“Will that really work?”

“’Course it will, Shuggy Pie. It works every time. Boys are essentially all the same. They need you to do the thinking for them. Trust me, he’ll come around,” she says confidently. “You’re not bad lookin’, even if you are a pain most of the time.” Celia sticks her plate in the sink and says she’s going to the lake with Margaret and Kristi and Jake and everybody.

I hope she’ll invite me, but she doesn’t.

After Celia leaves, I call up Elaine. Nobody answers, so I call Mark next.

“Hey,” I say. “What are you doing?”

“Some of the guys are over here,” Mark says.

“Like who?”

“Just some of the guys—Jack and Kyle and Tommy.”

Ha! My first big chance to make Mark notice me, make him see me for the woman I am! I’ll make the whole room notice me! I’ll be the femme fatale I was born to be! I can see it now: me, slinking around the Findley’s rec room like a real temptress, the boys, hovering around me like nervous little bees, eager to do my bidding.

“What are you guys doing?” I say, real casual-like.

“I don’t know. Just hangin’ out, playing video games and stuff,” Mark says distractedly.

“Can I come over?”

“If you want.”

“Okay, well, maybe I will,” I say. He says okay, and we hang up.

I put my dishes in the sink and go to my room. I’ve been to Mark’s house a million times or more and not once have I thought about what I was wearing. But there are going to be guys over there, not to mention this new Mark. And if I am going to be the femme fatale, I’ve got to look the part.

I look in the mirror, and I am sorry to see it’s still just me there. Who was I trying to kid? I’m no femme fatale. I’m not the kind of girl boys like.

My hair is a lighter, less special version of my mother’s. It’s like dirty straw: There are no reds or golds, and it’s too fine to curl the way Celia’s does. It just sits at my shoulders and hangs. Elaine’s hair is long and coffee black, and I envy the dark richness of it, mine being just a pale imitation of someone else’s hair. My eyes are brown, the muddy kind of brown you get when you mix a bunch of watercolors together. My body is bony and stickstraight, not soft and curvy like Celia’s. I am tall, too tall for my age, and I have no womanly curves to speak of. I can’t fill a pudding cup with what I’ve got. But worst of all are my freckles. I have freckles scattered all over me, like sprinkles on a crummy cake no one feels like eating. No one else in my family has freckles.

I wonder if I’ll ever be pretty. Probably not. Not Mama and Celia’s kind of pretty, anyway. Daddy says I am like a baby colt, and that one day, I will be a real knockout. Don’t fathers know that you’re not supposed to say, One day you will be a knockout? Don’t they know that you’re supposed to say, You are a knockout right this very minute, just the way you are? Daddy’s just as bad as Mark; neither of them ever know how to say the right thing.

But Celia said I wasn’t bad lookin’, and that’s something. Maybe “not bad” is good enough for Mark to like. Anyway, it’s not like he’s some prize. His feet smell like nachos half the time, and Mrs. Findley always cuts his hair too short in the back. Still, he’s Mark, and he’s mine.

Mama said to make love or make war. I know she doesn’t mean I should go and have sexual relations with him, but that’s about all I know. Should I just forget the femme fatale stuff and tell him that I am in love with him, and that he should love me too, or else? Or should I be coy like Celia said, and make him wildly jealous so he’ll come chasing after me? I knew Mama wouldn’t be any help. Come to think of it, neither was Celia.

Chapter 5

When you walk into Mark’s house, you are overcome with the notion that a real family lives there. Family portraits are lovingly hung on every wall, and Mark’s school pictures have the seat of honor above the fireplace. The one from second grade is my personal favorite. He’s missing one of his front teeth, and his hair is slicked to the side like a used car salesman.

There are little baskets of potpourri all over the place, and Mrs. Findley’s ceramic teapot collection is displayed throughout the house. And it always smells the same, like pumpkin pie and fresh laundry. It smells the way a house should smell—warm and good and safe.

I walk right through the front door because I’m practically a part of the family. Mrs. Findley is icing a red velvet cake in the kitchen. My favorite.

“Hi, Mrs. Findley,” I say.

