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  I have always thought Todd was a bit of a jerk —I mean, he’s no Danny Stanton—but when your best friend likes someone as much as Karin likes Todd, you have to try to see the good in that person. And I at least like the way Todd is looking at Karin now.

  But once they are gone, there is no reason for me to hang out at the ticket table, and so I drift off, moving through the crowd, alone.

  I talk to a few people that I know, complaining about this and that class, but there is no one I want to talk to for very long. Nor does there seem to be anyone who wants to talk to me for very long.

  At one point I am standing alone with my back against the wall, thinking maybe I should be brave like Karin was, maybe I should ask some guy to dance, but there is no one I want to ask if I can’t ask Danny, and that is when Joshua Carr comes up to me, asks me how I’m doing.

  And that is when I know that I am really in trouble.

  Not that there’s anything wrong with Joshua Carr—he is even kind of cute, if overly clean-looking, with his short auburn hair and green eyes—it is just that Joshua Carr has a reputation for being The Nice Guy, meaning he talks to everybody, but he especially goes out of his way to talk to people that other people think of as losers, the ones no one bothers with. I have never known if this is some kind of religious thing with him. I have even thought before, often, that this is a very nice thing about him—whenever I’ve seen him trying to talk to someone so out of it, like the guy with the car fetish so extreme that even the other gearheads won’t talk to him—but I don’t want to be the object of anyone’s pity. Certainly, I don’t want to be the object of Joshua Carr’s pity.

  So when he asks me how I’m doing—do I maybe want some juice or a soda?—I tell him I’m fine, that I was just leaving anyway.

  And that is exactly what I want to do: leave.

  But when I locate Karin, who drove me, she is in a corner with Todd, who has one finger hooked in the rope belt on her jeans shorts while his other arm is around her shoulders, with Ricky and Danny hanging close by.

  Already Karin and Todd look like a couple, her head resting lightly on his shoulder like it belongs there.

  “Hey,” she says lazily, but not at all like she’s unhappy to see me, “we were just thinking of splitting for the diner. Todd got too stoned before, and now he’s got the munchies. Are you ready to go?”

  I look at the group she is with and instinctively I know that by “we” she doesn’t mean just her and Todd—which would just barely be tolerable, to be the extra person with her and Todd—but that she means the four of them, Ricky and Danny as well. Apparently Karin has forgiven Ricky her “Paris and Nicole” remark from earlier.

  As Ricky smirks at me, her arm tight around Danny’s waist, as Danny deliberately stares at some spot on the wall above my head, I just cannot take the idea of sitting at the diner, the place where everyone goes to hang out after ball games and dances, with Ricky smirking at me all night, with Danny carefully looking everywhere else but at me.

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I think I’ll pass. I was thinking of heading home soon anyway, thought maybe I should get some more studying in before the SATs.”

  At that, Ricky snorts.

  “So we’ll drop you on the way,” Karin says, and I can tell that even though she is where she has wanted to be for so long, with Todd, she is concerned about me.

  “No, really,” I say, forcing a smile to reassure her, even as I back away. “It’s not on your way. I’ll just call my dad.”

  Week of October 8/Week 6

  Karin drives us to the SATs.

  We have worried about and lived for this moment for so long, it is hard to believe it is finally here.

  The room where we take the test is set up with square tables for four. Karin and I sit down across from each other at an empty one, but my butt barely touches the seat when I jump up again, hand over my mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” Karin asks, concerned.

  But I can’t answer. Instead I run out the door and down the hall to the bathroom, where I throw up everything I had for breakfast: milk, juice, chunks of cereal—it is about as gross a sight as I have ever seen. I lean against the wall of the stall for a minute, feel the cool metal against my forehead. I wish I could just go home and go to sleep now—all I seem to want to do is sleep lately, I am that tired—but today is just too important. Unless I need to be rushed to the hospital, there will be no second chances, so I force myself to return to the testing room, will myself to fight back the nausea that never seems to be completely gone now. I will need to fight it for the next few hours, just long enough to do what I need to do.

  “Are you okay?” Karin asks when I take my seat for the second time.

  Before I can nod, she says, “What’s that?” Then she reaches out with a finger, wipes near the corner of my mouth. “Gross,” she says with disgust, wiping from her finger the fleck of vomit I’d missed. Then her expression softens. “Nerves, huh?” she says, and I simply nod, grateful to have a best friend who doesn’t bail on me just because I got vomit on her finger.

  Soon Todd comes in with Danny, and Todd sits down at our table as Danny moves off to find another seat.

  I try to pretend that didn’t just happen as I stare at the clock on the wall, waiting for the test to begin.

  It is hard to believe that all our years of education finally boil down to this one test, that so much will be decided by the next few hours. I know that some in the room aren’t worried at all, like Karin. Even though she has said she is nervous about this, I know she isn’t, not really. Her grades are so good, she has prepped so much, she is bound to get what she wants. I know others are taking the test as a formality, that their futures are already decided and that those futures do not shine quite so brightly as Karin’s.

