissed whispers that trailed in my wake. Hey, fattie. Hey, stinky. Fat a.s.s. Lard b.u.t.t. Wide load. Yo, Hindenburg (this was after we'd covered the Hindenburg disaster in history cla.s.s).

"You should smile more!" Valerie counseled on the bus home from school. She bared her own teeth in a tinselly grin. That summer, she had finally gotten her wish and spent six weeks in California with her father. I had counted the days until she came back and had accompanied Mrs. Adler to the airport to meet her. Waiting by the gate, I'd felt my heart shrivel painfully when Val came down the walkway, tanned and taller, with brand-new b.r.e.a.s.t.s pus.h.i.+ng against the front of her brand-new Izod s.h.i.+rt, and her hair hanging in a heavy gold curtain down her back. Beside me, Mrs. Adler had given a little yelp, her expression the strangest mixture of pride and sorrow, as Val pulled off her sungla.s.ses and flashed her braces in a smile. In the car, she'd babbled excitedly about the amazing time she'd had, showing me pictures of herself posing in front of the hollywood sign, telling stories about visiting her father "on set" and having lunch at "craft services" with Tom Cruise's stunt double. She'd come back with a suitcase full of new clothes, even more confidence than she'd had already, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of advice about how I should behave. "Say hi to people," she told me, as the bus labored up the hill toward home. "Be friendly!"

"They hate me," I said. Saying hi and being friendly would never work for me, but it had worked for Val. That fall she'd made the JV cheerleading squad, where her enthusiasm and volume made up for whatever she lacked in rhythm and grace. She wasn't the best-looking girl, or the most coordinated, and she was off-key as ever when the squad attempted to sing, but she was the one you'd watch anyhow, the one your eyes would follow as she cartwheeled on the sidelines or jumped in the air to celebrate a touchdown. She had a whole crew of new friends, fellow cheerleaders, giggling, ponytailed girls.

As for me, I had Val, and that was it. Everyone else seemed to hate me, and I didn't know why. I wasn't even the fattest girl in our cla.s.s. There were three girls bigger than I was (there'd been four once, before Andi Moskowitz had gotten s.h.i.+pped off to fat camp in the Berks.h.i.+res). Yes, I was heavy, and yes, I was plain-I'd spent enough time studying myself in my bedroom mirror to know that even with makeup and my hair done just right, no one would ever be tempted to call me beautiful, n.o.body from the cheerleading squad would be slipping a note in my locker inviting me to tryouts, the way they had with Val, not even if they needed a large, stable base for their pyramids-but I wasn't outrageously heavy or ridiculously ugly. So why were they picking on me?

I wondered sometimes whether it had to do with Jon. Maybe they hated me because they couldn't hate him. My brother was living, vacant-eyed, occasionally drooling proof that everything they were could be taken away. Just one bad decision, one wrong turn, a car's wheels that went off the road instead of staying on it, and they could end up like he was. They couldn't hate him, though; he was a victim, a survivor... but they could hate me, just by virtue of proximity.

I stayed as close to Val as I could, tagging along with her new friends, trailing in her perfume-and-mousse-scented wake, because n.o.body was mean to me when she was around. I also started carrying a bar of Dial soap in a plastic case, and a washcloth and a hand towel around in my backpack, plus fresh underwear and even an extra pair of sweatpants. I'd shower in the mornings for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, standing underneath the scalding water until my skin was bright red and my mother banged on the door and told me for the third time to come out. After lunch, I'd duck into the bathroom and change my underwear, just in case... and when I had my period, I'd change my napkin between every cla.s.s and change my underwear, too. I went through cans of what the drugstore coyly called "personal hygiene spray" at the rate of one a week. Val and I were in different cla.s.ses except for science and English, and three days a week we didn't even have the same lunch. I sat by myself at a.s.semblies and in chorus, and two days a week, I'd be all by myself at lunchtime, at a table in the cafeteria corner. Sometimes Merry Armbruster would plop down for a few minutes. She'd bow her head in prayer, lips moving rapidly while I ate the carrot sticks and rice cakes that I'd packed. Merry belonged to some weird church. She didn't cut her hair or wear pants or talk to boys, and she got sent to the office almost as much as Dan Swansea, because of her propensity for hissing things like "h.e.l.lbound Sodomite" at girls who French-kissed their boyfriends in the halls. She'd sit with me and talk to me, but I didn't think she liked me very much. Merry viewed me as a lost cause, the closest thing Pleasant Ridge High had to a leper whose feet she could wash.

