SIOBHAN VIVIAN is the acclaimed author of The List, Same Difference, and A Little Friendly Advice. She currently lives in Pittsburgh. You can find her at www.siobhanvivian.com.

To Brenna, my little sister extraordinaire

Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

Acknowledgements

Copyright

ONE

The wrapping paper on my birthday present is impenetrable. Mom must have used half a roll of tape to secure the sharp folds, creases, and delicate trimmings just so. She wants my Sweet Sixteen to be special — more special than me wearing a Hanes undershirt, Levi’s, and my dirty pair of Converse in our cramped mustard-yellow kitchen.

“I bet you can’t even fit into that pretty sundress I bought you in August!” Mom taunted when she realized I was dead serious about not dressing up for dinner. “You’ve shot up at least three more inches since then.”

It was endearingly pathetic. So I put on a foil party crown.

Mom cooked her homemade ziti, got me a whale-shaped ice-cream cake with chocolate crunchies from the Carvel across town, and invited my friends over at nine to help me blow out the candles. Once we’re all tweaked out on sugar, we’re going to bail on Mom for some suburban debauchery in my honor. Even though it’s Thursday, I’m allowed out until midnight.

“Dinner was awesome,” I say, and watch Mom’s lean body shake with elbow grease as she scrubs hardened noodles off a Pyrex dish. A chocolate-brown ponytail swishes across her shoulder blades and a few gray hairs catch the light from overhead. They seem to sparkle.

“The trick is, I cut all the ingredients in half . . . except for the cheese,” Mom tells me over the sound of running sink water. She is a pro at halving family-sized recipes. The anti–Betty Crocker.

I shake her present next to my ear. It doesn’t make a sound. “Can’t you do the dishes later?”

“All this buildup. The suspense must be killing you!” When she turns around, her grin is wide. She flings a damp dish towel over her shoulder and plops into the seat across from me. “Happy birthday, Ruby.”

I tear into the package, prepared to give an Oscar-worthy performance of Best Reaction to a Bad Present. Historically, Mom has exploited gift-buying opportunities as chances to make me more girly. A baby-blue eyelet blouse with cap sleeves to soften my angular boyish figure. A palette of sparkly eye shadows to brighten my strikingly plain face. Some dangly earrings that get swallowed up by my dark, thick hair. I never begrudge her thinly veiled makeover attempts. It just seems stupid to keep things I’m never going to use. So I trade the goods for credit at the thrift store and get presents more my style. Like old camp T-shirts from summers before I was born, jeans so worn you could trace the white outline of the pocket where the previous owner’s wallet was kept, or those striped socks that have little sections for each of your toes.

But Mom promised this year would be different. That I was going to “absolutely die” when I saw her present. She’s been all goofy over finally cracking the code to her daughter’s weirdness, a proud moment for a single parent whose kid turned out to be nothing like her. I only hope I can act my way out of disappointing her. After all, she’s trying. And trying should count for something.

“Read the card! The card!” Mom says, rescuing it from the shreds of wrapping paper I’ve tossed aside. But I’m already inside the box. When I unfold the flaps of tissue, my mouth drops open and I swallow the whole roomful of air in surprise.

My hands hold an old Polaroid camera. It’s tan and black, with three retro racing stripes of red, yellow, and blue darting down the front. There’s a tower of four flashcubes, like miniature disco balls stacked on top of each other. A nylon lariat threads through a loop of plastic on the back. I slip it over my head and the cord digs into the back of my neck. It feels wonderfully clunky.

“I found it at the camera shop on West Market. I wanted to splurge on one of those digital cameras, but once I spotted this on a shelf behind the register, I knew you’d get a real kick out of it. The man said it’s in perfect condition, though it took me half a roll of paper towels to wipe away all the dust.” She reaches underneath the tissue and hands me two boxes of film, which she explains are standard and still available at CVS.

It takes a few tries, but I figure out how to load the film into the front hatch. Then I frame Mom’s face in the viewfinder and pull the orange trigger. The room flashes and the camera roars. Seconds later, it spits out a foggy white square.

I’ve never owned a real camera before. Just those cheap disposables you can buy at the drugstore. I didn’t even know I wanted one. It’s not like many moments in my life are picture worthy. But now that I do, well . . . it couldn’t be a more perfect present.

“Mom,” I say, but she cuts me off with a shhh before I can get sappy. We are very anti-sap.

“Here. You’re supposed to at least pretend like you’re interested in this.” Mom replaces the photo in my hand with an envelope. She’s not annoyed or anything. I can tell by the way she’s grinning.

The card is her plain cream-colored stationery, folded once along the middle. There’s no flowery Hallmarkian poem with twirly golden script about how I’m now a real woman and blah-blah-barf. I am so thankful that hormone-soaked sentiment is not our relationship. It just makes things uncomfortable. Especially with a history like ours.

I crack it open.

Ruby,

Make wonderful memories.

Love, Mom

I look up at her and smile, but she’s already returned to dish duty. Her photograph lies on the table. Even partially developed, my mom is so pretty — a stark contrast from the peeling linoleum of our kitchen floor, a stark contrast from me.

The doorbell rings. Three times, rapid fire.

“Now, who on earth could that be?” Mom asks in a sugary way. She peers over her shoulder and winks, because we both already know.

I run out of the kitchen, hurdle the living room coffee table, and position myself steps away from our front door. Raising the camera to my eye, I fight to keep the laughter inside my mouth. “It’s open!”

Beth is wearing a green mohair cardigan over a gray tank top, dark skinny jeans, and pointy brown leather flats. The sides of her wavy auburn hair are pinned back with a few bobby pins and her face is tinged pink from her brisk walk around the block. She steps into my house but freezes in action pose as the flash pops.

“Surprise!” I shout, before she can wish me a happy birthday for the fiftieth time today. Beth was the first to call me, at exactly 12:01 A.M. She bought me a birthday egg-and-cheese bagel and delivered it to my homeroom. She covered my locker with pictures of birthday cakes from an old cookbook, threw two fists of three-hole-punch confetti on me at the lunch table, and forced me to tie a helium balloon to the strap of my book bag and keep it there for the entire day.

“Ruby!” she screams and lunges with wiggling peach-polished fingers. I am seven inches taller than Beth, so I hold the photo over my head, comically out of her reach. But she’s not afraid to exploit my weakness. She jabs a finger into my armpit and I recoil in a fit of laughter.

I hustle backward to the kitchen and Beth makes chase. We circle the table and both of us are screaming and laughing so hard the windows shake in their frames. Beth slows down only to kiss my mom hello on the cheek.

I am way out of breath, so I stop. Beth throws her arms around my neck and sinks us to the floor. We stare at the photo in my hands. As our panting subsides, her face emerges from the mist of the film. Her hazel eyes are wide open and her mouth is a perfect O.

“Ha! I look like you!” she says, because I’m notorious for making stupid faces in pictures while everyone else around me smiles like normal.

“No, you don’t,” I say, pointing to the gap in my front teeth. A genetic gift from my dad that I absolutely hate. It’s wide enough to slide a nickel through, like I’m a human slot machine. Beth’s teeth are naturally perfect. She’s never had braces or even any cavities. They’re all tiny and straight and white, like Chiclets. I stick my tongue out at her.

“I like your little space,” she says. “It’s cute.”

I roll my eyes. “You think everything is cute. Even dog poop.”

“Shut up! Dog poop can be cute,” she says, matter-of-factly. “But not as cute as rabbit poop.” We both laugh and my mom calls us crazy.

The doorbell rings.

“Ooh! That’s Katherine!” Beth says, glancing at the clock over the sink. “Her mom was going to drop her off after her basketball game.”

She wants us to surprise Katherine with another guerrilla picture, but suddenly I’m worried about conserving my film. That, and Katherine gets on my nerves. But Beth is so excited, hopping up and down like a little kid who has to pee, I shrug and follow her lead.

Beth readies her hand on the brass knob and I crouch down near the recliner. The bell rings again, this time long and impatient. As Beth swings the door open, I spring up like a jack-in-the-box. We both scream our heads off.

