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clumping like a broken wagon.
    Then one July afternoon we were playing poker for bottle caps at Dino’s house, his parents being both at the bakery. I remember I was winning and in the excitement I was paying little attention until Dino and Callie went into the bedroom and shut the door. Even then I didn’t worry until time passed and passed and Freddie and Sharkie started making jokes I didn’t want to understand.
    The game ended. I waited and waited for her. Freddie tried to get me to go upstairs with him. “Bug off,” I said, beginning to feel sick with anxiety. It was getting near five and we both had to be home. Finally I banged on the door.
    “Don’t be a jackass,” Freddie warned. “Dino’ll bust you in the snoot if you barge in on him.”
    But they were done. Callie strolled out buttoning her blouse, while Dino did not bother to put his shirt on. He said a long good-bye at the door, kissing her sloppily, but did not offer to walk us home.
    Right on the corner of Tireman by the drugstore we had a big fight. “Did you fuck him, Callie? Did you?”
    “So what if I did?”
    “You could get pregnant!”
    “No, I can’t. I never got the curse yet.”
    “Callie! Why did you want to do that?”
    “Dino’s cute. He’s the cutest boy I know. You’re just jealous. You like him too.”
    I was stung because I did have a crush on Dino. Everybody said Freddie was better-looking, but Dino was quicker in his words and his thoughts and how he moved. I associated him with my beautiful black-and-white tomcat Lightning I had till he was killed; but I could not imagine doing whatever Callie did with Lightning or Dino.
    Callie took my arm. “You can have Freddie.”
    “I don’t want Freddie! Why did you do that?”
    “Let me be, Jill. I bet you could get Freddie. Easy.”
    “Besides, I got my periods. Last year.”
    Callie yanked her arm away. “You’re just chicken! Just a baby chicken! But I’m growed up and I’m going to act like it.”
    I went home weeping through the alleys, so no one would see me. The bond between us snapped. Not only was Callie instantly absorbed in Dino, doting on him and fetching and taking his coarse lip, but she dropped me into unimportance, a bystander in her real life. A year later Dino passed her on to Sharkie, whose kid she had. Freddie wanted me to be his girl, so I was, but I wouldn’t do more than neck with him.
    I sit up on the glider, chafing my cold hands. Lately reading psychology books and adult novels, I found a label for my adventuring. Am I sick? Am I depraved? “Am I an L.?” I write in my notebook, scared to spell out lesbian. Not only were our games wicked, it turns out, but they were worse than regular terrifying real sex. I can hardly believe that, but there it is in black and white, and I have to trust books over my own unlikely and childish experiences. Perhaps I’m already crazy? I talk to myself, I make up fantasies I care more for than my homework, and I am not popular, blond or going steady—nothing a teenager should be. I have never had a real date like I read about or see on TV. I still miss Callie. Now she is changed forever from the mischievous soulful runt who buried pheasants with me to a housewife padding around in slip and feathered mules, a permanent whine in her voice and a puzzled frown pulling at her wide mouth.
    Francis’ guitar is leaning against the wall in its battered case, its female curves drawing my eyes. I am staring at it in my usual vague welter of want and revulsion when the door downstairs bangs open.
    “Jillie? Are you hiding up there again? Who do you think is going to wash your dishes for you? Santa Claus?”
    When I climb down the steps, however, she is standing at the bottom wrapped in the red kimono Francis brought back from Japan. Her small mouth puckers with gloom. “I can’t decide what to wear. And my hair won’t come right.”
    “It looks fine to me.”
    “Like a cat caught in a fan!” She puts a hand