"Selling shoes," he said, smiling. "I did that one summer. It sucks, huh?"

"Yeah." The mall was whizzing by again, storefronts and people blurring past. Traveling with Sumner next to me, the mall was like an undiscovered country. He'd always had a way of making even the ordinary seem fun; during that summer at the beach he stayed in the water with me almost all the time, bodysurfing and doing handstands, diving for sh.e.l.ls and making up games. Ashley spent the whole week on the beach with her towel and sunscreen, tanning, while Sumner and I swam until our fingers were pruny and white. He was the only one who had time to play with me. If Ashley pouted and made a fuss when he tried to include me, he could usually get her to come around. And when he couldn't and we fought, he had a way of taking my side without it looking like he was betraying her. He stuck up for me, and I never forgot it.

As we zoomed past the fountain I looked up at the huge banners that hung from the ceiling, each with its community motif: a house, a school, a flower, an animal that looked like a goat but I figured was a deer. I had this sudden, crazy urge to stand on the seat and rip every one of them down as we pa.s.sed. I could almost feel my fingertips on the sheer fabric, smooth and giving as I yanked them from their bases. Speeding through the Lakeview Mall, dismantling it as I went. I glanced at Sumner, thinking of how much had changed, with the visions of those tumbling banners still in my head. I almost wanted to tell him, to ask him if he knew how it felt to be suddenly tempted to go wild. But we were flying along, the engine drowning all other sounds, and I let it go, for now.

Chapter Seven.

After my chariot ride through the mall it seemed like I ran into Sumner everywhere. This was partly due to the fact that he had so many jobs. Besides pepper-and-cheese man and mall security, he was also mowing the lawn at the cemetery and driving a school bus for r.e.t.a.r.ded children. Sumner did not believe in idle time.

I thought it must be fate that I kept b.u.mping into him, some strange sign that he was meant to come back into my life and fix or change something, a voice from the past arriving in the present with the answers to everything. I knew this was silly, but it was hard to dismiss Sumner's timing.

Lewis and Ashley continued to bicker and make up, almost daily. The moods she'd made a habit of inflicting exclusively on the family were now fair game to him as well, and as the wedding crept ever closer he approached our front door as if it was a bomb and the wrong word, compliment, or even expression could cause everything to blow. My mother and I commiserated silently, watching him climb the stairs to Ashley's room like a soldier going off to battle. I found myself liking Lewis more now that he was suffering with us; I imagined it being the way crisis victims bonded, joined by the unthinkable.

It was now an even two weeks until the wedding. My mother's lists had taken over the house, yellow stick-it notes flapping from anything that was stationary and big enough to hold them. They lined the bannister, grabbing my attention as I climbed the stairs. They hung from the fridge and the television, last-minute reminders, things not to forget. They were like caution signs, flagging me down and giving a warning to proceed carefully around the next turn. The wedding, so long churning over our house in a steady pattern, was beginning to whip itself into a storm.

"Where's that other package of thank-you notes?" I heard Ashley say from the kitchen as I got out of the shower one morning. "I need more than just the six that are left in this pack."

"Well, I put them in that same drawer," my mother answered, her shoes making a scuffling noise across the floor as she went off in search of the notes. "They can't have gone anywhere by themselves."

"Obviously not," Ashley growled under her breath, that same constantly grumbling, incoherent voice I seemed to hear behind me whenever I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I heard my mother come back and pull out a chair. "Here they are," she said in her singsong placating voice. "And I brought this list in so we could go over what needs doing today."

"Fine."

"Okay," my mother said, and there was a rustling of plastic that I a.s.sumed was Ashley ripping open the new cards. "First, there are the final fittings at Dillard's today at ten. I know Haven has traded shifts so she can be there, and I called this morning to make sure the headpiece was ready."

"She's probably grown another four feet and we'll have to get fitted again later," Ashley grumbled, and I stared at myself in my bathroom mirror, through the steam. I had almost outgrown my mirror, the top of my head barely within the frame. I examined myself, the geometry of my ribs, elbows, and collarbone. I imagined lines intersecting, planes going on forever and ever. My arms were long, lanky, thin, and my knees were hinges holding the bony parts of my skinny legs together. I was sharp to anyone who might brush against me.

"Ashley, you know your sister is sensitive about her height." This was the closest my mother came to scolding Ashley, who was old enough not to need it. "Imagine being fifteen and reaching six feet. It's very hard for her, and comments like that don't help."

"G.o.d, it's not like I'm saying it to her face," Ashley said bitterly, and I wondered if all those thank-you cards and all that grat.i.tude were having an adverse effect, leaving no niceties for anyone in person. "Besides, she'll be glad later. She'll never get fat."

"That's hardly a comfort now." My mother cleared her throat. "After the fitting we can have our final meeting with the caterer. He called yesterday and said the appetizers are in order and you just have to make some final decisions about desserts."

