"A hot girl," said Sam. Molly and Chad and I laughed, and even Sarah had to admit that it was funny with a begrudging snort, but my mom shook her head. She looked at Sam meaningfully. "That's an offensive way to talk about Judy's friends."

After she said this, she looked at Sarah and Molly, and I was wondering what she could be thinking, maybe something along the lines of: "Well, at least neither of you is hot enough to get objectified by my twelve-year old son."

Then Chad was like, "I have to take off. I told Alice I'd pick her up after her study group. Congratulations, J., you were great. Molly, Sarah, nice to meet you two." I liked this; he was pretending he hadn't met them before, at the party our parents didn't know had happened. He even winked at us. I bet Molly and Sarah loved that.

"So, Judy," my dad said, as Chad walked away. "Where'd you find that song?"

I felt in this question something about what it must be like to be a parent, to realize that your kids' lives actually take place without you, in dark practice rooms, in their bedrooms, in their private, inaccessible imaginations and minds.

"I've been listening to nothing else for three years, Dad," I said, punishing him for no reason. I never cut my parents any slack at all. And I'm sorry for that now.

"Oh," he said. "I'm surprised I've never heard it before, then."

"I had never heard it either," Goth Sarah said, and I wondered if this was true, or if she was just kind and wanted to make my dad feel better.

"Me, neither," Molly said.

We drove home in the kind of warm car glow that exists only when your life hasn't been totally ruined. I remember it now, because it's raining outside the Motel Manor, and the window in my room is leaking just enough so that the gray paint on the windowsill is bubbling and the carpet next to the window is sopping and black.

If I close my eyes as tight as I can and rub them until dots of light form, I can still see Sam next to me in the backseat the night of the SV concert, and the backs of my parents, my mom with her arm stretched between the seats. It was warm in the car with Sam and my parents all safe. And I had just had the thrill of being in the senior voice concert. My mom was playing with the little bit of hair curling down into my dad's collar. She was thrilled, because of the concert and my polite friends, and because she had seen all three of her kids that night and we all seemed happy.

"You want a haircut, Max?" she asked, playing with my dad's hair.

"Do I need one?"

My mom always cuts my dad's hair. I don't think he's ever had his hair cut by anyone else. My parents met the summer after high school and got married when they were twenty. Those were their "hippie years," when they moved to New Mexico and made belts and definitely smoked a lot of pot while their one pig and six chickens ran around the yard. They didn't stay, because I guess it wasn't a great life for Chad. I wonder if all the pot-smoking I'm guessing they did was related to my foreshortened limbs.

Later that night, I heard my parents in the bathroom, setting up the haircutting salon, and Sam thumping plastic strums to "The Boys Are Back."

I didn't listen to the vent, just lay down on my stomach on my bed and wrote a long entry in pink in my leather diary-a gift my dad had gotten me at the Ann Arbor Art Fair. I wrote all about the concert, Norman Crump, my voice, the way it sounds coming from my body and how it must sound different to people who aren't inside my body. And Kyle. What he hears when he listens to me. How I think he's a good listener, so unlike most boys. I wrote about AP bio, how I'd gotten Rachael Collins as my lab partner, and how I liked her because she was tidy and reserved, with short dark hair and a big vocabulary. She worked on the school paper, wrote a current events column, and saved most of her words for that; she didn't talk much. I suggested naming our dead cat "Cletus the Fetus," not so much because I wanted Rachael to think I was funny (although I would have liked it if she had), but because joking about the rubbery plucked cat made me feel less miserable about carving up someone's beloved pet, or worse, a helpless stray. Our teacher, Mr. Abraham, who was constantly touching us with his moist, fat hands, posted cat-part pictures on the cla.s.s website and made jokes about "partbook" being like, our "facebook." Grownups who use Facebook are embarra.s.sing, and even if Mr. Abraham had known better than to be on Facebook himself, we still wouldn't have found him cool for knowing what it was. It's better not to pander to teenagers, since we have super sharp pander radars. But Mr. Abraham probably wouldn't have been embarra.s.sed to learn that we thought he was a loser anyway, because there are two kinds of people in the world: people who get embarra.s.sed and people who embarra.s.s others. And Mr. Abraham was definitely the latter. He'd probably be thrilled to know that he and Cletus the Fetus are characters in my diary.

