All Souls

The Girl No One Knows

Fathers

Mr. Dell, in his daughter's room, stuck his face into the horn of a stargazer lily, one of a… one of a… must have been a dozen, and he breathed in and said wasn't that something. And wasn't it: the pileup of cards, a stuffed bear, a bouquet of balloons, a banner, a bed jacket, books on tape.

We love you, Astra! The chorus to his daughter was always the same, and he, too, said the same, but he did not look at her famished face, did not meet her eye, did not take her hand; he wheezed out only so much cheer. "That party at the Mortons'" was how he started. Mr. Dell stood between his daughter's bed and the window and described what he could of the Mortons' party. "I've been to Suki's before, Dad." Okay, he had forgotten, so other things, then. Not far into the kickoff fund-raiser, the host had stood on a piano bench to say he was not sorry to be so poorly acquainted with the parents gathered, but he expected to know a lot about everyone by the end of the school year when the money for the senior gift was raised. "Then Mr. Morton expected he would never see any of us again."

"That sounds like Suki's dad."

"Suki's mother is funny."

The room Suki's father had spoken in was a very big, cream-colored box of a room, a cake box, a hatbox, something large and expensive. Mr. Dell described the party to his daughter in the way Grace would have described it: how things looked and sounded, the gurgle of civility among designing adults. He described what it felt like to be known as the parent of such a child, his own, his only, his best, bright addition.

"Dear, dear Astra, how are you feeling?" he asked now.

"Daddy," Astra said, and she smiled when she told him how corny he was.

He told his daughter who had come to the Mortons'. Mrs. Forestal was there, so Mr. Forestal was not. Mr. and Mrs. Van de Ven, Mrs. Abiola, the Cohens, and Mr. Fratini were there. "I talked a lot to Alex's mother — is that woman crazy? The Johnsons were not in attendance. The headmistress, Miss Brigham, was there for a short speech, and she asked after you — everyone there asked after you, darling. Everyone sends love." Then he remembered that the Johnsons were in Europe meeting somebody royal.

Astra said, "The Johnsons have expensive fights that end with new jewels."

The Mortons' apartment was all bloody mahogany and damask. Crystal chandeliers, those plinking rainbows, were hanging everywhere. Double sconces, elaborate molding, herringbone floors. The caterers were using monogrammed family silver. The word expansive came to mind, or a three-tiered cake on a crystal stand, a monument in buttercream frosting, swags of sugar violets, silver dots. That was the equivalent dessert to the Mortons' apartment as far as Mr. Dell was concerned. He looked at Astra again and saw how tired she was; her eyelids looked swollen as if she had been crying, and perhaps she had cried. He hadn't been here for all the tests; he was at work.

"I wish I could be hungry," Astra said. She shut her eyes.

Good night, ladies, good night, ta, ta, or however it went. Mr. Dell thought literature should be a consolation, but what he most often remembered did not comfort him. He did not have his wife's gift, Astra's inheritance from Grace for hope and serenity. Sick as his little girl was, she yet lay hopeful of recovery — fearful, too, at times, at times overwhelmed, given to deep, jagged sobs, and yet… she was sick and in pain on a sad floor in the hospital, and yet she seemed to feel his terror, his sorrow, and she consoled him by being mostly mild, sleepy, quiet. Most of the time when he visited, she slept and slept. She grew smaller.

Again he asked and again, day after day, "How do you feel?"

Better. Not well. Sick. Hurting. Hurting a lot. Here is where it hurts the most. Look at what they did.

Why was it hard to look when he had already looked into disaster, into the broken face of his beautiful wife in a bag on a gurney? Yes, he remembered saying to the figures standing behind him — a row of janitors, a man with a mop at attention was that who? Policemen? Morticians? Yes. My wife. This is Grace Walker Dell, yes. My wife.

What business had Grace there on that street at that hour? Why had she not been home, but she was saving money looking for a new lamp on Bowery. He wanted her here with him at this other, terrible bedside. He should not have to be alone.

Mothers

Theta Kovack called First Wok and ordered garlic chicken, noodles, soup. Two Cokes. Marlene, at her ear, said, "General Tsao's! Get General Tsao's!" But Theta said, "Aren't you on a diet?" and she scuffed off her shoes and unbuttoned her blouse. The twenty she extracted from her purse felt damp. "For when the guy comes," she said, holding out the money. She let her skirt slip down her hips as she walked to her room and shimmied out of work. Of course, she didn't want to see herself, but she saw herself, or parts of herself, her belly rucked by the band of her slip, an angry redness she rubbed at. Glad she had not gone to the Mortons' party arrived wrongly dressed. Now the damp smell was surely hers, and nothing of Dr. Bickman's office — the minty winter-green of mouthwash, the cleansing alcohol, the doilies on the trays of tools — remained. A subway with a few stops and a three-block walk was all it had taken to grease Theta's face.

A Daughter

Miss Wilkes, undressing at home, sniffed the bitter smell at the underarms of her turtleneck and said, "My god!" She sniffed again. When did her sweat turn so peculiarly acrid? The face she saw in the mirror, her own, seemed still a girl's, not a teacher's, but the stink of her was something awful, old. True, the girls themselves were not always so fresh. Edie Cohen, in her usual rush, liked to announce she hadn't showered. The girls said, "Keep your arms down. Stay away!" But the girls got up close to each other and examined each other and were amused or mockingly repelled by what they sometimes found. "Want an Altoid?" Good girls mostly, polite, they offered her Skittles and mints, whatever they had secreted — and she allowed. Miss Wilkes said, "Yeah, I would like," and she took her favorite colors. They got up close for her to pick and seemed startled at what they saw. What did they see? But they were never so familiar as to fix her. They would let her go through a class smudged rather than say, "Miss Wilkes, you've got ink on your chin." Only Lisa Van de Ven had stopped her, had said, "Wait." Lisa it was who had tucked in the label of her shirt, who had said, "Miss Wilkes," holding out a box of Kleenex. Lisa Van de Ven, Lisa. Miss Wilkes was on the bed with the weight of her hand between her legs.

Mothers

In a corner apartment with a southwestern view of Park Avenue's islands bedded with begonias, glossy begonias, Suki Morton's mother held the phone in one hand and a drink in the other and heard her daughter's screed against that fat Dr. Meltzer and his chem class labs. "He keeps us late. He piles on the homework. We're seniors, for god's sake. We're under a lot of stress as it is. I hate Dr. Meltzer."

Mrs. Morton could not come up with an expression. Dr. Meltzer was a name attached to a fat man who smelled like the movies. Buttery and smoky at the same time. Butter-yellow teeth. Short-sleeved shirt, pocket protector, high waist, and waddle. Surely encountered in the movies but a teacher to be found in a public school, never one like Siddons. Mrs. Morton hung up the phone and said, "I never liked science."

