"Now what's the matter?" August's scarecrow features fil ed up the s.p.a.ce in front of me.

"Are you bust?" His gnarled fingers, one of the tips shorn off, tilted my cards. "Aw, that's too bad. That gives you twenty-four. Too much. Let's see what Lady Luck delivers me." His fingers siphoned off a card. "d.a.m.n." The word drifted from his mouth, a disappointment reluctant to leave the warm nest of his body and become manifest.

"I got twenty-seven. That's even worse."

He showed his cards to me. A nine of hearts, an eight of spades, and the pucker-lipped jack of diamonds. I spotted a family resemblance to the king of hearts in the scaly stare, the pompous curls, the shoulders that didn't look as if they were going to give in to Lady Luck anytime soon. The stamp of royalty, I figured, must make a person successful but cruel. I tucked that fact in the back of my mind to use in one of my Bugaboo stories.

"Don't worry," August said into the brittle air, laying a straw-boned arm across my shoulders.

"That's chance for you. The chips don't always fal where you want 'em to." His chin slackened with this admission, then tipped up, the stumps of teeth in his mouth little gravestones swimming in a yel ow tide.

His way of smiling. "Next time I'l teach you girls grand hazard."

His palm disappeared into his pocket and emerged with a trio of black-tipped, ivory dice.

They gleamed in his hand, smooth and round, the way his teeth never had and probably never would.

At night, I took to sleeping with the deck of cards August gave me slipped under my pil ow and hoped that when I woke, the bulbous eyes of the jacks, the haughty lips of the queens, and the ridiculous crowns on the kings would be squashed flat. Every morning, however, they were unaltered, and it was my own face-puffy and moon-sized in its proportions-that displayed al the damage. Week by week, my cheeks grew rounder, my head more elongated. My legs sprouted like vines. Soon, my ankles protruded a good three inches from under my pants hem, and my legs shivered in the raw air, but there were only so many sets of boys' clothes the Dyersons could afford to buy. More and more clothing piled up on Amelia's side of the room.

Serena Jane, on the other hand, was gathering more clothes than she knew what to do with at the Pickertons'. Mrs. Pickerton sewed them for her-dresses with b.u.t.terfly col ars and perfect white blouses with sheer sleeves puffed on them like dandelion fluff. Each week, Elsie, Mrs. Pickerton's maid, laundered and ironed the garments back into elaborate shapes, ready for their next promenade.

They stood at attention in the wardrobe like little tin soldiers. When I went over to visit her, I liked to comb through her closet.

"How come you never wear this?" I asked, extracting a green plaid kilt. I liked the way it looked with its brutal safety pin-like something for a Celtic warrior. Serena Jane didn't even look up from her movie magazine.

"I don't know." It was raining, and we "I don't know." It was raining, and we hadn't felt like going to Hinkleman's.

I reached into my hip pocket. "Want to see a card trick?" But the only sound was Serena Jane turning a page. I hung the kilt back in the closet.

"If it was me, I'd about wear this every day."

Amanda Pickerton knocked, then stuck her head around the door. Sentinel-stouter and slower, but no less obnoxious-mewed violently at her heels. Instinctively, I edged away from him.

"Serena Jane? Chicken pot pie for dinner." My mouth began watering, but Amanda curdled her lips into a smile for me. "Don't worry, dear. August knows to come get you. He'l be here shortly." She noticed my hand on the kilt in the closet and shook her head.

"Oh no," she said. "No, no, no. You would be a disaster in plaid. Absolutely." She shut the door behind her as if she were locking a reptile in a cage.

I went and flopped on the bed next to Serena Jane, causing the mattress to lurch. She didn't even know how lucky she was. She had chicken pot pie-hot and bubbling, straight from the oven-whenever she wanted it and a ruffled bedspread that was flecked with snooty primroses.