I wrote a lot about that cat, even drew diagrams of him. I don't know why; maybe I wanted to honor him in some way, after violating him with all that cutting and labeling. We started with his midventral muscles: transverse abdomens, rectus abdominus, internal oblique, external oblique. The more we hacked away, the more he looked like a chicken. It reminded me of that horrible thing people say when they eat creatures no human should eat, like frogs and rabbits, how they "taste like chicken," and I decided never to eat meat again. Rachael almost threw up when we cut up the jejunum. I don't know why she found it grosser than the urinary bladder, maybe the unfamiliar word grossed her out. People hate things they've never heard of.

Right before I fell asleep the night of the concert, I flipped to the back of my diary and wrote out the lyrics to my Rickie Lee Jones solo, even though I'd had them memorized for years. I have a habit of flipping ahead, writing notes to my future self: "How are things now? Did you pa.s.s the math test? Did the boy you liked end up falling in love with you, too?"

Are the signs you hid deep in your heart All left on neon for them?

I don't know what made me write those down that night. Maybe I sensed that soon all the secret signs in my heart would be utterly neon-for the world to gape at and label.

8 My second American lit paper for Ms. Doman was on Pecola Breedlove, and how race, fate, and longing ruin her before the plot even starts. If you're ever feeling bad, reread The Bluest Eye, because Pecola Breedlove has such a tragic life that it makes even what happened to me seem like a sneeze. The funny thing about literature is that if you have a name like Breedlove, you're f.u.c.ked. There's no way an author calls you that without making you breed your father's baby after he rapes you on the kitchen floor. But the part of that book that kills me is how she loves the blond doll. How she wants to be what she can never be. That's life-ruining enough, I think. So my paper was kind of on that, and Ms. Doman read it out loud to the cla.s.s, even though it was six pages long.

Then she followed me down to the auditorium, because we had auditions for the spring show, Runaways, an utter piece of s.h.i.t with the single advantage of a cast of dozens of teenagers. It was because of Runaways that I started seeing Kyle every day after school, not to mention Chris and Alan, who were always picking him up, working on the senior show, swimming, or doing whatever it was they did in the building after hours. It's funny how being at school after school gives you a lawless feeling. Even if you're there for rehearsal or something utterly, nerdily school-related, the energy is a jittery, giddy sort, unlike the trapped vibe of daytime. Runaways also made us feel reckless, as if we were actually kids living on the streets, rather than our lucky private school selves dusted with a little makeup to look dirty.

I vividly remember the day we auditioned, because I got cast as a deaf black guy named Hubbel, after doing some comically bad fake sign language. And because Ms. Doman and I had a conversation that made me nervous.

"Judy," she said, in an oddly serious tone, "can we walk down together?"

"Sure! Are you casting Runaways?"

"No, of course not-they don't give the bookworms any say!" she said, smiling. "I just wanted to watch you guys do your thing. Are you nervous?"

I nodded.

"I'm sure you'll be divine. You were stunning at the voice concert, Judy. Really stunning. But you know what?"

"What?"

"I hope you'll think about being a writer."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. I don't mean it as a compliment. I mean it as an a.s.signment."

"Okay," I said.

She waited for a minute, kind of watching me. We had arrived at the auditorium and were standing still outside the door. I felt uncomfortable.

"How're things going?" she asked, and something about the fake casualness of it reminded me of my mom.

"Really good!" I said, and it came out too high and too fake, as if they weren't good, but they actually were, so I was weirded out by myself. Why did I sound like I was lying to Ms. Doman?

"If you ever want to talk to me about anything, just come by, okay? Doesn't have to be just the books we talk about in cla.s.s." She pushed the auditorium door open and we walked in.

