The moment his arms had gone around me, I stopped thinking entirely. I was a creature of instinct and feeling, every heartbeat and breath and movement attuned to his. With Hardy at my back I threw the ball, and it rose in the air in a sure arc. Instead of the hoped-for swish, it bounced off the rim. But considering I hadn't even gotten close to the backboard before, it was a big improvement.

"Better." Hardy said, a smile in his voice. "Nice going, kid."

"I'm not a kid. I'm only a couple of years younger than you."

"You're a baby. You've never even been kissed."

The word "baby" rankled. "How would you know? And don't try to claim you can tell by looking. If I say I've been kissed by a hundred boys, you'd have no way to prove

otherwise."

"If you've been kissed even once, I'd be amazed."

A great all-consuming wish burned inside me, that Hardy would have been wrong. If only I had the experience and the confidence to say something like "Prepare to be amazed, then," and walk up to him and give him the kiss of all time, one that would blow the top of his head off.

But this scenario wasn't going to work. First, Hardy was so much taller, I'd have to climb halfway up his body before I could reach his lips. Second, I had no clue about the technicalities of kissing, whether you started with the lips parted or closed, what to do with your tongue, when to close your eyes.. .and although I didn't mind Hardy laughing about my klutzy basketball moves—well, not much—I would die if he laughed at my attempt to kiss him.

So I settled for a muttered. "You don't know as much as you think you do." and went to get the ball.

Lucy Reyes asked me if I wanted to get my hair cut at Bowie's, the fancy Houston salon where she and her mom got their hair cut. It would cost a lot, she warned, but after Bowie started me off with a good cut, maybe I could find a hairdresser in Welcome who could maintain it. After Mama gave her approval, and I had collected every cent I had saved from babysitting the neighbors1 kids. I told Lucy to go ahead and make the call. Three weeks later

Lucy's mom drove us to Houston in a white Cadillac with tan upholstery and a cassette player, and windows that rolled down at the touch of a button.

The Reyes family was well-off by Welcome standards, due to the prosperity of their shop, which they had named Trickle-Down Pawn. I had always thought pawn shops were visited by derelicts and desperate people, but Lucy assured me that perfectly nice folks went to get loans from such places. One day after school she had taken me to Trickle-Down, which was run by her older brother, uncle, and father. The shop was filled with rows of shiny guns and pistols, big scary knives, microwave ovens, and television sets. To my delight, Lucy's mom had let me try on some of the gold rings in the velvet-lined glass cases...there were hundreds of them sparkling with every stone imaginable.

"We do a big business in bust-up engagements," Lucy's mom had said brightly, pulling out a velvet tray pebbled with diamond solitaires. I loved her thick Portuguese accent, which made it sound like she'd said "beeg beesiness."

"Oh. that's sad," I said.

"No, not at all." Lucy's mom had gone on to explain how it was empowering for women to pawn the engagement rings and take the money after their no-good fiances had cheated on them. "He scroo her, you scroo heem," she said authoritatively.

Trickle-Down's prosperity had given Lucy and her family the means to go to the uptown area of Houston for their clothes, manicures, and haircuts. I had never been to the upscale Galleria area, where restaurants and shops straddled the city's main loop. Bowie's

was located in a luxurious cluster of stores at the intersection of the loop and West-heimer. It was hard to conceal my astonishment when Lucy's mom drove up to a parking attendant's station and gave him the keys. Valet parking for a haircut!

Bowie's was filled with mirrors and chrome and exotic styling equipment, the biting scent of perm activator hanging thick in the air. The owner of the shop was a man in his mid-thirties, with long wavy blond hair that hung down his back. It was a rare sight in South Texas, and it led me to assume Bowie must have been tough as hell. He was certainly in great shape, lean and muscular as he prowled through the shop dressed in black jeans, black boots, a white Western shirt and a bolo tie made of suede cord and a chunk of unpolished turquoise.

"Come on." Lucy urged, "let's go look at the new nail polish."

I shook my head, remaining seated in one of the deep black leather chairs in the waiting area. I was too dumbstruck to say a word. I knew Bowie's was the most wonderful place I had ever been to. Later I would explore, but for the time being I wanted to sit still and take it all in. I watched the stylists at work, razor-cutting, blow-drying, deftly wrapping tiny portions of hair around pastel-colored perm rods. Tall wood-and-chrome display racks contained intriguing pots and tubes of cosmetics, and medicinal-looking bottles of soap, lotion, balms, and perfumes.

It seemed every woman in the place was being transformed right before my eyes, submitting to the combing, painting, filing, processing, until they had achieved a well-tended glossiness I had never seen except in magazines. While Lucy's mom sat at a manicure table and had her acrylic nails filled, and Lucy dabbled in the cosmetics area, a woman dressed in black and white came to show me to Bowie's station. "First you'll have a consultation," she told me. "My advice is to let Bowie do whatever he wants. He's a genius."