The flash pops, but Katherine doesn’t even blink. Instead, she leans against the door frame in her yellow track pants and navy Akron High School varsity basketball sweatshirt. Her chapped lips wrinkle around a brown filter, and she takes the last deep drag of her cigarette before casting it off into my neighbor’s bushes.

“I could seriously kill my parents,” she says. A combination of smoke and her hot breath in the cold air clouds her face.

The three of us head into the kitchen while Katherine rambles off a crazy recap of her parents fighting in the bleachers over who will keep which half of their sectional sofa. Beth gets her a glass of water. I quietly watch the picture develop in my hands. With her stick-straight blonde hair and icy blue eyes, Katherine is too pretty to be a smoker.

Beth taps Katherine on the shoulder to scoot in her chair because she wants to help my mom push the candles into my cake. It’s a tight squeeze past the sink, and Katherine moves in, but not nearly enough for Beth to pass. Rather than ask again, Beth goes around the other way. I don’t think Katherine even notices. She just looks around the room in wide-eyed wonder.

“Wow, this is like the smallest kitchen I’ve ever seen.”

Oh, right. The new girl’s never been in my house before.

“Yeah, well . . .” I say, but decide not to get into it. Anyhow, she’s right. The kitchen is tiny. We have to keep the refrigerator in the pantry and our oven filled with pots and pans. When I want an English muffin or a frozen waffle, I have to move the block of knives over to the table so there’s room for the toaster on the tiny spread of countertop. It’s nowhere near the size of the kitchen in our old house. But Katherine wouldn’t know that.

Katherine’s only been hanging out with us for a few weeks, since Beth found her crying on the windowsill in the girls’ bathroom during fourth period. She said that none of her friends understood what she was going through, now that her dad had officially decided to move out. Apparently, Katherine tried to have a heart-to-heart with a few of her teammates on the way to a basketball game. The girls half listened to her sad story, between joking with each other and waving to the cars passing by the team bus. When Katherine was finished, they reminded her that, as both captain and their strongest player, she had to concentrate on the court if Akron High was going to squeak out a victory against Barberton. So Katherine pushed everything out of her mind and played her best game of the season. Her teammates congratulated her on the win, then boarded the bus, put on their headphones, and rode back without another word. No one cared about her family problems, so long as she made her free throws. And that’s when she decided that she needed some new friends.

That day, at fifth period lunch, Beth told us the story. I found it weird that Katherine would admit all that to a relative stranger, but whatever. Beth said that we couldn’t turn our backs on her, even if Katherine wasn’t quite a perfect fit with our established group dynamic.

“Says who?” I had taunted in my best wise-ass voice when Beth had brought it up. Maria had laughed at that. And even Beth had cracked a smile. After all, it wasn’t like we were looking to increase our numbers. The addition of Maria to our twosome last year, when the principal assigned Beth to be her shadow, caused me enough stress. Sure, it all turned out fine in the end. Maria was into the same kind of things we were — thrift stores, rock music, and rolling our eyes over how dumb the popular kids were. But I still had growing pains and all the other awkward stuff that comes with getting used to someone new. Katherine was a different story altogether. We had nothing in common with her. She was a senior, and we were all sophomores. She was popular (or at least she used to be), athletic, and pretty wild. We were, well, not. I just had a feeling that Katherine wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

But later, at my locker, Beth had pushed my brown hair aside and had whispered into my ear. She reminded me that I knew more than anyone what Katherine was going through with her family stuff. She said there was probably a lot I could do to help her.

I felt like a real jerk. Especially with how great Beth had been to me, single-handedly helping me survive all my own family drama. I couldn’t imagine what kind of state I’d have been in if I hadn’t had a friend like her looking out for me. So I’ve been trying, mostly for Beth. But for Katherine too, I guess. Though she doesn’t make it easy.

Gravel crunches under a set of tires in the driveway. I grab my camera again and return to the door. This time, I drop to the carpet and point the Polaroid out of our mail slot. As Maria walks up the stairs, I snap a picture. Her knees are brown and meaty and partially concealed by red stripey leg warmers.

Maria blows me an air kiss and sheds her fur-collared old lady coat as she walks though the door, shifting her cell phone from ear to ear. “You can’t come! I told you, NO BOYS TONIGHT!” she shouts before flipping her phone closed and rolling her eyes. “Ugh, he is so annoying!”

I nod in sympathy, but the truth is, Maria talks to so many guys, I have no idea which he she’s currently annoyed with. Maybe it’s this guy Davey who graduated last year and works at Square Records. I spotted her draped all over him in the school parking lot yesterday, while I was walking toward the science wing for a lunchtime study session.

I doubt they saw me. I’m very quiet.

“Cool camera! It’s a certifiable relic!” Maria says, batting her long eyelashes and raking her fingers through her choppy little bangs. She leans in and whispers in my ear. “Meanwhile, you are totally in for some major birthday madness tonight! So let’s down the family cake and get going, okay?”

I skip back into the kitchen. On the way, the lights go out. Mom sets the glowing cake in front of an empty seat at the table. I sit and look out at the four bodies that fill the tiny room. Beth snaps my picture with my new camera and, for once, I smile as big and bright and normal as I can.

“Happy Birthday” is belted out in bad harmony. Even my mom, who has her arm around Beth, is singing loudly. The tiny room is so full of happy off-key noise, I almost don’t hear the doorbell ring.

There are five plates, five people. There is no one missing.

I am stuck in birthday cake prison — my gut pressed into the table, the back of my chair scraping our cabinets. Katherine, who is off to the side, grabs my camera from the table and bails midsong into the living room to answer the door.

Suddenly, I’m five years old. I don’t want her touching my present.

The doorbell rings again.

Is that Davey? I mouth to Maria. Maybe a ring-and-run to protest his exclusion from our guest list? She shrugs.

Beth keeps smiling, and drags out the youuuuuuu as long as her lungs will let her.

My birthday candles flicker, begging to be wished upon. I take a deep breath, but get distracted by a flash of white light in the living room.

Katherine bounds back into the kitchen and flicks a freshly snapped Polaroid at me like a Frisbee. “Someone’s here for you.”

Blurry features slowly sharpen in my hands. But I only need to see the gap teeth develop before I know who’s here.

My dad.

A tall, lean man steps forward and fills the door frame, an unlit cigar stub clenched between his teeth. He holds some pink flowers down at his side. They are carnations, I think. The bunch is wrapped up in clear plastic and secured with a dirty red rubber band, like the bouquets you can buy at the gas station or 7-Eleven when you haven’t planned far enough ahead to go to a real florist.

He clears his throat with a thick guttural cough and his eyes lock onto my birthday cake. “Happy birthday, Rubes,” he says, but doesn’t look at me.

“Thank you,” I whisper and scratch a hardened piece of mozzarella off the table.

I used to obsess about what I might say to my dad if I ever saw him again. Not for the last several years, but when I was a kid and things were really messy. I even wrote a never-to-be-delivered letter when I was ten, at the request of the school guidance counselor, who thought it would help my issues. It was four pages long, written front and back on bright pink construction paper. I can’t remember much of what was in it, and I’ll never know for sure because Beth and I microwaved the stupid letter until it caught fire so I wouldn’t have to find it again and have it upset me. But I am so totally positive I never, ever wrote thank you.

Mom flicks on the light and everything is too bright and too real. I blink a few times, half expecting my dad to disappear. “Jim,” she says in the same surprised voice reserved for when you run into a neighbor at the supermarket. I wince, hating that there’s even a hint of friendliness in her voice. “You should have called. You . . .” Her face fights both smiles and frowns as she struggles to finish her sentence. There are too many options.

His grip tightens around the flowers and crackles the cellophane. “Yeah. I thought about that.” Still in the doorway, he shifts his weight from dirty work boot to dirtier work boot. He’s afraid to enter the kitchen, and it’s too late to run.