She had pocket money every week, whether she deserved it or not. I nudged my sister with my shoulder, sending the mattress lurching again. "Do you ever miss me?" I kept my eyes pointed straight down, my gaze swimming among the bedspread's primroses. If anything, I thought, she should be the lonely one. After al , I had Amelia in the bed next to me at night, snoring her funny, snuffly snore. Serena Jane had no one here.

Serena Jane tossed her magazine on the floor and flipped over to her back. "Sometimes, when I go to sleep. It's weird without you." She blinked up at the ceiling, and I pictured her doing that in the middle of the night, her arms raised over her head like wings. I reminded myself that nothing came for free. My sister's piano lessons and new wardrobe had a price. Maybe it seemed steeper in the dark. Serena Jane rol ed back over to her stomach and brushed the hair off her cheeks. "In the morning, everything is fine, though. I'm getting used to it."

I pictured her drinking coffee and milk out of Amanda Pickerton's basket-weave wedding china, spooning fresh fruit out of the crystal bowl, and tolerating the Reverend Pickerton's rapturous gaze.

Whenever I came over, I noticed that he spent a lot of time hiding behind his paper if Serena Jane was in the room. When he was done with the front page, he busied himself with drafts of his sermon and budget forms until Serena Jane left, wafting behind her the unusual scent of tuberose. Once, I watched him sniff the air tentatively, like a dog investigating a new bone, al owing himself one sharp inhalation, one perfumed blast of sin-his rapture for the day.

If he had been a gambling man-and he wasn't, not by any means-I bet the Reverend Pickerton would have laid his entire fortune out in front of Serena Jane's fairy feet just for the pleasure of it, just to watch her lithe arms scoop it al up to her bosom. He was a man of the spirit, but he wasn't total y ignorant of the ways of the flesh. I bet he would have paid to put himself on Serena Jane's side of the stakes any day of the week. He wasn't a fool. He knew that in this world, beauty always comes out on top.

Chapter Seven.

As the days after my father's death turned into months, and as January led into February's dreaded chil , I refused to return to school. Nothing Brenda said to me made any difference, either. "Don't you miss Serena Jane?" she asked. "Don't you want to spend more time with her?" I shook my head. At school, Serena Jane had always made it a point to sit as far away from me as possible, and she'd consistently ignored me in recess, flocking instead to the more pleasingly proportioned girls.

Brenda tried a different tack. "Don't you want to see your friends?" I snorted.

"Suit yourself." She shrugged. "Saves us on gas. You can stay out here with Amelia." Because of Amelia's mute spel s, Brenda taught her at home.

Amelia had never set foot in that schoolroom, and I intended to fol ow her lead. At the sound of her name, the muscles in my throat slackened as though they'd been given a balm. Amelia. My main companion now. Amelia, who bubbled like a soup kettle when she tried to speak to anyone but me, kettle when she tried to speak to anyone but me, who glided unseen in the edges of shadows, whose skin was so pale, it seemed as if the daylight might break her in half.

Not everyone was pleased with my new arrangement, however. Miss Sparrow, for one, was starting to stew in her cla.s.sroom. What was it about me? she wondered. Why couldn't I be fenced within the reasonable bounds of educational authority?

According to her view of the universe, if ever a creature needed inst.i.tutional shaping, it was I. And even though she found me absolutely grotesque and personal y repugnant, she was stil more than wil ing to have a whack at whittling down the bulk of me.

She waited until after Valentine's Day before she paid her first visit to the farm, sparing me the usual flurry of construction paper hearts pa.s.sing in and out of everyone's hands but mine. Through the grime of a frosted upstairs window, Amelia and I watched her mince her way from her car toward the rickety front door, her rabbit-skin boots leaving a refined cal igraphy in the snow. There was a series of machine-gun raps on the door, and then Brenda answered. Priscil a Sparrow's eyes raked over Brenda's thin shoulders and paisley head scarf, and Brenda's jaw tightened like a bow. Then Brenda's lips moved and released al the arrows she was hiding in her mouth, piercing Miss Sparrow's armor of nail lacquer, and hairspray, and Coral Gables lipstick. The nicked wooden door swung closed in Miss Sparrow's face. Upstairs, I dug a single fingernail into my palm, scratching a line into my flesh to keep score. Downstairs, I could hear Brenda banging pots and pans in the kitchen.