Ten blocks south, Suki's best friend, Alex, was watching cheese melt over chips. She was talking to herself, rehearsing a college interview, saying that what she loved about this college was there were more boys than girls, better parties, good drugs. Alex was saying her ambition was to be the most famous party girl the school had ever known, and she knew what she was doing, and she could meet this goal.

Car Forestal twisted utensils through food she had mashed to look like war salvage, drought gruel, rancid scraps from boarding school. She was at the orphanage and eating with her baby "pusher," the tiny silver spade from her godmother. Car pushed and smoothed and rearranged the food; she made patterns.

"Look, Carlotta, if you're not going to eat it, at least stop this baby business. Not everything on your plate has to be mashed." Mrs. Forestal said she simply could not sit for hours and play the warden, and she pronounced Car's manners repugnant and left the table. Car excused herself elaborately—"May I please" — and made answer, "Why of course, my dear," and the girl left her plate of food that no longer looked like food and went to her room and drank water.

Sarah Saperstein and her father were talking about global warming, and Edie Cohen — Dewdrop to her father — was listening to her father talk about her older brother, Jake, the pride of the family, a sophomore at MIT who was making computer programs for Intel or Extel or Ontel, some techno-sounding company that had a tel to it. Edie Cohen's brother was one of the reasons she worked so hard; she had his career to live up to no matter what her parents said. Her parents said they didn't care what grades she got as long as Dewdrop could say she had given her all.

Ufia, the black princess, was eating chickpeas and telling her mother she didn't think Mr. O'Brien saw the racist significance of the Dickinson poem, at least not the way she did. "Just think of the term," she said. "'White Election.' Could anything be more obvious?"

Kitty Johnson had come home after seven from advisory with Mr. O'Brien, and her head ached. Kitty said it was a migraine-order headache, and she told the housekeeper she was going to bed. "I'm not going to be 'up to nothing' in my room, as you say. I won't be phoning anyone. I don't do that, anyway. I just don't want any dinner."

***

What other conversations were there? Was there still talk of the Dells, Astra Dell especially? Was the subject of her cancer old, or simply avoided because it diminished all the other griefs a healthy person felt? Here was a body dangerously sick: Astra Dell, that pale girl from the senior class, the dancer with all the hair, the red hair, knotted or braided or let to fall to her waist, a fever, and she consumed.

CHF

The sofa Car sat on was smooth as a mushroom and so plumply overstuffed that no indented evidence of her remained when she stood up; in fact, there was no evidence of anyone's passing through her father's apartment, and she could only imagine the swaying enormity of the cleaning lady, who was so thorough in her work that the slats of light through the blinds seemed dust-less. Here all was sealed, unscented, unused, unmarked, yet the clock was wound and keeping time. Her father's drawers were empty; his closet, locked. Car had a key to her father's apartment, and this, she supposed, was enough, was a lot really, and meant she could wander and phone as she would, as she had and did last week, this week, any week, and because her father's number was unlisted and her mother didn't know it, Car was inaccessible. That man! was all her mother said. That man, Car's father, impeccably pressed and pleated, was surely in handsome company. Dearest girl. He wrote the occasional postcard that took weeks to get across the ocean. Dearest wren. Today in the Galleria Borghese, William stood in front of the Bernini and wept. You know the statue. Daphne breaking into branches. Her father was a character in a Henry James novel. Car lit up another cigarette and ashed it on the table.

Marlene

Marlene picked her nose and sent what she found in it flying across her room. She was a dirty girl, she knew that much, and whatever the girls in school suspected her of — stealing, farting, lying — was true. The slut part was not true, although she wished it were, but all the dirty parts — yes, she was that girl. Look at her messy room, the unresolve of such disorder. She had no ambition but to dizzy herself into absence. Smoking cigarettes helped. The nights when her mother came home and went straight to bed saying her feet were swollen, those nights Marlene often shamed herself into high feeling. She flashed her ass in the bright windows of the living room; she pulled her cheeks apart; she said, Kiss my a-hole; she said, Eat me. Ugly expressions she used as she would spit, and she picked at herself and made worse scabs. But who could see this now in the soft light of her bedroom? She wrote to Astra Dell and chewed her nails to a bloody quick she blotted on the draft of her letter… Dear Astra. She meant what she wrote, the dear part. Of all the girls in her class, only Astra Dell had ever been genuinely kind to her and was, yes, was dear to her, and now Marlene was in a position to help Astra. To help Astra Dell! To be her friend as no other. I have never shared more than a hello nod or a smile with you, but the one time I saw you cry, I wanted to share those tears with you. I am thinking of you, which was purely the truth. Marlene was thinking of Astra and rumors of scorching treatments being used to cure her. Marlene wrote three pages, single-spaced, telling Astra about stupid things, school, Miss F. She either just sits there and waits for you to have some trigonometric moment or tells you that she cannot believe that you don't know it. Marlene's letters were filled with whatever she had overheard in the senior lounge, for she had found a place there for herself in the lounge. Alex began laughing hysterically over nothing in chemistry, and Dr. Meltzer kicked her out of the class. Marlene often sat in the corner of the lounge leaned up against the lockers, and from there she listened in, took notes, copied stories, scribbled, drew flowers. Alex was making a video of the senior experience, but Marlene was writing it all down for the sick girl.

Marlene wrote to Astra about her yearbook page. Marlene Kovack, Last Heard Saying: Nothing. Who wrote that? Marlene had some ideas — Suki Morton and Alex Decrow. Some joke.

But there's always got to be one person to hate in every class, right? Marlene wrote to Astra: Expect to see Alex's movie. She's shoving her camera into everyone's face. Even Marlene's, of course. Marlene had been asked to look into the camera and say something to Astra. Marlene, watching from her corner, had said, "Catch me in action," and then held as still as she could, hardly seeming to breathe. Alex filmed some girls from below because, as Alex said, the angle was so fucking freaky, possibly original; the way a little kid sees the world is mostly oily, prickly legs. Marlene believed Alex wanted everyone to look ugly. That was school for Marlene, an ugly ongoing movie, but now suffering had another meaning, real suffering led to real death. Dear Astra, I hope to see you even before you get this letter, and she did hope to see Astra; this was the truth.

Siddons

Dembroski was checking off attendance in senior class meeting.

Alex Decrow?

Edie Cohen — sick.

Marlene Kovack—

Suki Morton?