All these long-buried feelings are rising up and churning around, but, thankfully, I can’t seem to hold on to a single painful thought.

Maria’s lips move silently at Katherine: I think that’s her dad.

“Who?” Katherine blurts out. Maria slaps her hand over Katherine’s mouth.

“I wanted to get you a dozen,” Dad says, ignoring my friends and sheepishly extending the bouquet in my direction. He doesn’t explain why there are only six.

Beth takes a step back from the table, like the whole scene is too intense for her to be standing so close. We lock eyes for a moment and I silently beg her to tell me what I’m supposed to do. She’s always been the one with all the answers, ready to help me through any tough time I might be having. And I need her now, more than ever before. But her face is frozen. She’s not even blinking.

Dad’s eyes finally settle on my face. Everyone is looking at me now. They all wait patiently for me to give them a cue. To see if this surprise family reunion might be my birthday wish come true. But my candles are still lit and, thankfully, I can’t even remember the last time I saw him. So I make a wish to keep on forgetting and blow them out.

“Rubes,” he says again. The bouquet sinks slightly. “These are for you.” His voice drips with expectancy. Like I owe him something. It’s almost funny. But I don’t want to laugh. I want to scream.

“THANK YOU!” I shriek at the top of my lungs, suddenly springing to life. My chair leg catches on a buckle in the floor, and I hip check the table to allow for my escape. Droplets of melted wax and ice cream splatter all across the pictures I’ve taken.

Someone gasps. Maybe everyone does. The volume of my voice even freaks me out. These are the only two words I can think of, so I repeat them over and over. “THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU,” as loud as I possibly can, between gulps of air. Each word coincides with a room-shaking stomp as I stalk around the kitchen table until my dad and I are face-to-face.

Measured against him, it hits me how tall I am. And I see more of myself in his face than the gap between my teeth. The steep slant of his nose, the pale green of his eyes, a ridiculously pouty lower lip. I don’t want to notice these things. I don’t want to be like him at all.

I snatch the flowers out of his hand. A few stems break, some petals fall. We are nearly chin-to-chin. The only air I can inhale is what pours out of his partially open mouth. It smells peppery, like his cigars. It’s so potent, like he’s breathing clouds into my face.

We lock eyes and I don’t dare blink. I want to make him sorry that he’s come here.

He wipes his watery eyes with the sleeve of his flannel coat. He is just sorry.

I drop the bouquet and run out of the room.

“Ruby!” Mom calls after me.

Outside, the cold October air pricks my hot cheeks like a thousand tiny needles. My body throbs equal parts adrenaline and embarrassment. For a moment, I don’t know where to go. What I should do.

The front door opens behind me. I turn around and see Maria emerging from my house, keys in hand. Beth comes next, holding my sweatshirt. Katherine pushes past her. I allow myself the smallest sigh of relief. We dive into Maria’s ancient orange Volvo while she turns her key a few times, pounding her foot on the clutch.

An old blue pickup truck blocks us in the driveway. As soon as the engine catches, Maria guns her car onto my front lawn and pulls around it, carving tracks into the dying grass and cakey soil. We jump the curb and the spinning tires squeal against the asphalt.

Maria’s hands strangle the steering wheel. “Oh my God! You scared the living crap out of him!”

“Screw that. You scared the living crap out of me,” Katherine mumbles, fumbling for a cigarette.

Maria checks her rearview mirror. It’s strangled with a hundred of those sickly sweet yellow air freshener trees, swishing violently from side to side. “I don’t think he’s following us,” she says, taking a turn way too fast. She slows down and allows a deep breath. “That was insane!”

I shiver off the goose bumps popping up on my bare arms. I don’t know what to say, so I press my lips together and concentrate on breathing.

Beth wraps my sweatshirt around my shoulders. “I’ve been waiting for you to have a moment like that for six years, ever since the day your dad left.”

Then it hits me. It’s over. I finally have closure — the best birthday present I could have asked for. The murkiness of my mind gives way to one clear, honest feeling that I don’t try to hide from.

I want to celebrate.

TWO

Maria makes a left onto Copley Road, Akron’s main drag. We drive for a few minutes until a three-story-high neon bowling pin sprouts out of the ground. We’re approaching Akron Pinz and I’m ready to salvage what little time is left on my birthday clock. I honestly don’t care about anything else.

Akron Pinz is a notorious weekend hangout. It has a huge parking lot, which is key for scoping out who might be there at any given time. It’s also a total dive, with few patrons to hassle us or, worse, report our antics. Best of all, the bowling alley is butted up against a large and dense park, which provides lots of natural camouflage.

The place is totally deserted tonight, except for a couple of cars cuddled together underneath the single spotlight illuminating the lot. We pull past them and come to a stop at the very edge of the park, near a small wood-chip-strewn playground erected in honor of a little kid who died of cancer two years ago. You can always find flowers tied up to the chain-link fence. I usually try not to look at them, because it’s totally depressing. But tonight, they momentarily steal my attention away from the impending birthday fun. They’re just like the ones my dad brought for me, except white.

Beth and I kick out on two creaky rubber swings, while Katherine climbs on top of the monkey bars. Maria flops onto a bench across from us, her face fuzzy in the darkness. A glimpse of purple satin underwear peeks out from her jean skirt.

“So what am I in store for tonight?” I ask Maria, pointing at the stuffed knapsack next to her. It’s partially unzipped and a few plastic bags are popping out. “Are we partying it up Dollar Store style?” I’m sure I sound suspiciously cheery.

Maria hesitates and pulls the knapsack onto her lap, like she’s not sure if it’s okay to ignore what just happened back at my house, now that the adrenaline’s worn off. But Beth leaps up from her swing, races to Maria’s side, and gives her a little nudge. With Beth’s blessing, Maria suddenly can’t fight the smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. She unzips the bag and pulls out an opaque green bottle of champagne. A dozen curly pink ribbon strings are wrapped around the neck.

“Whoa! Where’d you get that?” I’ve never really drunk before, except for the couple of dented cans of warm beer we smuggled out of Beth’s garage at her family’s last Fourth of July barbecue. Never something as fancy as this.

“Nothing’s too good for your Sweet Sixteen!” Beth commandeers the bottle, her tiny hands cradling the neck. The cork pops off and sails into the darkness. “And you better remember that next week, when it’s my birthday.”

Katherine grabs the bottle from her and presents it to me with some grand game-show hand gestures that make everyone laugh, even me. “Seriously though, my mom’s boss sent it to her for helping him on the weekend with some report. Lucky for us, I was the only one home when the delivery guy showed up.”

“Isn’t that cool?” Beth says, jumping up and down behind Katherine. “We should totally do this kind of stuff more often!”

I spend a second translating the label before I remember that I barely passed French my freshman year. I take a deep, celebratory sip. The crisp, appley bubbles swill and expand in my mouth, more than I expect them to. Some overflow dribbles down the front of my white T-shirt.

“Nice one,” Katherine snarks, shielding a freshly lit match from the wind with cupped hands.

I am ordered to sit and drink while my friends set up a total old-school park birthday party, the kind little kids have in the springtime. My mind tries to wander back to my house, to think about what might be going on there between my mom and dad, but I don’t let it. Instead, I lock onto the details around me. Maria hangs streamers from low branches. Katherine strings up a star-shaped piñata from the monkey bars. Beth duct-tapes Pin the Tail on the Donkey to a big gnarly oak. I wish I hadn’t left my camera at home. I want to make sure this is what I remember about tonight.

“I can’t believe you guys went to all this trouble for me,” I say, taking another sip. The bottle is nearly half empty. I guess I should slow down.

“I can’t believe you still feel like celebrating,” Maria says in a quiet voice, and chucks a roll of streamers over a low branch. “Not like I know the history or anything, but what was that all about?”

“No clue,” I say, and pull my arms inside my sweatshirt.

Beth rips off a piece of duct tape with gritted teeth. “All guys are the same. It’s like they’ve got special radar and, when they sense you’re completely over them, they show up again just for the sake of messing with your head.” She pauses to take a sip from my bottle. “Pete Southern did the same thing about a month after he dumped me. But it was beyond too late for any apologies. Right, Ruby?”