"Girls," she crowed, "come on down here and help me set this table." She clattered a handful of forks together like sabers. "That d.a.m.n fool woman," she muttered, slamming bowls of Irish stew onto the table. "Thinks she knows it al ." She ran her eyes over the b.u.mps of my body, then over Amelia's skinny cheeks, and paused. "She doesn't know the first thing about us."

The sentiment proved to be equal y true on Brenda's part when it came to underestimating Miss Sparrow. For in spite of her careful y limned makeup, and clattery high heels, and fancy words, Priscil a Sparrow was a warrior at heart. In her opinion, she had right on her side, and she had no intention whatsoever of letting an il iterate like Brenda Dyerson cal the shots. She tromped back to her car, the heels of her furry boots leaving a trail of cruel crescents, and drove home, where she brewed herself a strong cup of tea, spiked it with a splash of sherry, and regrouped.

The day of Miss Sparrow's second visit, the snow was up to her knees. She had to abandon her car on the main road and stumble down the dirt lane to the farm, but it didn't deter her from reaching the farmhouse door and pounding on it like a refugee. This time, I was in the kitchen, drinking cocoa at the scabbed table with Amelia, and I could see large wet flakes staining Miss Sparrow's painted cheeks. Once again, Brenda blocked the doorway with her meager body and c.o.c.ked her jaw, resenting the heat that was curling around her ankles and out into the air. Priscil a Sparrow might have been good at math, but she wasn't even aware of the calculations we went through in deciding whether or not to put another log on the fire.

"What is it?" Brenda spat.

Miss Sparrow didn't waste precious words. She scrabbled in her pocket with her finely gloved fingers and produced an envelope.

"From the superintendent of the board of education. It states that, by law, you're required to send any children in your care to school, and that if you don't, you can be found negligent and have the children removed." She glanced over Brenda's broom-handle shoulder and took in my bulk and Amelia's greasy hair and sleepy eyes. Unattractive girls, both of us, she thought, but that wasn't her concern. She was merely here to see that the rules were fol owed, that justice was done, that no one fel through the cracks on her watch.

Brenda accepted the envelope, stuffing it into her ap.r.o.n pocket without looking at it. She was an expert in receiving unwelcome news. In her experience, bad correspondence always arrived dressed up-splashed with red ink, embossed with seals and a lot of stamps, as if written threats needed extra muscle the way loan sharks needed heavies. She knew al about them, and they knew about her.

Brenda shivered with a blast of icy air and scuttled her shoes on the floorboards. On the other side of the door, Priscil a Sparrow was stil other side of the door, Priscil a Sparrow was stil craning her neck, trying to get a good look us.

"Is that al ?" Brenda closed the door a fraction of an inch.

In the cold, the tip of Miss Sparrow's nose was turning bulbous and red. Nevertheless, she managed a sickly smile. "Unless you have any special circ.u.mstances of which I'm unaware." Her teeth hung in her mouth like icicles.

Brenda produced a sickly smile of her own. "No special circ.u.mstances. Truly wil be back at school in the morning."

Priscil a Sparrow's stained lips retreated even farther over the ridges of her teeth. "Oh, but this letter stands for all the children at this residence. I believe you and your husband have a child of your own? A girl? Whom you've never sent to school?"

"I teach Amelia here at home. She's shy.

She has a hard time with her speech."

The corners of Priscil a Sparrow's eyes narrowed into poison- tipped darts. "And what makes you think you're qualified to meet that responsibility? Do you have any kind of formal training in pedagogy? Any familiarity with child development and psychology?"