Later Mrs. Dembroski wondered at the suspended notation for Marlene Kovack; she couldn't account for her own indecision on the matter. Where was Marlene on Wednesday?

Unattached

Anna Mazur sat near the end of the bed and watched Astra's breathing because everything else she looked at was hospital-like, too white and too clean, bandaged, tubed, needled, starched, so that the rise and fall of Astra's breathing in the bed was what she watched, the way she might watch a clock, as if the visit could be hurried by such attention, but her time at the hospital was like all time at the hospital and slow! A nurse came in and pinged the IV sac, and later the nurse came back and said, "Still sleeping is she?" and Anna wondered at the sameness of hospital talk, remembering her brother Mitchell in a cold room where he slept and slept away what little time was left. The unfairness of things. Anna Mazur knew Astra from the English Speaking Union's Shakespeare contest. "You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand." Anna had never been Astra's teacher; she had only stepped in to coach when, last year, Miss Hodd was out and Astra had needed help to prepare for the contest. Anna liked the girl very much and wished she had taught her, wished she had been a favorite, but Anna had never been anyone's favorite. (She was no Tim Weeks.) Maybe in a different school or another profession, she might be valued more. Oh, she had been liked as a teacher, yes, even well liked on occasion, but nobody's best, nobody's favorite. She had been three years at Siddons and had never seen Tim Weeks's apartment. Anna stared at the blanketed rise of the sick girl's feet. She thought Astra's toes would break off if she touched them, and so she backed out of the room in good-bye, glad to be gone and down so many floors and into the unseasonably flushed and humid yellow air. She shivered to be alive, but the unfairness of things — criminals turning on the spit of their crimes, the crooked and maimed and unspeakably wicked thrumming with health while the innocent died — saddened Anna, and she called Tim Weeks once outside.

He said, "Why don't you come over?" And when she didn't answer, he said, "Take a taxi. I'm not really as far as you think."

She didn't know where to sit once she was in his apartment. The couch was serving as a table; stacks of magazines and newspapers and books took up its length, and the chair under a reading lamp was clearly Tim's, so that the only other possible chair was the beanbag in the corner. "From somebody's youth," he said, "probably mine."

She moved around the room. She looked at the books on his shelves: biographies — Ernest Hemingway, Adlai Stevenson, Frank Lloyd Wright — and in a cleared space a picture of a dour little girl and another picture of her, younger by years, smiling on a lawn in a skirted bathing suit. "My niece. My sister's children. They live with the folks in Ohio. The little boy's name is Ted. He's six, I think, or he may be seven." The little boy was cuter than his sister, freckled, a little like Tim. "He looks like you," she said.

"I'm flattered," he said. "I'm glad. I've got beer and beer. What would you like?"

"Nothing."

"Really?"

But she joined him in a beer, clinking bottles as he moved his chair closer to the couch, remarking that they had more than Siddons in common; they were both from the Midwest. Yes, he said. He knew that, and Tim was glad she had called, had come; he had been wondering about her visit to Astra Dell.

"Yes," she said.

"So?"

"The girl slept the whole time. She opened her eyes when I first got there, and she may have seen me. I don't know. The nurse said she would tell Astra I'd been there." Anna drank and shrugged her shoulders, said she was tired. She said, "So," said, "Nothing much to say except I'm depressed."

He took the beer from her hand and kept her hand in his and looked at her in that Tim Weeks way he had, and he was adorable again.

She said, "Well, I'm not suffering, am I? I came here, didn't I? I'm sitting with you and drinking beer and playing the sad sack when what do I have to be sad about?"

"Don't be so hard on yourself. You have reason to be sad. There's something wrong about a child gravely ill. There's the memory of your brother."

"You think they could fix it by now. You think they'd know more."

"Next time maybe I should go with you," and he let go of her hand.

"I'm not being hard on myself. I was glad for an excuse to call you."

He smiled. He talked about quiet experiences and how it helped to see a lot of foliage from the windows of his apartment. "Look," he said, and she did, and she saw the leaves on the cherry trees were small and ovate and a yellow-red that looked edible.

"I like where you live."

CHF

By the time Car got to the hospital, visiting hours were almost over, but Astra was awake, and when the girls saw each other, they cried. Astra was hooked to ma chinery and fenced off behind a castered table, so that Car stood aloof and cried. The words for what they were feeling were ordinary, familiar words, and Car was sorry to say them. Even the language behind her silence was worn and uninspired and whapped the way balloons did without surprise or weight. And what had she brought to show Astra? Old photos, the colors too bright; the beach, a hurtful white against the blue of everything else. Astra in a tented costume and Car in a bathing suit, and both of them laughing at Car's father, who had taken pictures then. The girls eating lobster. Car asleep in the hammock. The girls older and eating lobster. Sweet peas whimsically tangled on tepeed trellises, and hydrangeas, so heavy headed from a rain, they flopped on the lawn as if playing dead. Pictures of the front of the house swept and raked. Thor, more of Thor, this time with his bone. Kayaks far out in the bay. "That's us," Car said. "Remember? That was the same day we saw Will Bliss and met his friend from Taft. Remember?" Astra remembered. There had been a party on the beach, a bonfire. Astra said, "Will Bliss, just the name. You have to love him. Besides, what's wrong with looking cute all the time and being the favorite friend of little children?"

Car smiled. "What was that song those boys were singing?"

What was it? But Car didn't remember what it was or what she was going to say next, and she opened the present she had brought for Astra while Astra watched: a bracelet, light as the cotton it was swaddled in, from Cartier, thin as a string, a silver bracelet beaded with silver beads. Astra's mouth opened in a kind of smile, her tears looked milky, and Car was ashamed to look at Astra and turned her attention to the upright row of cards.

"All your cards!" Car said. "This one," and she opened and read and put it behind another card. "Lisa Van de Ven has the neatest, fattest handwriting. 'Dear Astra… at least you're escaping Mr. O'Brien's first-period Monday class… ugh. I'm sure you're happy about that. And you'll be able to catch up on the sleep…' Lisa is such a bore." Car took up another and read aloud: "'Remember the chorus trip when we stayed up all night and talked about EVERYTHING!!!?' Who is this from? Edie, I should have known. And Alex of AlexandSuki, what did they have to say? I miss you a lot, and I know so many people have said that to you, but I know that you know that coming from me…' Alex is so crazy. You know she's making a video about the senior experience? She thinks it'll look good on her applications." The rest of the cards Car read to herself, and when she turned back to Astra, her best friend's eyes were shut. They were shut and her face settled in a way more final than before, and Car knew she was asleep. Someone rapped at the door; visiting hours were over; it was time. True enough, the room had darkened. The corridor, too, was asleep, and the nurses' station empty, and the doors along the hall were half shut on screened-off beds, and nowhere was there music or TV, only the nurse on spongy soles, moving just ahead, checking on the darkness from room to room, saying to Car as they walked down the corridor, "She's looking pretty good, your friend."

