I told Chase Mercer a lot of things.
We ended up sitting on the grass at the eighteenth hole, both of us staring up at the stars. Chase knew almost all the constellations—he’d had a telescope in Columbus—and he was picking them out, one finger pointing while I followed it with my eyes. He had just spotted Cassiopeia when I heard the voices.
“Yoo-hoo!” Then a light flickered across my face, a flashlight beam darting from me to Chase and back again. “Oh, my God,” someone shrieked. There was an explosion of giggling. “Chase, you dog, you,” someone else yelled out.
“Shut up,” Chase said. He stood up and brushed himself off, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the light.
“I always knew she was a slut,” I heard a girl say, and even without looking I knew it had to be Caroline Dawes, who was skinny and tan, with straight black hair she spent a lot of time swinging around. Her mother had made her invite me over just after I moved in, and we’d spent a long, painful afternoon in her room, where, as I watched, she lay on the bed talking on the phone. We’d already been in gym class together for almost two years, and she’d tortured me with every fat name in the book until I’d lost the weight. Now, with my awful luck, we were neighbors, and she had something new to hold against me.
“Let’s go,” someone said, and the light flicked across us once more, landing square on my face. It hurt my eyes. “Oh, gross,” another voice said. “Chase, you must have been desperate, man.”
I turned to look at Chase but he was walking away, quickly, his head down. “Chase,” I called out.
“Oh, Chase,” someone echoed in a high falsetto. More laughing. But they were leaving now, their voices growing fainter, the light skipping across the trees and grass, brightening their path.
“Wait,” I said, but I could hardly see him now. The voices trailed off and I was left there alone, under all those stars.
By the next morning when I went to the pool, I had a new nickname: Hole in One. And when I saw Chase Mercer at the snack bar, he wouldn’t even look at me. He walked right over to where Caroline Dawes and all her friends were sitting, greasing themselves up with baby oil and drinking Diet Coke, and took his place with them.
Chase Mercer got off easy.
A week later, just before school started, I went downtown to a tattoo place and had my lip pierced. I don’t know why I did it; it just felt right. I figured I had nothing to lose.
It was the same reason I cut my hair with nail scissors and dyed it bright red. The same reason I took up with Ben Lucas, who was nasty and dirty and just wanted to get into my pants, and I almost let him. The same reason I lost myself in music that screamed and thundered and hated as much as I wanted to.
And I sat in my new bedroom in my new house with my new pool and new clothes and felt miserable, angry with every inch of who I was. At school I was like a time bomb, ready to explode; I pulled my long coat around me for protection so that nothing could get through.
It worked, as well as it could.
At school the guidance counselor, Ms. Young, would pat me on the shoulder and tell me all I needed was a little self-esteem. “And a role model,” she’d go on cheerfully. “Someone you admire who is strong and fearless, who you can model yourself after.”
I didn’t have anyone but my mother. And I knew she wasn’t strong all the time. She’d been fat in school, too.
“Oh, honey,” my mother would say, stroking my hair. “These are the worst years. I promise you.” But this time, she couldn’t quit her job and take me someplace else. We were here to stay.
The worst years, I’d repeat to myself, thinking of Caroline Dawes and Chase Mercer and Hole in One and the music that almost, but never quite, pounded them all away. And then I’d run my tongue across my lip and hope that she was right.
Morgan drove. Isabel rode shotgun, and I sat in the back, with all the CDs and magazines and a hairbrush that bounced across my lap each time we took a turn. The radio was blasting, but Morgan and Isabel talked the whole time. I couldn’t hear a word they said; instead I caught bits and pieces of their laughing faces in the light from oncoming cars, Morgan rolling her eyes, Isabel with her feet balanced on the dashboard, singing along with the radio.
I kept trying to glimpse my own reflection each time a car lit up the rearview mirror; I was sure I’d find the old me staring back, my hair ragged and black, my lip ring glinting. Instead, I saw that same pretty girl Isabel had created. And I was surprised every time, sure she wasn’t real.
It seemed there was some social life in Colby and we found it at the public beach. The Colby fireworks were the event of the summer. We took our place, parking at the end of a long row of cars by some dunes.
Morgan opened her door and the dome light came on. Isabel pulled down the visor and looked in her mirror. “Nose check,” she said.
Morgan peered in the rearview, turning up her head and checking her nostrils. “Okay here.”
“Here too.”
“How’s my lipstick?” Morgan asked.
Isabel glanced at her. “Good. Mine?”
“Good.”
If this was what girls did, I wasn’t quite sure I really wanted to know about it.
Isabel turned around. “Ready?” she asked me.
It’s easier to be ready when you don’t know what for. “Sure,” I said.
“Okay then. Let’s go.”
She grabbed one of her six-packs and got out, kicking the door shut; Morgan held the seat for me. She pulled a blanket from the back, folding it in her arms, and carefully locked the door behind us. By that time, Isabel was already halfway across the dunes.