At that moment, Amelia snuck up behind her mother and peeked around her ap.r.o.n. A life pa.s.sed amid gangsters, horse thieves, smugglers, and gamblers had granted Amelia an unerring nose for greed, vanity, and other a.s.sorted venal characteristics, and in Miss Sparrow, she smel ed rancid pride combined with the bitter char of unrequited love. She smel ed the lemon tang of loneliness mingling with despair. Just under Priscil a Sparrow's skin, Amelia could tel , a rosemary blast of judiciousness rippled, fol owed by the musty decay of jealousy and a lingering note of envy-in short (and in spite of al of Miss Sparrow's better attempts with d.i.c.k Crane), the odors of a lifelong spinster.

I didn't think a person like Priscil a Sparrow was going to have any more luck getting Amelia to speak up than her mother did, and even if she succeeded, it wouldn't change anything. At the end of the day, Amelia would always stil be a Dyerson-soft-spined, down at the heels, patchworked. She was what she was, and she didn't mind, either. Not like me, who would have given anything to shed my c.u.mbersome skin and bones, stripping myself down to marrow, to nothing more than a gambler's heart, which beat fast and true and stil believed that somewhere out there, a deck was stacked entirely in my favor.

I was correct about school. Miss Sparrow hated me, but she hated Amelia even more. It turned out Amelia was unable to make any progress whatsoever with elocution, dictation, repet.i.tion, or any form of memorization. For an entire month, Amelia was kept so late after cla.s.s that the moon would begin to rise in the schoolroom's paneled window, but it did no good. No matter how many chalky columns of letters and words Miss Sparrow tal ied up, no matter how much she banged on the blackboard, Amelia simply couldn't force out a sound. She did better with her numbers, having a firm grasp on the concept of zero. She knew, for instance, that nothing divided by nothing was stil instance, that nothing divided by nothing was stil nothing. "Things are what they are," she muttered to me on the long cold walk home, her tongue loosened after the confines of school. "You can't change them."

Not that Miss Sparrow didn't try. First, she punished Amelia for being unwil ing to speak, sticking her in the coat closet, then she tried coddling, intimidation, and, final y, wheedling. "Come on, darling," she'd say, hooking a finger under Amelia's chin and tipping it up to her for better eye contact. "The other children find recitation easy. You should, too." When Amelia merely blinked at her, silent as an owl, Miss Sparrow dug her finger harder into Amelia's skin. Her teeth seemed to grow a little longer in her mouth. "You know, don't you, that children who refuse to repeat their lessons don't get visits from Santa? You wouldn't like that, would you?"

Amelia, for whom Santa was an abstract concept, merely blinked again.

In the end, Miss Sparrow gave up, ignoring the listless presence of Amelia in the back row and contriving to have her miss school on the day the state a.s.sessment exams were held. Amelia didn't mind. She spent the afternoon at home, curled in a nest of blankets, reading the Sears catalog, and helping Brenda bake.

My reentry to school was hardly smoother than Amelia's. The day she skipped the test, I muddled through the pages of questions, my tongue trapped between my teeth, my ankles squeezed together under my desk, as if by tightening al the screws of my body, I would summon up the answers. I gave a glance over to the seat next to me, where Marcus Thompson scratched his pencil across his paper as fast as he could, his lips whispering the answers to himself as he scribbled, adding extra facts and explanations in the margins as he saw fit. I leaned forward, hoping to overhear an answer or two, but it was al mumbo-jumbo to me.

"Smarty pants," I hissed, and he jerked his head up, startled. Then he grinned.

"Big bones," he snapped back, but his eyes twinkled as he said it.

Ever since my return to school, Marcus had been the only pupil with any kind words for me.

Even my sister was as distant as a ghost, gliding past me at recess like an unattainable spirit, and it was this canyon of strangeness between us that pained me even more than my troubles with numbers and letters or the rude comments I got from everyone else.

"Hey, Truly," the kids taunted, "come sit on this here rock. You'l crush it, and we'l have us some marbles." Or, "Truly, Truly, two-by-four, couldn't get through a barnyard door." Always, I searched for my sister, but she was usual y too far away to do any good, as flickering and unreliable as a lightning bug.

