More study dates ensued, involving pizza, conversation, and more kissing. I knew right off I was never going to fall in love with him. Gill must have sensed it, because he never tried to push it further. I wished I could have felt passionately about him. I wished this shy. friendly boy could be the one to reach inside the part of my heart that was held so tightly in reserve.

Later that year, I discovered life sometimes has a way of giving you what you need, but not in the form you expect.

If Mama's pregnancy was an example of what I might go through one day, I decided having children wasn't worth it. She swore when she'd carried me, she'd never felt better in her life. This one must be a boy, she said, because it was an entirely different experience. Or maybe it was just that she was so much older. Whatever the reason, her body seemed to revolt against the child in her belly as if it were some toxic growth. She felt sick all the time.

She could hardly force herself to eat. and when she did. she retained water until the lightest touch of your finger would leave a visible depression in her skin.

Feeling so bad all the time and having great washes of hormones in her system made Mama peevish. It seemed nearly everything I did was an unholy irritation. In an effort to reassure her, I checked out a number of pregnancy books from the library and read helpful quotes to her. "According to the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, morning sickness is good for the baby. Are you listening, Mama? Morning sickness helps regulate insulin levels and slows your fat metabolism, which ensures more nutrients for the baby. Isn't that great?"

Mama said if I didn't stop reading helpful quotes, she was going to come after me with a switch. I said I'd have to help her up from the sofa first.

She returned from each doctor visit with worrisome words like "preeclampsia" and "hypertension." There was no anticipation in her tone when she spoke about the baby, when it would come, the May due date, the maternity leave from work. The revelation that the baby was a girl sent me over the moon, but my excitement felt inappropriate in light of Mama's resignation.

The only times Mama seemed like her old self were when Miss Marva came to visit. The doctor had commanded Miss Marva to stop smoking or she would eventually drop dead from lung cancer, and his warnings worried her so much, she actually obeyed. Dotted with nicotine patches, her pockets filled with teaberry gum, Miss Marva walked around in a constant low-level temper, saying most of the time she felt like skinning small animals.

"I'm not fit for company," Miss Marva pronounced, walking in with a pie or plate of something good, and sitting next to Mama on the couch. And she and Mama would bitch to each other about anyone and anything that had stepped on their last nerves that day, until they both started laughing.

In the evenings after I'd finished my homework. I would sit with Mama and rub her feet. and bring her cups of soda water. We watched TV together, mostly evening soaps about rich people with interesting problems, like being approached by the long-lost son they never knew they had, or getting amnesia and sleeping with the wrong person, or going to a fancy party and falling into the swimming pool in an evening gown. I would steal glances at Mama's absorbed face, and her mouth always looked a little sad, and I comprehended she was lonely in a way I could never ease. She was going through this experience by herself, no matter how much I wanted to be a part of it.

I returned a glass pie plate to Miss Marva on a cold November day. There was a frosty snap in the air. My cheeks stung from the occasional whip of a breeze unimpeded by walls, buildings, or trees of appreciable size. Winter often brought rain and flash floods that were referred to as "turd-floaters" by exasperated residents of Welcome, who had long protested the town's badly managed drainage system. Today was a dry day, however, and I made a game of avoiding the cracks in the parched pavement.

As I neared Miss Marva's trailer I saw the Cates pickup parked alongside it. Hardy was loading boxes of artwork into the truck bed, to cart it to the gallery in town. Miss Marva had been doing brisk business of late, which was proof that Texans' appetite for bluebonnet paraphernalia should never be underestimated.

I savored the strong lines of Hardy's profile, the tilt of his dark head. A flush of desire and adoration swept over me. It was that way every time our paths crossed. For me, at least. My tentative experiments with Gill Mincey had brought to life a sexual awareness I had no idea how to satisfy. All I knew was that I didn't want Gill, or any of the other boys I knew. I wanted Hardy. I wanted him more than air and food and water.

"Hey, you," he said easily.

"Hey yourself."

I passed him without stopping, carrying the pie plate up to Miss Marva's door. Marva was busy cooking and greeted me with an unintelligible grunt, too involved in her task to bother with conversation.

I went back outside and found Hardy waiting for me. His eyes were such a fathomless blue I could have drowned in them. "How's basketball?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Still terrible."

"You need more practice?"

"With you?" I asked stupidly, caught off guard.

He smiled. "Yeah, with me."

"When?"

"Now. Right after I change clothes."

"What about Miss Marva's artwork?"

"I'm going to take it to town later. I'm meeting someone."

Someone. A girlfriend?

I hesitated, smarting with jealousy and uncertainty. I wondered what had prompted him to offer to practice with me, if he had some misbegotten idea we could be friends. Some shadow of despair must have crossed my expression. Hardy took a step closer, his forehead scored with a frown beneath the rumpled silk of his hair.