  For myself, I have studied hard for this. I know I need to jump through this hurdle to get to where I want to be. I have spent nearly all my time studying for the math part, math being my weakness. When I flipped through the pages of the English prep books, I realized that unless they changed things drastically, I could clear that part no problem. And the essay portion should be a cake-walk. If anything brings me down here today, it will be math.

  Then, just two minutes before the test is to start, Tim O’Mara rushes in, late. There is only one available seat left, at our table, and he slides into the seat across from Todd, between Karin and me.

  I don’t even say hello. I cannot even think of Tim O’Mara right now. There is just too much riding on this moment in time.

  I am still staring at the clock on the wall, watching the second hand move, my yellow number-two pencils lined up next to me, when the proctor says, “Turn over your test booklets and … begin!”

  And now I am writing, writing for my life, it feels like.

  My pencil flies down the answer sheet, filling in those tiny ovals with gray lead. I know all the English like I know my own name: It is as though the vocabulary section was designed with me in mind; the reading comprehension like a walk. When the proctor calls “Begin!” to start the essay section, I am much more relaxed, knowing I am capable of writing something that will rack me up those perfect eight hundred points easily. However, when the proctor later calls “Begin!” to start the math section, I am on less familiar ground, but I ignore the noise of people clearing their throats or turning pages around me, ignore the noise in my own head. My concentration narrows to the size of one thin dime as I call up everything I have ever known about algebra, geometry, equations.

  When the proctor calls “Time!” for the last time, I lay my yellow number-two pencil down, feeling as though I have run a long race. I am tired, but it is a good tired.

  We get into Karin’s car afterward, and I ask her how she thinks she did.

  “I think I did okay,” she says modestly, and shrugs, keying the ignition. “You?”

  “I think I got an eight hundred on the English,” I say. “The essay part too.” Then I let out a breath I hadn’t even rea
lized I’d been holding. “And the math? I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Week of October 15/Week 7

  The tension of the SATs behind me, it is tough to know what to do with myself. True, I know that it’ll still be six weeks before I get the results, and true, I know that there’s still studying for classes to do, I still need to keep my grades up, but I just can’t concentrate on that. I need to find something to take my mind off all of that, take me out of myself, and so I decide to go to the mall.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” my mom offers.

  She knows I already asked Karin but that Karin said no, she had a date with Todd.

  “That’s okay,” I say.

  It’s not that I don’t appreciate my mom’s offer, since I know she’s been extra busy with work lately—a new client who forgot to pay his taxes for the last three years, even though he very publicly won a lot of money in a contest—but I would rather go alone. I am hoping to find some clothes to maybe reinvent my image—maybe a change of wardrobe or the right shoes will somehow make things better for me at school? And it is easier to shop for a new image when you are alone, when you don’t have a mother along who is so used to seeing you in the old way that it is hard for her to see you as anything different.

  “I won’t be gone that long,” I say. “Can I borrow the car keys?”

  Driving to the mall, I see that some of the cars I pass have kids that I know in them, out for a good time. At the mall I see some others I know, clustered in groups at tables in the food court or looking in the windows of Limited Express. I wonder when life got to be like this for me, what has brought me to a point where I feel as though everyone else is part of a couple or a larger group, while I am here alone.

  Without even recognizing that I am sad, I feel tears jump to my eyes.

  It is so odd how emotional I am lately and how the littlest things can make me sad or angry or even happy. It is like being on a roller coaster of feelings with no memory of having paid admission for the ride. Certainly, there is no sense of control.

  Immediately, impatiently, I wipe the tears away.

  The mall at night feels strange. Even though it is not late, it is only about seven-thirty, there is an edgy quality to the air, like something could happen any minute. Everyone else is shopping with someone else, except for a few women who look like they could be mothers, walking fast from store to store as though they need to get their shopping in quick before the leash that is home yanks them back, and a few men in suits who look like they must be shopping for new shoes, making fast purchases at Mr. Boston or Structure and then grabbing a burger and fries at Nathan’s before zipping off to the wife and kids or maybe a girlfriend.

  I sit in the food court at a table alone, sipping a vanilla milk shake from Háagen-Dazs. I do not normally let myself have anything so big or sweet, but I have been feeling so nauseous lately and this is the only thing that appeals.

  As I toss the empty plastic cup in the trash, I am bothered, as I always am, by the white noise lurking behind the piped-in music. It always feels to me as though I can hear that white noise, meant to hypnotize me, seducing—Stay…. Shop! —when all it serves to do is make me feel mildly irritated, as though there were a hornet in my brain.

  I think I will do what the other girls here are doing, and I look in the windows of Limited Express, look at the accessories at Claire’s. But somehow the idea of trying on the pants at the former, with their tight-fitting legs, doesn’t interest me, and I already have enough cheap jewelry, so why bother with the latter?

  Shoes , I think. One of the things I thought I’d get here was shoes.

  But when I try on shoes in ALDO, in Steve Madden, even in Naturalizer, they don’t fit properly. Even though I have asked for the right size—seven, my size—everything feels too tight, painfully so, and I realize that lately I have taken to wearing my sneakers to school every day because it has reached the point where they are the only shoes I own that don’t hurt. I ask the salesgirl at Naturalizer to measure my feet, and she tells me they really are still a size seven.