Pete was Beth’s first and only boyfriend. They dated for about two months last year and their unexpected breakup was really hard on her. I guess there are a few similarities. The tip of my nose feels icy, so I pull my head down into my T-shirt like a turtle to warm it up. I can make out Beth’s shape through the thin cotton.

She takes a step toward me. “Ruby, you know there isn’t an I’m sorry big enough in the entire world to ever make up for how he bailed on you and your mom.”

It’s true. My dad is a total loser and not at all worth any of my waning birthday hours. But I don’t want to start some big discussion about this. I pop my head out and walk back over to sit down on a swing.

“It just seems so random,” Maria says. “I think —”

Beth interrupts her with a heavy sigh. “Listen, the worst thing we could do is let him ruin Ruby’s birthday.”

“I totally agree,” I say, pumping my legs and picking up some speed. “It’s a nonissue. It’s over. So let’s quit talking about it, okay?”

Katherine picks a scab off her elbow. “Why’d your dad leave in the first place?”

Beth sticks her finger up in the air. “Okay. Wait up. If we’re going to talk about this, no one can refer to him as Ruby’s dad. Because he’s not. He’s essentially a stranger.”

It’s weird to hear someone say that about your dad. But Beth’s right. He hasn’t been that for a long, long time, and I’ve got to keep reminding myself of it.

Katherine rolls her eyes. “Well, what should we call him then? What’s his name?”

“It’s Jim,” I say.

“Fine. Then why’d Jim leave in the first place?”

Maria’s head perks up.

There’s no way to hide the pissy tone in my voice, so I don’t even try. “I don’t know, Katherine. I guess he fell out of love with my mom.” What a stupid question.

“He doesn’t pay child support, does he?” Maria drags a stick through the dirt.

“Not really.” I think we used to get money orders every so often. But not for a long time. That’s why Mom is always at the hospital, picking up extra shifts.

“Maybe this will help your mom finally move on.” Maria crosses, then uncrosses her legs. “’Cause, I mean, she’s totally hot. And she doesn’t ever date. Right?”

The party scene whirls past my eyes as I swing higher and higher. “Right. She doesn’t.” I make my voice sound as flat as possible, so Maria and Katherine will get the hint already and remember that this is my party, not a therapy session. Maria shoots me an apologetic smile and returns to streamer duty.

For a second, I feel bad. I know Maria has a lot of questions about my family situation. Maybe it’s weird that we’ve never really talked about it before, even though I consider her a close friend. The thing is, I don’t have any details to give. Dad left, Mom’s heart was broken, she completely shut down, and I went a little bit crazy dealing with everything on my own. But I eventually learned how to handle it, with Beth’s help. The whole story ended tonight with me walking out that door. The beginning doesn’t matter anymore.

My swing creaks back, blowing my hair across my face. At the apex, Katherine materializes dead center before me. I rush forward and grind the toes of my Converses into the wood chips to keep myself from plowing into her. The world catches up to me in three-second swirling delay.

I’m pretty tipsy.

Katherine’s forehead creases with deep thought. “But what about you, Ruby?”

I use my sneaker to smooth the splayed wood chips around me. My hands feel clammy around the cool metal chains. “What about me?”

“He fell out of love with your mom. I get that. But why’d your dad leave you?”

Katherine might as well have kicked me in the chest. I can’t seem to catch my breath.

“Not cool, Katherine,” Maria says, and rolls her eyes.

“Seriously,” Beth says.

Katherine puffs up. “What? That’s a valid question! Lots of people get divorced, but still stay close to their kids. I mean, that’s why my dad’s getting an apartment across town.”

Beth runs over and stands next to me. “Katherine, your situation is completely —” she begins, but then her cell phone rings. She fishes it out of her pocket and holds the screen up to my face.

My home number.

I shake my head, unable to push words out of my mouth. She hands the phone to Maria, who answers it and drifts away toward the fence.

“Listen. None of this is about Ruby,” Beth says. “Jim’s having some stupid midlife crisis. He’s trying to make himself feel better so he can go on with his life somewhere else.”

“Sure,” Katherine says quietly, before tipping her head back and taking a huge sip of champagne. “I guess that could be it.”

“That is it,” Beth insists. “And the best part is that Ruby didn’t let him off the hook.” She pats me on the back. “Tonight was the best thing that could have happened for you, Ruby. Trust me.”

Maria returns, pushing aside a clump of dangling streamers. She forces a smile.

“What did her mom say?” Beth asks.

“She wanted to make sure Ruby is okay. And that we’d have her home by midnight. She sounded totally normal. Not crying or anything.”

I’m not surprised. Mom doesn’t cry in front of me. She’s definitely not going to be all blubbery to Maria. Still, seeing Dad had to be hard for her. “Was he there?” I ask, suddenly finding my voice. Because seeing him leave us again would be even worse.

Beth cocks her head to the side. “Do you want him to be there?”

Something about the way Beth asks this question makes me think it’s a trick. I feel like the answer tattooed on my heart is maybe. Or maybe even yes. But I focus on the good-for-me answer, the one my brain is screaming, the one I know is right. “No. I don’t.”

Beth rewards me with a hug.

“Well, she didn’t say either way,” Maria tells me. Then she adds, “Sorry, Ruby. I should have asked her that.”

I guess I look pretty pathetic, all glum and hunched over, clinging to the swing like a little kid. Beth steps on the toes of my sneakers. She takes my hands and shakes out my arms. Then, tipping her weight back, she pulls me up off the swing. “I’d be a pretty terrible friend if we didn’t have some fun tonight. So let’s get to it already and put all this behind you for good.”

We make the best of our final hour. We freeze-dance in the headlights while Katherine mans the car stereo. We prank everyone in Maria’s phone. Gifts are given. Beth has knitted me a skinny, gray wool scarf with butter-yellow ribbons laced through the stitches. It’s instantly the prettiest thing I own. Maria has bought me an old Cooper Rubber T-shirt from Revival, our town’s vintage resale store. Katherine is presentless, but writes me an IOU for a CD of my choice on a napkin she finds in the Volvo’s glove compartment. After the last few sips of my champagne, I cheat at Pin the Tail on the Donkey, but lose anyway. Everyone takes a swing at the piñata with a splintered tree branch. Katherine finally cracks it with a tire iron she finds in Maria’s trunk. We wrestle on the ground for the candy necklaces, plastic bracelets, and super bouncy rubber balls that rain down.

I use up the last of my energy to convince myself that I am actually having a good time. If for nothing more than to spite him. Then I spend most of the ride home semi-passed out against the passenger-side window, my forehead sticking to the glass. I can hear the conversations around me, but I can’t muster the energy to participate.

“Did you like your champagne, birthday girl?” Maria rustles my hair, and it feels like a tornado across my scalp.

“A little too much, I think,” Beth says, smoothing my bangs and securing them off my face with one of her bobby pins.

“I love you guys,” I mumble.

“That’s just the liquor talking,” Maria jests.

“Here, take this.” The strong scent of mint tickles my nose. I open my bleary eyes and Katherine hands me a mouthwash strip sandwiched between two pieces of gum. “Your mom won’t smell anything on your breath but spearminty freshness. Trust me, it works every time.”

Though it takes a lot of effort, I manage to thank her.

The Volvo shuffles over a wide set of train tracks and we’ve arrived at my street. A respectful silence blankets us as everyone looks at my house. I cover my eyes with my hand but end up peeking through my fingers. The house is dark, the driveway is empty.

Before they say good-bye, all of the girls invite me to sleep over in case I don’t want to go home. I turn them down with a barrage of mumbled and embarrassed thank-yous because I’ve got nothing to run from.

I use the spare key hidden over the porch awning to enter the house. The television in my mom’s bedroom softens. She doesn’t want to talk, only to know that I am home safe. I do her the favor of helping myself to the noisiest glass of water imaginable.