“Hello, dear. I’ve made cream cheese icing, just the way you and Mark like it, extra sweet.” She gives me her special smile, the one where her nose wrinkles.

“Thanks, Mrs. Findley.”

She sprinkles a handful of chopped pecans on top of the cake and says, “Sit with me a minute and chat, Annemarie.”

So I do. Talking to Mrs. Findley is as easy as talking to Elaine or Celia, but in a different way. She listens and nods, and she makes you feel safe.

When I told Mark that my mama was a whole lot prettier than his, I was only five, so what did I know about anything? It may be true that Mama’s prettier, but Mrs. Findley has a warm kind of beauty few people will ever be able to fully appreciate or comprehend. It’s in the way she touches people, looks at people like they’re something special even when they’re not.

Her hair is light brown and beginning to gray at the crown of her head. Her eyes are the color of Daddy’s bourbon, wise and gentle. Mrs. Findley is a few years older than my mother, and I suppose I should mention that she is not from the South. She’s from the Midwest. This may seem like a trivial detail, but somehow, it matters. She is different; she is unique.

Mark will never know how lucky he is to have been born to a lady like Mrs. Findley. People who have it that good rarely do.

I get so comfortable talking to Mrs. Findley, I sort of dread the thought of walking into a den of boys. There is something about walking into a room full of boys that makes you feel exposed and somehow all wrong. You feel inadequate, like you come up short in every way that matters. It didn’t used to be like this, and I don’t know when it changed, but now it feels like it was always this way.

That’s why I’m relieved when Mrs. Findley suggests that I bring the cake down to the rec room. It gives me some sort of purpose, a reason to be there. Plus, it’s always easier to walk into a room carrying something—a purse, a cake, a baseball bat. Anything to make you look like you belong.

The boys don’t even look up when I come into the room. I am carrying the cake, and plates and forks underneath it, and when I say, “I’ve got cake,” they finally look at me. I am wearing an old yellow sundress of Celia’s, and I have tied my hair back with green ribbon. I think I look real nice. And all they see is the cake.

Mark says, “All right!” He grabs the cake and sets it on the coffee table. “Hey, where’s the knife?”

I glare at him. “It’s your house. You go get the knife.”

That bum Jack Connelly says, “Aw, pipe down, Annemarie. You’re the girl. Well, sort of.” He smirks. “Girls are in charge of the food; that’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s always gonna be. You better get used to it.”

“You’re a pig, you know that? Oink, oink. You just roll around in your own feces all day thinking stupid thoughts.” I laugh at my own joke.

“Why don’t you go home and play with your Barbies?” he snaps. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

I hate Jack Connelly.

I’ve hated him ever since the third grade. It was lunchtime, and this was when we still had assigned seats in the cafeteria. Jack was bragging about how he had been tested for his IQ, and the doctor had told him he had a genius IQ of 300. I told him that I knew for a fact that he didn’t have an IQ of 300, that a genius IQ was 140, that Albert Einstein himself only had an IQ of 160, and besides, Jack could barely spell his own name. Jack got mad, and before I knew it, we were kicking each other’s chairs, and I kicked so hard he fell out of his chair and I stubbed my toe. The cafeteria monitor yelled at us, and we both had to skip recess that day. From then on, we were sworn enemies.

Every day at school we would try to outdo each other. He told everyone that I was born with both girl and boy parts. I told everyone that his own parents had tried to sell him on the black market, but nobody would take him cause he was so ugly. Then one afternoon he tripped me on the playground, and to this very day, there is a tiny scar on my left cheek. You can barely see it anymore, but it’s there, and it’s all because of Jack Connelly.

We’re still snarling at each other when Kyle Montgomery says, “Hey, thanks for bringing the cake down, Annemarie.”

Tommy Malone says nothing. His eyes dart back to the video game that has been paused.

Mark says, “Let’s eat the cake later; I wanna finish this game.” Then he finally seems to notice me. “Why are you wearing a dress?”

“Because everything else was dirty. It’s Celia’s.” My face feels hot.