After school, Val had cheerleading practice. I would walk the two miles home (I'd quit taking the bus by myself after we'd had to back down a blocked-off street and the meep-meep-meep noise had prompted some wit to shout, "Hey, that's how Addie Downs sounds when she's getting on the toilet"). The yellow-and-black bus would labor past me, up the hill just beyond the high school parking lot, and usually, someone would stick his head out the window and yell "Burn it off, fattie!" as I climbed. I kept my head down, biting my lip, feeling my thighs rubbing together, feeling myself start to sweat, start to chafe, start to stink.

At home, I'd take another shower, and then I'd go to my job, babysitting Mrs. Shea's youngest children, a set of three-year-old twins. I'd stay until seven, sometimes later. I would take the twins to the park, pulling them in their Radio Flyer wagon, and at dinnertime, we'd play restaurant, where I'd take their order in a little notebook, then bring them their mac and cheese or cut-up hot dogs, rice or chicken noodle soup. I'd bathe them, read to them, supervise teeth-brus.h.i.+ng and pajama selection, and leave them on their beds, waiting for their mother to come home and tuck them in.

The Sheas lived at the end of our street. Most days, I'd go straight home, but once or twice a week, I'd cross the busy road and walk to the convenience store on the corner of Main and Maple, or the drugstore down the street, and wander through the aisles slowly, sometimes murmuring "milk" or "bread" or "b.u.t.ter" to myself, to make it sound like I had a legitimate reason for being there. Meanwhile, I'd fill my basket with bags of cookies and chips, family-sized Cadbury candy bars wrapped in crisp blue-and-white paper and gold foil, boxes of Sno-Caps, plastic cups of b.u.t.terscotch pudding so loaded with artificial colors and flavors and preservatives that they didn't require refrigeration, chocolate-iced cupcakes, raspberry-filled doughnuts, and lemon pies. I'd shove my money across the counter without meeting the clerk's eyes ("Having a party?" an older lady in a dark-blue ap.r.o.n had asked me once, and I'd been forced to mumble my a.s.sent), cram the treats into my backpack, and hurry out the door.

At home, my mother would have dinner waiting: broiled chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s, sweet potatoes with a sprinkling of cinnamon and b.u.t.ter Buds, a bowl full of chopped iceberg lettuce doused with fat-free vinaigrette. The four of us would sit at the kitchen table, cutting and pouring and moving food into our mouths and answering questions about our days. Jon would work on word searches, or read Omni magazine at the table, his cheek propped up in one hand, his mouth hanging open.

When we were done with our meal, I'd wash the dishes, wipe off the table, and sweep the floor. My father would head to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Jon would drift toward the television set. He liked sitcoms with laugh tracks, shows that told him what was funny. I'd hear his own hoots of laughter, a scant second after the taped audience started laughing. My mother would change into sweatpants, and we'd take our evening const.i.tutional, ten laps around the block. I'd take another shower, my third of the day. "Goodnight," I'd call before locking myself into my bedroom.

Every night I'd promise myself I wouldn't do it, that I'd just finish my homework and go to sleep like a normal person. Some nights I'd last until eight-thirty or even nine. I'd rinse my mouth with mouthwash so astringent it would make my eyes water. I would brush my teeth until my gums bled. I'd chew sugar-free gum and gulp mint tea. I'd sketch frantically, using charcoal and colored pencils to capture a scene from the day-the twins in the sandbox, their round faces crinkling when they laughed; the sun coming up over the cherry tree in our backyard; my mother's hands on Jon's shoulders. I'd replay the day's taunts in my head. I would review what I'd eaten, and think about how well I had done, how I hadn't had as much as a spoonful of the twins' mac and cheese or a single cookie from their box. None of it did any good. Eventually I'd think, Just a taste. Just a little taste of something sweet. And then, almost before I knew it, I would find myself with my hand down deep in one of the plastic bags, the stiff waxed paper and foil wrappers crinkling as I tore the packages open. I'd turn off all the lights except the small one by the side of my bed, and I'd lie on my side, curled around my sketchpad, or one of the heavy art books I'd take out of the library, looking at paintings and photographs from museums in Italy and Paris, places I'd never been and would probably never visit. And I'd eat, ferrying the sweets from the box to my mouth in an unbroken chain, chewing and swallowing and chewing and swallowing, feeling the pillow cool against my cheek, the chocolate coating my mouth and my tongue, the syrupy caramel melting deep in the back of my throat, my left hand dipping and rising into the bags and boxes as my right hand turned the pages.

