Just then, the girls walked in, though Eddie barely recognized them. During the day, when they were cleaning, they wore sweatpants and kept their hair tied up in bandannas. But tonight, they were wearing tight, shiny dresses and high heels, and their hair had been teased and sprayed. They had apparently bought one eye-shadow sampler, and each had chosen a color—Nadia blue, Julia green, Tonya violet, Gabrielle a lurid yellow, and tiny Elise shimmery brown.

“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie!” they cried out. They all stopped to double-cheek kiss him, even though they had never done anything but put their hands out for money before.

Eddie held the wrist of Nadia while the other girls followed Ronan, in Eddie’s Panama hat, and the ersatz tic-tac-toe board up the stairs.

Eddie said, “You’re clear on what’s happening here, right, Nadia? Nobody but us can know. Otherwise, it’ll be back to Russia for the five of you.”

“Kyrgyzstan,” Nadia said.

“Exactly,” Eddie said.

Nadia patted Eddie’s cheek. “Do not worry, Eddie. We understand. It just business.”

Eddie walked back toward his car with the shopping bag, smarting about his lost hat. He told himself that he had two others just like it at home. He told himself to focus on the bigger picture.

After all, Barbie had been right. Things had gone just fine.

HOPE

Allegra texted Hope at ten thirty on Saturday night. Please come pick me up.

Hope was thrown by the word please. Allegra never, ever used please, thank you, or excuse me when communicating with Hope.

Where are you? Hope texted back. She had dropped Allegra in front of the Dreamland Theatre, but she knew Allegra had had no intention of seeing a movie. Now, she worried something was wrong.

At Calgary’s house, Allegra texted. Please come get me.

NFW, Hope texted. Find another ride.

Pls! Allegra texted.

Three uses of the word please. Something definitely wrong. Hope waited.

PLS HOPE!

Hope waited.

PLS PLS PLS PLS!!!! I’ll owe you.

You already owe me already! For covering for you! Hope texted, but she put on her sandals. She had practiced the flute for two hours, until her tongue and lips hurt, then she had looked at her chemistry homework. She was pretty sure Allegra was out with Ian Coburn, which meant Brick might be home and willing to text with her about acids and bases. But if she texted Hot glass looks like cool glass and Brick was out having fun the way teenagers were supposed to on Saturday nights, then Hope would feel like the biggest loser on earth.

When she set her chemistry book down, she was officially out of options for her Saturday night.

She did NOT want to go to Calgary’s house, the same house where she had allowed him to get to third base while lying on his bed last December.

Calgary had asked Hope to the Christmas formal the week before Thanksgiving, and she had said yes, even though she realized she was a date of convenience—Calgary was Brick’s best friend, and Brick was taking Allegra. Right after Hope said yes, Calgary started paying all kinds of boyfriend-like attention to her. He invited her to his basketball games, where a seat was reserved for her in the family section. Hope sat and made awkward conversation with Rachel McMann and Dr. Andy (who had been Hope’s dentist until Rachel got her real-estate license and joined a rival agency, when Eddie moved the whole family to Dr. Torre).

Calgary started walking Hope to class and walking her to the bus. He asked her to the movies one night, and after the movies there was some mad kissing on the front step of Jack Wills, which was shuttered and closed for the season. Then Christmas Stroll weekend arrived, and Calgary and Hope walked around holding hands. They waited for Santa to arrive in his fire engine, they listened to the Victorian carolers, they got chowder and cocoa from the food tent. At one point, Calgary stepped into Stephanie’s, the gift shop, alone, because he said he wanted to get a present for Hope. Hope sat on a bench with her eyes closed until he emerged with a small bag that contained a tiny box. Jewelry. Something special, something binding. This was turning into a relationship.

Hope couldn’t believe it. Calgary was popular and good looking; he was a three-sport athlete and president of the Japanese club, which might have been really dorky except that Calgary was so cool, he made the Japanese club cool, and lots of people joined, most of whom couldn’t speak a word of Japanese. Calgary could speak Japanese fluently; his parents, in a burst of foresight, had hired a Japanese au pair when he was small, and when her visa expired, they paid one of the sushi chefs at Lola to be his tutor. Calgary wanted to go to the University of Pennsylvania, major in Japanese and business, and proceed to become more successful than any man they knew.

The Saturday night of Stroll, Hope let Calgary feel her breasts and put his mouth on them. He called them exquisite, and Hope ran her hands through Calgary’s hair, because this was something she had seen actresses do in the movies. Calgary had nice brown curls that smelled like pinecones. Touching his hair while he kissed her breasts made her fall in love a little, which she suspected was a bad development.

The weekend after Christmas Stroll, Calgary’s parents went off island to a Marriage Encounter weekend in Fall River, and Calgary invited Hope over to hang out. This was a setup, she thought, for them to both lose their virginity, and she deliberated for several hours before accepting. She wasn’t sure she wanted to lose her virginity to Calgary McMann—because, although he was good looking and spoke fluent Japanese and sank 88 percent of his free throws, and although she’d felt something when she touched his hair and he explored her breasts with his mouth, it wasn’t the big, all-consuming fireball of TRUE LOVE she’d been expecting. But, she realized, she might not meet that person for another twenty years, and did she really want to be a virgin when she was thirty-six? Wasn’t it a rite of passage to get it out of the way? Calgary wasn’t a bad choice.