I wanted to say, why would I? But I didn't want to insult Ms. Doman, and I had a little chill of fear-that she knew more about me than I knew about myself, the way your parents think they do but don't, and the way some grown-ups actually do.

"Can I ask you something?" I asked as we sat down. I put some spearmint Eclipse in my mouth.

She looked at me warmly. "Of course, Judy. Anything."

"I hope it's not a rude question. Um. When did you marry your husband?"

She smiled, a bit bewildered, but maybe touched, too. I held the package out to her, in case she needed gum or encouragement, but she waved it away politely.

"I married Orb when I was thirty-two, five years ago."

"Orb?"

"Everyone calls Norman 'Orb'-it's a nickname."

"Oh."

"Why do you ask, Judy?"

"Just curious."

"You thinking of getting married?"

"Not until I'm thirty-two."

"I'm glad," she said. "Not that it's any of my business, but you can fall in love many times before you get married. True love isn't a once-in-a-lifetime event."

As she said it, she watched me for a reaction, and I tried hard not to show one, because the truth is, I thought it was a very depressing thing to say. I want true love to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Maybe just because she married an old famous dude, she has to think she might find love again, or that she had found it before so it's okay that this isn't it. But that's not how I feel about it. Or maybe she has true love with Norman Crump, and I'm just young and stupid. The horrible thing about being young and stupid (among others) is that you can't know what you don't know. But you can have a sense that you don't know s.h.i.t. This is a curse I notice most of my cla.s.smates don't have. They seem to think they know a lot about a lot of things. I don't know why I have to be like a magical elf of a teenager, but I somehow know it's impossible to know much until you're way older than we all are. I hate that. Both the fact of it and the loneliness of being the only one who seems to know it.

In fact, the whole experience of Runaways gave me a dizzying epiphany about being young and stupid. For one thing, it made me think of a Young People's Theater show I had done in third grade, a musical adaptation of Animal Farm in which my friends Julie and Caitlin and I played sheep who sang about the rule of law. We were all eight years old and thought we were fantastic. I didn't even care that I was like one foot tall, singing, "No animal should sleep upon a bed, or wear a coat or hat upon its head. / No animal should drink of alcohol or hurt or kill another animal. / All animals are equal cha cha cha. / All animals are equal yah yah yah." Now that I'm almost seventeen, I realize what a b.u.t.t-numbing disaster that play was-and my parents must have died, sitting through it nine times. But at the time, I thought it was like the best thing ever and that there was nothing they would rather do than watch me with my wooly earm.u.f.fs on, all night, every night. So what am I going to think of Runaways eight years from now? Or even eight months? Eight days? Impossible to say. What will I think of myself ?

As Hubbel, the deaf black runaway, my first lines were "I had to run away! I had to! You do it because you get scared! Scared of yourself !" They were incredibly melodramatic (and now, I realize, ironic), and since Goth Sarah got the part of my interpreter, she spoke them while I "signed" silently. I didn't know what deaf people sound like when they talk, and didn't want to do anything people would think was a joke, or make fun of anyone. So I tried during the audition, and the one time I did the actual play before I actually disappeared, to keep the fake sign language subtle and kind of sad.

Maybe that was Tony-worthy genius, but I have to admit I felt like Ms. Minogue cast me as Hubbel because she thought he and I were both disabled and I could Method-act his alienation or something. Or it was payback for getting the big senior voice solo. I couldn't feel sorry for myself, though, because Molly got chorus, which I thought was totally unfair, and if I'm being totally honest here, kind of racist. I mean, she was the only black girl in our cla.s.s and she was really good and they should have given her a real part. I wondered what she and her parents thought, if they were all used to life being unfair and talked openly about it, or whether they all just pretended it was okay that she was "chorus member three" like we pretended in my family that everything was okay.

Kyle played a bad-boy druggie, which was easy since he always looked half asleep, except now, because he was suddenly paying close attention to me during the numbers when we danced near each other. I knew it the way you can, like in a Planet Earth, Life, National Geographic way-like, I don't know, I was a scrumptious baby alpaca and could feel some groggy but hungry wolf eyes on my back. Maybe that's overstating it. But he was watching me.