The Sat.u.r.day after Valentine's Day all of those heart-shaped boxes of candy that hadn't been bought were 75 percent off. I'd buy half a dozen boxes and stack them in my closet. At night, I'd start off with cookies, move on to something salty, like cheese curls or potato chips, and finish my evening with nougats and caramel chews, b.u.t.tercreams and cherry cordials. I would flip the pages, looking at the pictures with my fingers scrabbling through the fluted brown paper cups in a box with the words To My Sweetheart twining across the cover in gold script, and I'd fall asleep without brus.h.i.+ng my teeth, with all of that sweetness gilding my mouth. I would dream about love, about being magically lifted out of my house, out of my town, even out of my body, and deposited someplace better, where I'd be a thin beautiful laughing girl in a two-piece swimsuit or a short cheerleader's skirt. Sometimes I would let my mind wander to Dan Swansea, how he'd looked at the swimming pool in the summer, beads of water flas.h.i.+ng on his smooth brown back, more water slicking the dark hairs against his calves. Hey, pretty, I'd imagine him saying as we pa.s.sed in the hall. In my dreams, he reached for my hands, he tugged me into the secret vestibule outside the gym teacher's office to steal a kiss before cla.s.s. None of this would ever happen, but my dreams, carefully embroidered and unfolded each night, were as sweet as candy.

"I don't understand it," my mother said after my checkup. My pediatrician had shaken his head, frowning, while I stood on the scale, and then, bald head gleaming, he'd bent over his prescription pad and written the words "Weight Watchers" and "exercise," before tearing it off and ceremoniously handing it to me. She'd add another lap to our evening walk, or subtract half a sweet potato from my dinner, and I'd promise myself that I was going to stop with the chips and the cookies and the To My Sweetheart candy. I'd wake up full of resolve, thinking that this would be the day that things would change: I'd stick to my diet, I'd smile, I'd be friendly, I'd do whatever Val told me, because clearly she'd figured out the secret to being liked by everyone.

"Just don't worry so much," Val lectured one spring morning. She wore a pink tank top that left her arms and the top of her chest bare, and a khaki skirt-since she'd started with the cheerleaders, she wore skirts almost all the time. A few she'd bought herself, over her California summer, and a few I recognized as Mrs. Adler's, the long, lacy cotton ones that swept the ground like a bridal train. Val's braces had come off, her teeth were white and straight and s.h.i.+ny, and her figure had filled out-she wasn't very big on top, but her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s looked right with her tight hips and long legs. To look at her you'd never believe that she'd once been geeky or gawky, that her clothes had been weird, that she and I had once belonged together. The balance had s.h.i.+fted. In high school the things that I was (smart, neat, polite, artistic) mattered far less than the things Valerie was (blond, cheerleader). "You smell fine."

"I know," I said, and pulled at the hem of my sweater. It was too hot for sweaters, but mine came from Benetton and was exactly the same as the ones the other, thinner girls wore, only bigger. I had the same designer jeans, too, special-ordered from Marshall Field's, where they didn't normally stock my size. My mother had bought them for me, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that I could wear exactly the same things as the other girls and they would still look wrong, because I was wrong, and nothing I wore could change that.

"You're too self-conscious," Val scolded, shading her eyes and peering down the street. "It's like you're already thinking of every bad thing someone could think about you before they even think it. If people know they're getting to you, they're just going to keep doing it."