The Carrie Diaries
Candace Bushnell

For Calvin Bushnell

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE A Princess on Another Planet

CHAPTER TWO The Integer Crowd

CHAPTER THREE Double Jeopardy

CHAPTER FOUR The Big Love

CHAPTER FIVE Rock Lobsters

CHAPTER SIX Bad Chemistry

CHAPTER SEVEN Paint the Town Red

CHAPTER EIGHT The Mysteries of Romance

CHAPTER NINE The Artful Dodger

CHAPTER TEN Rescue Me

CHAPTER ELEVEN Competition

CHAPTER TWELVE You Can’t Always Get What You Want

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Creatures of Love

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Hang in There

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Little Criminals

CHAPTER SIXTEEN How Far Will You Go?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Bait and Switch

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Cliques Are Made to Be Broken

CHAPTER NINETEEN Ch-ch-ch-changes

CHAPTER TWENTY Slippery Slopes

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The Wall

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Dancing Fools

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Assumption of X

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Circus Comes to Town

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Lockdown at Bralcatraz

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The S-H-I-T Hits the Fan

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Girl Who…

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Pretty Pictures

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Gorgon

CHAPTER THIRTY Accidents Will Happen

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Pinky Takes Castlebury

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO The Nerd Prince

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Hold On to Your Panties

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Transformation

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE A Free Man in Paris

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE A Princess on Another Planet

They say a lot can happen in a summer.

Or not.

It’s the first day of senior year, and as far as I can tell, I’m exactly the same as I was last year.

And so is my best friend, Lali.

“Don’t forget, Bradley, we have to get boyfriends this year,” she says, starting the engine of the red pickup truck she inherited from one of her older brothers.

“Crap.” We were supposed to get boyfriends last year and we didn’t. I open the door and scoot in, sliding the letter into my biology book, where, I figure, it can do no more harm. “Can’t we give this whole boyfriend thing a rest? We already know all the boys in our school. And—”

“Actually, we don’t,” Lali says as she slides the gear stick into reverse, glancing over her shoulder. Of all my friends, Lali is the best driver. Her father is a cop and insisted she learn to drive when she was twelve, in case of an emergency.

“I hear there’s a new kid,” she says.

“So?” The last new kid who came to our school turned out to be a stoner who never changed his overalls.

“Jen P says he’s cute. Really cute.”

“Uh-huh.”Jen P was the head of Leif Garrett’s fan club in sixth grade. “If he actually is cute, Donna LaDonna will get him.”

“He has a weird name,” Lali says. “Sebastian something. Sebastian Little?”

“Sebastian Kydd?” I gasp.

“That’s it,” she says, pulling into the parking lot of the high school. She looks at me suspiciously. “Do you know him?”

I hesitate, my fingers grasping the door handle.

My heart pounds in my throat; if I open my mouth, I’m afraid it will jump out.

I shake my head.

We’re through the main door of the high school when Lali spots my boots. They’re white patent leather and there’s a crack on one of the toes, but they’re genuine go-go boots from the early seventies. I figure the boots have had a much more interesting life than I have. “Bradley,” she says, eyeing the boots with disdain. “As your best friend, I cannot allow you to wear those boots on the first day of senior year.”

“Too late,” I say gaily. “Besides, someone’s got to shake things up around here.”

“Don’t go changing.” Lali makes her hand into a gun shape, kisses the tip of her finger, and points it at me before heading for her locker.

“Good luck, [A-Z]ngel,” I say. Changing. Ha. Not much chance of that. Not after the letter.

Dear Ms. Bradshaw, it read.

Thank you for your application to the New School’s Advanced Summer Writing Seminar. While your stories show promise and imagination, we regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you a place in the program at this time.

I got the letter last Tuesday. I reread it about fifteen times, just to be sure, and then I had to lie down. Not that I think I’m so talented or anything, but for once in my life, I was hoping I was.

I didn’t tell anyone about it, though. I didn’t even tell anyone I’d applied, including my father. He went to Brown and expects me to go there, too. He thinks I’d make a good scientist. And if I can’t hack molecular structures, I can always go into biology and study bugs.

I’m halfway down the hall when I spot Cynthia Viande and Tommy Brewster, Castlebury’s golden Pod couple. Tommy isn’t too bright, but he is the center on the basketball team. Cynthia, on the other hand, is senior class president, head of the prom committee, an outstanding member of the National Honor Society, and got all the Girl Scout badges by the time she was ten. She and Tommy have been dating for three years. I try not to give them much thought, but alphabetically, my last name comes right before Tommy’s, so I’m stuck with the locker next to his and stuck sitting next to him in assembly, and therefore basically stuck seeing him—and Cynthia—every day.

“And don’t make those goofy faces during assembly,” Cynthia scolds. “This is a very important day for me. And don’t forget about Daddy’s dinner on Saturday.”

“What about my party?” Tommy protests.

“You can have the party on Friday night,” Cynthia snaps.

There could be an actual person inside Cynthia, but if there is, I’ve never seen it.

I swing open my locker. Cynthia suddenly looks up and spots me. Tommy gives me a blank stare, as if he has no idea who I am, but Cynthia is too well brought up for that. “Hello, Carrie,” she says, like she’s thirty years old instead of seventeen.

Changing. It’s hard to pull off in this little town.

“Welcome to hell school,” a voice behind me says.

It’s Walt. He’s the boyfriend of one of my other best friends, Maggie. Walt and Maggie have been dating for two years, and the three of us do practically everything together. Which sounds kind of weird, but Walt is like one of the girls.

“Walt,” Cynthia says. “You’re just the man I want to see.”

“If you want me to be on the prom committee, the answer is no.”

Cynthia ignores Walt’s little joke. “It’s about Sebastian Kydd. Is he really coming back to Castlebury?”

Not again. My nerve endings light up like a Christmas tree.

“That’s what Doreen says.” Walt shrugs as if he couldn’t care less. Doreen is Walt’s mother and a guidance counselor at Castlebury High. She claims to know everything, and passes all her information on to Walt—the good, the bad, and the completely untrue.

“I heard he was kicked out of private school for dealing drugs,” Cynthia says. “I need to know if we’re going to have a problem on our hands.”

“I have no idea,” Walt says, giving her an enormous fake smile. Walt finds Cynthia and Tommy nearly as annoying as I do.

“What kind of drugs?” I ask casually as we walk away.

“Painkillers?”

“Like in Valley of the Dolls?” It’s my favorite secret book, along with the DSM-III, which is this tiny manual about mental disorders. “Where the hell do you get painkillers these days?”

“Oh, Carrie, I don’t know,”Walt says, no longer interested. “His mother?”

“Not likely.” I try to squeeze the memory of my one-and-only encounter with Sebastian Kydd out of my head but it sneaks in anyway.

I was twelve and starting to go through an awkward stage. I had skinny legs and no chest, two pimples, and frizzy hair. I was also wearing cat’s-eye glasses and carrying a dog-eared copy of What About Me? by Mary Gordon Howard. I was obsessed with feminism. My mother was remodeling the Kydds’ kitchen, and we’d stopped by their house to check on the project. Suddenly, Sebastian appeared in the doorway. And for no reason, and completely out of the blue, I sputtered, “Mary Gordon Howard believes that most forms of sexual intercourse can be classified as rape.”

For a moment, there was silence. Mrs. Kydd smiled. It was the end of the summer, and her tan was set off by her pink and green shorts in a swirly design. She wore white eye shadow and pink lipstick. My mother always said Mrs. Kydd was considered a great beauty. “Hopefully you’ll feel differently about it once you’re married.”

“Oh, I don’t plan to get married. It’s a legalized form of prostitution.”

“Oh my.” Mrs. Kydd laughed, and Sebastian, who had paused on the patio on his way out, said, “I’m taking off.”

“Again, Sebastian?” Mrs. Kydd exclaimed with a hint of annoyance. “But the Bradshaws just got here.”

Sebastian shrugged.“Going over to Bobby’s to play drums.”

I stared after him in silence, my mouth agape. Clearly Mary Gordon Howard had never met a Sebastian Kydd.

It was love at first sight.

In assembly, I take my seat next to Tommy Brewster, who is hitting the kid in front of him with a notebook. A girl in the aisle is asking if anyone has a tampon, while two girls behind me are excitedly whispering about Sebastian Kydd, who seems to become more and more notorious each time his name is mentioned.

“I heard he went to jail—”

“His family lost all their money—”

“No girl has managed to hold on to him for more than three weeks—”

I force Sebastian Kydd out of my thoughts by pretending Cynthia Viande is not a fellow student but a strange species of bird. Habitat: any stage that will have her. Plumage: tweed skirt, white shirt with cashmere sweater, sensible shoes, and a string of pearls that is probably real. She keeps shifting her papers from one arm to the other and tugging down her skirt, so maybe she’s a little nervous after all. I know I would be. I wouldn’t want to be, but I would. My hands would be shaking and my voice would come out in a squeak, and afterward, I’d hate myself for not taking control of the situation.

The principal, Mr. Jordan, goes up to the mike and says a bunch of boring stuff about being on time for classes and something about a new system of demerits, and then Ms. Smidgens informs us that the school newspaper, The Nutmeg, is looking for reporters and how there’s some earthshaking story about cafeteria food in this week’s issue. And finally, Cynthia walks up to the mike. “This is the most important year of our lives. We are poised at the edge of a very great precipice. In nine months, our lives will be irreparably altered,” she says, like she thinks she’s Winston Churchill or something. I’m half expecting her to add that all we have to fear is fear itself, but instead, she continues: “So this year is all about senior moments. Moments we’ll remember forever.”

Suddenly Cynthia’s expression changes to one of annoyance as everyone’s head starts swiveling toward the center of the auditorium.

Donna LaDonna is coming down the aisle. She’s dressed like a bride, in a white dress with a deep V, her ample cleavage accentuated by a tiny diamond cross hanging from a delicate platinum chain. Her skin is like alabaster; on one wrist, a constellation of silver bracelets peal like bells when she moves her arm. The auditorium falls silent.

Cynthia Viande leans into the mike. “Hello, Donna. So glad you could make it.”

“Thanks,” Donna says, and sits down.

Everyone laughs.

Donna nods at Cynthia and gives her a little wave, as if signaling her to continue. Donna and Cynthia are friends in that weird way that girls are when they belong to the same clique but don’t really like each other.

“As I was saying,” Cynthia begins again, trying to recapture the crowd’s attention, “this year is all about senior moments. Moments we’ll remember forever.” She points to an AV guy, and the song “The Way We Were” comes over the loudspeaker.

I groan and bury my face in my notebook. I start to giggle along with everyone else, but then I remember the letter and get depressed again.

But every time I feel bad, I try to remind myself about what this little kid said to me once. She was loaded with personality—so ugly she was cute. And you knew she knew it too. “Carrie?” she asked. “What if I’m a princess on another planet? And no one on this planet knows it?”

That question still kind of blows me away. I mean, isn’t it the truth? Whoever we are here, we might be princesses somewhere else. Or writers. Or scientists. Or presidents. Or whatever the hell we want to be that everyone else says we can’t.

CHAPTER TWO The Integer Crowd

“Who knows the difference between integral calculus and differential calculus?”

Andrew Zion raises his hand. “Doesn’t it have something to do with how you use the differentials?”

“That’s getting there,” Mr. Douglas, the teacher, says. “Anyone else have a theory?”

The Mouse raises her hand. “In differential calculus you take an infinitesimal small point and calculate the rate of change from one variable to another. In integral calculus you take a small differential element and you integrate it from one lower limit to another limit. So you sum up all those infinitesimal small points into one large amount.”

Jeez, I think. How the hell does The Mouse know that?

I’m never going to be able to get through this course. It will be the first time math has failed me. Ever since I was a kid, math was one of my easiest subjects. I’d do the homework and ace the tests, and hardly have to study. But I’ll have to study now, if I plan to survive.

I’m sitting there wondering how I can get out of this course, when there’s a knock on the door. Sebastian Kydd walks in, wearing an ancient navy blue polo shirt. His eyes are hazel with long lashes, and his hair is bleached dark blond from seawater and sun. His nose, slightly crooked, as if he was punched in a fight and never had it fixed, is the only thing that saves him from being too pretty.

“Ah, Mr. Kydd. I was wondering when you were planning to show up,” Mr. Douglas says.

Sebastian looks him straight in the eye, unfazed. “I had a few things I needed to take care of first.”

