"What do you want?"

She nibbles at her lip to study me again-my face, my hair, the way I can't stop fussing with my crystal guide. She looks down at her lunch box and jiggles it back and forth, a tiny smile creeping across her lips. "You'll have to do what I tell you to, okay?" she says. "No matter how messed up it might seem to you."

"It isn't something illegal, is it?"

"Oh, no," she says, her smile growing by the moment. "Nothing like that." The bus pulls up, but she waves it away, taking a seat next to me on the bench. "We'll get the next one."

"Can I at least know your name?"

"Maria," she says.

"Maria." I smile. "It's superb to meet you. We're all cos-mically destined in Life School, don't you think?"

"Whatever," she says, her face s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up again. She slips on her jacket and opens her palm, inviting me to study it-the lines of her fate and life and love and spirituality. "This line here," I say, "shows you'll live a long life. But see all these breaks? These show complications, you know? The rough stuff."

I glance down at her scratches, noticing how a couple of them are peeking out from the sleeve of her jacket. I want to ask her about them, but I'm afraid that if I do, she'll want to leave. Finally, she pulls the cuff downward to cover the scratches up.

"See this line in the middle?" I say, looking back at her palm. "That's your fate line."

"And what's my fate doing?"

"It's broken," I say. "See here, where your life line interrupts your fate line? That means that stuff goes on in your life that keeps you from reaching your destiny. And this line, here, your line of sun? This also interrupts your fate line."

"What does that mean?"

"Your line of sun speaks of your spirituality and well-being. But yours is weak, except where it breaks your fate. Your love line, too; it's crossed by branches of your fate and sun. Even your family line crosses your love line. It's like there are so many kinks, but your lines can't quite make it over them."

"I guess I don't have a chance," she says, but she's laughing when she says it, like she's long been resolved to a fruitless future. Like it comes as no surprise at all.

"Sure you do," I say. "There's always a chance in Life School. It's all about learning. Just ask yourself, what in your life causes difficulty. What harnesses you from attaining your goals? If you can identify that, you can change your own fate."

"Easy," she says.

"It's not easy. In my case, my family line interrupts everything-my fate, my sun, my mind-though, at the same time, it's the dullest line of all. I just have to remind myself of that every once in a while so I don't let my lack of roots consume me." I inhale a cleansing breath, thinking how good it feels to be reminded.

"I don't know why you can't just plant your own roots," she says. "Why can't you just decide to be someplace and then be there? Make friends there? Make a life there? Why do you need to rely on people who obviously don't know or give a s.h.i.t about you, to get on with your life?"

"Don't you believe in a sense of blood relation?"

"I have no reason to. And from what you're saying, neither do you."

Her verbal acid sinks into my chest, eats a hole in my heart, makes me want to cry bright fiery tears. But I don't. I can't. I have to be strong for her. Maybe she doesn't know what she's saying. Maybe she's just trying to be honest with me.

"Can I ask you just one question?" I say.

"What?"

"Does your family line interrupting your love line have anything to do with these scratches on your arms?" I pull up on her sleeve, and finger over one of them, the blood still a bit fresh.

Maria responds by s.n.a.t.c.hing her arm away. She stands up and grabs her lunch box-a scratchy-eyed Diana staring into my knee. "f.u.c.k you!" she says.

"I just want to help you, Maria."

"Help yourself," she huffs. "You're so fake, pretending to be all sensitive and everything. You're not fooling anyone with all your sunny pink bulls.h.i.t."

I feel my jaw tense, my chest weep. I sit up tall, trying to retain confidence, trying to a.s.sure myself that none of what she's saying is true.

"You're not even worth it to me," she says, glancing down at her lunch box. She turns on her heel and dashes down the street, leaving me alone.

I fold up from the bench, feeling completely defeated-filled with more rainy-day sadness than I thought I'd ever know. Still, I decide it would be best to go after her.

I begin walking down North Street. Maria actually isn't that much ahead. I follow as she takes a bunch more streets, keeping at least three shop lengths behind her as she continues on to Hawthorne Boulevard, pa.s.ses the Irish church, the wig shop, and crosses the street to the bank. There's one of those old-fashioned phone booths in the parking lot, the novelty kind. I watch from the alcove of the wig shop as she steps inside the booth to make a phone call. The fusion of scents in the air-of oily hair mixed in sweet perfume-makes me feel queasy.

Four minutes flip forward on the digital bank clock. Then ten. I wonder what's keeping her. I cross the street and approach the booth. Her back is toward me, but she's not on the phone. Her head is down and she's curled up in the corner. I knock.