"G.o.d, I am so sick of making decisions." A pause, during which I heard my mother stirring her coffee. "And writing these d.a.m.n thank-you notes. Does anyone really think that I'm not grateful for their gift? Is it really necessary for me to state it in writing?"

"Yes, it is," my mother snapped, and I turned to look at the vent as the words came up through it, surprised at the impatience in her voice. "And I've been meaning to talk to you, Ashley, about your att.i.tude lately concerning this wedding and those who are doing their best to make it a success."

"Mother," Ashley began in that bored voice. I could almost see her waving her hand, dismissing the words even as my mother said them.

"No, you're going to listen this time." My mother was. .h.i.tting full speed now, gearing up. "I understand that you are under a lot of pressure and that it's hard being a bride. That is all well and good. But it does not, ever, ent.i.tle you to be rude, selfish, uncaring, and generally obnoxious to me or Haven or anyone else. We've been very patient with you because we're your family and we love you, but it stops here. I don't care if the wedding is two weeks or two hours away, you were never raised to behave this way. Do you understand me?"

And there it was. I stood naked, my eyes fixed on the steel grate of the vent that transmitted my mother's words, clear as bells, up to my own ears. It was quiet down there now, with only the sound of the ceiling fan creaking in slow circles.

Then, a sniffle. Another. A sob, and the floodgates opened. Ashley was wailing, her usual response to any justified attack. "I don't mean it," she began. "It's just hard, with my job and the Warshers and all the planning, and sometimes I just ..."

"I know, I know," my mother said, having jumped back into her soothing mode, easing off the troops and letting the skirmish settle down. "I just wanted to let you know how it was affecting everyone else. That's all."

I combed my hair, put on deodorant and eyeliner, and got myself ready for work while the gushing and apologizing continued. By the time my mother had gently suggested that Ashley come up and apologize to me for her behavior of, oh, the last four months, I was fully dressed and waiting on my bed. I opened the door when she knocked, trying to act spontaneous.

"Hey," I said, making a point not to notice her red eyes and the crumpled Kleenex clutched in her hand. "What's up?"

"Well," she said, leaning against the doorjamb and rubbing one foot with the heel of the other, "Mom and I were just talking about how crazy everything's been with the wedding and all, and I wanted to come up and say I'm sorry if I've been a jerk lately. I mean, I'm sorry for taking it all out on you, you know, when I did."

"Oh." I sat on my bed, nodding. "Well. That's fine."

"I'm serious, Haven." She came in and sat down beside me. "I'm sorry. It's the last time we'll ever be living under the same roof and I've been impossible. So I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I said. "And you have."

"Have what?"

"Been a jerk. And impossible." I smiled at her. "But I'm used to that from you."

"Shut up," she said, staring at me. Then she looked down and added, "Okay. You're right."

"I know," I said.

She stood up and walked to the door, turning back to me as she stepped out into the hallway. "You know, you're going to be really grateful someday."

"For what?"

"Being tall." She looked at me, her eyes traveling from my feet to my face. "You don't think so now, but you will."

"I doubt it," I said. "But thanks for making the effort."

She scowled at me, halfheartedly, and I listened to her tiny feet patter back down the hallway to the stairs. Ashley had two weeks left in the bedroom beside mine, with a wall so thin between us that I always knew when she cried herself to sleep or had nightmares and tossed in her sleep. I knew a lot more about Ashley than she would have allowed me to if she could have controlled such things. There was a strange bond between us, however unintentional: the divorce, the wall, the years that separated us or didn't. My sister was leaving the house, and me, in just two weeks. And regardless of it all, good and bad, I would be sad to see her go.

The fitting that afternoon went the way they all had. I stood on a chair while Mrs. Bella Tungsten, seamstress, crawled around on the floor beneath me with a mouthful of pins, mumbling through her teeth to "Stand still, please." She wore a measuring tape around her neck that she could brandish in a second, slapping it against my skin or around my waist with one flick of her wrist. This was the fourth and final fitting, and we all knew Mrs. Bella Tungsten a little better than we'd ever thought we would.

"I have never in all my life seen a child grow so fast." That was Mrs. Bella, tape in hand, tugging at the hem of my dress. "It's gonna have to be shorter on her than on the rest. That's all I can say."

"How much shorter?" My mother got up from the one good chair in Dillard's fitting room and came over to inspect for herself. "Noticeably?"

Mrs. Bella tugged again, trying to make length where there wasn't any to be found. "There's nothing I can do. I can't let the dress down."

Ashley sighed loudly from the corner of the room, where one of Mrs. Bella's a.s.sistants was unfurling her train, her arms full of white, silky fabric.

My mother shot Ashley a look and squatted down beside Mrs. Bella, staring at my hemline. "No one will be looking at the bottoms of the dresses, anyway. Right?" She didn't sound so sure.