I sneak a glance at him from behind my hand. Here is someone who truly does come from another planet—a planet where all humans are perfectly formed and have amazing hair.

“Please. Sit down.”

Sebastian looks around the room, his glance pausing on me. He takes in my white go-go boots, slides his eyes up my light blue tartan skirt and sleeveless turtleneck, up to my face, which is now on fire. One corner of his mouth lifts in amusement, then pulls back in confusion before coming to rest on indifference. He takes a seat in the back of the room.

“Carrie,” Mr. Douglas says. “Can you give me the basic equation for movement?”

Thank God we learned that equation last year. I rattle it off like a robot: “X to the fifth degree times Y to the tenth degree minus a random integer usually known as N.”

“Right,” Mr. Douglas says. He scribbles another equation on the board, steps back, and looks directly at Sebastian.

I put my hand on my chest to keep it from thumping.

“Mr. Kydd?” he asks. “Can you tell me what this equation represents?”

I give up being coy. I turn around and stare.

Sebastian leans back in his chair and taps his pen on his calculus book. His smile is tense, as if he either doesn’t know the answer, or does know it and can’t believe anyone would be so stupid as to ask. “It represents infinity, sir. But not any old infinity. The kind of infinity you find in a black hole.”

He catches my eye and winks.

Wow. Black hole indeed.

“Sebastian Kydd is in my calculus class,” I hiss to Walt, cutting behind him in the cafeteria line.

“Christ, Carrie,”Walt says. “Not you, too. Every single girl in this school is talking about Sebastian Kydd. Including Maggie.”

The hot meal is pizza—the same pizza our school system has been serving for years, which tastes like barf and must be the result of some secret school-system recipe. I pick up a tray, then an apple and a piece of lemon meringue pie.

“But Maggie is dating you.”

“Try telling Maggie that.”

We carry our trays to our usual table. The Pod People sit at the opposite end of the cafeteria, near the vending machines. Being seniors, we should have claimed a table next to them. But Walt and I decided a long time ago that high school was disturbingly like India—a perfect example of a caste system—and we vowed not to participate by never changing our table. Unfortunately, like most protests against the overwhelming tide of human nature, ours goes largely unnoticed.

The Mouse joins us, and she and Walt start talking about Latin, a subject in which they’re both better than I am. Then Maggie comes over. Maggie and The Mouse are friendly, but The Mouse says she would never want to get too close to Maggie because she’s overly emotional. I say that excessive emotionality is interesting and distracts one from one’s own problems. Sure enough, Maggie is on the verge of tears.

“I just got called into the counselor’s office—again. She said my sweater was too revealing!”

“That’s outrageous,” I say.

“Tell me about it,” Maggie says, squeezing in between Walt and The Mouse. “She really has it out for me. I told her there was no dress code and she didn’t have the right to tell me what to wear.”

The Mouse catches my eye and snickers. She’s probably remembering the same thing I am—the time Maggie got sent home from Girl Scouts for wearing a uniform that was too short. Okay, that was about seven years ago, but when you’ve lived in the same small town forever, you remember these things.

“And what did she say?” I ask.

“She said she wouldn’t send me home this time, but if she sees me in this sweater again, she’s going to suspend me.”

Walt shrugs. “She’s a bitch.”

“How can she discriminate against a sweater?”

“Perhaps we should lodge a complaint with the school board. Have her fired,” The Mouse says.

I’m sure she doesn’t mean to sound sarcastic, but she does, a little. Maggie bursts into tears and runs in the direction of the girls’ room.

Walt looks around the table. “Which one of you bitches wants to go after her?”

“Was it something I said?” The Mouse asks innocently.

“No.” Walt sighs. “There’s a crisis every other day.”

“I’ll go.” I take a bite of my apple and hurry after her, pushing through the cafeteria doors with a bang.

I run smack into Sebastian Kydd.

“Whoa,” he exclaims. “Where’s the fire?”

“Sorry,” I mumble. I’m suddenly hurtled back in time, to when I was twelve.

“This is the cafeteria?” he asks, gesturing toward the swinging doors. He peeks in the little window. “Looks heinous. Is there any place to eat off campus?”

Off-campus? Since when did Castlebury High become a campus? And is he asking me to have lunch with him? No, not possible. Not me. But maybe he doesn’t remember that we’ve met before.

“There’s a hamburger place up the street. But you need a car to get there.”

“I’ve got a car,” he says.

And then we just stand there, staring at each other. I can feel the other kids walking by but I don’t see them.

“Okay. Thanks,” he says.

“Right.” I nod, remembering Maggie.

“See ya,” he says, and walks away.

Rule number one: Why is it that the one time a cute guy talks to you, you have a friend who’s in crisis?

I run into the girls’ room. “Maggie? You won’t believe what just happened.” I look under the stalls and spot Maggie’s shoes next to the wall. “Mags?”

“I am totally humiliated,” she wails.

Rule number two: Humiliated best friend always takes precedence over cute guy.

“Magwitch, you can’t let what other people say affect you so much.” I know this isn’t helpful, but my father says it all the time and it’s the only thing I can think of at the moment.

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“By looking at everyone like they’re a big joke. Come on, Mags. You know high school is absurd. In less than a year we’ll be out of here and we’ll never have to see any of these people ever again.”

“I need a cigarette,” Maggie groans.

The door opens and the two Jens come in.

Jen S and Jen P are cheerleaders and part of the Pod clique. Jen S has straight dark hair and looks like a beautiful little dumpling. Jen P used to be my best friend in third grade. She was kind of okay, until she got to high school and took up social climbing. She spent two years taking gymnastics so she could become a cheerleader, and even dated Tommy Brewster’s best friend, who has teeth the size of a horse. I waver between feeling sorry for her and admiring her desperate determination. Last year, her efforts paid off and she was finally admitted to the Pod pack, which means she now rarely talks to me.

For some reason, she does today, because when she sees me, she exclaims, “Hi!” as if we’re still really good friends.

“Hi!” I reply, with equally false enthusiasm.

Jen S nods at me as the two Jens begin taking lipsticks and eye shadows out of their bags. I once overheard Jen S telling another girl that if you want to get guys, you have to have “a trademark”—one thing you always wore to make you memorable. For Jen S, this, apparently, is a thick stripe of navy blue eyeliner on her upper lid. Go figure. She leans in to the mirror to make sure the eyeliner is still intact as Jen P turns to me.

“Guess who’s back at Castlebury High?” she asks.

“Who?”

“Sebastian Kydd.”

“Re-e-e-ally?” I look in the mirror and rub my eye, pretending I have something in it.

“I want to date him,” she says, with complete and utter confidence. “From what I’ve heard, he’d be a perfect boyfriend for me.”

“Why would you want to date someone you don’t know?”

“I just do, that’s all. I don’t need a reason.”

“Cutest boys in the history of Castlebury High,” Jen S says, as if leading a cheer.

“Jimmy Watkins.”

“Randy Sandler.”

“Bobby Martin.”

Jimmy Watkins, Randy Sandler, and Bobby Martin were on the football team when we were sophomores. They all graduated at least two years ago. Who cares? I want to shout.

“Sebastian Kydd,” Jen S exclaims.

“Hall of Famer for sure. Right, Carrie?”

“Who?” I ask, just to annoy her.

“Sebastian Kydd,”Jen P says in a huff as she and Jen S exit.

“Maggie?” I ask. She hates the two Jens and won’t come out until they’ve left the bathroom. “They’re gone.”

“Thank God.” The stall door opens and Maggie heads for the mirror. She runs a comb through her hair. “I can’t believe Jen P thinks she can get Sebastian Kydd. That girl has no sense of reality. Now, what were you going to tell me?”

“Nothing,” I say, suddenly sick of Sebastian. If I hear one more person mention his name, I’m going to shoot myself.

“What was that business with Sebastian Kydd?”The Mouse asks a little later. We’re in the library, attempting to study.

“What business?” I highlight an equation in yellow, thinking about how useless it is to highlight. It makes you think you’re learning, but all you’re really learning is how to use a highlighter.

“He winked at you. In calculus class.”

“He did?”

“Bradley,” The Mouse says, in disbelief. “Don’t even try to tell me you didn’t notice.”

“How do I know he was winking at me? Maybe he was winking at the wall.”

“How do we know infinity exists? It’s all a theory. And I think you should go out with him,” she insists. “He’s cute and he’s smart. He’d be a good boyfriend.”

“That’s what every girl in the school thinks. Including Jen P.”

“So what? You’re cute and you’re smart, too. Why shouldn’t you date him?”

Rule number three: Best friends always think you deserve the best guy even if the best guy barely knows you exist.

“Because he probably only likes cheerleaders?”

“Faulty reasoning, Bradley. You don’t know that for a fact.” And then she gets all dreamy and rests her chin in her hand. “Guys can be full of surprises.”

This dreaminess is not like The Mouse. She has plenty of guy friends, but she’s always been too practical to get romantically involved.

“What does that mean?” I ask, curious about this new Mouse. “Have you encountered some surprising guys recently?”

“Just one,” she says.

And rule number four: Best friends can also be full of surprises.

“Bradley.” She pauses. “I have a boyfriend.”

What? I’m so shocked, I can’t speak. The Mouse has never had a boyfriend. She’s never even had a proper date.

“He’s pretty nifty,” she says.

“Nifty? Nifty?” I croak, finding my voice. “Who is he? I need to know all about this nifty character.”

The Mouse giggles, which is also very un-Mouse-like. “I met him this summer. At the camp.”

“Aha.” I’m kind of stunned and a little bit hurt that I haven’t heard about this mysterious Mouse boyfriend before, but now it makes sense. I never see The Mouse during the summer because she always goes to some special government camp in Washington, D.C.

And suddenly, I’m really happy for her. I jump up and hug her, popping up and down like a little kid on Christmas morning. I don’t know why it’s such a big deal. It’s only a stupid boyfriend. But still. “What’s his name?”

“Danny.” Her eyes slide away and she smiles dazedly, as if she’s watching some secret movie inside her head. “He’s from Washington. We smoked pot together and—”

“Wait a minute.” I hold up my hands. “Pot?”

“My sister Carmen told me about it. She says it relaxes you before sex.”

Carmen is three years older than The Mouse and the most proper girl you’ve ever seen. She wears pantyhose in the summer. “What does Carmen have to do with you and Danny? Carmen smokes pot? Carmen has sex?”

“Listen, Bradley. Even smart people get to have sex.”

“Meaning we should be having sex.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Huh? I pull The Mouse’s calculus book away from her and bang it shut. “Listen, Mouse. What are you talking about? Did you have sex?”

“Yup,” she says, nodding, as if it’s no big deal.

“How can you have sex and I haven’t? You’re supposed to be a nerd. You’re supposed to be inventing the cure for cancer, not doing it in the backseat of some car filled with marijuana smoke.”

“We did it in his parents’ basement,” The Mouse says, taking her book back.

“You did?” I try to imagine The Mouse naked on some guy’s cot in a damp basement. I can’t picture it. “How was it?”

“The basement?”

“The sex,” I nearly scream, trying to bring The Mouse back down to earth.

“Oh, that. It was good. Really fun. But it’s the kind of thing you have to work at. You don’t just start doing it. You have to experiment.”

“Really?” I narrow my eyes in suspicion. I’m not sure how to take this news. All summer, while I was writing some stupid story to get into that stupid writing program, The Mouse was losing her virginity. “How did you even figure out how to do it in the first place?”

“I read a book. My sister told me everyone should read an instructional manual before they do it so they know what to expect. Otherwise it might be a big disappointment.”

I squint, adding a sex book to my image of The Mouse and this Danny person getting it on in his parents’ basement. “Do you think you’re going to…continue?”

“Oh, yes,”The Mouse says. “He’s going to Yale, like me.” She smiles and goes back to her calculus book, as if it’s all settled.

“Hmph.” I fold my arms. But I suppose it makes sense. The Mouse is so organized, she would have her romantic life figured out by the time she’s eighteen.

While I have nothing figured out at all.

CHAPTER THREE Double Jeopardy

“I don’t know how I’m going to get through this year,” Maggie says. She takes out a pack of cigarettes, which she stole from her mother, and lights up.

“Uh-huh,” I say, distracted. I’m still shocked The Mouse is having sex. What if everyone is having sex?