During cla.s.sroom hours, if I turned my eyes to the desks on the far left side of the room, I could pick out her waxy curls. Sometimes she wore a sweater set the color of orange sherbet or a skirt so ful y pleated that she resembled a flamenco dancer. On her wrist dangled a charm bracelet Mr.

Pickerton had given her for her birthday-a silver heart, a smal key, and a little cross studded with seed pearls, just like the one he'd given his real daughter. When Serena Jane moved her arm, I could hear the charms jingling. I would close my eyes and pretend it was a secret code Serena Jane was sending just to me. During lunch and recess, Serena Jane was immediately swal owed by a phalanx of admirers-girls who cooed over the fringe of her new kilt and boys who wondered how her eyelashes had gotten so dark while her hair was stil so blond.

Even Miss Sparrow flickered around her, returning Serena Jane's essays tattooed with soldierly exclamation points and warm words of encouragement. Mine only ever had the letter C curling into itself on the last page, as if it were giving up.

Amelia and I ate together alone on the big rock shaped like a turtle, peeling the waxed paper off our sandwiches silently and eating glumly, hunkered into our own separate miseries. Soon, however, I noticed Marcus staring at us from his perch across the schoolyard, muttering nonsense to the air. I nudged Amelia. "What's his problem?" She just shrugged and bent back over her soggy bread and tuna fish. I glared at Marcus, making my eyes bulge until he turned scarlet and beat a retreat inside to pester Miss Sparrow some more with his endless facts about Russian s.p.a.ce dogs, the chemical properties of curare poison arrow tips, the physics of the curvebal s thrown by Yankee Mel Stottlemyre, and anything else that struck his fancy.

One afternoon, though, he either decided One afternoon, though, he either decided he'd had enough of my eyebal ing him or he was ful up to bust with information, but he abandoned his bench across the yard and sidled up to our rock with his rucksack, settling so closely to me that his leg touched mine. Amelia and I were just finishing the sandwiches that Brenda had packed for us, chewing the chalky slabs of government cheese as slowly as possible to make them last.

"What do you want?" I scowled, bracing for a comment about my b.u.t.t being heavier than stone or some other such nonsense.

But Marcus merely reached into his rucksack and withdrew a bunch of comic books, fanning them out on the rock between Amelia and me. "Want to see these? Some of them are real y good."

I shrugged and picked up a copy of Spider-Man. On the cover, Spidey was throwing a web out of his wrist big enough to swal ow an entire apartment building.

Marcus tapped the page. "Real y, it should be coming out of his abdomen because that's where spiders spin their silk. Did you know they make different kinds? Sticky for traps, and smoother, stronger pieces for moving around on.

They weave both kinds into their webs so they can cross them without getting stuck." Marcus squinted.

"What kind do you suppose Spidey's using here?"

I rol ed my eyes. "The sticky kind, obviously. Because he's catching bad guys."

"But there aren't any bad guys in the picture."

Across the yard, I could see my sister tel ing an elaborate story, her head thrown back in laughter. I put the issue back down and pushed it toward Marcus. "Okay, so maybe the other kind.

Who cares?" It was nice to have company, I thought, but I was like Spidey. I worked alone. I stuck my chin in the air. "Don't you know that no one ever talks to Amelia and me?"

Marcus flipped a comic page. He was smal , but I could see he didn't scare easy. He shrugged. "No one ever talks to me, either. They don't want to know al the things I know, like about spiders. Did you know they can live underwater?

One type even weaves a waterproof web." He ducked his head. "It's shaped like a bel ." Next to me, her forearms resting on the boulder, Amelia leaned over the cover of a vintage Superman comic, enthral ed by mousy Clark's transformation from spectacled milquetoast to man of steel. Marcus jutted his chin toward the magazine. "Superman's okay, but I like Spider-Man better. I just col ect Superman for the resale value. So far, my col ection is worth ten dol ars, but I only paid two."

I crossed my arms. "If you're so smart, maybe you can tel me how Superman manages to change his clothes so quick."