  “They’re just a bit wide,” she says. “They look a little swollen. Maybe you want to try a seven-and-a-half to accommodate the extra width?”

  I shake my head, leave the store, and walk on.

  I came here to get out of my head, to have a little harmless fun, but this shopping—shopping without finding anything I want or that fits properly—is only making me more tense.

  Then, just as I am about to give up and go home, near the Macy’s end of the mall I walk past a store I have never been in before or even noticed much: Mommy Heaven. Well, of course I’ve never gone in there before or even noticed it , I think. Why would I ever go in there or even notice it?

  Yet now I am drawn to the display in the window.

  I have, of course, seen pictures of my mother when she was pregnant with me. In them she looks as if she is growing an alien inside her, her frame normally so skinny that all you can imagine is that it almost had to have been some foreign force that did that to her. And here’s the other thing: In those pictures she looks as if she has walked out of an eighties sitcom, her oversize blouses and dresses in shades of pink, and mostly with big bows tied loosely at the neck.

  It is impossible to imagine clothes being more unattractive.

  My mom and I have watched shows together sometimes, syndicated reruns of Friends where Rachel is pregnant, and at other times my mom has pointed out pictures to me of pregnant actresses on the cover of Vogue or Vanity Fair.

  “Why didn’t they have clothes like that when I was pregnant?” she has said. “I would have loved wearing those clothes. Instead I always felt like a big pink pod.”

  And I have known that she was right: She would have looked great in those clothes. She would have looked like the coolest pregnant woman ever.

  And now here are the same pregnancy clothes my mom loves, here in the window before me, and they are every bit as cool as she thinks they are. There are jeans, just like the low-riders everyone else wears, low enough for someone to proudly show off a round belly rather than hiding it. There are gauzy tops with romantic sleeves, even halter tops. There are dressy dresses that even somehow manage to look sexy. I would wear those clothes.

  At last I pull myself from the window, head for home.

  I have no idea what I was doing there.

  Week of October 22/Week 8

  I miss my second period.

  When I realize this has happened, my parents are out to dinner with my aunt Stacey and I am home alone.

  I throw a minor fit.

  I take the little notebook that I use to record my period out of my desk drawer and stare at the taunting “Arrived” and “Due” dates. Then I tear the most recent sheet out of the book, tearing every single used page out of the book afterward and shredding them, all the while with tears running down my face.

  I am scared, more scared than I have ever been in my life. And angry too, a part of me is so very angry.

  At last, exhausted, I collapse on my bed, with my clothes still on. My mind screams, What if there is something … wrong? What am I going to do?

  At last, I fall asleep, the tears still damp on my lashes.

  When I wake in the morning, I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything, that this is still just stress. Even though I have never been more than five days late before, certainly I have never been two months late before, I tell myself this is just stress.

  It was just after my eleventh birthday that I got my period for the first time. My mom, usually so practical, was ecstatic. Never mind ecstatic, she was practically in tears.

  “My baby!” she said, hands on either side of my face after I called her up to the bathroom, saying I needed a little help. “My baby is a woman!”

  “God, get a grip, Mom,” I said, trying to pry her hands from my face.

  But she wasn’t having any of that. She pulled me to her, wrapped me in her arms.

  “Nothing will ever
be the same after this,” she said.

  All the while I was thinking, Of course things’ll never be the same after this. Things are never the same after any moment.

  But, of course, I didn’t say that to her. Mom was too busy having a moment of her own. We’d both been waiting for this for a year. Mom had told me she’d gotten her own first period when she was only ten, and this was one more thing that it seemed like she was better at than I was. I’d been waiting anxiously for this moment, she’d been waiting hopefully for this moment, and I decided to let her just enjoy her moment because the moment she was having was obviously way better than the moment I was having. But I did have to finally draw the line at …

  “No, Mom, we do not have to have The Talk.”

  “But aren’t there things you want to know?” she said. “You must have things you want to ask me.”

  “Actually? Um, no,” I said, arms crossed.

  But then, a minute later, seeing the wounded look on her face, I felt guilty.

  “I’m pretty sure I know everything already,” I said, trying on a smile, “but thanks.”

  “Everything?” she echoed.

  “Well, Karin got this book, see, and really, it was very detailed.”

  “A book?”

  “Great place to learn things, don’t you think?” I said, really smiling this time.

  “I guess,” she said, not really looking convinced. Or maybe she was simply disappointed; maybe this wasn’t the way she’d pictured things. She tried one last time: “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to hear a little bit about the first time your father and I —”

  “NO!”

  Of course I didn’t want to hear that kind of thing about my mother and father back then, and I don’t want to talk to my mother about what is going on now. So I do not tell her about it when I start getting cramps, think I’m going to finally get my period, then realize that I have not gone to the bathroom to do “number two,” as they say, in a few days, and realize that—gross!—I am constipated. Between the constant tiredness, and the sore and swollen breasts, and the nausea and vomiting, and the increased urination, and now the constipation, it is as though some foreign army has invaded the body I once knew.