Crap. I absentmindedly pick up a copy of The Nutmeg. The headline screams: yogurt served in cafeteria. I roll my eyes and shove it aside. With the exception of the handful of kids who actually work on The Nutmeg, no one reads it. But someone left it on the old picnic table inside the ancient dairy barn that sits just outside school property. The table’s been here forever, scratched with the initials of lovers, the years of graduating classes, and general sentiments toward Castlebury High, such as “Castlebury sucks.” The teachers never come out here, so it’s also the unofficial smoking area.

“At least we get yogurt this year,” I say, for no particular reason. What if I never have sex? What if I die in a car accident before I have the chance to do it?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Maggie asks.

Uh-oh. Up next: the dreaded body discussion. Maggie will say she thinks she’s fat, and I’ll say I think I look like a boy. Maggie will say she wishes she looked like me and I’ll say I wish I looked like her. And it won’t make a bit of difference, because two minutes later, we’ll both be sitting here in our same bodies, except we’ll have managed to make ourselves feel bad over something we can’t change.

Like not getting into the damn New School.

What if some guy wants to have sex with me and I’m too scared to go through with it?

Sure enough, Maggie says, “Do I look fat? I do look fat, don’t I? I feel fat.”

“Maggie. You’re not fat.” Guys have been drooling over Maggie since she was thirteen, a fact that she seems determined to ignore.

I look away. Behind her, in the dark recesses at the far end of the barn, the glowing tip of a cigarette moves up and down. “Someone’s in here,” I hiss.

“Who?” She spins around as Peter Arnold comes out of the shadows.

Peter is the second-smartest boy in our class and kind of a jerk. He used to be a chubby-faced short kid with pasty skin, but it appears something happened to Peter over the summer. He grew.

And apparently took up smoking.

Peter is good friends with The Mouse, but I don’t really know him. When it comes to relationships, we’re all like little planets with our own solar system of friends. Unwritten law states that the solar systems rarely intersect—until now.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks.

“Actually, we do. We’re having girl talk here.” I don’t know why I’m like this with boys, especially boys like Peter. Bad habit, I guess. Worse than smoking. But I don’t want boring old Peter to ruin our conversation.

“No. We don’t mind.” Maggie kicks me under the table.

“By the way, I don’t think you’re fat,” Peter says.

I smirk, trying to catch Maggie’s eye, but she’s not looking at me. She’s looking at Peter. So I look at Peter too. His hair is longer and he’s shed most of his zits, but there’s something else about him.

Confidence.

Jeez. First The Mouse and now Peter. Is everyone going to be different this year?

Maggie and Peter keep ignoring me, so I pick up the paper and pretend to read. This gets Peter’s attention.

“What do you think of The Nutmeg?” he asks.

“Drivel,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says. “I’m the editor.”

Nice. Now I’ve done it again.

“If you’re so smart, why don’t you try writing for the paper?” Peter asks. “I mean, don’t you tell everyone you want to be a writer? What have you ever written?”

Maybe he doesn’t mean to sound aggressive, but the question catches me off guard. Does Peter somehow know about the rejection letter from The New School? But that would be impossible. Then I get angry. “What does it matter, what I’ve written or not?”

“If you say you’re a writer, it means you write,” Peter says smugly. “Otherwise you should go and be a cheerleader or something.”

“And you should stick your head in a barrel of boiling oil.”

“Maybe I will.” He laughs good-naturedly. Peter must be one of those obnoxious types who’s so used to being insulted he’s not even offended when he is.

But still, I’m shaken. I grab my swim bag.“I’ve got practice,” I say, as if I can hardly be bothered with this conversation.

“What’s the matter with her?” Peter asks as I storm out.

I head down the hill toward the gym, scuffing the heels of my boots in the grass. Why is it always like this? I tell people I want to be a writer, and they roll their eyes. It drives me crazy. Especially since I’ve been writing since I was six. I have a pretty big imagination, and for a while I wrote stories about a pencil family called “The Number 2’s,” who were always trying to get away from a bad guy called “The Sharpener.” Then I wrote about a little girl who had a mysterious disease that made her look like she was ninety. And this summer, in order to get into that stupid writing program, I wrote a whole book about a boy who turned into a TV, and no one in his family noticed until he used up all the electricity in the house.

If I’d told Peter the truth about what I’d written, he would have laughed. Just like those people at The New School.

“Carrie!” Maggie calls out. She hurries across the playing fields to catch up. “Sorry about Peter. He says he was joking about the writing thing. He has a weird sense of humor.”

“No kidding.”

“Do you want to go to the mall after swim practice?”

I look across the grounds to the high school and the enormous parking lot beyond. It’s all exactly the same as it always was.

“Why not?” I take the letter out of my biology book, crumple it up, and stick it in my pocket.

Who cares about Peter Arnold? Who cares about The New School? Someday I’ll be a writer. Someday, but maybe not today.

“I am so effing sick of this place,” Lali says, dropping her things onto a bench in the locker room.

“You and me both.” I unzip my boots. “First day of swim practice. I hate it.”

I pull one of my old Speedos out of my bag and hang it in the locker. I’ve been swimming since before I could walk. My favorite photo is of me at five months, sitting on a little yellow float in Long Island Sound. I’m wearing a cute white hat and a polka-dot suit, and I’m beaming.

“You’ll be fine,” Lali says. “I’m the one with the problems.”

“Like what?”

“Like Ed,” she says with a grimace, referring to her father.

I nod. Sometimes Ed is more like a kid than a dad, even though he’s a cop. Actually, he’s more than a cop, he’s a detective—the only one in town. Lali and I always laugh about it because we can’t figure out exactly what he detects, as there’s never been a serious crime in Castlebury.

“He stopped by the school,” Lali says, stripping off her clothes. “We had a fight.”

“What’s wrong now?” The Kandesies fight like Mongolians, but they always make up, cracking jokes and doing outrageous things, like waterskiing in their bare feet. For a while, they kind of took me in, and sometimes I’d wish I’d been born a Kandesie instead of a Bradshaw, because then I’d be laughing all the time and listening to rock ‘n’ roll music and playing family baseball on summer evenings. My father would die if he knew, but there it is.

“Ed won’t pay for college.” Lali faces me, naked, her hands on her hips.

“What?”

“He won’t pay,” she repeats. “He told me today. He never went to college and he’s just fine,” she says mockingly. “I have two choices. I can go to military school or I can get a job. He doesn’t give jack shit about what I want.”

“Oh, Lali.” I stare at her in shock. How can this be? There are five kids in Lali’s family, so money has always been tight. But Lali and I assumed she’d go to college—we’d both go, and then we’d do something big with our lives. In the dark, tucked into a sleeping bag on the floor next to Lali’s bunk bed, we’d share our secrets in excited whispers. I was going to be a writer and Lali was going to win the gold medal in freestyle. But now I’ve been rejected from The New School. And Lali can’t even go to college.

“I guess I’m going to be stuck in Castlebury forever,” Lali says furiously. “Maybe I can work at Ann Taylor and earn five dollars an hour. Or maybe I could get a job at the supermarket. Or”—she smacks her hand on her forehead—“I could work at the bank. But I think you need a college degree to be a teller.”

“It’s not going to be like that,” I insist. “Something will happen—”

“What?”

“You’ll get a swimming scholarship—”

“Swimming is not a profession.”

“You could still go to military school. Your brothers—”

“Are both in military school and they hate it,” Lali snaps.

“You can’t let Ed ruin your life,” I say with bravado. “Find something you want to do and just do it. If you really want something, Ed can’t stop you.”

“Right,” Lali says sarcastically. “Now all I need to do is figure out what that ‘something’ is.” She holds out her suit, sliding her legs through the openings. “I’m not like you, okay? I don’t know what I want to do for the rest of my life. I mean, why should I? I’m only seventeen. All I know is that I don’t want someone telling me what I can’t do.”

She turns and makes a grab for her swim cap, accidentally knocking my clothes to the floor. I bend over to pick them up, and as I do, I see that the letter from The New School has slid out of my pocket, coming to rest next to Lali’s foot. “I’ll get that,” I say, making a grab for it, but she’s too fast.

“What’s this?” she asks, holding up the crumpled piece of paper.

“Nothing,” I say helplessly.

“Nothing?” Her eyes widen as she looks at the return address. “Nothing?” she repeats as she smoothes out the letter.

“Lali, please.”

Her eyes move back and forth, scanning the brief missive.

Crap. I knew I should have left the letter at home. I should have torn it up into little pieces and thrown it away. Or burned it, although it’s not that easy to burn a letter, no matter how dramatic it sounds in books. Instead, I keep carrying it around, hoping it will act as some kind of perverse incentive to try harder.

Now I’m paralyzed by what must be my own stupidity.

“Lali, don’t,” I whisper.

“Just a minute,” she says, reading the text one more time. She looks up, shakes her head, and presses her lips together in sympathy. “Carrie. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” I shrug, trying to make light of it. My insides feel like they’re filled with broken glass.

“I mean it.” She folds the letter and hands it back to me, busying herself with her swim goggles. “Here I am, complaining about Ed. And you’re being rejected by The New School. That’s got to suck.”

“Sort of.”

“Looks like we’re both going to be hanging around here for a while,” she says, putting her arm around my shoulder. “Even if you do go to Brown, it’s only forty-five minutes away. We’ll still see each other all the time.”

She pulls open the door to the pool, enveloping us in a chemical steam of chlorine and cleaning fluid. I consider asking her not to tell anyone about the rejection. But that will only make it worse. If I act like it’s not a big deal, Lali will forget about it.

Sure enough, she flings her towel into the bleachers and runs across the tiles. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” she shouts, doing a cannonball into the water.

CHAPTER FOUR The Big Love

I return home to bedlam.

A puny kid with a punk haircut is running across the yard, followed by my father, who is followed by my sister Dorrit, who is followed by my other sister Missy. “Don’t ever let me catch you on this property again!” my father shouts as the kid, Paulie Martin, manages to jump on his bike and pedal away.

“What the hell?” I ask Missy.

“Poor Dad.”

“Poor Dorrit,” I say, shifting my books. As if in mockery of my situation, the letter from The New School falls out of my notebook. Enough. I pick it up, march into the garage, and throw it away.

I immediately feel lost without it and fish it out of the trash.

“Did you see that?” my father says proudly. “I just ran that little thug off the property.” He points to Dorrit.“You—get back in the house. And don’t even think about calling him.”

“Paulie’s not that bad, Dad. He’s only a kid,” I say.

“He’s a little S-H-I-T,” says my father, who prides himself on rarely swearing. “He’s a hoodlum. Did you know he was arrested for buying beer?”

“Paulie Martin bought beer?”

“It was in the paper,” my father exclaims. “The Castlebury Citizen. And now he’s trying to corrupt Dorrit.”

Missy and I exchange a look. Knowing Dorrit, the opposite is true.

Dorrit used to be the sweetest little kid. She would go along with anything Missy and I told her to do, including crazy stuff like pretending she and our cat were twins. She was always making things for people—cards and little scrapbooks and crocheted pot holders—and last year, she decided she wanted to be a vet and spent practically all her time after school holding sick animals while they got their shots.

But now she’s nearly thirteen, and lately, she’s become a real problem child, crying and having temper tantrums and yelling at me and Missy. My father keeps insisting she’s in a stage and will grow out of it, but Missy and I aren’t so sure. My father is this very big scientist who came up with a formula for some new kind of metal used in the Apollo space rockets, and Missy and I always joke that if people were theories instead of actual human beings, Dad would know everything about us.

But Dorrit isn’t a theory. And lately, Missy and I have found little things missing from our rooms—an earring here or a tube of lip gloss there—the kinds of things you might easily lose or misplace on your own. Missy was going to confront her, but then we found most of our things stuffed behind the cushions in the couch. Nevertheless, Missy is still convinced that Dorrit is on the path to becoming a little criminal, while I’m worried about her anger. Missy and I were both brats at thirteen, but neither one of us can remember being so pissed off all the time.

True to form, in a couple of minutes Dorrit appears in the doorway of my room, aching for a fight.

“What was Paulie Martin doing here?” I ask. “You know Dad thinks you’re too young to date.”

“I’m in eighth grade,” Dorrit says stubbornly.

“That’s not even high school. You have years to have boyfriends.”

“Everyone else has a boyfriend.” She picks a flake of polish from her nail. “Why shouldn’t I?”

This is why I hope never to become a mother. “Just because everyone else is doing something, it doesn’t mean you should too. Remember,” I add, imitating my father, “we’re Bradshaws. We don’t have to be like everyone else.”