"I'm busy."

"Please, Maria," I say. "I want to speak with you. I want to help you. Don't you realize? We were fated to meet."

Since we're so much alike.

Maria turns to face me, her eyes all red and spider-veiny. I imagine her aura as a solid black cape over her shoulders. Her lunch box is wide open on the ground. Her sleeve is rolled up. And there's a safety pin, of all things, jammed deep into her inner forearm, all the way in.

I fold the door open, and there are blood tears running down her olive cheeks. "Here," I say, "let me help you." I take her arm and cradle it in mine, pull up on the safety pin and pluck it out.

Maria allows my arms to wrap around and hold her. I feel her fingers press against my back. And I think how it must have been destiny that Ache and I never did end up meeting today. How maybe Maria's the first real friend I've met since I got here.

How maybe I've accomplished a lot today.

SAt.u.r.dAY, AUGUST 12, 5:45 P.M.

I don't know Kelly Pickerel. But I know of her.

I know that Mr. Vargas, the computer teacher, paid her two hundred dollars to give him a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b, and that she ended up doing it, right there in his cla.s.sroom, right under his desk. That's what I heard. I also heard that she did it in the park with four guys from the lacrosse team-all four at once!

She's one of those girls who, on the surface, everybody thinks they want to be like-pretty, popular, lots of boyfriends. Except as soon as she opens her mouth you can tell she's really a b.i.t.c.h and a s.l.u.t, and everyone knows it.

I flip through the sc.r.a.pbook I've found at the back of her closet. She's got some pretty screwed up hobbies. It's loaded with all these old newspaper clippings about some guy who murdered his girlfriend.

"Ginger?" Emily calls from the doorway. "What are you doing in Kelly's room?"

"Your mom asked me to clean," I say, draping one of Kelly's scarves around my neck-a purple shimmery one with silver threads woven throughout. "Go play."

Emily gives me a pouty face, but she knows better than to give me s.h.i.t, so she just stomps off.

I love babysitting for the Pickerels. Not that I love kids. I hate kids. I hate all kids over six and under thirteen. My sister Sadie is eleven and she's the worst. Emily is five, so she's borderline.

Babysitting here is cool for the following reasons: 1. Mrs. Pickerel only goes out for two hours, tops.

2. She pays me fifteen dollars an hour, plus a big tip.

3. Emily doesn't mind playing by herself.

4. Unlike my mother, Mrs. Pickerel could probably care less that I'm a dancer. So she doesn't care when I pig out on her snacks. Doesn't say anything about how many Suzy Q's are gone from the package. Or how big my thighs are. Or how straight my back is when I do a pirouette.

5. Kelly's away in California for the summer, visiting her father, so her room is ripe for snooping.

Of course, it wasn't easy landing this gig. I had to work for it. I knew Kelly had a younger sister, and when I found out through Cheryl's older brother's friend Jessie that Kelly was going away for the summer, a lightbulb clicked on over my head.

The day after she left, I went by Kelly's house, rang the doorbell, and introduced myself to Mrs. Pickerel. I told her that I was fairly new to the area, just riding by on my bike, looking for kids (potential clients), noticed she had some (from the telltale swing set in the yard), and was wondering if she'd ever need someone to look after them once in a while. Then the clincher: I started talking about all my plans for college and how I was already saving up, how I was the freshman cla.s.s treasurer at Salem High, certified in CPR, and a cla.s.sical ballerina, happy to pa.s.s on my dancing skills to small children, namely hers. A perfect blend of responsibility, brains, and talent.

But I think what really did it was the resume I typed up, with the carefully chosen font-Comic Sans-to show my fun, yet professional side. I listed my work experience in bold: a babysitting job of Cheryl's that I pa.s.sed off as my own, a fund-raiser thing I'd organized (a chocolate sale I'd read about in some book for English cla.s.s), and a volunteer summer gig at the Crombie Street Shelter. All completely bogus.

All so I could get into Kelly Pickerel's room and teach her a lesson once and for all.

Of course, I can't just rifle through her room every time I'm here. Emily would get suspicious and I'd be fired. I have to be discreet, rummage through in stages, cover one area at a time (like today, for example, with her closet). Plus, I'm not just looking for anything. I'm looking for the thing. The one ingredient that will really bring Kelly down.

A couple weeks ago I went through her bookcase. They say you can tell a lot about people from what they read. Plus, since I like to hide stuff in and between books, I thought this might be the most incriminating place. She's got a few copies of stuff I've read--Judy Blume, Christopher Pike, Maya Angelou. But mostly it's all these touchy, feel-good, self-help books. t.i.tles like When Nothing Matters Anymore, Fighting Invisible Tigers, Get Over It, and When Love Hurts. Total snore material.