"Was that good?" and when the nurse didn't answer right away, Car said that maybe she could come tomorrow. Maybe, yes, she should come. Tomorrow. Tomorrow was school again. Folio meeting. She had AP calculus to do. No frees tomorrow except lunch. No lunch tomorrow. Tomorrow no food, nothing, only water.

Siddons

Edie Cohen explained right speech involved abstinence from "lying, telling tales, harsh language, and frivolous talk." In the first skit at morning meeting, three girls were talking, and as a fourth approached, one girl said to the others, "Don't let her join our group." In the second skit, four girls were talking and after one of them had left, the others spoke behind her back: "She is a drag. I wish she wouldn't follow us."

In the third skit, four girls were talking and then one of them walked to a pile of book bags and took something that was clearly not hers. When later she had the opportunity to confess, she lied: "I didn't take anything."

Marlene played the student who said, "Don't let her join our group," a line she had heard: Lisa Van de Ven, eighth grade, middle school. The jittery disconnect and suddenness of middle school: breasts and stinks. Rumors, boys, dances. The boys froze some fatty's bra and waved it like a flag in Frost Valley.

Unattached

Anna Mazur did not like Tim Weeks's apartment as much as she liked her own. Hers had a view of the East River. Every time she opened the front door to her apartment, she walked toward the restlessness, the choppy, mostly dun-colored or black shivering river as seen from the picture window, a view that powerfully affirmed the rightness of her relocation from Michigan. Hers was a postwar building, and the windows were modern with wide panes — she needed to get them washed — and the rent for her apartment was a matter of its view and the floor, the twelfth floor, a junior one-bedroom, which meant not quite a studio, not quite a one-bedroom, but five hundred square feet of living space for a large chunk of what she made every month. Her mother had asked more than once, "How much can you save living in a city like New York?" Money for Anna, at age twenty-eight, was not the point; she had wanted sophistication and experience. The private school in Michigan where she first taught had a B reputation, or so said her cousin, the lawyer — and who better than the lawyer to know? In Anna's eighth-grade classroom at Siddons, early in the teaching year, she had one day come into class and started the lessons — always, always, she forgot to take roll — while two of her students hid under her desk. They would have seen the entire class through from this perspective except that their delight in the prank, and their classmates' laughter, gave them away. Other missteps included her constantly confusing the names of two black girls—"Do we all look alike, Miss Mazur?" The problem was the girls did look alike.

She remembered other embarrassments. The class trip to the cheese factory where she stepped in something that stank up the bus. Those moments — all too many of them — when pride overrode discretion, and she let loose her voice in a communal song; she let her florid soprano flail upward and over the ordinary sound produced by those gathered at the start of the new school year. Her voice, a fat girl's vanity, drew too much attention in a school setting, and only in church could she freely sing. However had she managed to get through the first year at Siddons? Anna suspected it was finally her friend's good word, Sharon Feeney, the darling Miss F, who had known Anna at the university and had written on her behalf. The darling Miss F—"I can't carry a tune!" — was a favorite among the administrators. To be favored, a favorite, that was Anna's ambition, but she was not so confident of this happening as to decorate her apartment with the view of longstanding employment. This was her third year of teaching at Siddons.

Tim Weeks was thirty-three years old and had been at Siddons for six years. His apartment was darker and had no river view, but there was permanence in the oak shelves and books and photographs. Anna had no photographs; her personal history shamed her for being as ordinary as mud. Her mother had worked in a nursing home and her father on assembly at the GM plant. Their house was split-level in a ditched development, no water in sight, stunted trees, and culs-de-sac. Her father once in the car saying, "Oh lordy, Annie, it's just a fancy word for dead end."

Marlene

On clubs afternoons when Marlene was free — she wasn't a joiner — she walked to the hospital and sat with Astra Dell. If others were there or arrived, she cut the visit short and only left off whatever she had brought to read to her because Astra had said she loved being read to, so that is what Marlene did. She read stories from Dog Fancy's "Therapy on Four Legs." She brought in stories about heroes and miracles that might make Astra feel good, and they did because she smiled when Marlene read them. Astra said, "Marlene, you're weird," but she smiled when she said this. Astra always thanked her, and she thanked Marlene in a genuine way. Her smile seemed to Marlene entirely sincere; even on those afternoons when she was in pain and noddy with medicine, when her voice broke and she only waved good-bye, Astra seemed glad to have seen Marlene, and so Marlene came to the hospital on other days, not just clubs afternoons. She would have visited on the weekends except the weekends were Mr. Dell's. On this day, as on so many days, Marlene Kovack left school and her last name — the nasal sound of it when said at school — she left behind, and she walked along the East River down the broad avenue to the hospital.

The spired entrance was marbled and churchlike in its serious human traffic, and Marlene was an old parishioner, a woman in black on her way to prayers. She didn't have to ask where, she knew. The back banks of elevators, the higher floor, the long corridor, turn left, and another five rooms down, and she was there, Astra's room, the door ajar and sometimes other visitors but most often not, most often on clubs afternoons it was only Marlene. Once when Miss Mazur and Mr. Weeks had come, Marlene had stayed on. She wanted to know teachers the way Astra knew teachers, and Marlene liked Mr. Weeks. Marlene did not know Miss Mazur, but it was her opinion — and she shared it later with Astra Dell — that Mr. Weeks felt sorry for Miss Mazur, which was why he was with her. Miss Mazur's face was wildly askew. Every feature went its own way, and her nose was a large distraction. Most clubs afternoons Marlene had Astra Dell to herself. Astra sometimes slept; she opened her eyes sometimes only just long enough to say, I'm not feeling very well. Astra wasn't feeling well on this clubs afternoon, so Marlene did not stay but left a note on the bedside table for her signed love. And for this, Marlene thought better of herself, and once home she was a sharpened arrow thrummed from the bow and hitting its target. Steadfast, selfless, purposed to comfort her friend, her only and her best. Couldn't she say that? Yes, Marlene thought, however unacknowledged, she was Astra's best friend.

A Daughter

The nurse informed them that Astra wasn't feeling very well today. "We won't stay long," Lisa said. Miss Wilkes in a louder voice to Astra, "We just wanted to say hello." Lisa moved away from Miss Wilkes so that Astra could see her and she could see Astra, but the sight of Astra weakly propped against the pillows surprised Lisa, who had not visited before and had had no idea of how worn away her friend would be, how see-through thin.