“Maybe I’m sick of being a stupid old Bradshaw. What is so great about being a Bradshaw anyway? If I want to have a boyfriend, I’ll have a boyfriend. You and Missy are just jealous because you don’t have boyfriends.” She glares at me, runs to her room, and slams the door.

I find my father in the den, sipping a gin and tonic and staring at the TV. “What am I supposed to do?” he asks helplessly.“Ground her? When I was a boy, girls didn’t act like this.”

“That was thirty years ago, Dad.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, pressing on his temples.“Love is a holy cause.” Once he goes off on one of these spiels, it’s hopeless. “Love is spiritual. It’s about self-sacrifice and commitment. And discipline. You cannot have true love without discipline. And respect. When you lose the respect of your spouse, you’ve lost everything.” He pauses. “Does this make any sense to you?”

“Sure, Dad,” I say, not wanting to hurt his feelings.

A couple of years ago, after my mother died, my sisters and I tried to encourage my father to find someone else, but he refused to entertain the idea. He wouldn’t even go on a date. He said he’d already had the one big love of his life, and anything less would feel like a sham. He felt blessed, he said, to have had that kind of love once in his life, even if it didn’t last forever.

You wouldn’t think a hard-boiled scientist like my father would be such a romantic, but he is.

It worries me sometimes. Not for my father’s sake, but for my own.

I head up to my room, sit down in front of my mother’s old Royale typewriter, and slide in a piece of paper. The Big Love, I write, then add a question mark.

Now what?

I open the drawer and take out a story I wrote a few years ago, when I was thirteen. It was a stupid story about a girl who rescues a sick boy by donating her kidney to him. Before he got sick, he never noticed her, even though she was pining away for him, but after she gives him her kidney, he falls madly in love with her.

It’s a story I would never show anyone, because it’s too sappy, but I’ve never been able to throw it away. It scares me. It makes me worry that I’m secretly a romantic too, just like my father.

And romantics get burned.

Whoa. Where’s the fire?

Jen P was right. You can fall in love with a guy you don’t know.

That summer when I was thirteen, Maggie and I used to hang out at Castlebury Falls. There was a rock cliff where the boys would dive into a deep pool, and sometimes Sebastian was there, showing off, while Maggie and I sat on the other side of the river.

“Go on,” Maggie would urge. “You’re a better diver than those boys.” I’d shake my head, my arms wrapped protectively around my knees. I was too shy. The thought of being seen was terrifying.

I didn’t mind watching, though. I couldn’t take my eyes off Sebastian as he scrambled up the side of the rock, sleek and sure-footed. At the top, there was horseplay between the boys, as they jostled one another and hooted dares, demanding increasing feats of skill. Sebastian was always the bravest, climbing higher than the other boys and launching himself into the water with a fearlessness that told me he had never thought about death.

He was free.

He’s the one. The Big Love.

And then I forgot about him.

Until now.

I find the soiled rejection letter from The New School and put it in the drawer with the story about the girl who gave away her kidney. I rest my chin in my hands and stare at the typewriter.

Something good has to happen to me this year. It just does.

CHAPTER FIVE Rock Lobsters

“Maggie, get out of the car.”

“I can’t.”

“Please—”

“What’s wrong now?”Walt asks.

“I need a cigarette.”

Maggie, Walt, and I are sitting in Maggie’s car, which is parked in the cul-de-sac at the end of Tommy’s street. We’ve been in the car for at least fifteen minutes, because Maggie is paranoid about crowds and refuses to get out of the car when we go to parties. On the other hand, she does have the best car. It’s a gigantic gas-guzzling Cadillac that fits about nine people and has a quadraphonic stereo and a glove compartment filled with her mother’s cigarettes.

“You’ve smoked three cigarettes already.”

“I don’t feel good,” Maggie moans.

“Maybe you’d feel better if you hadn’t smoked all those cigarettes at once,” I say, wondering if Maggie’s mother notices that every time Maggie gives the car back, about a hundred cigarettes are missing. I did ask Maggie about it once, but she only rolled her eyes and said her mother was so clueless, she wouldn’t notice if a bomb blew up in their house. “Come on,” I coax her. “You know you’re just scared.”

She frowns. “We’re not even invited to this party.”

“We’re not not invited. So that means we’re invited.”

“I can’t stand Tommy Brewster,” she mutters, and crosses her arms.

“Since when do you have to like someone to go to their party?”Walt points out.

Maggie glares and Walt throws up his hands. “I’ve had enough,” he says. “I’m going in.”

“Me too,” I say suddenly. We slide out of the car. Maggie looks at us through the windshield and lights up another cigarette. Then she pointedly locks all four doors.

I make a face. “Do you want me to stay with her?”

“Do you want to sit in the car all night?”

“Not really.”

“Me neither,” Walt says. “And I don’t plan to indulge in this ridiculousness for the rest of senior year.”

I’m surprised by Walt’s vehemence. He usually tolerates Maggie’s neuroses without complaint.

“I mean, what’s going to happen to her?” he adds. “She’s going to back into a tree?”

“You’re right.” I look around. “There aren’t any trees.”

We start walking up the street to Tommy’s house. The one good thing about Castlebury is that even if it’s boring, it’s beautiful in its own way. Even here, in this brand-new development with hardly any trees, the grass on the lawns is bright green and the street is like a crisp black ribbon. The air is warm and there’s a full moon. The light illuminates the houses and the fields beyond; in October, they’ll be full of pumpkins.

“Are you and Maggie having problems?”

“I don’t know,” Walt says. “She’s being a huge pain in the ass. I can’t figure out what’s wrong with her. We used to be fun.”

“Maybe she’s going through a phase.”

“She’s been going through a phase all summer. And it’s not like I don’t have my own problems to worry about.”

“Like what?”

“Like everything?” he says.

“Are you guys having sex too?” I ask suddenly. If you want to get information out of someone, ask them unexpectedly. They’re usually so shocked by the question, they’ll tell you the truth.

“Third base,”Walt admits.

“That’s it?”

“I’m not sure I want to go any further.”

I hoot, not believing him. “Isn’t that all guys think about? Going further?”

“Depends on what kind of guy you are,” he says.

Loud music—Jethro Tull—is threatening to shake Tommy’s house down. We’re about to go in, when a fast yellow car roars up the street, spins around in the cul-de-sac, and comes to rest at the curb behind us.

“Who the hell is that?” Walt asks, annoyed.

“I have no idea. But yellow is a much cooler color than red.”

“Do we know anyone who drives a yellow Corvette?”

“Nope,” I say in wonder.

I love Corvettes. Partly because my father thinks they’re trashy, but mostly because in my conservative town, they’re glamorous and a sign that the person who drives one just doesn’t care what other people think. There’s a Corvette body shop in my town, and every time I pass it, I pick out which Corvette I’d drive if I had the choice. But then one day my father sort of ruined the whole thing by pointing out that the body of a Corvette is made of plastic composition instead of metal, and if you get into an accident, the whole car shatters. So every time I see a Corvette now, I picture plastic breaking into a million pieces.

The driver takes his time getting out, flashing his lights and rolling his windows up, down, and back up again as if he can’t decide if he wants to go to this party either. Finally, the door opens and Sebastian Kydd rises from behind the car like the Great Pumpkin himself, if the Great Pumpkin were eighteen years old, six-foot-one, and smoked Marlboro cigarettes. He looks up at the house, smirks, and starts up the walk.

“Good evening,” he says, nodding at me and Walt. “At least I hope it’s a good one. Are we going inside?”

“After you,”Walt says, rolling his eyes.

We. My legs turn to jelly.

Sebastian immediately disappears into a throng of kids as Walt and I weave our way through the crowd to the bar. We snag a couple of beers, and then I go back to the front door to make sure Maggie’s car is still at the end of the street. It is. Then I run into The Mouse and Peter, who are backed up against a speaker. “I hope you don’t have to go to the bathroom,”The Mouse shouts, by way of greeting. “Jen P saw Sebastian Kydd and freaked out because he’s so cute she couldn’t handle it and started hyperventilating, and now she and Jen S have locked themselves in the toilet.”

“Ha,” I say, staring carefully at The Mouse. I’m trying to see if she looks any different since she’s had sex, but she seems pretty much the same.

“If you ask me, I think Jen P has too many hormones,”The Mouse adds, to no one in particular. “There ought to be a law.”

“What’s that?” Peter asks loudly.

“Nothing,”The Mouse says. She looks around. “Where’s Maggie?”

“Hiding in her car.”

“Of course.”The Mouse nods and takes a swig of her beer.

“Maggie’s here?” Peter says, perking up.

“She’s still in her car,” I explain. “Maybe you can get her out. I’ve given up.”

“No problem,” Peter shouts. He hurries away like a man on a mission.

The bathroom scene sounds too interesting to miss, so I head upstairs. The toilet is at the end of a long hall and a line of kids are snaked behind it, trying to get in. Donna LaDonna is knocking on the door. “Jen, it’s me. Let me in,” she commands. The door opens a crack and Donna slips inside. The line goes crazy.

“Hey! What about us?” someone shouts.

“I hear there’s a half-bath downstairs.”

Several annoyed kids push past as Lali comes bounding up the stairs. “What the hell is going on?”

“Jen P freaked out over Sebastian Kydd and locked herself in the bathroom with Jen S and now Donna LaDonna went in to try to get her out.”

“This is ridiculous,” Lali declares. She goes up to the door, pounds on it, and yells, “Get the hell out of there, you twits. People have to pee!” When several minutes pass in which Lali does more knocking and yelling to no avail, she gives me an exaggerated shrug and says loudly, “Let’s go to The Emerald.”

“Sure,” I say, full of bluster, like we go there all the time.

The Emerald is one of the few bars in town with—according to my father—a reputation for being full of shady characters: i.e. alcoholics, divorcées, and drug addicts. I’ve only been three times, and each time I looked around desperately for these so-called degenerates but was never able to spot any patrons that fit the bill. In fact, I was the one who looked suspicious—I was shaking like a Slinky, terrified that someone was going to ask for my ID and, when I couldn’t produce it, call the police.

But that was last year. This year I’ll be seventeen. Maggie and The Mouse are nearly eighteen, and Walt is already legal, so they can’t kick him out.

Lali and I find Walt and The Mouse and they want to go too. We troop out to Maggie’s car, where she and Peter are deep in conversation. I find this slightly irritating, although I don’t know why. We decide that Maggie will drive Walt to The Emerald, while The Mouse will take Peter, and I’ll go with Lali.

Thanks to Lali’s speedy driving, we’re the first to arrive. We park the truck as far away from the building as possible in order to avoid detection. “Okay, this is weird,” I say, while we wait. “Did you notice how Maggie and Peter were having some big discussion? It’s very strange, especially since Walt says he and Maggie are having problems.”

“Like that’s a surprise.” Lali snorts.“My father thinks Walt is gay.”

“Your father thinks everyone is gay. Including Jimmy Carter. Anyway, [A-Z]alt can’t be gay. He’s been with Maggie for two years. And I know they definitely do more than make out because he told me.”

“A guy can have sex with a woman and still be gay,” Lali insists. “Remember Ms. Crutchins?”

“Poor Ms. Crutchins,” I sigh, conceding the argument. She was our English teacher last year. She was about forty years old and she’d never been married and then she met “a wonderful man” and couldn’t stop talking about him, and after three months they got married. But then, one month later, she announced to the class that she’d annulled her marriage. The rumor was that her husband turned out to be gay. Ms. Crutchins never came right out and admitted it, but she would let revealing tidbits drop, like, “There are just some things a woman can’t live with.” And after that, Ms. Crutchins, who was always full of life and passionate about English literature, seemed to shrink right into herself like a deflated balloon.

The Mouse pulls up next to us in a green Gremlin, followed by the Cadillac. It’s terrible what they say about women drivers, but Maggie really is bad. As she’s trying to park the car, she runs the front tires over the curb. She gets out of the car, looks at the tires, and shrugs.

Then we all do our best to stroll casually into The Emerald, which isn’t really seedy at all—at least not to look at. It has red leather banquettes and a small dance floor with a disco ball, and a hostess with bleached blond hair who appears to be the definition of the word “blousy.”

“Table for six?” she asks, like we’re all absolutely old enough to drink.

We pile into a banquette. When the waitress comes over, I order a Singapore Sling. Whenever I’m in a bar I always try to order the most exotic drink on the menu. A Singapore Sling has several different kinds of alcohol in it, including something called “Galliano,” and it comes with a maraschino cherry and an umbrella. Then Peter, who’s ordered a whiskey on the rocks, looks at my drink and laughs. “Not too obvious,” he says.