And then, after rehearsal one day that first week, Goth Sarah and Molly and I were sitting in our usual spot at the end of the hallway next to the theater and almost to the fire escape, and Molly was improvising a song about Sarah, to the tune of "Yankee Doodle," that went: "Sarah Taylor went to town, riding on a hedgehog; she got hungry by a swamp and ate a hairy bullfrog," Sarah was laughing hysterically, and I was eating a cookie because I was totally starving. And then Kyle came over and stood in front of me, not saying anything, just smiling, like we both knew something was coming. Molly stopped singing. I offered him some of my cookie because I didn't know what else to do and he was like, "Sure," and I broke the cookie in half and the halves were totally uneven so I gave him the bigger half because I didn't want to seem like a pig, and he was like, "Thanks, Judy Lohden!"

Chris Arpent heard this and walked over, and when he saw Kyle eating the cookie, was like, "What am I, chopped liver?" Which kind of reminded me of my grandma Mary. I gave him the other half, and he took it and didn't say thanks but said to Kyle as they started walking away, "C is for cookie, good enough for me." Goth Sarah rolled her eyes, but Molly was like, "You're going to hate on Cookie Monster's song? That's cute! He's in touch with his inner child!" And then they looked at each other and laughed and Molly nudged me with her elbow and sang, "K is for Kyle-kinky good for me!" They waited for me to respond, but I didn't, and finally Molly asked, "You okay?" and I tore a page out my notebook and wrote in pink, "I'm deaf, can't hear you b.i.t.c.hes," and held it up. Molly laughed her shout-laugh, grabbed the paper from me.

Chris didn't thank me after gobbling up my cookie, but he started saying hi in SV and whenever he showed up at Runaways rehearsals to hang out with Kyle. Meanwhile, I never ate another cookie, because I didn't want to have one and not give them any, but I also didn't want to do it again, because it would have seemed like I was eating the cookie just so I could get them to talk to me. Of course, not eating the cookie for them is just as stupid as eating a cookie for them, but at least they didn't know about it that way.

And then on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Kyle stood right down the hall from me while Goth Sarah was talking about Eliot Jacobs and how he was like, super into j.a.pan and read books about tea ceremonies and how to organize flowers so they would look especially something-well organized, I guess. He had apparently planted a garden at his mother's house in Ann Arbor, and Sarah said it was the most relaxing place she had ever been, and that he practiced some j.a.panese religion called Shinto, which was much cooler than being a Buddhist, because that was already such a cliche in America, but most Americans had never even heard of Shinto.

Kyle was standing with Greg and Stockard, listening to Greg say he was going to get some good s.h.i.t over Thanksgiving and get "hiiiiiiiiigh," and laughing politely, but then he wandered away from them and over to us. He had had me on his radar the whole time, the way I'd had him on mine. I reached up and touched my earrings, silver moons my mom got from a place called Anonymous Angels that hires disabled people in third-world countries to make jewelry. Kyle was eating Fritos and held the bag out, but I shook my head. I didn't want to smell like corn chips in front of him, even if he smelled like them in front of me. He had his camera on his shoulder, but it was in the case, turned off for once. Most days, he appeared to be making a doc.u.mentary about the making of Runaways. I was tempted to make fun of him, but something in me said not to, that it wasn't a joke for him. I never wanted to hurt his feelings.

"So Judy Lohden, guess what I got?" he said.

I shrugged, tried to arch my eyebrows in the way I constantly saw Elizabeth Wood doing.

"A car."

"No kidding. Do you have your license?"

"Yup. Got that, too."

"How will you make the most of it?" I asked.

He smiled right at me, like he was smiling into my mouth. It's hard to describe.

"You want a ride home?"

"Only if it's a convertible," I joked, trying to drown out the pounding of my heart, in case he could hear it. I still love myself for coming up with that.

"If you consider my parents' used Toyota Camry a convertible, then it is."

"I consider that a Mustang," I said.