Lisa and Miss Wilkes, uncertain in the semi-dark of Astra's room, whispered to each other, was Astra asleep?

"I'm not asleep," Astra said.

"'How are you' seems like such a stupid thing to ask," Lisa said, "but how are you?" One stupid question after another followed. And afterward in the booth at the coffee shop, Lisa said she was stunned. Astra seemed to have shrunk already. Lisa said, "Obviously, I didn't know what to say."

Miss Wilkes was forgiving. She said she liked Greek coffee shops. Posters over every booth — white, hilly villages, crags to the sea. Behind the glass door in the refrigerated case the usual desserts, thickly frosted cakes, rice pudding, liquidy fruit.

Wet water glasses were swiftly set before them and then the heavy coffee-shop crockery, coffee for Miss Wilkes, hot water and a tea bag for Lisa, who sighed out how unfair it was, Astra Dell, how awful, how confusing, how messed up it was, and it was! No one ever said the world made sense, but Lisa had expected that hard work and earnest intentions would pay off to some degree. Maybe the school reward system was the problem. "We need a much more arbitrary system," Lisa said. "Grades should be picked from a hat." No more elections and auditions. The fateful nature of the world was what should be taught because outside of school that was how it was. Money, scarce among the teachers and rarely talked of and then as an evil, was undervalued in school when, in fact, it decided so much. Lisa said that Suki Morton would end up at Brown because of it.

"Who are the Mortons?" Miss Wilkes wanted to know.

"They're the soup people."

Miss Wilkes said, "I'm ignorant of high-end experience, so I don't feel the lack."

"I don't either," Lisa said, "at least not until the girls come back from spring vacation blonder and tan. Then I'm jealous." She shrewdly shoved aside her parents' summer home on the Jersey shore.

Miss Wilkes remembered a senior with high style whose disc player blew up in Dr. Meltzer's class. There were sparks, or that's what everyone said. Dr. Meltzer screamed at the girl, "Who do you think you are?" One of the drawbacks of the fourth floor: Dr. Meltzer was there, throwing chalk. "I hear him screaming a lot."

"Dr. Beltzer," Lisa said.

"So he said, 'Who do you think you are?' and she said, 'A Du Pont.'"

There were, in Lisa's opinion, so many ways to be disappointed in school. "Prize Day, if you want to know. Prize Day is a reason to give up. I lose sleep, friends, and hair, so I can sit through an eternity of the 'Everything Lisa can't do' show. I have to pay attention because my mother will want to know names so she can torture me with them."

"But you've won prizes."

"The nice-girl prize, yes, twice. I had them fooled."

"You're not a nice girl?"

"No," Lisa said, pulling at the skin on her thumbs, "I'm not a nice girl."

"I have that habit, too."

Lisa said, "I know." She said, "Graduation seems so far away," and she sighed theatrically. Lisa said, "I don't really want to talk to anyone at school anymore. Not because of you. Just because there is no reason to make an effort. It's not real at Siddons." Margaret Schilling and Jennifer Mann, stupid, glossy, social girls, not long out of Siddons, were on the gossip shows now. Margaret Schilling had recently posed in an emerald dress with a pug in her arms for one of those horsey magazines. "My mother buys Town and Country." Lisa thought many of the girls in her class were simply making themselves into the perfect corporate wives of tomorrow. "I heard, swear to god, word for word, Alex Decrow say, 'All I want is to smoke and party and marry a rich guy.'" Lisa thought that the importance of money should be taught; at least then girls would be prepared and might go through life less bitter.

"Are you bitter?" Miss Wilkes asked.

"I'm growing more disappointed every day," Lisa said.

"And why is that?"

"I am sure Suki Morton does not have the grades or the numbers, but she will get into Brown. She's not very smart, but she has a lot, a lot of money. So there's one reason to be bummed."

"Any other?"

Lisa had to pause over this question. "Health. Health guarantees. I expect to stay healthy because I eat cautiously, and I exercise and I don't smoke — well, now and then I have a puff — but then I look at Astra Dell, who has led a pure existence, and she is sick." Lisa said, "She's been a vegetarian for three years!"

Miss Wilkes rose abruptly and said, "I'll be back." In the bathroom she ran cold water over her wrists. Her face in the mirror seemed to waver, and she did not want to go back to the booth. Not because of you: What had Lisa Van de Ven meant by that remark? They had been spending a part of every school day together, but this was the first time they had ever gone anywhere together outside of school. She did not want to open her mouth — too many teeth — but she did when she saw Lisa smiling at her return. Miss Wilkes had never perfected a closed-mouth kind of smile; besides, she was too big a woman for that. "We should get the check," Miss Wilkes said, and she gestured to the waiter.

"I'm all right," Miss Wilkes said. "Don't worry. Hospitals upset me."

"Yes."

"No," she said, and she put her hand over Lisa's to stop her from sliding over money. Her hand over Lisa's looked large, and she kept the girl's hand under. Was the girl embarrassed? The salt and pepper, the cup of sugars, the poster, the booth — what else was there to look at? She looked at her hand over Lisa's, and Lisa, she saw, looked at her, and the girl made no effort to turn away, and so this was how it demonstratively started, although Miss Wilkes was not sure she wanted it started. She should never have suggested they visit Astra together, should never have prolonged the afternoon. But here they were in the coffee shop without words — of course! — with a gesture, followed by another, a caressing thumb. Her large, chewed-up thumb over Lisa's smaller, chewed-up thumb. "You're wearing polish," Miss Wilkes said.

"My mother says it looks cheap."

"I don't know about that."

"It does," the girl said, "but I like it."

The salt and pepper, the poster again — what else was there to look at? Now Miss Wilkes was embarrassed or more embarrassed than when they had begun this, for this was a beginning for them. This was what happened at beginnings. Tentative, self-conscious, clumsy, clumsily affectionate starts. I, I, I, the stuttered confessions. She might say, I'm not very good with words, but Lisa was lifting her hand out from under, she was squeezing the older woman's hand, she was laughing a little and patting Miss Wilkes's hand, saying, "What big teeth you have, Grandma," saying, "Let's go, it's late, you can walk me home," saying, "Don't be disingenuous, Janet. You knew I was a take-charge person."

Miss Wilkes — Janet Wilkes — was at least ten years older than Lisa Van de Ven, but in this moment she felt as if she were the student.

Mothers

Car Forestal's name did not come up at the senior parents coffee, although Astra's did. A number of mothers could have told stories about girls from other schools, but only Mrs. Cohen recounted to the group what she had heard was happening at St. Catherine's and Norris-Willet. "The pipes are rusty from girls being sick." Several mothers bemoaned their helplessness. The college counselor said it wasn't happening at Siddons.