“What are you talking about?” I ask innocently, sipping my cocktail through a straw.

“That you’re underage. Only someone who’s underage orders a drink with an umbrella and fruit. And a straw,” he adds.

“Yeah, but then I get to take the umbrella home. And what do you get to take home besides a hangover?”

The Mouse and Walt think this is pretty funny, and decide to only order umbrella drinks for the rest of the night.

Maggie, who usually drinks White Russians, orders a whiskey on the rocks, instead. This confirms that something is definitely going on between Maggie and Peter. If Maggie likes a guy, she does the same thing he does. Drinks the same drink, wears the same clothes, suddenly becomes interested in the same sports he likes, even if they’re totally wacky, like whitewater rafting. All through sophomore year, before Maggie and Walt started going out, Maggie liked this weird boy who went whitewater rafting every weekend in the fall. I can’t tell you how many hours I had to spend freezing on top of a rock, waiting for him to pass by in his canoe. Okay—I knew it wasn’t really a canoe, it was a kayak, but I insisted on calling it a canoe just to annoy Maggie for making me freeze my butt off.

And then the door of The Emerald swings open and for a moment, everyone forgets about who’s drinking what.

Standing by the hostess are Donna LaDonna and Sebastian Kydd. Donna has her hand on his neck, and after he holds up two fingers, she puts her other hand on his face, turns his head, and starts kissing him.

After about ten seconds of this excessive display of affection, Maggie can’t take it anymore. “Gross,” she exclaims. “Donna is such a slut. I can’t believe it.”

“She’s not so bad,” Peter counters.

“How do you know?” Maggie demands.

“I helped tutor her a couple of years ago. She’s actually kind of funny. And smart.”

“That still doesn’t mean she should be making out with some guy in The Emerald.”

“He doesn’t look like he’s resisting much,” I murmur, stirring my drink.

“Who is that guy?” Lali asks.

“Sebastian Kydd,”The Mouse volunteers.

“I know his name,” Lali sniffs. “But who is he? Really?”

“No one knows,” I say. “He used to go to private school.”

Lali can’t take her eyes off him. Indeed, no one in the bar seems to be able to tear themselves away from the spectacle. But now I’m bored with Sebastian Kydd and his attention-getting antics.

I snap my fingers in Lali’s face to distract her.“Let’s dance.”

Lali and I go to the jukebox and pick out some songs. We’re not regular boozers, so we’re both feeling the giddy effects of being a little bit drunk, when everything seems funny. I pick out my favorite song, “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, and Lali picks “Legs” by ZZ Top. We take to the dance floor. I do a bunch of different dances—the pony, the electric slide, the bump, and the hustle, along with a lot of steps I’ve made up on my own. The music changes and Lali and I start doing this crazy line dance we invented a couple of years ago during a swim meet where you wave your arms in the air and then bend your knees and shake your butt. When we straighten up, Sebastian Kydd is on the dance floor.

He’s a pretty cool dancer, but then, I expected he would be. He dances a little with Lali, and then he turns to me and takes my hand and starts doing the hustle. It’s a dance I’m good at, and at a certain point one of his legs is in-between mine, and I’m kind of grinding my hips, because this, after all, is a legitimate part of the dance.

He says, “Don’t I know you?”

And I say, “Yes, actually you do.”

Then he says, “That’s right. Our mothers are friends.”

“Were friends,” I say. “They both went to Smith.” And then the music ends and we go back to our respective tables.

“That was hilarious.”The Mouse nods approvingly. “You should have seen the look on Donna LaDonna’s face when he was dancing with you.”

“He was dancing with both of us,” Lali corrects her.

“But he was mostly dancing with Carrie.”

“That’s only because Carrie is shorter than I am,” Lali remarks.

“Whatever.”

“Exactly,” I say, and get up to go to the bathroom.

The restroom is at the end of a narrow hall on the other side of the bar. When I come out, Sebastian Kydd is standing next to the door as if he’s waiting to go in. “Hello,” he says. He delivers this in a sort of fakey way, like he’s an actor in a movie, but he’s so good-looking, I decide I don’t mind.

“Hi,” I say cautiously.

He smiles. And then he says something astoundingly ridiculous. “Where have you been my whole life?”

I almost laugh, but he appears to be serious. Several responses run through my head, and finally I settle on: “Excuse me, but aren’t you on a date with someone else?”

“Who says it’s a date? She’s a girl I met at a party.”

“Sure looks like a date to me.”

“We’re having fun,” he says. “For the moment. You still live in the same house?”

“I guess so—”

“Good. I’ll come by and see you sometime.”And he walks away.

This is one of the oddest and most intriguing things that has ever happened to me. And despite the bad-movie-ish quality to the scene, I’m actually hoping he meant what he said.

I go back to the table, full of excitement, but the atmosphere has changed. The Mouse looks bored talking to Lali, and Walt appears glum, while Peter impatiently shakes the ice cubes in his glass. Maggie suddenly decides she wants to leave. “I guess that means I’m going,” Walt says with a sigh.

“I’ll drop you first,” Maggie says. “I’m going to drive Peter home, too. He lives near me.”

We get into our respective vehicles. I’m dying to tell Lali about my encounter with the notorious Sebastian Kydd, but before I can say a word, Lali announces that she’s “kind of mad at The Mouse.”

“Why?”

“Because of what she said. About that guy, Sebastian Kydd. Dancing with you and not me. Couldn’t she see he was dancing with both of us?”

Rule number five: Always agree with your friends, even if it’s at your own expense, so they won’t be upset. “I know,” I say, hating myself. “He was dancing with both of us.”

“And why would he dance with you, anyway?” Lali asks. “Especially when he was with Donna LaDonna?”

“I have no idea.” But then I remember what The Mouse said. Why shouldn’t Sebastian dance with me? Am I so bad? I don’t think so. Maybe he thinks I’m kind of smart and interesting and quirky. Like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

I dig around in my bag and find one of Maggie’s cigarettes. I light up, inhale briefly, and whoosh the smoke out the window.

“Ha,” I say aloud, for no particular reason.

CHAPTER SIX Bad Chemistry

I’ve had boyfriends before, and frankly, each one was a disappointment.

There was nothing horribly wrong with these boys. It was my fault. I’m kind of a snob when it comes to guys.

So far, the biggest problem with the boys I’ve dated is that they weren’t too smart. And eventually I ended up hating myself for being with them. It scared me, trying to pretend I was something I wasn’t. I could see how easily it could be done, and it made me realize that was what most of the other girls were doing as well—pretending. If you were a girl, you could start pretending in high school and go on pretending your whole life, until, I suppose, you imploded and had a nervous breakdown, which is something that’s happened to a few of the mothers around here. All of a sudden, one day something snaps and they don’t get out of bed for three years.

But I digress. Boyfriends. I’ve had two major ones: Sam, who was a stoner, and Doug, who was on the basketball team. Of the two I liked Sam better. I might have even loved him, but I knew it couldn’t last. Sam was beautiful but dumb. He took woodworking classes, which I had no idea existed until he gave me a wooden box he’d made for Valentine’s Day. Despite his lack of intelligence—or perhaps, more disturbingly, because of it—when I was around him I found him so attractive I thought my head would explode. I’d go by his house after school and we’d hang in the basement with his older brothers, listening to Dark Side of the Moon while they passed around a bong. Then Sam and I would go up to his room and make out for hours. Half the time, I worried I shouldn’t be there, that I was wasting precious time engaging in an activity that wouldn’t lead to anything (in other words, I wasn’t using my time “constructively,” as my father would say). But on the other hand, it felt so good I couldn’t leave. My mind would be telling me to get up, go home, study, write stories, advance my life, but my body was like a boneless sea creature incapable of movement on land. I can’t remember ever having a conversation with Sam. It was only endless kissing and touching in a bubble of time that seemed to have no connection with real life.

Then my father took me and my sisters away for two weeks on an educational cruise to Alaska and I met Ryan, who was tall and smooth like polished wood and was going to Duke, and I fell in love with him. When I got back to Castlebury, I could barely look at Sam. He kept asking if I’d met someone else. I was a coward and said no, which was partly true because Ryan lived in Colorado and I knew I’d never see him again. Still, the Sam bubble had been punctured by Ryan, and then Sam was like a little smear of wet soap. That’s all bubbles are anyway—a bit of air and soap. So much for the wonders of good chemistry.

With bad chemistry, though, you don’t even get a bubble. Me and Doug? Bad chemistry.

Doug was a year older, a senior when I was a junior. He was one of the jocks, a basketball player, friends with Tommy Brewster and Donna LaDonna and the rest of the Pod crowd. Doug wasn’t too bright, either. On the other hand, he wasn’t so good-looking that a lot of other girls wanted him, but he was good-looking enough. The only thing that was really bad about him was the zits. He didn’t have a lot of them, just one or two that always seemed to be in the middle of their life cycle. But I knew I wasn’t perfect either. If I wanted a boyfriend, I figured I would have to overlook a blemish or two.

Jen P introduced us. And sure enough, at the end of the week, he came shuffling around my locker and asked if I wanted to go to the dance.

That was all right. Doug picked me up in a small white car that belonged to his mother. I could picture his mother from the car: a nervous woman with pale skin and tight curls who was an embarrassment to her son. It made me kind of depressed, but I told myself I had to complete this experiment. At the dance, I hung around with the Jens and Donna LaDonna and some older girls, who all stood with one leg out to the side, and I stood the same way and pretended I wasn’t intimidated.

“There’s a great view at the top of Mott Street,” Doug said, after the dance.

“Isn’t that the place next to the haunted house?”

“You believe in ghosts?”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

“Naw,” he said.“I don’t even believe in God. That’s girl stuff.”

I vowed to be less like a girl.

It was a good view at the top of Mott Street. You could see clear across the apple orchards to the lights of Hartford. Doug kept the radio on; then he put his hand under my chin, turned my head, and kissed me.

It wasn’t horrible, but there was no passion behind it. When he said, “You’re a good kisser,” I was surprised. “I guess you do this a lot,” he said.

“No. I hardly do it at all.”

“Really?” he said.

“Really,” I said.

“Because I don’t want to go out with a girl who every other guy has been with.”

“I haven’t been with anyone.” I thought he must be crazy. Didn’t he know a thing about me?

More cars pulled in around us, and we kept making out. The evening began to depress me. This was it, huh? This was dating, Pod-style. Sitting in a car surrounded by a bunch of other cars where everyone was making out, seeing how far they could go, like it was some kind of requirement. I started wondering if anyone else was enjoying it as little as I was.

Still, I went to Doug’s basketball games and I went by his house after school, even though there were other things I wanted to do more, like read romance novels. His house was as dreary as I’d imagined—a tiny house on a tiny street (Maple Lane) that could have been in Any Town, U.S.A. I guess if I were in love with Doug it wouldn’t have mattered. But if I had been in love with Doug it would have been worse, because I would have looked around and realized that this would be my life, and that would have been the end of my dream.

But instead of saying, “Doug, I don’t want to see you anymore,” I rebelled.

It happened after another dance. I’d barely let Doug get to third base, so maybe he figured it was time to straighten me out. The plan was to go parking with another couple: Donna LaDonna and a guy named Roy, who was the captain of the basketball team. They were in the front seat. We were in the back. We were going someplace we’d never get caught, a place where no one would find us: a cemetery.

“Hope you don’t still believe in ghosts,” Doug said, squeezing my leg.“If you do, you know they’ll be watching.”

I didn’t answer. I was studying Donna LaDonna’s profile. Her hair was a swirl of white cotton candy. I thought she looked like Marilyn Monroe. I wished I looked like Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe, I figured, would know what to do.

When Doug unzipped his pants and tried to push my head down, I’d had enough. I got out of the car. “Charade” was the word I was thinking over and over again. It was all a charade. It summed up everything that was wrong between the sexes.

Then I was too angry to be frightened. I started walking along the little road that wound through the headstones. I might have believed in ghosts, but I wasn’t scared of them per se. It was people who were troubling. Why couldn’t I just be like every other girl and give Doug what he wanted? I pictured myself as a Play-Doh figure; then a hand came down, squeezing and squeezing until the Play-Doh oozed through the fingers into ragged clumps.

To distract myself, I started looking at the headstones. The graves were pretty old, some more than a hundred years. I started looking for one type in particular. It was macabre but that’s the kind of mood I was in. Sure enough, I found one: Jebediah Wilton. 4 mos. 1888. I started thinking about Jebediah’s mother and the pain she would have felt putting that little baby into the ground. I bet it felt worse than childbirth. I got down on my knees and screamed into my hands.