The time before that, I looked under her bed. I found one of those fire-safe boxes. At first I thought I'd hit the incriminating jackpot, seeing that there was a key sticking out of the lock, but instead it was kind of ... weird. There was all this stuff crammed inside. One of those plastic snow globes with a family of yellow cats holding paws in a circle, one spotted cat in the center. A handful of foreign coins. A set of rosary beads and a laminated picture of the Virgin Mary. And then, at the bottom of everything, as if it were a liner, a folded up drawing of a whale. It had been done with little-kid hands, in crayons, and signed at the bottom: Love Kelly. At the top it said To a Whale of a Dad. I could tell it'd been crumpled up, and that Kelly had done her best to try and straighten it out.

It made me wonder if my dad still kept my old art stuff. Or if it, too, ended up crumpled into a paper ball.

The closest I've ever come to actually talking to Kelly was this past year. I had my hair braided and then spiraled around the crown of my head. I don't normally wear it that way, but I was being dragged into Boston right after school to try out for the Nutcracker (my mother's stupid idea), and needed to have it up. Kelly and her friend, this girl Maria, were talking in the courtyard outside the school gym. Kelly tapped me on the shoulder as I walked by them. "Hey, freshman," she said, "do us a favor and be the ashtray." Then Maria, the smoking one, flicked her ashes in my hair, and Kelly let out this loud hyena laugh.

Then, one time after school, right before Thanksgiving, I saw her walking with some jock-guy from the lacrosse team. He had his arm dangling around her shoulders, but he kept moving it down to tickle her waist. She was laughing extra loud, like she wanted everyone to hear how much fun she was having-she thinks she's so great. But then she saw me, just standing there watching her, and her expression changed-two rock-hard eyes; one long, tight slit of a mouth-like she was mad or embarra.s.sed or something. She peeled the slit open for only a second to mouth the words "go screw" at me.

But my worst run-in with the b.i.t.c.h was right at the beginning of finals last year. It was in study hall, in the cafeteria, and I was talking to Matt, this guy in my algebra cla.s.s who I'd been majorly crushing on for the past two quarters. Of course, Matt didn't know about my crushdom-at least I don't think he did-because I'd been pretending to be interested in his math skills (yeah, right!). Anyway, while the two of us were reviewing his Pythagorean theorem notes, Kelly and her b.i.t.c.h friends were sitting a full two tables back, but I could still hear their huge junior mouths. Obviously none of them cared about pa.s.sing finals or getting into college or anything, because not even one of them had a book opened. I kept eyeballing Mr. Vargas the whole time, wanting him to say something to them. I mean, after all, it was study hall. But he just kept flipping through the pages of his newspaper like the overweight and underpaid slouch of a teacher that he is. Not that I ever really expected him to reprimand his precious Kelly; that could cost him some serious nookie points.

Anyway, after a good twenty minutes of listening to Kelly's hyena laugh, I felt something hit against the back of my head. I ignored it at first, hoping it was just a fluke, but then I felt more.

"Hungry?" I heard someone shout out.

At the same moment, a handful of sunflower seeds landed on the table in front of me. I looked up at Matt to see if he'd noticed. He had. He was staring right at Kelly and all her b.i.t.c.h friends.

"Tell her to have some birdseed," Kelly shouted at him.

I turned to look. At the same moment, a couple of sunflower seeds beaned me in the face-one landed at the corner of my eye; the other hit me in the nose. Kelly was staring right at me, a stupid smirk across her stupid face, a sandwich bag full of sunflower seeds clutched in her hand. "Can I buy you a burger, honey?" she asked. "You're looking a little rexic."

"Excuse me?"

"As in anorexic," she explained, raising her eyebrows like I'm the stupid one. "What are you ... a size negative seven?"

Holy. Effing. s.h.i.t. My face turned flame red-I could feel it-and there were hot bubbly tears filling the rims of my eyes. Laughter erupted all around me, probably just from Kelly's table, but at that moment, it was like everyone was making fun-even Matt.

I opened my mouth to say something clever but nothing came out. And so I just turned back around, hoping that Kelly would just go away.

She didn't.

More sunflower seeds pelted against my back. I looked up at Matt, and he looked away, back to his a-b-c notes, like he didn't want to talk to me anymore. I grabbed my books and spent the remainder of the study hall period in the bathroom, locked in one of the stalls, crouched atop the toilet so no one would see me.