Tonight’s Polaroids are in a stack next to an ashtray in the kitchen. There is only one cigar butt mashed inside, but the entire room reeks like a chimney. I empty the ashtray and think about throwing away the pictures too, knowing the one of Jim is shuffled somewhere in the pile. But I decide against it and hide them in the silverware drawer, in case tonight is really the last time I ever see him.

The thought of that, or maybe the smell of smoke, brings tears to my eyes.

I crack the window before heading up to bed, because I definitely don’t want to smell this in the morning.

THREE

His leaving seemed sudden at the time.

I was on the living room floor in my sleeping bag, hair divided into two still-damp pigtails, trying to watch Annie for the millionth time. I say trying, because Dad walked past the screen like every five seconds and ruined all the best dance numbers. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. When I was annoyed enough to make a fuss, I found him snatching the last of his dusty records from the shelf.

This instantly struck me as strange behavior because the records were ancient and I had never heard them played. In fact, we didn’t even own a record player. So I crept behind him toward the master bedroom to investigate.

Mom had wedged herself into the tiny space between the nightstand and her dresser. Her back was up against the wall like a criminal in an alleyway — completely out of Dad’s way.

We watched Dad cram the last of his possessions into an overstuffed trash bag. Two large suitcases had already been filled and waited in the doorway. Mom wasn’t crying or making a scene. She just stood stiff as a statue with her hands folded over her nursing scrubs. She didn’t even acknowledge me when our eyes met for a brief second.

Even though it was already dark and the middle of winter, I ran outside without stopping for a jacket. My bare feet crunched in the iced-over snow that no one had shoveled from that afternoon’s storm. I leapt up on the hood of that blue truck and sat with my back against the frosty windshield. Brisk cold seeped through my gauzy pajamas. I shivered and shook, but there was no way I was going to move. I had to stop him from leaving.

Snow crunched helplessly under his work boots. Dad dropped his things in the bed of his truck. He told me twice to get down, but I didn’t listen. Hot tears streamed off my cheeks.

When he looped his arms under my armpits and lifted me off the hood, I arched my back and let my limbs hang like dead weight. It was a game we used to play when I was little. But instead of tickling me or groaning in fake struggle, my dad set me off to the side of the driveway like it was nothing. And, without a word, he got in his blue truck and drove away.

FOUR

The salty smell of breakfast seeps underneath my comforter, where I am buried, eyes squinted shut. Bright sun radiates heat and light through the bedding and bakes me like pie filling.

But I shiver, as if I were still freezing cold, still out on the hood of his truck. I haven’t thought of the day he left in years, but suddenly I’m reliving it in such sharp detail that it takes my breath away. It’s not like a dream or a flashback, where things seem all soft and muddy and confused. This is different. This feels as real and painful as it did the first time. I brush away a clump of damp hair from my face and kick the covers off.

Mom stands at the foot of my bed in her mint-green nursing scrubs, staring down at me. The skin around her eyes is dark and puffy, even though she’s put makeup on to try and hide it. She probably hasn’t slept a wink. I doubt I would have either, if not for passing out cold on my pillow after praying that I wouldn’t throw up. I’m never, ever drinking again.

She’s holding a plate piled high with scrambled eggs, toast, and a neat stack of bacon. A huge glass of water and an economy-sized bottle of Advil are wedged in the crook of her arm. I can’t remember the last time she cooked me breakfast, though I doubt my brain is really working properly. It feels like it hates me, the way it pounds and amplifies the steady beat of Mom’s slipper tapping the carpet to a frighteningly loud decibel level.

“You slept right through your alarm this morning. I had to come in here and shut it off myself.”

“Sorry,” I say, reaching for the water with the Advil. My tongue feels like a dried orange peel as it presses two tablets against the scaly roof of my mouth. I start gulping.

Mom shifts her weight from left to right. Her shiny hair flips shoulders accordingly. “I let school know you wouldn’t be in today, seeing as it’s nearly two P.M.”

The red dots on my digital clock look blurry and fat through the bottom of the glass. Every part of me feels heavy, sinking deep into the grooves worn into my old mattress, but I can’t get comfortable. Mom clears some junk from my nightstand and sets the plate down. I keep swallowing until the glass is empty, and then trade it for a fork she’s got stuffed in her pocket.

“Is it safe for your mother to assume that coming home drunk will not be behavior she can expect from you on a regular basis?” Slipping into third person is Mom’s trademark of being annoyed, another way to put more distance between us.

Sharp pain ripples across my forehead, but I force myself to nod through it.

“Good answer. Then suffering through your first hangover will be your only punishment. You can consider this Get Out of Jail Free card a belated birthday present. But know that if you ever come home intoxicated again, you’ll be grounded like there’s no tomorrow.” She plants her hands on her hips and waits for me to formally acknowledge the huge amount of parental slack I’ve just been granted.

So I mumble, “Umm . . . thank you.”

A smirk creeps across her mouth. “That was quite a tirade last night. At least your father knows I’ve raised one very polite teenager.”

This is how my mom and I communicate. Sarcasm acts like smoke and mirrors, so we can talk about something without having to actually say anything. But her punch line lights the fuse of my memory. I see flashes of faces gawking at me by birthday candlelight, feel sparks of soreness in my throat from my courteous rant, hear the crackle of cellophane in his tightening fist. He was here, but now he’s gone. Again.

“First off, he’s not my father.” I half expect her to defend him, but she doesn’t say anything. “And what did he want me to say? ‘Hello there! Umm . . . gee, this is awkward, but what’s your name again? Ahh, that’s right . . . Dad! I totally didn’t recognize you there! Would you care for some cake?’” A clump of eggs slides off my quivering fork. I might still be a little bit drunk.

Mom walks over to my window and opens it wide. I’m glad, because her perfume is thick in the hot room and my first bite of breakfast tastes like a mouthful of overripe petals. Sharp October wind pours in and tangos with the heat of my radiator. She stands there quietly for a minute, peering down at the front lawn.

While her back is turned, she says, “I don’t know what he expected and I’m certainly not going to guess. But it’s obvious what he wanted. He wanted to see you.”

Her words get colder the longer they hang in the air. Maybe she’s jealous, because she’s the one who actually still seems to care about him. At least I have a best friend who’s helped me deal with everything. My mom has nothing but work and awkward conversations with me.

“Well, he got what he wanted,” I say through squishy bites of buttery toast. “Now he can go on back to wherever he’s been hiding for another six years, because we don’t need him.”

She turns back around to face me, and we wrestle our lips into weak smiles. Then she pulls out the dirty towels from my hamper while I eat, and both of us ignore the uncomfortable silence that has settled over my room. Just like always. It’s almost comforting.

Mom flips the hamper lid shut and makes for the door. My throat suddenly feels tight and I swallow hard to force shards of bacon down. Something triggers my gag reflex. But it’s not food that bubbles up.

“So, did he say anything to you last night? Like . . . where he’s been for the last six years?” My voice is tinny and high-pitched. It doesn’t sound anything like me.

Mom surveys the distance left between her and my open bedroom door. Her shoulders slump and her lungs empty with one deep sigh. “Yeah. He did.”

I sit up too fast and my bloated gut seizes in protest, swishing around remains of last night’s champagne. Mom sits down on my comforter. Her bottom lip catches under the ridge of her front teeth. I wait patiently and avoid eye contact.

“Your dad’s been living in Oregon.”

“Oregon?”

“Yes. At least, until last week.” Her voice stays even and measured. “Apparently, he was a park ranger there.”

I look for an edge to these two puzzle pieces. Some kind of cheat to link park ranger and Oregon with what little I know about Jim. But they are blobs from somewhere in the hazy, undeveloped middle of What Happened. I have no idea where or how they belong. Or why I even care.

A few seconds pass before my breathing kick-starts. “A park ranger? In Oregon?”

She bites at her pinky nail.

“Mom.”