He shrugs, and he and Jack and Tommy return to the TV while Kyle cuts into the cake with a fork. He cuts five lopsided pieces, and slides them onto the plates. I sit on the couch with my arms crossed and watch him silently. I wish I could think of something smart to say.

“So, who’s your homeroom teacher?” Kyle asks, passing me a plate. I rest the plate at the edge of my lap to hide my scabby knees.

“Mrs. Simone. Who’s yours?” I take a big bite of cake, careful not to let any crumbs fall. They do anyway.

“Same. I heard she’s nice.”

“Yeah.”

I wish Elaine was here. When it comes to boys, Elaine is confident and supremely sure of herself. Maybe it’s because she’s from New York, but Elaine can flirt with the best of ’em. She acts like she’s hot stuff, and everybody believes it. It’s a trick of hers. I know she would have had Kyle Montgomery feeding her cake by the end of the afternoon.

Why oh why is it so much harder to talk to boys like Kyle? It’s not that he isn’t nice, because he is, nicer than most of the boys my age. There is just something disarming about good-looking people. They make you feel all fluttery and nervous, and you hardly know where to look. I settle on staring at a freckle under his right eye. The freckle makes me feel better, knowing that a good-looking person like Kyle Montgomery can have freckles and still be good-looking.

He asks me which honors classes I’ll be taking in seventh grade, and I say all of them. I ask him if he’s gonna try out for the basketball team, and he says yes. Before long, we’re talking.

I lean back into the couch. This isn’t so bad. Sure, I’m no femme fatale, and sure, the boys aren’t swarming around me, but it’s not so bad. I’m sitting next to Kyle Montgomery and I’m holding my own. I’m a woman in my own right.

We talk about Mr. Romano’s honors math class, and playing softball, at which point Tommy comes and joins us on the couch. Tommy is uneasy around girls, but he likes sports well enough. So I keep the topic on sports, we eat cake, and everything is fine. I check to see if Mark has noticed, but he and Jack are too busy with their dratted game.

When Mark and Jack finally finish their game, they clamor for cake, and the atmosphere changes all over again. It’s so much easier when it’s just you and the one boy. It’s easier to be you without a big audience.

The boys discuss the upcoming basketball season, and although I know as much about basketball as anyone else, certainly Mark, I stay silent. At moments like these, saying the wrong thing would be disaster. And anyway, it’s hard to find a moment to break in with one of my snazzy witticisms. It’s darn near impossible to get a word in when there are boys around. They take over everything and breathe up all the air in the room.

Mercifully, the afternoon passes by without major incident. Jack comments on my eating three pieces of cake, but Jack is a dunce, so who cares? I can’t be bothered with worrying about people like Jack Connelly. When it’s time to go, I am left feeling empty. I don’t know what I was expecting to happen, but it sure wasn’t this.

The whole time we were sitting there, my eyes kept sliding back to Mark. How is it possible to have known a boy for eight years and never have seen how special he was, how terribly, secretly wonderful? Everything about him seems special now. I can’t stop looking at him, and I keep wanting to touch his hair or squeeze his hand. It’s so distracting. If anyone else noticed, I’d die.

Mark didn’t look at me once. I mean, he looked at me, but not once did he see me.

Chapter 6

I live in the kind of town where people are always saying things like, “I can’t wait to get out of here” and “When I get out of this town …” They usually want to move to New York, and they say those two words with real reverence: New York. It even sounds capitalized. Everybody dreams big where I am from, but nobody’s dreams ever come true. New York City might as well be Never-Never Land for all the good it will do anybody from Clementon.

The thing is, you can’t ever really leave Clementon. The sweet South lures you back home, just like those Sirens in Greek mythology. You might go to college somewhere else, you might even move away, but you always end up coming back. That’s what happened to my mama.

She and my daddy were both born and raised in Clementon. They both went to Clementon High, they dated, and then they went their separate ways to college—Mama to a women’s college up North, and Daddy to the state school. When Grandpa Cavane got sick her junior year, Mama had to come home and go to the state school too. I guess she and Daddy met up at college and it was all fireworks. They fell right back in love and got married after graduation.