"Well," Mrs. Bella said slowly, spitting out a few pins, "I suppose. You can hope for that, at least."

Meanwhile I just stood there, arms crossed over my chest to hold the dress up, which was missing the zipper as well as the white ribbon edging and bow that Ashley had added to personalize the pattern. It was bad enough to be standing in Dillard's with my mother and Mrs. Bella tugging on my hemline and staring at my ankles; but the employee lounge was in the next room, so people kept pa.s.sing through, carrying brown bags or cups of coffee and stopping on their way. They all knew Ashley, fellow employee, and stopped to coo and make a fuss over her and her dress. They just stared at me, the giant on the chair, too tall for the pretty pink bridesmaid dress that would now make me look like I was expecting a flood, not falling gracefully across my ankles as originally planned. I just stared ahead at a clock over the water fountain and pretended I was someplace, anyplace, else.

"Okay, Heaven honey, drop your arms so I can check this bodice." Mrs. Bella had been corrected several times about my name, to no avail. It was one detail too many to keep straight.

I dropped my arms and she slapped the tape across my chest, then pulled it around to the side. Her hands were dry and cold, and I felt goose b.u.mps immediately spring up and spread, my snap reaction to any contact with Mrs. Bella. She was my mother's age but already had that thick, musty smell of old women and old clothes. She dragged a stepstool around to stand on and climbed up to inspect the tape.

"I do believe there must be tallness somewhere in your family, Mrs. McPhail," she said as she pulled the tape tighter, then let it drop. "Or maybe on your husband's side?"

"No," my mother said in the light voice she used whenever she wanted to encourage something to pa.s.s, "not really."

"It has to come from somewhere, right, Heaven?" She pulled a pincushion from her pocket and fastened the back of the dress, inserting one pin after the other.

"It's Haven," my mother said gently, trying to get me to look at her so that I could see her please-be-patient expression. I kept my eyes on the clock, on the second hand jumping around the face, and concentrated on time pa.s.sing.

"Oh, right," Mrs. Bella said. "It's probably one of those-what do they call them, recessive genes? Only pops up every other generation or so."

My mother murmured softly, trying to move Mrs. Bella along. Ashley was walking around the room in her dress and bare feet while the a.s.sistant followed, fixing the train behind her. More employees were pa.s.sing through now, with the clock nearing twelve-thirty. I could feel my face getting red. I felt gargantuan, my head almost brushing the ceiling, my arms dragging past Mrs. Bella to the pins on the floor. I had that image of pulling down the banners in the center court of the mall again, my hands clutching the fabric as it billowed before me. I imagined myself monsterlike, plodding like G.o.d zilla through the aisles of Dillard's, searching out Mrs. Bella with her pin-filled mouth and recessive genes and hoisting her above my head in one fist, triumphant. I envisioned myself cutting a swath of destruction across the mall, across town itself, exacting revenge on everyone who stared at me or made the inevitable basketball jokes like I hadn't heard one ever before. My mind was soaring, filled with these images of chaos and revenge, when Mrs. Bella's voice cut through: "Okay, honey, the back's unpinned. With a little creative sewing I think we can get this dress to look right on you."

I looked down to see Ashley below me in her own dress, a vision of white fabric and tan skin, her face turned upward, hand clamping her headpiece. "Just don't grow for two weeks," she said to me, half-serious. "As a favor to me."

"Ashley!" my mother said, suddenly fed up with everyone. "Get out of the dress, Haven, and we'll go to lunch."

I went to change and slipped off the dress, careful not to stab myself with any of the hundreds of pins in the fabric. I put on my clothes and brought the dress out folded over my arm, handing it back to Mrs. Bella, who was now absorbed in sticking pins into Ashley, who deserved it. We left her standing there in all her white, as if waiting to be placed in the whipped-creamy center of a cake.

We had to eat at the mall, so we chose Sandwiches N' Such, which was a little place by Yogurt Paradise that sold fancy sandwiches and espresso and had little tables with white-and-red-checked tablecloths, like you were in Italy. We sat in the far corner, with the espresso machine sputtering behind us.

We didn't talk much at first. I ate my tuna fish on wheat and looked out at the crowd walking underneath the fluttering banners of the mall. My mother picked at her food, not eating so much as moving things from side to side. Something was bothering her.

"What's wrong?"

As soon as I asked she looked up at me, surprised. She'd never been comfortable with how easily I could read her, preferring to think she could still fool me by covering what was awful or scary with the sweep of her hand, the way she chased monsters out from under my bed when I was little.

"Well," she said, shifting in her chair, "I guess I just wanted a little time alone with you to take stock."

"Stock of what?" I concentrated on my food, picking around the mushy parts.