"It—what isn't happening?" Mrs. Van de Ven asked, and Mrs. Cohen explained the acidic effects of throwing up. Mrs. Cohen said, "You and I don't have to worry about that problem."

"What does that mean?" Mrs. Van de Ven asked.

Car Forestal was the unnamed girl Mrs. Van de Ven described as a latchkey kid. Some latchkey was what Mrs. Cohen thought. Latchkeys, more like it. The father had some three or four homes, didn't he? And just where was Mrs. Forestal now? Why wasn't she at the coffee?

"Poor little rich girl."

"Poor little poor girl."

"Precocious."

"Depressed."

"Unwell."

CHF

Car Forestal lay on her bed smoking, swishing her feet, and feeling with the toes of one the smooth, polished toes of the other. No classes until after lunch, and she never went to school for lunch; except for advisory meetings with Dr. D, she never even sat in the lunchroom. The oily-gravy odors made her sick.

Astra occurred to her and how weird it was that she, Car, who smoked and drank, was healthy while her best friend was sick. Good could be wrung from dwelling on Astra. Comparatives were meaningful.

Now Car was sad, and she thought she should call her father. Astra he would understand. She would call him if she knew where he was.

Marlene

Marlene let her red pen trail to the center of the lined page to draw circle over circle over circle, petal, petal, stem. One flower, two, in smears of them, second-period math class. The old crowding in of the big terms: free will or fate. Underneath the gobby flowers, she drew an enormous, ornamental, biblical A. Astra Dell's dying: What did it mean to them all in this overheated room? Check-plus, best girl, A, Astra, Astra Dell. Marlene Kovack wrote Astra Dell in her notebook; she wrote over and over the letters to the sick girl's name; she fattened each into a cartoon.

"Marlene?" Miss F scolded in questions. Death adrift, an odorless gas in the room, Marlene Kovack felt its woozy effects and was glad when the bell rang and she could leave off math and numbers.

Out of school, she felt prettier — Marlene sat out recess and her next two frees in her apartment in the bathroom some twelve blocks away, and here she thought about Astra Dell again and Astra Dell's father and Astra Dell's mother, who was dead. When Marlene was ten, the only mother with a face had been her own mother, Theta Kovack, even then droopy, beaked, a slot for a mouth, and thin hair fluttered to balding — an embarrassment. Marlene saw her mother as she was, and Marlene had seen Mrs. Dell as she was, too. Mrs. Dell had given school tours. Right up to her violent end, Mrs. Dell was giving tours; she had stood just behind the visitors in the doorway to Miss Hodd's English class and smiled at her daughter. Marlene had seen Mrs. Dell's face — eyes, nose, mouth matched up in small perfection, very pretty. A softer Astra, orange hair not red. Why couldn't Mrs. Dell have been her mother? Traitorous thought.

One day Astra Dell's enormous hair clip snapped off (that's how heavy Astra's hair was), and Marlene had found the hair clip and kept it. The clip was tortoise-shell and greasy from Marlene's rubbing it. She rubbed it now and looked under the ledge of the bathroom sink, junked up with soap and dismal.

Siddons

Impossible in the face of impossible, implausible, some of them imminent, defining decisions on the way: early apps. Early applications.

"One thing you have to say about our class," the two Elizabeths said, "we don't talk college."

"I leave that to my mother," Lisa said.

None of the girls — save for Ufia, Saperstein, Song, and Elizabeth G., who were applying for early admission — wore college sweatshirts, but that didn't mean the rest of the class hadn't picked up shirts and caps from their own first-choice colleges and wore these souvenirs at home. Kitty Johnson hoped to go to Williams and wore purple scrunchies; Alex Decrow hoped to go to the Rhode Island School of Design; Suki Morton, Brown; Lisa Van de Ven, Brown; the other Elizabeth, Brown; Edie, Penn; Car, Harvard or Columbia—I'm allowed to have two favorites; and Astra? Where did Astra want to go to school?

Marlene Kovack said… didn't say really, mumbled.

Alex and Suki

"Bite me," Suki said.

"I know," Alex said, and they shoved closer together on the red block, smoking, and talked about Astra Dell, how the day after her mother's funeral, Astra Dell had come back to school, and that was typical of Astra, wasn't it? "She's perfect."

On this damp day, Alex and Suki saw so many mothers with and without babies passing the red block on their way to the expensive coffee shop with its sea-coast cottage interior. There they all were, the young women in oversize barn coats and tight pants and narrow sling-backs they wore sockless. Such were the signs of ease. Wrist-size ankles, bones, bones, blushed faces, woodsy hair. Pedigreed dogs, rare breeds. See the chocolate Sussex spaniel in his puddled leash outside the store? "Woof to you!" Suki said to the midmorning mothers, and Suki wiggled — she always did this in passing — she flitted a little ass in her rolled-up uniform skirt on her way back to school, recess over. In the hallways the worn-away mothers were giving parent tours.

Siddons

Miss F, after lunch, on the elevator, kept herself aloof in the corner to avoid any sudden moves of the dangerous seniors stooped by the weighty, sharp weaponry of books they carried on their backs. "Watch, watch," Miss F said, making her way out. Four from the class of '97. They seemed happy enough though her own students protested their despair. Unhappiness weighs more, of course, not that Miss F had known it. Now this, this wonderful girl, Astra Dell, was sick. For the class of '97, the year would be marked by this event and its outcome. Pray heaven, the girl lives.

Alex and Suki

Alex Decrow bought a box of cards and left one on quick Quirk's desk: a duck with the message, "You quack me up." Alex had drawn a line through the word Valentine and written above in bold caps QUIRK.

"Alliteration. That ought to help your cause with our college counselor," Suki said.

"I just want to get it straight with her who I am and where I want to go to college."

Mothers

Mrs. Van de Ven, whenever she gave a school tour, knew at least some of what was happening on that day. "And a lot happens," she explained to the couple as they stood in the lunchroom. Middle-school soccer, council, upper-school morning meeting, JV volleyball vs. Norris-Willet, varsity volleyball vs. Norris-Willet, Diversity Book Club. The Dance Concert was already in the making, and ahead were the spring musical, Gilbert and Sullivan, and the class-eight play with the Alford boys. Mrs. Van de Ven gave the couple copies of the Quill and Folio, the middle- and upper-school literary magazines. "Award winning," she said. Other publications included the school newspaper, the Siddons Observer, and the yearbook. Lots of clubs, a Rainbow Coalition — gender issues, Mrs. Van de Ven said, dropping gender issues into the soup of the tour as with a slotted spoon, carefully. Gospel Choir, Knitting Club, Save Tibet. Community service obliged girls to work outside the school at soup kitchens, hospitals, nursing homes, schools. Sixty hours needed to graduate. Mrs. Van de Ven said that yes, hard to believe, this was her last year as a Siddons parent. "Next year I'm a past parent. It makes me kind of sad. I feel as if I'm graduating myself, and in a way, I am."