“Ruby.” She matches my tone exactly. Then her head dips back and rolls around her shoulders a full 360 degrees. “Okay, fine.” She sounds tired and annoyed. Not with the conversation. With me. I grip two fistfuls of my comforter and let her continue. “After you left, he sat down and asked if he could smoke.”

My nostrils flare. “You should have told him no.”

“I honestly didn’t know what to do. His hands were so shaky; it took him about half a book of broken matches before he got one lit. It was very awkward and very quiet, so I got the dustpan out and swept up your flowers. But I did ask him what he’s been doing these days. He said he’s been living in Oregon, working as a park ranger, but now he’s moving on to something new.” Her fluttering lashes mask her eyes. “And he said, ‘Tell Rubes I’m real sorry for ruining her party.’ Then he left.”

Cold sweat beads on my temples. “That’s it?” That can’t be it.

“Don’t look so surprised. You should know by now that your dad isn’t particularly good at apologies.” She couches it in a hollow chuckle, because she’s not being mean. Just honest.

I cram the million other questions I have back down my throat.

Mom shakes out her arm until a gold watch slides to her wrist. She checks the time and says matter-of-factly that she better get over to the hospital, as if our conversation needed an official ending. Leaning over, she takes a bite of the toast in my hand and plants a quick kiss on my cheek. Her gooey lipstick deposits sticky crumbs on my face.

“Sorry,” she says. And she wipes my face clean.

I don’t bother to clarify the intention of her apology.

On her way out of the room, she bends over to pick something up off my floor. “Oh, Ruby. This is beautiful!” She rubs my gray birthday scarf against the side of her face.

“Yeah. Beth made it for me.”

Her fingers trace the yellow ribbons. “She’s such a good friend.” Mom carefully folds the scarf up and lays it on top of my dresser, making me feel crappy that it was ever on the floor in the first place.

I roll away from the rest of my breakfast and fill my face with the pillow until her car scuttles down the driveway. Then our tiny house is quiet, except for the silence, which seems extraordinarily loud. There’s no sleeping through this kind of silence. So I get up and take a shower.

My fingers jerk hard and fast through soapy knots of hair. I squint my eyes so tight while I rinse that, when I open them again, the colored spots take forever to fade from the white bathroom tile. Not once but twice, the bar of Ivory flies out of my hands. Every movement feels clumsy and awkward. So I make the executive decision not to shave my legs, even though they’re pretty prickly.

It’s certainly no secret that I’ve got some serious emotional baggage. Make that a complete set of luggage with wheels for easy transportation, zippered sections for compartmentalizing, and ballistic nylon for an impenetrable shell. But I remind myself that there’s no need to worry. All my issues are packed nicely and neatly away. Just because Jim randomly showed up doesn’t mean I have to relive everything all over again. Once was more than enough.

The water turns icy and my skin is pruned. I run to my freezing room and slam the window shut. I squeegee myself with a towel and pull up my favorite Levi’s. They feel chalky and in desperate need of a wash, just the way I like them. I shiver into a white tank top and a Japanese Coca-Cola T-shirt I found at Revival, twist a pile of my thick wet hair on top of my head, and secure it with a rubber band. I take one more Advil and start a load of towels in the washing machine.

Then I crash onto our puffy floral couch. The late afternoon light makes everything in the living room look dusty. Traces of leftover cigar smoke burn through my nose.

I try not to think of Oregon. Oregon. Oregon.

Especially because it’s a very boring train of thought. I don’t know a thing about the state, other than its general Pacific Northwestness.

The Internet might enlighten me a bit, if not for our hulking paperweight of a computer. Wedged in the corner of the room, it’s covered in catalogs, credit card offers, and receipts. The sickly green monitor is practically bigger than our television set and the dial-up modem can barely handle a heated IM discussion. We can’t afford a new computer, but we might as well throw this one out. It’s completely useless.

Then I remember. My map.

It hung on my bedroom wall in our old house — a temporary cosmetic concealer for the garish metallic wallpaper Jim promised he’d strip and replace with something nicer when he had a chance. Each state was a different pastel color. I’m almost positive that Oregon was pale yellow. That’s a pretty weird thing to remember. But my post-shower chill is suddenly replaced by a shade of warmth.

I head up the creaky attic stairs, past the bulk toilet tissue and paper towels we buy from Costco. I throw all my weight into the door to get it open. Inside the main room, packed moving boxes are bricked tall like the Great Wall of China.

We used to live in the smallest of the Victorian homes on Rose Lane, but it was still enormous by anyone’s standards. My parents bought it cheap because it was classified as a Fixer-Upper — meaning it had been left vacant and uncared for after the bulk of the Akron rubber industry shifted overseas.

Tiny flecks of white house paint would flutter in the air like confetti whenever it got windy. Roof tiles wriggled loose and got lost in the tall grass of the front yard. The pipes leaked and made patches of ceiling turn rusty. Some of the rooms had exposed nails poking through the raw studs, which I was warned to be careful around. It was creaky, run-down, and pretty spooky, especially at night. But the house was also full of endearingly weird quirks, like false-bottom floorboards, sliding doors that would disappear into the wall, and a hidden back staircase that Beth and I filled with stuffed animals and made into a hideout.

I loved that house. I’d never forget that house.

Mom and Jim had planned to restore it together. A labor of love. But up until the time he left, most of their repair projects were in various states of half-ass. The perfect metaphor for their relationship, I guess. Mom pledged to finish the place herself, but that never happened. Partly because he took all his tools with him. Though I seriously doubt she could have done that kind of work alone anyhow.

Two years later, property taxes went up in our neighborhood. Mom and I moved to a tiny two-bedroom row house across Akron that was practically the size of an apartment. We packed up the old house together. At that time, I had been doing okay for a few months. My grades had gone back up and I had stopped seeing the school counselor. But moving shattered any progress I might have made. I think I cried the entire time. It was like I was being forced to look at all these things from my old life and then bury them in boxes forever. It must have been unbearable for Mom. But the one pacifier to the whole situation, which Mom made sure to constantly remind me of, was that our new house was just around the corner from Beth’s.

I restack a few of the boxes off to the side to gain access to a cardboard poster tube in the corner. The plastic cap makes a hollow pop that echoes through the room.

The map is not nearly as big as I remember it to be, stretching barely the length of my arm. Random boxes make for an uneven display surface, so I unfurl only the top left corner and press it against a stack at eye level. The rest of the map uncoils sloppily off to the side. A slight tear grows through a state that may or may not be Wyoming.

Well, I was right. Oregon is yellow. Ohio is blue.

But beyond that, there’s no real information about the state except for its capital, Salem, a couple of brown triangles indicating the Cascade Mountain Range, and a tiny cartoon horse with a cowboy on top. I squint forward, as if something secret might suddenly emerge if I just stare hard enough, long enough.

Then I spot it. A fleck at the peak of the cowboy’s hat. It looks like a pinprick. It looks like his plan to leave us.

Another wave of nausea crashes over me and I get clammy. My hand shakes as I carefully reach forward, as if I were adjusting one of the logs in a campfire.

But the fleck sticks to my damp fingertip. It’s dust. It’s nothing at all.

A plastic tarp rustles and I jump. My sweaty bare feet slip on the attic floor and I fall hard into one of the boxes. A corrugated corner jabs my pathetically untoned bicep. I touch the red spot softly and find it’s already tender and lumpy, a definite bruise in the making. Across the room, the tarp flutters again. From the ground, I can see it’s draped over a hissing heat vent.

I pull my knees up to my chin and wonder what it is that I’m doing up here in the first place, and what kind of grand revelation I expect from a stupid third-grade classroom map.

FIVE

I fight through gusts of fall wind, the tails of my scarf flapping wildly behind me. I sink my face into the folds until my eyelashes bat away woolly strands. Autumn has peaked, and the trees are on fire with color.

As I wait for a stoplight to change, I find myself underneath one insanely bright orange-leafed tree. I stare up at the netting of delicate branches splayed overhead like the inside of an umbrella. It’s chokingly beautiful.