Marcus blushed and without asking began gathering up his comic books one by one, his pale fingers worrying the corners of the covers like light-drunk moths. A brace of clouds overhead buckled and began spitting out snow. "I don't know the answer to that," he said as if it were the saddest thing in the world. "Some things are just pretend." He leaned in close to me. His eyes were very, very blue.

Just then, Miss Sparrow appeared on the steps with her bel , ringing it with grim precision. "But not everything," he whispered. I bent close to hear what he was saying, and as soon as I did he planted a quick kiss on my cheek. I looked over at Amelia, but she was absorbed by the fal ing snow and hadn't noticed a thing. I tugged her wrist, my face scarlet.

Suddenly, going inside was the last thing I wanted to do.

"Come on," I said. "We better head in."

After school, Marcus was waiting silently for Amelia and me by the coatroom door, and he proceeded to trail us the whole length of town, waiting for some kind of signal to come closer.

"What's he doing?" Amelia said, twisting her neck around, and I had to confess that he'd kissed me earlier.

The sun came out briefly from behind its fril of clouds, making Marcus's shadow coast along like a bat. I pointed it out to Amelia. "Look at that."

She twisted her head and smiled one of her rare smiles. "Stop it," I hissed. "If you keep encouraging him, he'l just fol ow us forever."

Amelia kept smiling, though, as if she knew something I didn't. In front of us, our three shadows danced and jigged-Amelia's a happier version of herself, Marcus's elongated and elegant, and mine so big, it slid off the cement and into the street, where it morphed and stretched until I couldn't street, where it morphed and stretched until I couldn't tel anymore where I stopped and the rest of the world began.

"He must be in love with you," Amelia whispered, kicking up a light dusting of snow. Even after al of Miss Sparrow's instruction, her tongue stil stumbled over her consonants, so that it took me a minute to figure out what she was saying. When I did, I scowled.

"Don't be ridiculous. He wanted to show me his comic books, that's al ."

Amelia shrugged, as if love were no big deal. "Sometimes," she said in her funny drone, "that's al it takes."

The only things I bothered to bring with me when I moved to the Dyerson farm were my mother's tortoiseshel mirror, a wedding photograph of my parents, and my half of my father's winnings from August's horses. They were only three items-not very many to keep count of-but over the course of my life, I would manage to lose them al . I started with my mother's mirror. Of al the things my mother had left behind her in this world, the tortoiseshel mirror was one of the few possessions Dad hadn't given away. Year by year, the silk slips, the dresses in my mother's closet, her round-toed shoes, had leeched into charity bins and the garbage.

"They've got moths," Dad would bark, coming down the stairs with an armful of sweaters.

"It's frayed al along the seams," he explained when he gave away her coat. "No one wears this style anymore."

I never knew why he kept the mirror. It wasn't particularly valuable-in fact, there was a crack running down its back and handle, and the gla.s.s was speckled and hazy, giving anyone gazing into it the semblance of a pox victim. Stil , the tortoiseshel was genuine, and even after years of neglect, it shone with a gentle l.u.s.ter that reminded me of wel -oiled wood. Sometimes I used to sneak into my father's room and pul the mirror off the bureau, twisting it around and around in my hand or tilting the gla.s.s so it caught the light and made a little circle of luminescence on the ceiling. After each of my father's purges, I would creep to the chest of drawers and check that the mirror was stil there, and it always was, facedown on a yel ow linen runner.

One rainy afternoon when I was about six and Serena Jane was eight, we decided to play May Queen-just like the real May Queen that Aberdeen crowned every spring. I a.s.sumed that Serena Jane would make herself the queen-she always did-but that afternoon, she just smiled and said, "No, Truly, let's make it you this time." And so I let myself be swaddled in a toilet paper sash, crowned with a tinfoil tiara, and given the mop to hold for a bouquet.

I'd felt sil y until Serena Jane's breath tickled the back of my neck and she whispered, "Look, you're a princess." She held up the flecked oval mirror in front of my square jaw and bulbous nose, and for once, I believed her.