CHF

The skipped lunch entitled Car to a Tasti D-Lite, and it wasn't too cold for a Tasti D-Lite, but it also meant that after the cone she would have to run the reservoir. Dinner was never really a problem. Her mother usually said okay to most of what Car did. Okay from her mother with a hurt expression. Last night, the night before, any night with her mother was dangerous. The way they sat, each at her end — a centerpiece, a mound of acid greens and champagne grapes, antiqued hydrangeas as from another century, was pushed back a little. "The better to see," her mother said, and her expression at the other end of the table was skeptical or indifferent. Her mother sat erect with her wrists against the edge of the table, hands prayered, nails red. No plate at her mother's place. Her mother wasn't hungry. Oh, all this about her mother! Car had forgotten her mission, and she walked back up the street again, passing classmates carrying frothy coffees. With Astra sick, Car was on her own. This was what it would feel like in France with her father in the spring: tromping in oversize boots through rooms that echoed.

So another letter in her head started to Astra, another explanation, but then what? Talking, talking, talking about herself. Originality was hard to come by on Fifth Avenue, walking north, park side, under the dark overhang of trees in an odd and balmy patch of late October. Noon now, lunch now, and Car on a walk. What could she say to Astra in the moment that would not be wrong? How could she write to Astra about the clean out-of-doors and how rarely happy she was in it?

Fathers

As Dr. Byron had explained, Astra was still growing. The environment for the nasty cells was as nourishing as school. Dr. Byron had assured Mr. Dell that they could talk anytime. Where was Grace to take notes? Anaplastic high-grade fibrosarcoma, a rare connective tissue cancer: What was he to make of these words, he, a lawyer? "Fuck," he said, "Goddamned, mother fuck," and he went on cursing on the street. Mr. Dell was not a man to swear. He moved to hail a cab, then decided he would walk the forty blocks he had to home.

Unattached

Anna Mazur said the teachers' lounge smelled of the movies, and Tim Weeks agreed and asked did she want to take a walk? The day was blue; the trees were in a flap. Fall color, October.

"Davidenja!" Tim Weeks said to one of the cleaning women as he and Anna Mazur passed an open door along the hall on their way out. Then Tim Weeks was smiling and looking only at her again, saying, "That's the only expression I know. I think it means 'good night.'"

Tim Weeks smiled at her; nonetheless, Anna Mazur continued to talk about her brother. His cancer — also rare. "My mother put her hands on his face, and that was the beginning of the end," Anna Mazur said then, "Why am I talking like this on such a beautiful day?"

Siddons

Lisa stood to address them and said that Astra Dell was devoted to dance and was a senior and a survivor — Lisa was not — but that some of the other seniors in Dance Club, Kitty Johnson and Ufia Abiola, were survivors. They had known Astra from the beginning. Alex Decrow and Suki Morton were survivors, too, though they were outside at the red block, smoking. Edie Cohen, who came to Siddons in seventh grade, and Kitty and Ufia sat on the floor, arranging themselves into blown-out, solemn flowers, and sounded assent that something nicer than flowers should be sent. Something done but what?

"I've got some ideas," Lisa said.

I can't believe it: the chorus in the senior lounge, Dance Club members packing up for home. Some stories were told, and one in particular because it had happened to so many of them. Eighth grade, the Shakespeare play with the boys from Alford. Francesca Fratini was Helena — in heels, almost six feet tall, using Will Bliss as a shield — she was very funny, but Francesca was always funny.

Will Bliss was another story. Talk about conceit.

Will Bliss, eighth grade, even then a boy of lovely shape and wavy hair he wore behind his ears. Will Bliss! Preposterous name!

"Everyone had a crush on him!"

"Had?" Alex said. "Speak for yourself!"

Will Bliss and Astra Dell broke up because of Car.

"I don't understand that relationship," Lisa said.

"Astra is loyal."

"Have you seen her senior page?" from one of the Elizabeths.

"She did it already?"

"She said she's always known what she wanted to do," from the other Elizabeth.

"So what did she do?"

"She designed a page where she's looking over her shoulder at rows and rows of postage-stamp-size pictures of everyone she has ever loved. Miss Hodd and her cats and her horse and Car. A lot of teachers. Mr. Weeks."

"That hottie!"

"Gillian Warring wants to marry him."

"He knows how handsome he is."

How many times had Mr. Weeks been seen observing himself in the mirrors of evening windows? How many times seen making a face that he must have thought handsome?

Ufia, who rarely spoke unwisely, said, "Come to school in the dark and go home in it, and both ways take Madison Avenue — a person can't see the merchandise for her face."

Lisa said, "Once Astra told me the longest day of the year made her cry because every day after would be shorter."

"Don't even think it," from Ufia. "Astra Dell is not going to die. So stop crying!"

Girls were picking through the senior lounge and one of them was saying, "You think that's bad?"

"Suki," Alex said. "Did you hear me? I'm going to make this video for Astra. It's going to be funny."

"That'll be hard," Suki said.

"God!" Lisa said when Alex brushed past. "Air yourself out, girl."

The sound of Astra Dell's voice — impossible to call it up — but the inflection learned from her mother, her poor dead mother, that was the thing. Hearing Astra Dell hack around singing some twangy country girl's song, that was what Ufia said she missed, and the girls still in the lounge, all of them, agreed.

"I wish she were here."

A Daughter

"That's what I sent." Lisa's mother, calling from Sucre, was describing for her daughter a bouquet, mostly stargazer lilies, she had sent to Astra Dell. "Her father told me that Astra loved the stargazers."

"I would have done something," Lisa said.

"But you didn't."

"Oh, blank that."

"Watch it."

"I was going to do something."

"Oh."

"I hate you, Mother!"

"Astra Dell can have visitors at any time, you know."

"Whose friend is she, anyway?" Lisa said.

"I'll talk to you—" Mrs. Van de Ven began, but her daughter clicked off, mum on the visit she had made with Miss Wilkes to see Astra.