So I take out my camera from my bag and snap my first real picture. Maybe I could make a collection, like flashcards of beautiful things that I could look at whenever I’m feeling down. Or maybe that’s dumb. I doubt the pictures could ever look as good as the real thing. Especially Polaroids. As cool as they are, they always seem a little bit out of focus.

The sidewalks are mostly deserted, save for random old ladies shuffling along with carts commandeered from the Giant Eagle parking lot, or smiling young moms pushing strollers and chatting into their hands-free cell-phone wires. After a few minutes of brisk walking without any real game plan, I’m on the main drag of tiny mom-and-pop stores on West Market that have somehow survived all the strip-mall development.

The temperature is pretty chilly, so I zip up my navy-blue hooded sweatshirt and cram my hands into the shallow pockets. The flashing bank clock across the street says it’s almost three. Since Akron High School is about as far away as my house at this point, I decide to head over in that direction and meet up with Beth and the girls. It’s weird, but it feels like forever since I’ve seen them.

Akron High is your typical brick fortress, surrounded by usually green, but now crispy brown, lawns. I can see students inside three floors of classrooms. The parking lot off to the side displays the vast spread of wealth in town — boxy maroon four-doors from the mid-90s reflect in the polished chrome rims of the sleek silver imports parked next to them. Company allegiance is printed in the white letters circling each tire. Firestone and Cooper and the local favorite, Goodyear.

I walk up and down each row until I find Maria’s orange Volvo, Goodyear tires. The car is pretty beat up, with dents and dings in the metal and rips in the beige interior, but it always gets us where we need to go. The funniest thing is the back left seat, which we all call the Period Seat. Once Maria tossed a lipstick over her shoulder and it melted in the summer heat and stained the cloth just like a period. It went unused after that, but now that there are four of us, someone always has to sit in the Period Seat. We take turns, rotating around from shotgun. Beth always jokes how just sitting in that seat gives her cramps.

I jump up on the hood and wait until the sound of the final bell catches on a cool breeze. When it does, Maria is the first to walk out. She sees me and blows me kisses with both of her mitten-covered hands. Beth is right behind her. She has on a pair of brown wide-leg polyester pants, stolen out of her granny’s suitcase when she last came to visit. Her pace quickens when she spots me, and the fabric bells swish wildly around her ankles. She comes up nose-to-nose with me and grabs the strings on my sweatshirt. One hard yank and the hood shrinks until only my lips are exposed.

“Where were you? I must have called your house a thousand times!” She sounds pretty pissed. And worried. “Are you okay?”

I hop off the hood and stretch my arms like a worn veteran of many drunken nights out. “Mom let me ride out my hangover in bed. She even delivered me a full breakfast. Eggs and toast and all that.”

Beth rolls her eyes, still semi-annoyed at me but happy to see that I’m doing all right after last night. She shrugs off her book bag, which I hold while she puts on her jean jacket. Rain clouds swarm overhead in remarkably fast motion.

“Weird! So she wasn’t pissed?” Maria walks around to the back of her car, pops the trunk open, and carelessly tosses her books inside one by one.

“Nah. She gave me a No Drinking Lecture, but I’m not grounded or anything.” The truth is, I bet my mom was just happy that I came home in one piece. The power of pity is an amazing thing. I should remember that.

Maria slams the trunk closed and cozies up to me against the side door. “Did she get any dirt on your dad? I mean, Jim?” She whispers the last part, almost as if she doesn’t want Beth to hear. But she does hear. Her head spins toward us really fast.

I rub the sole of my left sneaker back and forth over the gravel. When I look up, Beth is walking over to us. “It’s nothing, trust me,” I say.

“Ruby. Spill it.” Beth rubs her hands together and blows on them to keep warm.

It’s not that I don’t want to tell her. More than anything, I’m embarrassed by the whole situation and for what Maria might think about everything. But I ignore the redness burning up my cheeks, unbutton my lips, and recite the two new facts I’ve learned this morning.

“A forest ranger? You’ve got to be kidding me,” Beth snarls. “Hopefully, karma will strike and a big pine tree will fall on him.”

Maria digs in her purse for her favorite lip gloss. She squeezes a dollop on her bottom lip and smoothes it out with her pinky. “Yeah. Tiiiiimber.”

Over Beth’s shoulder, I spot Katherine trucking across the parking lot with huge athletic strides. Palming an orange basketball, she bobs and weaves around milling students like she’s driving for the hoop. The oversized, yellow-mesh uniform hangs comically off her slender frame. Her hair is pulled back into a long, sleek blond ponytail, so tight it yanks up her eyebrows.

She skids to a stop a few feet away from us and shuffles the last few steps. “I waited for you guys at Maria’s locker, but you never showed.” Her voice is barbed with annoyance. Then she locks eyes with me. “Ruby. I thought you were out sick today.”

“I was out sick today.”

“And we told you to meet us at the car,” Beth barks. As sweet as Beth is, she can get pretty snippy when you don’t follow the plan. And I can’t say that I don’t love it when she’s snippy with Katherine.

“Oh. Sorry.” This time, Katherine’s voice is softer. She divides her attention among the three of us and starts over. “Did any of you guys want to come to my basketball game? It should be a good one. There’s this girl on the other team that I know from camp and she’s got incredible moves underneath the basket. But she can’t score on me and it drives her nuts.”

“My dad’s leaving town tomorrow, so I’ve got a mandatory dinner,” Maria says. I’m secretly jealous that Maria’s family has this tradition before his business trips. I imagine the three of them sitting around their dining room, her mom doling out scoops of stuffing and slices of roasted turkey like Thanksgiving. That’s just the way it is in my mind, though. Really, her family dinners mean shoes-off sushi on the mini bamboo tables at Little Tokyo. Still. She’s lucky. The couples who stay happily married should get some kind of special prize, maybe from the government. Maybe a trophy.

Katherine focuses on me and Beth. “What are you guys up to?” Her nose crinkles up, like she’s already sniffing out our crappy excuses.

The truth is that watching a basketball game is about the last thing any of us would want to do, Beth especially. She despises organized athletic activity more than anyone else I know. Last year, she used the asthma excuse so often, Mr. Parisi made her write a ten-page paper on crab soccer to pass gym.

“My mom promised to take me out for another driving lesson.” Because Beth’s sixteenth birthday is almost a week away, on Halloween, she’s as obsessed with getting her license as she is with planning her yearly costume party. I didn’t even bother getting mine, because it’s not like I’ll have a car to drive or anything. Mom can barely make ends meet as it is. “But . . . I guess I could get her to take me out after dinner.” Then she shoots me a pleading look, like I’m supposed to suffer with her.

It’s hard to say no to a friend who has done so much for you. So I quickly run through the positives. I only come up with one — we’ll get to hang out alone for a few hours. But that’s more than good enough for me, especially with how weird and sentimental I’m feeling. “Yeah, okay. I’ll go.”

Katherine’s face lights up. Even though she can be pretty nasty sometimes, I still feel a flicker of happiness at cracking her surly exterior. She is having a pretty tough time lately. I guess I’m a sucker that way.

Before parting ways, we discuss plans for the evening. Maria is our social director because of all the boys she knows, and she rambles off a list of uninteresting Friday night options, including meeting up with Davey and some of his friends at Pinz. Which I’m kind of over. We’ve done that for the last three weekends. It’s supposed to be really cold out tonight, and I think some of those guys suspect I’m a lesbian because I’ve never walked hand in hand with them to the dark corners of the park. Not that I have guys throwing themselves at me or anything. I’ve never even talked to most of them, like one-on-one. I just kind of lurk around other people’s conversations and smile or laugh when it’s appropriate.

Then Maria says, “Oh, well, I got a random e-mail from Teddy Baker about a party tonight at his house. You guys know him, right?”

Teddy went to grade school with Beth and me, but transferred to Fisher Prep for high school — the sprawling all-boys school next to Akron’s golf course. I haven’t seen much of him since I was twelve, the year I moved off his block.

“Wait. How do you know Teddy?” I ask.