"Of us. You know, once the wedding is over and Ashley moves out, it's just going to be the two of us. Things will be different." She was working up to something. "I've thought a lot about this and it's best, I think, if I kept you apprised of what's happening. I don't want to make any major decisions without consulting you, Haven."

This tone, this jumble of important-sounding words, seemed too much like the kitchen-table talk we'd gotten the morning my father moved out. They'd come to us together, while I was eating my cereal, a united front announcing a split. That had been a long time ago, before my mother bought all her matching shorts-and-sandals sets and my father sprung new hair, a new wife, and a new beginning. But the feeling in my stomach was the same.

"Are you going to Europe?" I asked her.

"I don't know yet," she said. "I really want to go, but I'm worried about leaving you alone so soon after your sister moves out. And of course the fall, with you in school ... the timing just isn't so good."

"I'd be okay," I said, watching a baby at the table next to us drooling juice all over himself. "If you want to go, you should go." I felt bad for not meaning this, even as I said it.

"Well, as I said, I haven't decided." She folded her napkin, over once and then again: a perfect square. "But there is something else I need to discuss with you."

"What?"

She sighed, placed the napkin in the dead even center of her plate, and said quickly, "I'm thinking about selling the house."

The moment she said it a picture of our house jumped into my head like a slide jerking up onto a screen during a school presentation. I saw my room and my mother's garden and the walk to the front door with day lilies blooming on either side. In my mind it was always summer, with the gra.s.s short and thick and the garden in full color, flowers waving in the breeze.

"Why?"

The hard part, the spitting out part, was done and now she relaxed. "Well, it's only going to be the two of us, and it would be cheaper if we moved somewhere smaller. We could find a nice apartment, probably, and save money. The house is really too big for just two people. We can't possibly fill it. Selling just seems like the logical choice."

"I don't want to move," I said a bit too loudly, and I was surprised at the sharp tone in my voice. "I can't believe you want to sell it."

"It's not a question of wanting to, necessarily. You don't know how expensive it is to keep it up, month after month. I'm only thinking of the best plan."

"I don't like the best plan." I didn't like any of it, suddenly, the changes and reorganizations and alterations to my life that were all in the control of other people and outside forces. I looked at my mother in her nice pink outfit and lipstick and Lydia-inspired frosted-and-cut hair and wanted to blame her for everything: the divorce and stupid Lewis and Ashley's wedding and even the height that set me to stooping and scrunching myself ever smaller, fighting nature's making my body betray me. But as I looked at her, at the concern in her face, I said none of this. I would push it back again, dig my heels into where I stood while the world shifted around me, what I'd considered givens suddenly lost to someone else's mistakes, miscalculations, or whims. A marriage, a sister, a house, each an elemental part of me, now gone.

"Haven, none of this is decided yet," my mother said, reaching across the table awkwardly to brush back my hair, her fingers smoothing my cheek. "Let's not get upset, okay? Maybe we can work something out."

"I'm sorry," I said, thinking of the tether again, pulling me back even as I strained to get away, to speak my mind. "I didn't mean to snap at you."

She smiled. "It's okay. I think we should all be allowed to yell at each other, at least once, before the wedding. It would probably do us all a lot of good."

Later, after we'd made small talk so that she could feel we'd ended on a good note, I sat alone at the table and stared out into the mall, putting off going to work. The Lakeview Models would make their first appearance the next weekend, kicking off the official start of mall season, each weekend an event or sales spectacular. It was a whole world, the mall, enclosed and safe, parameters neatly marked. Only Sumner seemed out of bounds, cruising in his golf cart wherever he pleased, keeping the peace and dodging the crowds. As I left I could see him over by the giant gumball machine, uniform on, looking official. He saw me and came over, leaving his cart safely parked by a row of ferns.

"You look upset," he observed, dropping into step beside me. His uniform cuffs rolled over his feet and hid his shoes.

"Well, it's been a long day," I said.

"What happened?" He waved at the owner of Shirts Etc., a round woman with jet black hair that had to be a wig. Her bangs were too neat, clipped straight across her forehead.

"I just had lunch with my mother."

"And how is she?"

"Fine. She's going to Europe." I was walking as slowly as I could, with the Little Feet sign looming up ahead. The words were spelled out in shoes, just like on the boxes and the name tag in my pocket, which I would wait until the last possible second to put on.

"I love Europe," Sumner said, adjusting his gla.s.ses. "I went my soph.o.m.ore year and had a grand time. Lots of pretty girls, if you don't mind underarm hair."

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Mind underarm hair?"

He thought for a minute. "No. Not especially. But it depended on my mood and the extent of the hair itself. They have great chocolate in Europe, too. You should ask your mom to bring you some."

"I think we're going to move," I said, trying out the words for the first time. It felt strange. Again I saw my house, my room, the flowers. Maybe we'd end up in an apartment like Ashley's, all white paint and new carpet smell, with a splashing pool within earshot.