At the upper-school morning meeting, Miss Brigham had announced that Sarah Saperstein and Ny Song had been named National Merit Finalists; Ufia Abiola was honored by the National Achievement Program that recognizes black students; Karen Sanchez and Julia Alonzo were Scholars in the National Hispanic Recognition Program. Karen and Julia were among the top 2 percent of all students who self-identified as Hispanic on the PSAT. Lisa remembered the numbers and was pretty sure her mother had the news as well; her mother had been at school in the morning giving a parent tour. Her mother knew all about the top 2 percent, which explained her mother sending more flowers to Astra Dell — a sick girl was less a disappointment probably.

Fathers

Wendell Bliss (of the weak heart and well-known son Will) found a cheerful salad — red and yellow peppers cut in cubes like confetti — left by the housekeeper on the counter. There was a lukewarm chicken breast dressed up with parsley and little potatoes that he could reheat in the microwave if he knew where to find it. Stumped again by the serene expanse of stainless steel. Only the hooded restaurant stove with its prominent grillwork over the burners was apparent to him, but Viking was a word that came with men in horned helmets, and Wendell Bliss wouldn't think to touch the stove. He ate his lukewarm food; he ate slowly. After a while Marion Bliss phoned from Florida to check on what had been left him for dinner. He told her, and then he told her about Will and how he had said yes to an advance on the boy's allowance. He told his wife about Astra Dell, too, because he knew she would want to know. His wife knew so many people — they knew so many people — and one of her chief pleasures was rooting out what connected them. She was fond of saying, "Six degrees of separation!" The discovery of parallel experience and pattern was satisfying to his wife, but the unfairness in the allocations of suffering was something to ponder, that was a lozenge to suck on and so fall to sleep.

CHF

Car Forestal made art out of what was on her plate.

"It isn't fattening," her mother said, but Car said the sauce was tasteless, and she pooled it in potatoes, which she never ate. "You know I don't."

Mrs. Forestal said she didn't know why she bothered with a cook, and Car said she didn't know why either. Mrs. Forestal said she tried to please, and Car said don't. Mrs. Forestal asked Car was she this way in school, and Car said which way? Mrs. Forestal said don't bother, and Car said she wouldn't. Nothing she did was right, Mrs. Forestal said, and Car said no, nothing she, Car, did was right.

"I can't talk to you."

"I can't talk to you either."

"Every night this."

"I can't please you, Mother. Nothing pleases you."

"That's not true."

"You're always on my case."

"I am not."

"Listen to yourself sometime; you are."

"Don't be smart, Carlotta."

"I'm not being."

"You're excused, then."

"But I'm not finished."

"You are. You're only playing with your food."

"Okay, if you want me out…"

"Don't run off to your father's."

"I'm not."

"I know you."

"No, you don't."

"I'm warning you."

"Yeah, what are you going to do?"

"Don't leave this house… Carlotta."

"I'm going out for a walk. Can I go out for a walk, Mother? My best friend is very sick, okay? I need to be by myself for a while, okay? I need to get out of this place."

Siddons

Dembroski, checking off attendance in senior-class meeting, was calling out, "Decrow? Has anyone seen Alex Decrow?"

"After ninth grade no one ever makes perfect attendance," Kitty Johnson said to Car. "What happens to us all in tenth grade?"

In tenth grade Mrs. Dell was killed in an accident, not so uncommon in the city: An out-of-control car drives onto a sidewalk. In Mrs. Dell's case, a taxi driver had a stroke and drove onto the sidewalk, injuring three and killing one, Grace Dell. The news flared in the papers, a photograph, and then hissed out.

Grace Dell, Dies at 44; October 4,1994. All those fours: four-four, four, four; four fours. "I bought into numerology for a while," Car said, then felt quick Quirk at the back of her neck wetly shushing: shush.

"I hope you know you're sitting at the Fat Table," Elizabeth F. said.

Greta Varislyvski seemed not to care or hear or even really see them but pulled her long self along the lunch bench until she was seated across from the two Elizabeths, Elizabeth F. and Elizabeth G.

Greta Varislyvski dully repeated, "Fat Table," as if she were answering the roll. Here was space to sit, and she had taken it. She was hungry. "I like to eat, too," she said. "All these girls counting calories. I'm not one of those."

The two Elizabeths were delighted then and told Greta she was welcome at the Fat Table anytime. The soy-cream sandwiches were under discussion. The Elizabeths knew that the soy-cream sandwiches they served in the cafeteria were disgusting, but they liked them, anyway. Elizabeth F. liked strawberry and Elizabeth G., raspberry cheesecake. Elizabeth G. insisted raspberry cheesecake was better. "It is, it is, it is," she said, and knocked against the other Elizabeth.

Greta Varislyvski made a face that might have been a laugh.

"Please," Elizabeth F. said, "don't yuck-yuck my yum-yum."

Suki an d Alex

"Please," Suki said, "I'm eating."

"I'm glad you are. I don't know what this is."

"A Caesar salad?"

"Really?" and she held up a square piece of iceberg. "What's the good of being rich, if I'm going to end up eating at Two Guys! Suki, I will pay whatever it costs never to eat at Two Guys again."

"Wow."

"Look," Alex said, "I don't want to be with the hoi polloi — that's the name of it, isn't it?" She said, "I know I am just a terrible snob, but honestly, Suki, why are we saving money? What's the point?"

"Something else is the matter, and I know what it is."

"Don't talk about him."

"I'm bored," Suki said. "Maybe after our salads, we should get our feet hennaed."

Siddons

The senior-class Halloween morning meeting was notable for the number of girls who came dressed as skinny icons: Car Forestal came as Audrey Hepburn, and Alex Decrow swagged around in short shorts as Dr. Holly Goodhead, with a fake knife and a conch. Suki, aka Twiggy, did up her enormous eyes and batted them at Dr. Meltzer, saying, "Can you guess who I am?"

"Death?" he tried.

Marlene Kovack was unusually ironic and came as Carrie in a blood-splattered prom queen's dress. Ufia, the black princess, wore a fruit headpiece and carried maracas but was obliged to explain herself as Carmen Miranda. "Doesn't anyone watch Turner Classics?" Edie Cohen and Kitty Johnson came as a couple, Raggedy Ann and Andy, and Sarah Saperstein and Ny Song, another senior couple, came as a Big Mac and french fries.

"Really sexy," Alex said to Ny.

The boom-box girls were singing along with Sheryl Crow, "If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad…"

Francesca Fratini was a "fun food" and came as a banana, and there were the usual number of witches, a policewoman with a riding crop, and a criminal in ball and chains, but the parade fell apart when a yodeling Heidi in a dirndl skated into the fun foods and knocked Fratini down. Lisa Van de Ven in a nurse's outfit with breasts as big as hams and padded hips came to the rescue, and Dr. D, in devil's horns and carrying a pitchfork, stood up to say, "Dismissed. To hell with you all!"