A week later, when I saw Kelly Pickerel again, it was like she didn't even know who I was, like she didn't even remember what she'd done. Her eyes pa.s.sed over me as if I were nothing more than another faceless freshman in her path.

I wonder if she'll be even more of a b.i.t.c.h now that she's a senior.

I toss the sc.r.a.pbook onto her bed for a later look and glance through her closet a bit more, checking out the rest of her clothes. I can't believe Kelly's a size seven/eight. I had her pegged for way bigger than that. I pluck a dress off the rack-this pepper-green velvet number, with long matching gloves. It's her winter ball dress. I recognize it from the photo by her bed-she and Sean O'Connell posing smack-dab in the middle of two giant balloon bouquets. I consider trying it on, but the phone rings, interrupting me.

I'm thinking it's my mother, telling me she's finally located Sadie after the little head case decided to run away again (like I care!). But it isn't. It's some girl who's looking for Kelly. "She isn't home," I say, kicking my sandals off and pressing my toes into the thick melon-colored carpet. I hold the dress up and glance in the mirror. There's a giant red mark on my chest. I look closer. It's colored in with a bunch of tiny blood dots. I can thank Sadie for this. If she wasn't so hard up for attention that she has to run away every five minutes, Mom would have driven me here instead of making me walk, and I wouldn't have gotten mauled by a car full of losers carrying water balloons. I hate adolescent boys!

"Well, do you know where I can reach her?" the girl asks. "She left her cell phone in my diner."

"Kelly's in California," I say, peeking at the red sunburn stripe down the part in my hair-so attractive. I've been thinking about doing one of those six-week color washes, one with a raspberry tint, but I know my mother would kill me. She loves my hair b.u.t.t-long, blond, and straight.

"Yeah, so am I," the girl says. "She was in my diner earlier today, with her boyfriend, and left her cell phone. She has this number labeled as 'home.'"

"Yeah, well this is her house in Ma.s.sachusetts" I say, making a smile face in the mirror, wondering if the green color of the dress coupled with my metal braces makes me look like a tinsel-topped Christmas tree.

"Do you know how to reach her here?" she asks.

"Nope." I slip my water balloon-dampened shorts down my legs and pull the dress up over my bathing suit, managing to zip up the back by balancing the phone between my neck and shoulder. It goes down to a little below my knee.

"Well, do you know how to reach Robby?"

"Who?" I turn sideways and wonder if my b.u.t.t looks big.

"Robby. Her boyfriend."

Robby? I take a second glance at the winter ball picture. "You mean Sean?"

"No, I mean Robby, Kelly's boyfriend. Wait, who am I speaking to?"

"I don't know where you could reach him," I say, and hang up quickly.

This is almost too juicy-good to be true. I pinch at the folds of extra fabric gathered at the waist and pirouette around and around with excitement, until I lose my spotting and smack down on my b.u.t.t. This needs clear thought. I need to be smart. I need to plan well. I grab the sc.r.a.pbook and finger at the binding. Should I look around for her dad's number and call her, make her s.h.i.t with what I know? Could I maybe use this info as blackmail?

But what if she and Sean broke up? I guess it's possible. Maybe it happened right before she went away. Maybe I should call him to be sure.

I tiptoe down the hallway, so Emily doesn't hear me, and make my way into the kitchen. Sean's number is on a list tacked up by the phone. I ink it onto the back of my hand, pluck a Scooter Pie from the free-for-all cupboard, and peek into the family room on my way back to Kelly Land. Emily's got her back to me, her eyes practically glued to the TV, watching Bob the Builder fix some birdhouse. Ode to cable TV-the ultimate babysitter.

Back in Kelly's room, I flop onto the bed. First things first. I peel the paper back from the Scooter Pie, take a giant bite, and think up what I'm going to say to Sean. Maybe while I'm talking to him I could mention that his girlfriend has a twisted idea of what goes in a sc.r.a.pbook. I flip it open and glance over the pictures. A closeup of a boy handcuffed and being led into a police car. A cla.s.s picture of the girl he killed. She's got this giant crooked-teeth smile wedged up her face, like being killed by her boyfriend is the last thing she expects. Sucks for her. Then there's a picture of a rock, the murder weapon, with blood spatters on the point.

Perfect breakup ammo!

I swallow down the last bite of the Scooter Pie, press STAR-SIX-SEVEN to block the caller ID, and dial Sean's number. "h.e.l.lo, is this Sean?" I ask when a boy picks up.

"Yeah. Who's this?"

"A friend."