Maria shrugs. “I hooked up with his friend at a party once, and then he found me online. But a party at Teddy’s means lots of boys,” she says, waggling her eyebrows. “Lots of richy-rich rubber boys.” She sprays the air with machine-gun-style kisses.

“Won’t Davey be mad that you’re not hanging out with him?” Beth asks.

“Davey’s not my boyfriend,” Maria says. “We haven’t even kissed yet.”

“Yeah, right,” Katherine says.

Maria laughs. “Seriously! Not even one smooch.”

“I thought you guys were together,” I say.

“Well, we are. Kind of.” Maria shakes her head. “We’ve been hanging out a bunch but it’s always more friendly than flirty.”

“Seriously?” Beth shakes her head, flabbergasted. “I think it’s time for you to move on. You don’t want to look desperate, throwing yourself at him if he’s not into you.”

“Yeah,” Maria says, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. “I guess maybe.”

We decide to meet at my house to get ready, since my mom will be at work. Maria drives off, sputtering gravel at the backs of our heels as Katherine, Beth, and I make our way toward the gym.

Katherine dribbles her basketball effortlessly through her legs as we walk. “Listen, Ruby,” she says, but pauses to clear her throat, spitting a huge yellow ball of smoker’s phlegm a few feet ahead of us. “I’m sorry if I came off harsh last night. I’m just going through my own drama. And seeing you freak out on your dad and, like, understanding that all this divorce stuff is going to mess me up for, like, years to come, really made me lose it.”

Decoding Katherine’s babble is a skill I’ve yet to master. But I know there’s an apology in there somewhere, which is pretty surprising. Until I glance over at Beth, who kicks a bottle cap. The faint smile she wears tells me everything.

“That’s okay,” I say, opening the double doors for her. And it is. While she might hang out with us, Katherine isn’t really my friend. I’m not the easiest person to get to get close to, but I keep people like her at a distance for a reason.

Predictably, there are not many people in the gym. Though every inch of wall space is covered by navy-and-yellow felt banners, proclaiming countless championships in every sport imaginable, most are titles won long before I was born. Akron’s athletic program has been on the end of a losing season for many many years. The crowd is mostly other basketball players from the freshman and JV girl squads, a few family members, and a bunch of little kids who storm the court at every unoccupied second to shoot free throws or run races to the half-court line and back. We have our pick of uncomfortable bleachers. I follow Beth up to the very top row.

“I’m glad you came,” she says, dropping her bag and slumping onto the bench. “After that last fight, no one in Katherine’s family would come to cheer for her. It’s amazing to me how selfish parents can be.” Beth shakes her head dismissively. “She reminds me a lot of you.”

“Really?” I say, sliding next to her and trying to hide the disappointment in my voice.

The Akron varsity girls team commandeers the center of the gym for some stretches. Most of the girls are half-assing it, talking and laughing while Katherine calls out counts of ten as sternly as an army drill sergeant. I recognize a few of them from the hallways. Specifically, two tall blondes and a short brunette. They are all wearing lipstick. The brunette catches me staring and points up at me and Beth. The two blondes lean in and all three whisper with curled upper lips, while keeping their eyes locked on us. They are Katherine’s old friends.

I pull my sweatshirt over my head to break their gaze.

“Yikes, Ruby! What’d you do?” Beth pokes my arm.

I wince and twist it so I can see the inside of my bicep. There’s a deep purple blob, speckled by flecks of red.

My throat fills up with a lump that I force down with a big swallow. “Ugh, this is so stupid. Okay. Well. Do you remember that map I used to have in my bedroom? I don’t know why, but I wanted to take a look at Oregon.”

Beth blinks a couple of times.

“You know, in my old house. The U.S. map that hid my super ugly wallpaper?”

I search her face for a glimmer of recognition. If anyone should remember something from my life in painstaking detail, it’s Beth. But then I realize she’s not confused. She knows exactly what I’m talking about.

“Ruby,” she says, wrapping my hand inside hers, “I don’t think it’s such a great idea for you to be thinking like that.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like, imagining where Jim might be living or something. Because — and I’m only saying this because I’m your best friend — he’s probably not coming back after how things went down last night. And the more you learn about him, the harder he’s going to be to forget again.” She looks away from me, up at the buzzing lights in metal cages over our head. “You’ve come so far. Don’t let this mess you up.”

“I was just curious,” I whisper. Though I know she’s right. I hardly knew anything about Jim when I was a kid, and it took years for me to get over him leaving. Imagine how tough it would be if he became a real person, instead of a vague idea of what he might really be like.

“I’m just giving you a little friendly advice.” She nudges me with her bony shoulder. “That’s my job.”

The shrill whir of a whistle diverts my attention to the court. Katherine is underneath the basket, wrestling with a girl from the opposing team over a loose ball. Neither wants to let go, so two additional referees add their whistles to the mix. Katherine’s throwing crazy elbows, thrashing for control. Finally, the other girl releases her grip, and Katherine screams a hoarse victory cry into her face. The referee blows a final long blast, flashes his hands in the shape of a T, and the angry Akron coach flags Katherine over to the bench.

But Katherine’s not quite finished, arguing down the ref and acting like his call was insanely unjustified. The brunette tries to lead her away by the arm, but Katherine flails free and stalks over on her own accord. She crashes onto the bench, grabs a Gatorade bottle, and squeezes a thick green stream down the back of her throat. She spots me in the stands, but doesn’t smile.

“Did you see that?” I turn to face Beth, but she’s looking at me all googly-eyed.

“Come on,” she says and kicks the empty bleacher in front of her. When I don’t spring to action she whines, “Ruby! Come on! You know this will make you feel better.”

Sometimes, when I’d get really upset about Jim stuff, Beth would sit me on the floor and French braid my hair over and over again until I calmed down. She hasn’t had to do it in years, and I’m not even that stressed or anything right now, but I guess she wants me to know she’s still there for me, like always. So I slide in front of her and pull out my hair thing. Piles fall down to my shoulders. It still feels damp at my roots from my morning shower.

“Whoa!” she squeals. “Ruby, your hair looks amazing.”

“Really?”

She digs frantically in her bag. “Crap. I don’t have a mirror. Where’s your camera?” Without asking, she digs into my bag and pulls it out. I make a goofy face into the lens, puffing out my cheeks like a chipmunk. Beth snaps the picture and looks pleased. She turns it around. Even though my face looks stupid, my normally flat hair is chunky and wavy, like I’ve spent the day at the beach. It’s almost pretty, which is so not a word I ever use to describe myself.

“Oh, my God! Maybe you and Teddy can finally consummate your marriage tonight.”

“What are you talking about?”

She smiles. “You know. A little thing called fourth-grade Halloween, when Teddy was James Bond and you were Princess Diana, marching together in the school parade. Everyone thought you were husband and wife.”

We both giggle. It feels really good. “Holy crap. I forgot about that.”

“Not at all surprising, considering you have a terribly memory.” She rolls her eyes. “Anyhow, I totally predict that you will make out with Teddy tonight.” She crosses her arms and nods her head once, like a genie. “It’ll be great. You’ll kiss all your troubles away.”

“Eww!” I say, and stick my tongue out. There’s something a little daytime-talk-show about trying not to obsess about your deadbeat dad by randomly hooking up with some guy. Plus, it’s not like I have a million other guys I’ve kissed in my lifetime. There hasn’t even been one. And I don’t know if I want my first to be tainted with his memory.

“What do you mean eww?” Beth pokes a finger at my chest. “Ruby, I’m starting to think that you might have a phobia about hooking up. Like a fear of getting close to a guy or something. Because of your parents.”

I actually contemplate her words for a few seconds. But then I notice how Beth’s face is super stony and serious. Too serious. “You’re so full of it.”

She rocks back with laughter. “Then prove me wrong!”

Kissing Teddy might be a good way to take my mind off things. And I don’t get many chances to prove Beth wrong about anything. So I flash a crooked grin and decide to seize this particular opportunity by the lips.

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