The car turned into a parking space in one of the rows of superheated vehicles, and Mama turned the key in the ignition. I was sorry I'd answered that way, because it had

brought a stricken look to her eyes. Slowly she reached out and smoothed back the front of my hair. I wanted to nudge against her hand like a cat being petted. Mama was a believer in personal space, her own and everyone else's, and she was not given to casual invasions of it.

"You're not alone," she said.

"Oh, I know, Mama. But everyone has brothers and sisters. I've always wanted someone to play with and take care of. I'll be a good babysitter. You won't even have to pay me."

That earned one more hair-smoothing, and then we got out of the car.

CHAPTER 4

As soon as school started, I discovered my polo shirts and baggy jeans qualified me as a fashion emergency. The style was grunge, everything shredded and stained and wrinkled. Trash-can chic, Mama said in distaste. But I was desperate to fit in with the other girls in my class, and I begged her to take me to the nearest department store. We bought thin gauzy blouses and long tank tops, a crocheted vest and an ankle-length skirt, and clunky Doc Martens shoes. The price tag on a pair of distressed jeans nearly sent Mama into shock—"Sixty dollars and they already have holes in them?"—but she bought them anyway. The high school in Welcome had no more than a hundred students in the entire ninth-grade class. Football was everything. The whole town turned out every Friday night for the game, or shut down so fans could follow the Panthers for the away games. Mothers, sisters, and girlfriends barely flinched as their warriors engaged in battles that, had they occurred outside the stadium, would have counted as attempted murder. For most of the players, this was their place in the sun. their one shot at glory. The boys were recognized like celebrities as they walked down the street, and the coach was ostentatiously told to put away his driver's license whenever he wrote a check—no ID was needed.

Since the athletic-supplies budget outstripped that of every other department, the school library was adequate at best. That was where I spent most of my free time. I had no thought of trying out for cheerleading, not only because it looked silly to me, but because it took money and string-pulling by frantic parents to assure their daughter's place on the squad.

I was lucky to find friends quickly, a circle of three other girls who hadn't made it into any of the popular cliques. We visited each other's houses, experimented with makeup, vogued in front of the mirror, and saved our money for ceramic flattening irons. For my fifteenth-birthday present, Mama finally allowed me to have contact lenses. It was a strange but delicious feeling to look at the world without the weight of thick glasses on my face. To celebrate my liberation, my best friend, Lucy Reyes, announced she was going to pluck my eyebrows. Lucy was a dark, slim-hipped Portuguese girl who devoured fashion magazines between classes and kept up with all the latest styles.

"My eyebrows aren't that bad," I protested as Lucy advanced on me with witch hazel, tweezers, and to my alarm, a tube of Anbesol. "Are they'?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Lucy asked.

"I euess not."

Lucy pushed me toward the vanity chair in her bedroom. "Sit." I gazed into the mirror with concern, focusing on the hair between my brows, which Lucy had said constituted a linking section. Since it was a well-known fact that no girl with a monobrow could ever have a happy life, I had no choice but to put myself in Lucy's capable hands.

Maybe it was just a coincidence, but the next day I had an unexpected encounter with Hardy Gates that seemed to prove Lucy's claim about the power of brow-shaping. I was practicing alone at the communal basketball hoop at the back of the subdivision, because earlier at gym class I had revealed I couldn't make a free throw to save my life. The girls had been divided into two teams, and there had actually been an argument over who would have to take me. I didn't blame them—I wouldn't have wanted me on my team either. Since the season wouldn't end until late November, I was doomed to more public embarrassment unless I could improve my skills.

The autumn sun was strong. It had been good melon weather, the hot days and cool nights bringing the local crops of casabas and muskmelons to full-slip sugar. After five minutes of shooting practice, I was streaked with sweat and dust. Plumes of powdered fire rose from the paved ground with each impact of the basketball.

No dirt on earth sticks to you like East Texas red clay. The wind blows it over you and it tastes sweet in your mouth. As the clay lurks under a foot of light tan topsoil, it expands and shrinks so drastically that in the driest months Martian-colored cracks run across the ground. You can soak your socks in bleach for a week, and you won't get that red out.

As I puffed and struggled to get my arms and legs working together, I heard a lazy voice behind me.

"You've got the worst free-throw form I've ever seen."

Panting, I tucked the basketball against my hip and turned to face him. A hank of hair escaped my ponytail and dangled over one eye.

There are few men who can turn a friendly insult into a good opening line, but Hardy was one of them. His grin held a wicked charm that robbed the words of any sting. He was rumpled and as dusty as I was, dressed in jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves ripped off. And he wore a Resistol hat that had once been white but had turned the olive-gray of ancient straw. Standing with relaxed looseness, he stared at me in a way that made my insides do somersaults.

"You got any pointers?" I asked.