I guess Doug figured I would come right back, because he didn’t bother looking for me for a while. Then the car pulled up and a door opened. “Get in,” Doug said.

“No.”

“Bitch,” Roy said.

“Get in the car,” Donna LaDonna ordered. “Stop making a scene. Do you want the cops to come?”

I got into the car.

“See?” Donna LaDonna said to Doug. “I told you it was useless.”

“I’m not going to have sex with some guy just to impress you,” I said.

“Whoa,” Roy said. “She really is a bitch.”

“Not a bitch,” I said.“Just a woman who knows her own mind.”

“You’re a woman now?” Doug said, sneering. “That’s a laugh.”

I knew I should have been embarrassed, but I was so relieved it was over, I couldn’t be bothered. Surely, Doug wouldn’t dare ask me out again.

He did though. First thing Monday morning, I found him standing by my locker. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

“So talk.”

“Not now. Later.”

“I’m busy.”

“You’re a prude,” he hissed. “You’re frigid.”When I didn’t reply, he added, “It’s okay,” in a creepy tone. “I know what’s wrong with you. I understand.”

“Good,” I said.

“I’m coming by your house after school.”

“Don’t.”

“You don’t need to tell me what to do,” he said, spinning an imaginary basketball on his finger. “You’re not my mother.” He shot the imaginary basketball into an imaginary hoop and walked away.

Doug did come by my house that afternoon. I looked up from my typewriter and saw the pathetic white car pull hesitantly into the driveway, like a mouse cautiously approaching a piece of cheese.

A discordant phrase of Stravinsky came from the piano followed by the soft taps of Missy running down the stairs. “Carrie,” Missy called from below. “Someone’s here.”

“Tell him I’m not.”

“It’s Doug.”

“Let’s go for a drive,” Doug said.

“I can’t,” I begged. “I’m busy.”

“Listen,” he said. “You can’t do this to me.” He was pleading, and I started to feel sorry for him. “You owe me,” he whispered. “It’s only a drive in the car.”

“Okay,” I relented. I figured maybe I did owe him for embarrassing him in front of his friends.

“Look,” I said when we were in the car and driving toward his house. “I’m sorry about the other night. It’s just that—”

“Oh, I know. You’re not ready,” Doug said. “I understand. With everything you’ve been through.”

“No. It isn’t that.” I knew it had nothing to do with my mother’s death. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell Doug the truth—that my reluctance was due to the fact that I didn’t find him the least bit attractive.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I forgive you. I’m going to give you a chance to make it up to me.”

“Ha,” I said, hoping he was making a joke.

Doug drove past his house and kept going, down the dirt track that led to the river. Between his sad little street and the river were miles and miles of mud-flat farmland, deserted in November. I began to get scared.

“Doug, stop.”

“Why?” he asked. “We have to talk.”

I knew then why boys hated that phrase, “We have to talk.” It gave me a tired, sick feeling. “Where are we going? There’s nothing out here.”

“There’s the Gun Tree,” he said.

The Gun Tree was all the way down by the river, so named because a lightning strike had split the branches into the shape of a pistol. I began calculating my chances for escape. If we got all the way to the river, I could jump out of the car and run along the narrow path that led through the trees. Doug couldn’t follow in his car, but he could certainly outrun me. And then what would he do? Rape me? He might rape me and kill me afterward. I didn’t want to lose my virginity to Doug Haskell, for Christ’s sake, and definitely not like that. I decided he’d have to kill me first.

But maybe he did only want to talk.

“Listen, Doug, I’m sorry about the other night.”

“You are?”

“Of course. I just didn’t want to have sex in a car with other people. It’s kind of gross.”

We were about half a mile from civilization.

“Yeah. Well, I guess I can understand that. But Roy is the captain of the basketball team and—”

“Roy is disgusting. Really, Doug. You’re much better than he is. He’s an asshole.”

“He’s one of my best buds.”

“You should be captain of the basketball team. I mean, you’re taller and better looking. And smarter. If you ask me, Roy’s taking advantage of you.”

“You think?” He took his eyes off the road and looked at me. The road was becoming increasingly bumpy, made for tractors not cars, and Doug had to slow down.

“Well, of course,” I said smoothly. “Everyone knows that. Everyone says you’re a better player than Roy—”

“I am.”

“And—” I took a quick peek at the speedometer. Twenty miles an hour. The car was bucking like an old bull. If I was going to make a break for it, I had to do it now. “And, Doug, I need to go home.” I rolled down the window. A cold blast of air hit my face like a slap. “The car’s covered with mud. Your mother’s going to kill you.”

“My mother won’t care.”

“Come on, Doug. Stop the car.”

“We’ll go to the Gun Tree. Then I’ll take you home.” But he didn’t sound so sure.

“I’m getting out.” I grabbed the door handle.

Doug tried to pull my hand away as the car veered off the track and slid into a pile of dried cornstalks.

“Christ, Carrie. Why the hell d’you do that?”

We got out of the car to inspect the damage. It wasn’t too bad. Mostly straw caught in the bumper.“If you hadn’t…” I said, relief and anger burning the back of my throat. “Because you wanted to prove to your stupid friends that you aren’t a loser—”

He stared at me, his breath steaming the air around him like a mysterious dry ice.

Then he smacked his hand on the hood of the car. “I wouldn’t fuck you if you paid me,” he shouted, pausing for breath. “You’re lucky…lucky I even considered having sex with you. Lucky I even took you out in the first place. I only did it because I felt sorry for you.”

What else could he say?

“Good. Then you should be happy.”

“Oh, I’m happy all right.” He gave the front tire a good kick. “I’m happy as hell.”

I turned and started walking up the road. My back was a firestorm of nerves. When I got about fifty feet away, I started whistling. When I was a hundred feet away, I heard the puttering sound of the car engine, but I kept going. Eventually, he passed me, looking straight ahead as if I didn’t exist. I picked up a strand of dried grass and tore it with my fingers, watching the pieces blow away.

I did tell this story to The Mouse and Maggie. I even told it to Walt. I told it again and again, but I made it funny. I made it so funny, [A-Z]he Mouse couldn’t stop laughing. Funny always makes the bad things go away.

CHAPTER SEVEN Paint the Town Red

“Carrie, you’re not going to be able to joke your way out of this,” Mrs. Givens says, pointing to the can of paint.

“I wasn’t planning to make a joke,” I insist, as if I’m completely innocent. I have a problem with authority. I really do. It turns me into mush. I’m a real jellyfish when it comes to facing adults.

“What were you planning to do with the paint, then?” Mrs. Givens is one of those middle-aged ladies who you look at and think, If I ever end up like her, shoot me. Her hair is teased into a dried bush that looks like it could self-ignite at any moment. I suddenly picture Mrs. Givens with a conflagration on her head, running through the halls of Castlebury High, and I nearly crack up.

“Carrie?” she demands.

“The paint is for my father—for one of his projects.”

“This is not like you, Carrie. You’ve never been in trouble before.”

“I swear, Mrs. Givens. It’s nothing.”

“Very well. You can leave the paint with me and pick it up after school.”

“Givens confiscated my paint can,” I whisper to The Mouse as we enter calculus.

“How did she find it?”

“She saw me trying to shove it into my locker.”

“Damn,”The Mouse says.

“I know. We’re going to have to go to plan B.”

“What is plan B?”

“Action must be taken,” I say. “I’ll think of something.”

I sit down and look out the window. It’s October now. Time to find a perfect red leaf and iron it between two pieces of waxed paper. Or stick cloves into a crisp apple, the juice running all over your fingers. Or scoop the slimy guts out of a pumpkin and roast the seeds until they nearly explode. But mostly, it’s time to paint the year of our high school graduation on the roof of the dairy barn.

It’s a grand tradition around here. Every fall, a few members of the graduating class scrawl their year on the roof of the barn behind the school. It’s always some boys who do it. But this year, The Mouse and I decided we should do it. Why should the boys have all the fun? Then we got Lali involved. Lali was going to bring the ladder, and The Mouse and I would get the paint. Then Maggie wanted to come. Maggie is fairly useless in these kinds of situations, but I figured she’d be good for booze and cigarettes. Then Maggie spilled the beans to Peter. I told her to un-tell Peter, but she said she couldn’t do that, and now Peter’s all excited about it even though he says he won’t actually be participating. Instead, he plans to stand there and direct.

After calculus, I head out to the barn, where I take a good look at the structure. It’s at least a hundred years old, and though it looks sturdy enough, the roof is higher and steeper than I’d imagined. But if we chicken out, next week the boys will probably do it, and I don’t want that to happen. No more missed opportunities. I want to leave some mark on Castlebury High, so when I’m old, I can say, “I did it. I painted the year of our graduation on the old barn out back.” Lately, high school hasn’t been bugging me as much as usual and I’ve been in a pretty good mood. Today, I’m wearing overalls, Converse sneakers, and a red and white checked shirt that I got at a vintage store in honor of the occasion. I also have my hair in braids, and I’m wearing a strip of rawhide around my head.

I’m standing there, staring up at the roof, when I’m suddenly overcome by a mysterious happiness and I have to start doing my best John Belushi Animal House imitation. I run all the way around the barn and when I get back to where I started, Sebastian Kydd is there, looking at me curiously while he shakes a cigarette out of a pack of Marlboro Reds.

“Having fun?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say. I should be embarrassed, but I’m not. I hate the way girls are supposed to be embarrassed all the time and I decided a long time ago that I just wouldn’t do it. “What about you? Are you having fun?”

“Relatively.”

I’m sure he is having fun, but not with me. After that night at The Emerald—nothing. He never called, never came by my house—all I get are bemused looks from him when he sees me in calculus or in the halls or occasionally hanging out here at the barn. I tell myself it’s just as well; I don’t need a boyfriend anyway—but it doesn’t prevent my mind from veering out of control every time I sense he’s in the vicinity. It’s almost as bad as being twelve—worse, I remind myself, because I ought to know better by now.

I glance at Sebastian, thinking it’s a good thing he can’t read my mind, but he’s no longer paying attention. He’s looking over my shoulder at the two Jens, who are carefully picking their way up the hill in high heels, like they’ve never walked on grass before. Their appearance is not surprising. The two Jens have taken to following Sebastian everywhere, like two small, cheery tugboats. “Ah,” I say. “Your fan club is here.”

He looks at me quizzically but says nothing. In my fantasy, Sebastian is a person of great and perceptive thought. But in reality, I don’t know a thing about him.

Lali picks me up in the truck at nine o’clock that evening. We’re dressed in black turtlenecks, black jeans, and sneakers. There’s an enormous harvest moon. Lali hands me a beer and I crank up the radio and we scream over the music. I’m pretty sure this is going to be the best thing we’ve ever done. I’m pretty sure this is going to be a real Senior Moment—A Moment to Remember. “Fuck Cynthia Viande,” I scream, for no good reason.

“Fuck Castlebury High,” Lali says. “Fuck the Pods.”

We pull into the driveway of the high school going about eighty miles an hour and drive right over the grass. We try to drive straight up the hill, but the truck gets stuck, so we decide to park it in a dark corner of the parking lot. While we’re struggling to get the ladder out of the back, I hear the telltale sputter of a fully loaded V-eight engine, and sure enough, Sebastian Kydd pulls up beside us.

What the hell is he doing here?

He rolls down the window. “You girls need some help?”

“No.”

“Yes,” Lali says. She gives me the shut-up look. I give her the shut-up look right back.

Sebastian gets out of the car. He’s like a panther getting up from a nap. He even yawns. “Slow night?”

“You could say that,” Lali says.

“Or you could get off your keister and help us. Since you don’t appear to be leaving,” I add.

“Can we trust you?” Lali asks.

“Depends on what you want to trust me with,” he says.

Eventually, we get the ladder up against the barn, and then The Mouse shows up with the paint and a large brush. Two enormous cone-shaped lights play over the parking lot, indicating Maggie’s arrival in the Cadillac. Maggie insists she can’t keep track of her high and low beams and usually blinds her fellow motorists. She parks the car and meanders up the hill with Walt and Peter in tow. Peter busies himself by examining the paint. “Red?” he says, and then, as if we didn’t hear him the first time, “Red?”

“What’s wrong with red?”

“It’s not the traditional Castlebury color for this exercise. It should be blue.”