"So I can drive you home, then?"

"Sure," I said, "thanks."

Then he went to grab his computer bag and I swooned against the wall.

"Wow," Goth Sarah said. "Maybe he wants to ask you out for real."

"Yeah, maybe," I said, thinking for real ? I mean, maybe she and Eliot drank tea naked and whispered to each other in j.a.panese in his mother's garden, but a ride home from Kyle was a serious date, as far as I was concerned. I was soaring around in my mind. I excused myself to call Rashid and cancel the piano lesson I had after rehearsal. It was the first time I'd ever done that. I wondered if he would tell my parents, and whether they'd be mad. Maybe this was a transition into the life of the new me, the one who skipped her responsibilities to get rides with Kyle Malanack.

He and I walked out together, and I imagined everyone must be talking about it. Kim Barksper was standing talking to Ms. Vanderly. Kim saw us and waved in what seemed like a genuinely friendly way. Maybe they weren't in love. Or maybe she thought there was no way he could be into me like that, so she didn't care if Kyle drove me home. If I'd seen them leaving together and getting into his car, I would have cried.

We said nothing walking out to the parking lot together, and I had the fleeting worry that I would be so boring he wouldn't be able to stand it and this would be my final and least successful audition ever.

He didn't open the door for me and I was glad. I hoisted myself up into the car, grateful that it wasn't an SUV, since that might have meant him lifting me in himself, a totally unbearable thought. When he closed his door, the world outside the car disappeared. His hands on the steering wheel looked strong and clean. I had the weird thought that we were both young.

Kyle pulled his seat belt across his chest, snapped it on, and started the engine. Tom Petty jumped out of the CD player. I was surprised by this nerdy choice. What else did he have in there, Eric Clapton? I wondered whether he watched American Idol, hoped so, wanted to watch it with him. Maybe now that he had driven me home, we'd be boyfriend and girlfriend, would spent weeknights doing homework at each other's house, weekends driving from party to party together. My heart flooded its cavities.

"What did you think of Ms. Minogue screaming at Kim?" I asked Kyle.

"She always does that kind of thing. At least Kim didn't cry until later."

"Oh, so she did cry. Everyone was talking about how she managed not to."

Ms. Minogue had screamed at Kim Barksper that her performance was getting worse instead of better, that she was lazy, and that being pretty wasn't going to be enough to get her by in "the real world," so why did she think it was okay to rely on it at Darcy?

Maybe I was the only one, but during this episode I had had a moment of tremendous, drowning jealousy. I mean, how great would it have been to have Ms. Minogue announce in front of everyone that I was pretty, as if it were such an established fact that it could be used against me? Of course this would never have happened, because I was pretty, but not the kind of pretty that would make anyone bring it up as a criticism or a compliment. Not to mention that I had memorized the script the night Mr. Gosford announced that we were doing Runaways, and was off-book by the time we auditioned (I held my script anyway, though, way too a.s.s-kissing to show that I had memorized anything). I was Ms. Vanderly's favorite. In fact, I was the pet of every teacher at the school, except Ms. Minogue, who I tried to avoid, and Mr. Abraham, who barely knew who we were. It was a good situation for me in a way, because even though all the teachers loved me, the other students never hated me for it, since I was too much of a mascot to be a real threat. And maybe they all thought it was only fair that I should be good at school and singing, since what else would ever go my way.

"How do you know Kim cried?"

"I saw her in the hallway."

"Oh." I felt jealous again, imagining Kyle comforting her. "I'm sure you made her feel better." I tried to say this nicely, as just a compliment, but he must have heard the angst behind it, because he looked at me sideways, in a confused way.

"What does that mean?"

"Just that you're nice."

"Oh. Thanks."

"No problem. It's just the truth."

Here, we both waited for what felt like a long time.

I lost the stare-down or won the friendly, who-will-save-our conversation contest, depending on how you see it. "In fact, come to think of it, why are you so nice to me?"

He was pulling up to a huge house that looked like it had been built five minutes ago, entirely out of blond wood.