“We wanted red,” I counter. “Whoever does the painting gets to pick the color.”

“But it’s not right,” Peter insists. “For the rest of the year, I’m going to be looking out the window seeing the year of our graduation painted in red instead of blue.”

“Does it really matter?” Sebastian asks.

“Red is a statement. It’s a fuck-you to tradition,”Walt says. “I mean, isn’t that the point?”

“Right on, brother.” Sebastian nods.

Maggie hugs her arms around her chest. “I’m scared.”

“Have a cigarette,” Walt remarks. “That will calm your nerves.”

“Who’s got the booze?” Lali asks. Someone hands her a bottle of whiskey, and she takes a swig, wiping her mouth on her shirt sleeve.

“Okay, Bradley. Get on up there,”The Mouse commands.

In unison, we tip our heads back and look skyward. The orange moon has come up behind the roof, casting a boxlike black shadow below. In the spooky light, the peak appears as high as Mount Everest.

“You’re going up?” Sebastian asks, astonished.

“Bradley used to be very good in gymnastics,”The Mouse says. “Very good. Until she was about twelve, anyway. Remember when you did that jump onto the balance beam and landed right on your—”

“I’d rather not,” I say, sneaking a glance at Sebastian.

“I’d do it, but I’m scared of heights,”Lali explains. Heights, indeed, are the only thing she admits to being scared of, probably because she thinks it makes her more interesting. “Every time I cross the bridge to Hartford, I have to get down on the floor so I don’t get dizzy.”

“What if you’re the one who’s driving?” asks The Mouse.

“Then she has to stop in the middle of traffic and sit there shaking until the police come and tow her car,” I say, finding this vision hysterical.

Lali gives me a dirty look. “That is so not true. If I’m driving, it’s different.”

“Uh-huh,”Walt says.

Maggie takes a gulp of whiskey. “Maybe we should go to The Emerald. I’m getting cold.”

Oh no. Not after we’ve made all this effort. “You go to The Emerald, Magwitch. I’m going to do this,” I say, with what I hope sounds like gutsy determination.

Peter rubs Maggie’s shoulders, a gesture not lost on Walt. “Let’s stay. We can go to The Emerald later.”

“All right,” The Mouse says pointedly. “Anyone who doesn’t want to be here should go now. Anyone who wants to stay should just shut up.”

“I’m staying,”Walt says, lighting up a cigarette. “And I’m not shutting up.”

The plan is simple: Lali and Peter will hold the ladder while I go up. Once I’m at the top, Sebastian will climb up after me with the can of paint. I place my hand on a rung. The metal is cold and grooved. Look up, I remind myself. The future is ahead of you. Don’t look down. Never look back. Never let ‘em see you sweat.

“Go on, Carrie.”

“You can do it.”

“She’s at the top. Ohmigod. She’s on the roof!” That’s Maggie.

“Carrie?” Sebastian says. “I’m right behind you.”

The harvest moon has transformed into a bright white orb surrounded by a million stars. “It’s beautiful up here,” I shout. “You should all have a look.”

I slowly rise, testing my balance, and take a few steps to get my footing. It’s not so hard. I remind myself of all the kids who have done this in the past. Sebastian’s at the top of the ladder with the paint. With the can in one hand and the brush in the other, I make my way to the side of the roof.

I begin painting, as the group takes up a chant below. “One…Nine…Eight…”

“NINETEEN. EIGHTY—” And just as I’m about to paint the last number, my foot slips.

The can flies out of my hand, bounces once, and rolls off the roof, leaving a huge splotch of paint behind. Maggie screams. I drop down to my knees, scrambling to get a handhold on the wooden shingles. I hear a soft thud as the can hits the grass. Then…nothing.

“Carrie?”The Mouse says tentatively.“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Don’t move,” Peter shouts.

“I’m not.”

And it’s true. I’m not moving. But then, with excruciating slowness, I begin to slide. I try to jam my toe into the shingles to stop, but my sneaker glides right over the slick spill of red paint. I reassure myself that I will not die. It’s not my time. If I were going to die, I’d know it, right? Some part of my brain is aware of the scraping of skin, but I have yet to feel the pain. I’m picturing myself in a body cast, when suddenly a firm hand grabs my wrist and drags me up to the peak. Behind me I see the tips of the ladder fall away from the edge, followed by a whomp as it clatters into the bushes.

Everyone is screaming.

“We’re okay. We’re fine. No injuries,” Sebastian shouts as the wail of a police siren rips the air.

“There goes Harvard,” Peter says.

“Hide the ladder in the barn,” Lali commands. “If the cops ask we’re just up here smoking cigarettes.”

“Maggie, give me the booze,”Walt says. There’s a crash as he throws the bottle into the barn.

Sebastian tugs on my arm. “We need to get to the other side.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask questions. Just do it,” he orders as we scramble over the peak. “Lie flat on your back with your knees bent.”

“But now I can’t see what’s happening,” I protest.

“I’ve got a record. Don’t move and don’t say a word, and pray the cops don’t find us.”

My breath is as loud as the pounding of a drum.

“Hello, Officers,”Walt says when the police arrive.

“What are you kids up to?”

“Nothing. Just smoking some cigarettes,” Peter says.

“Have you been drinking?”

“Nope.” A group answer.

Silence, followed by the sound of feet squelching around in the wet grass. “What the hell’s this?” demands one of the cops. The beam from his flashlight slides up the roof and into the sky. “You kids painting the barn? That’s a misdemeanor. Violation of private property.”

“Yo, Marone,” Lali says to one of the cops. “It’s me.”

“Whoa,” Marone says. “Lali Kandesie. Hey, Jack. It’s Lali, Ed’s girl.”

“You want to take a look around?” Jack asks cautiously, now that he’s being confronted by the boss’s daughter.

“Nah. Looks okay to me,” says Marone.

Jack snorts. “Okay, kids. Party’s over. We’re going to make sure you get to your cars and get home safely.”

And they all leave.

Sebastian and I lie frozen on the roof. I stare up at the stars, intensely aware of his body a few inches from mine. If this isn’t romance, I don’t know what is.

Sebastian peers over the side. “I think they’re gone.”

Suddenly, we look at each other and laugh. Sebastian’s laugh—I’ve never heard anything like it—is deep and throaty and slightly sweet, like ripe fruit. I imagine the taste of his mouth as being slightly fruity too, but also sharp, with a tang of nicotine. Boys’ mouths are never what you think they’re going to be anyway. Sometimes they’re stiff and sharp with teeth, or like soft little caves filled with down pillows.

“Well, Carrie Bradshaw,” he says. “What’s your big plan now?”

I hug my knees to my chest. “Don’t have one.”

“You? Without a plan? That must be a first.”

Really? Is that how he thinks of me? As some nerdly, uptight, efficient planner? I’ve always thought of myself as the spontaneous type. “I don’t always have a plan.”

“But you always seem to know where you’re going.”

“I do?”

“Sure. I can barely keep up with you.”

What does that mean? Is this a dream? Am I actually having this conversation with Sebastian Kydd?

“You could always try calling—”

“I did. But your phone’s perennially busy. So tonight I was going to stop by your house, but then I saw you getting in Lali’s truck and followed you. I figured you were up to something interesting.”

Is he saying he likes me?

“You’re definitely a character,” he adds.

A character? Is that good or bad? I mean, what kind of guy falls in love with a character?

“I guess I can be…sort of funny sometimes.”

“You’re funny a lot. You’re very entertaining. It’s good. Most girls are boring.”

“They are?”

“Come on, Carrie. You’re a girl. You must know that.”

“I think most girls are pretty interesting. I mean, they’re a lot more interesting than boys. Boys are the ones who are boring.”

“Am I boring?”

“You? You’re not boring at all. I just meant—”

“I know.” He moves a little closer. “Are you cold?”

“I’m okay.”

He takes off his jacket. As I put it on, he notices my hands. “Christ,” he says. “That must hurt.”

“It does—a little.”The palms of my hands are stinging like hell where I’ve scraped the skin. “It’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me though. One time, I fell off the back of the Kandesies’ truck and broke my collarbone. I didn’t know it was broken until the next day. Lali made me go to the doctor.”

“Lali’s your best friend, huh?”

“Pretty much. I mean, she’s been my best friend since we were ten. Hey,” I ask. “Who’s your best friend?”

“Don’t have one,” he says, staring out at the trees.

“I guess that’s the way guys are,” I say musingly. I check my hands. “Do you think we’re ever going to get off this roof?”

“Do you want to get off this roof?”

“No.”

“So don’t think about it. Someone will come and get us eventually. Maybe Lali, or your friend The Mouse. She’s cool.”

“Yeah.” I nod. “She’s got her life all figured out. She’s applying early admission to Yale. And she’ll definitely get in.”

“That must be nice,” he says with a hint of bitterness.

“Are you worried about your future?”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“I guess…But I thought…I don’t know. I thought you were going to Harvard or something. Weren’t you in private school?”

“I was. But I realized I didn’t necessarily want to go to Harvard.”

“How could anyone not want to go to Harvard?”

“Because it’s a crock. Once I go to Harvard, that’s it. Then I’ll have to go to law school. Or business school. Then I’ll be a suit, working for a big corporation. Taking the commuter train to New York City every day. And then some girl will get me to marry her, and before you know it, I’ll have kids and a mortgage. Game over.”

“Hmph.” It’s not exactly what a girl wants to hear from a guy, but on the other hand, I have to give him points for being honest. “I know what you mean. I always say I’m never getting married. Too predictable.”

“You’ll change your mind. All women do.”

“I won’t. I’m going to be a writer.”

“You look like a writer,” he says.

“I do?”

“Yeah. You look like you’ve always got something going on in your head.”

“Am I that transparent?”

“Kind of.” He leans over and kisses me. And suddenly, my life splits in two: before and after.

CHAPTER EIGHT The Mysteries of Romance

“Tell me exactly what he said.”

“He said I was interesting. And a character.”

“Did he say he liked you?”

“I think it was more that he liked the idea of me.”

“Liking the idea of a girl is different from actually liking a girl,” Maggie says.

“I think if a guy says you’re interesting and a character, it means you’re special,” The Mouse counters.

“But it doesn’t mean he wants to be with you. Maybe he thinks you’re special—and weird,” Maggie says.

“So what happened after we left?” The Mouse asks, ignoring her.

“Lali came and rescued us. He went home. He said he’d had enough excitement for one evening.”

“Has he said anything since?” Maggie asks.

I scratch a nonexistent itch. “Nope. But it doesn’t matter.”

“He’ll call,”The Mouse says with confidence.

“Of course he’ll call. He has to call,” Maggie says, with too much enthusiasm.

Four days have passed since the barn-painting incident and we’re dissecting the event for about the twentieth time. After Lali rescued us, apparently The Mouse and Walt did come back, but we were gone along with the ladder, so they figured we got away okay. On Monday when we showed up at school, we couldn’t stop laughing. Every time one of us looked out the window and saw 198 and that big red splotch, we’d crack up. At assembly that morning, Cynthia Viande referred to the incident, saying the vandalism to private property had not gone unnoticed, and the perpetrators, if caught, would be prosecuted.

We all snickered like little cats.

All of us, that is, except for Peter. “Can the cops really be that dumb?” he kept asking. “I mean, they were right there. They saw us.”

“And what did they see? A few kids standing around an old dairy barn.”

“That Peter guy—geez,”Lali said.“He’s so paranoid. What the hell was he doing there anyway?”

“I think he likes Maggie.”

“But Maggie’s with Walt.”

“I know.”

“She has two boyfriends now? How can you have two boyfriends?”

“Listen,” Peter said the next day, sidling up to me in the hall. “I’m not sure we can trust Sebastian. What if he rats us out?”

“Don’t worry. He’s the last person who’s going to tell.”

Hearing Sebastian’s name was like a skewer to the gut.

Ever since the kiss, Sebastian’s presence has been like an invisible shadow sewn to my skin. I cannot go anywhere without him. In the shower, he hands me the shampoo. His face floats up behind the words in my textbooks. On Sunday, Maggie, Walt, and I went to a flea market, and while I pawed through piles of sixties T-shirts, all I could think about was what Sebastian would like.

Surely he’ll call.

But he hasn’t.

A week passes, and on Saturday morning, I reluctantly pack a little suitcase. I look at the clothes I’ve laid out on the bed, perplexed. They’re like the random, disjointed thoughts of a thousand strangers. What was I thinking when I bought that beaded fifties sweater? Or that pink bandanna? Or the green leggings with yellow stripes? I have nothing to wear for this interview. How can I be who I’m supposed to be with these clothes?

Who am I supposed to be again?

Just be yourself.

But who am I?

What if he calls while I’m gone? Why hasn’t he called already?

Maybe something happened to him.

Like what? You saw him every day at school and he was fine.

“Carrie?” my father calls out. “Are you ready?”

“Almost.” I fold a plaid skirt and the beaded sweater into the suitcase, add a wide belt, and throw in an old Hermès scarf that belonged to my mother. She bought it on the one trip to Paris she took with my father a few years ago.

“Carrie?”

“Coming.” I bang down the stairs.

My father is always nervous before a trip. He gathers maps and estimates time and distance. He’s only comfortable with the unknown or the unexpected if it’s a number in an equation. I keep reminding him that this is not a big deal. It’s his alma mater, and Brown is only forty-five minutes away.

But he fusses. He takes the car to the car wash. He withdraws cash. He inspects his travel comb. Dorrit rolls her eyes. “You’re going to be gone for less than twenty-four hours!”

It rains during the drive. As we head east, I notice the leaves are already beginning to flee their branches, like flocks of birds heading south for the winter.

“Carrie,” my father says. “Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t beat yourself up about things.” He can usually sense when something is wrong, although he’s rarely able to pinpoint the cause.

“I’m not, Dad.”

“Because when you do,” he continues, warming up to one of his favorite topics, “you lose twice. You’ve lost what you’ve lost, but then you also lose your perspective. Because life happens to people. Life is bigger than people. It’s all about nature. The life cycle…It’s out of our control.”

It shouldn’t be, though. There ought to be a law that says every time a boy kisses a girl, he has to call within three days.

“So in other words, old man, shit happens and then you die.”

I say this in a way that makes my father laugh. Unfortunately, I can hear Sebastian in the backseat, laughing too.

“Carrie Bradshaw, right?”

The guy named George shifts my file from one arm to another and shakes my hand. “And you, sir, must be Mr. Bradshaw.”

“That’s right,” my father says. “Class of 1958.”

George looks at me appraisingly. “Are you nervous?”

“A little.”

“Don’t be.” He smiles reassuringly. “Professor Hawkins is one of the best. He has PhD’s in English literature and physics. I see on your application that you’re interested in science and writing. Here at Brown, you can do both.” He reddens a little, as if he realizes he’s being quite the salesman, and suddenly adds, “Besides, you look great.”

“Thanks,” I murmur, feeling a bit like a lamb being led to slaughter.

I immediately realize I’m being silly and overly dramatic. George is right: Everything about Brown is perfect, from the charming redbrick buildings of the Pembroke College campus, to College Green, dotted with voluptuous elms that still have their leaves, to the glorious columned John Carter Brown Library. I need only insert my mannequin self into this picture-postcard scene.

But as the day progresses from the interview in the artfully messy professor’s office—“What are your goals, Ms. Bradshaw?” “I’d like to make an impact on society. I’d like to contribute something meaningful”—to the tour of the campus, chem labs, the computer room, a first-year dorm room, and finally to dinner with George on Thayer Street, I begin to feel more and more flimsy, like a doll constructed of tissue paper. Halfway through dinner, when George mentions there’s a rock ‘n’ roll band playing at the Avon Theatre, I feel like I can’t refuse, even though I’d prefer to lie in my hotel room and think about Sebastian instead.

“Go,” my father urges. He’s already informed me that George is the kind of young man—intelligent, well-mannered, thoughtful—that he’s always pictured me dating.

“You’re going to love Brown,” George says in the car. He drives a Saab. Well engineered, slightly expensive, with European styling. Like George, I think. If I weren’t obsessed with Sebastian, I probably would find George attractive.

“Why do you love Brown so much?” I ask.

“I’m from the city, so this is a nice break. Of course, I’ll be in the city this summer. That’s the great thing about Brown. The internships. I’m going to be working for The New York Times.”

George suddenly becomes much more interesting. “I’ve always wanted to live in New York City,” I say.

“It’s the best place in the world. But Brown is right for me now.” He gives me a hesitant smile. “I needed to explore a different side of myself.”

“What were you like before?”

“Tortured,” George says, and grins. “What about you?”

“Oh, I’m a little tortured too,” I say, thinking of Sebastian. But when we pull up to the theater, I vow to put Sebastian out of my mind. Clusters of college kids, drinking beer and flirting, are seated outside at tiny French tables. As we push through the crowd, George puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. I look up at him and smile.

“You’re awfully cute, Carrie Bradshaw,” he says into my ear.

We stay out until closing time, and when we get back in the car, George kisses me. He kisses me again in the driveway of the hotel. It’s a clean and tentative kiss, the kiss of a man who thinks in straight lines. He takes a pen out of the glove compartment. “May I ask for your number?”

“Why?” I ask, giggling.

“So I can call you, dummy.” He tries to kiss me again, but I turn my head.

I’m feeling a little woozy, and the beer hits me full force when I lie down. I ask myself if I would have given George my number if I weren’t so drunk. I probably wouldn’t have let him kiss me either. But surely Sebastian will call now. Guys always call as soon as another man is interested. They’re like dogs:They never notice if you’ve changed your hair, but they can sense when there’s another guy sniffing around their territory.

We’re back in Castlebury by mid-afternoon on Sunday, but my theory proves wrong. Sebastian hasn’t called. Maggie, on the other hand, has. Several times. I’m about to call her when she calls me. “What are you doing? Can you come over?”

“I just got back,” I say, suddenly deflated.

“Something happened. Something big. I can’t explain it on the phone. I have to tell you in person.” Maggie sounds very dire and I wonder if her parents are getting divorced.

Maggie’s mother, Anita, opens the door. Anita looks stressed, but you can tell that a long time ago she was probably pretty. Anita is really, really nice—too nice, in fact. She’s so nice that I always get the feeling the niceness has swallowed up the real Anita, and someday she’s going to do something drastic, like burn down the house.

“Oh, Carrie,” Anita says.“I’m so glad you’re here. Maggie won’t come out of her room and she won’t tell me what’s wrong. Maybe you can get her to come downstairs. I’d be so grateful.”

“I’ll take care of it, Mrs. Stevenson,” I say reassuringly. Hiding in her room is something Maggie’s been doing for as long as I’ve known her. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to talk her out.

Maggie’s room is enormous with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides and a closet the length of one wall. Nearly everyone in town is familiar with the Stevenson house, because it was designed by a famous contemporary architect and is mostly comprised of glass. The inside of the house is pretty sparse, though, because Maggie’s father can’t abide clutter. I crack open the door to Maggie’s room as Anita stands anxiously to the side. “Magwitch?”

Maggie is lying in her bed, wearing a white cotton nightgown. She rises from beneath the covers like a ghost, albeit a rather churlish one.“Anita!” she scolds.“I told you to leave me alone.” The expression on Anita’s face is startled, guilty, and helpless, which is pretty much her usual demeanor around Maggie. She scurries away as I go in.

“Mags?” I caution. “Are you okay?”

Maggie sits cross-legged on the bed and puts her head in her hands. “I don’t know. I did something terrible.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how to tell you.”

I can tell, however, that I’m going to have to wait for this terrible revelation, so I sit on the padded stool-y thing Maggie uses as a chair. According to her father, it’s a Swedish-designed ergonomically correct sitting contraption that prevents backaches. It’s also sort of bouncy, so I bob up and down a bit. But then I’m suddenly tired of everyone else’s problems.

“Listen, Mags,” I say firmly. “I don’t have much time. I have to pick up Dorrit at the Hamburger Shack.”This is true, sort of. I probably will have to pick her up eventually.

“But Walt will be there!” she cries out.

“So?” Walt’s parents insist that Walt have an after-school job to make money for college, but the only job Walt’s ever had is working at the Hamburger Shack for four dollars an hour. And it’s only part-time, so it’s hard to see how Walt will be able to save enough money for even one semester.

“That means you’ll see him,” Maggie gasps.

“And?”

“Are you going to tell him you saw me?”

This is becoming more and more irritating. “I don’t know. Should I tell him I saw you?”

“No!” she exclaims.“I’ve been avoiding him all weekend. I told him I was going to see my sister in Philadelphia.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you get it?” She sighs dramatically. “Peter.”

“Peter?” I repeat, slightly appalled.

“I had sex with him.”

“What?” My legs are all tangled up in the Swedish sitting device and I bounce so hard the whole thing falls over, taking me with it.

“Shhhhh!” Maggie says.

“I don’t get it,” I say, trying to detach myself from the stool. “You had sex with Peter?”

“I had intercourse with him.”

And another one bites the dust.

“When?” I ask, once I manage to get off the floor.

“Last night. In the woods behind my house.” She nods. “You remember? The night we painted the barn? He was all over me. Then he called yesterday morning and said he had to see me. He said he’d secretly been in love with me for, like, three years but was afraid to talk to me because he thought I was so gorgeous I wouldn’t talk to him. Then we went for a walk, and we immediately started making out.”

“And then what? You just did it? Right in the woods?”

“Don’t act so surprised.” Maggie sounds slightly hurt and superior at the same time. “Just because you haven’t done it.”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

“Have you?”

“Not yet.”

“Well then.”

“So you just did it. On top of the leaves? What about sticks? You could have gotten a stick stuck in your butt.”

“Believe me, when you’re doing it, you don’t notice things like sticks.”

“Is that so?” I have to admit, I’m immensely curious. “What did it feel like?”

“It was amazing.” She sighs. “I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but it was the best feeling I’ve ever had. It’s the kind of thing that once you do it, all you want is to do it again and again. And”—she pauses for effect—“I think I had an orgasm.”

My mouth hangs open. “That’s incredible.”

“I know. Peter says girls almost never have orgasms their first time. He said I must be highly sexed.”

“Has Peter done it before?” If he has, I’m going to shoot myself.

“Apparently,” Maggie says smugly.

For a minute, neither one of us speaks. Maggie picks dreamily at a thread on her bedspread while I look out the window, wondering how I got so left behind. Suddenly, the world seems divided into two kinds of people—those who have done it and those who haven’t.

“Well,” I say finally. “Does this mean you and Peter are dating?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I think I’m in love with him.”

“But what about Walt? I thought you were in love with Walt.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I thought I was in love with Walt two years ago. But lately, he’s been more like a friend.”

“I see.”

“We used to go to third base. But then Walt never wanted to go any further. And it made me think. Maybe Walt didn’t really love me after all. We were together for two years. You’d think a guy would want to do it after two years.”

I want to point out that maybe he’s saving himself, but the truth is, it is pretty strange. “So you were willing and he wasn’t?” I ask just to clarify.

“I wanted to do it on my birthday, and he wouldn’t.”

“Weird,” I say. “Definitely weird.”

“And that really tells you something.”

Not necessarily. But I don’t have the energy to contradict her.

All of a sudden, even though I know this isn’t really about me, I feel a thundering sense of loss. Maggie and Walt and I were a unit. For the past couple of years, we went everywhere together. We’d sneak into the country club at night and steal golf carts, and cooling off a six-pack of beer in a stream, we’d talk and talk and talk about everything from quarks to who Jen P was dating. What’s going to happen to the three of us now? Because somehow I can’t imagine Peter taking Walt’s place in our corny adventures.

“I guess I have to break up with Walt,” Maggie says. “But I don’t know how. I mean, what am I supposed to say?”

“You could try telling him the truth.”

“Carrie?” she asks in a wheedling tone. “I was wondering if maybe you could—”

“What? Break up with him? You want me to break up with Walt for you?”

“Just kind of prepare him,” Maggie says.

Maggie and Peter? I can’t think of two people who belong together less. Maggie is so flighty and emotional. And Peter is so serious. But maybe their personalities cancel each other out.

I pull into the parking lot of the Hamburger Shack, turn off the car, and think, Poor Walt.

The Hamburger Shack is one of the few restaurants in town, known for its hamburgers topped with grilled onions and peppers. That’s pretty much considered the height of cuisine around here. People in Castlebury are mad for grilled onions and peppers, and while I do love the smell, Walt, who has to man the onion and pepper grill, says the stench makes him sick. It gets into his skin and even when he’s sleeping, all he dreams about are onions and peppers.

I spot Walt behind the counter by the grill. The only other customers are three teenage girls with hair dyed in multiple hues of pink, blue, and green. I nearly walk past them when suddenly I realize that one of these punks is my sister.