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Purple Crayon . I flipped through more pages, coming to fifth grade when my mother still had the night job: Little Women , Anne Frank. Ninth: To the Lighthouse, Madame Bovary . The emptiness of the house without my dad.
    After he left, Dot struggled to make ends meet. We moved several times, each rental smaller than the one before. She began going to Buck’s every night and lost a string of jobs because of calling in sick—i.e., hung over.
    Sometimes she brought a man home with her from the bar. Scuffed work boots on the doormat; muffled noises behind her bedroom walls. A stranger in the bathroom when I was trying to get ready for school. She got a reputation for being loose, which was a shocking thing in our little town where everybody knew everyone’s business.
    Just as I was heading out to the bus stop one morning, I heard a man leaving her room. Quickly I ducked into the kitchen. Dot followed him down the hall to the front door, asking him not once but twice, Don’t you want me to fix you some breakfast? The guy didn’t even answer in his rush to get out to his pickup. The motor gunned and the truck screeched away. I stayed put until Dot returned to her room. On my way out, I heard sobbing behind her closed door. Her rejection clouded my thoughts as I bagged an endless line of groceries after school. Why couldn’t she see what was so obvious to me; that hopping into bed with those men wasn’t going to make any of them fall in love with her? In fact, just the opposite.
    I turned to another page. After Dad left, my notebook became one of the few ties I had to my past. I didn’t keep a diary because I knew Dot would pry—and I didn’t need one. I could recall what I was doing at any point in time, just by what I’d been reading.
     
    I was deep into editing that night when the phone rang. I could hear music and people talking in the background. “What page are you on?” came an accented voice.
    “Two hundred forty-eight, no thanks to you.” I was smiling so hard my face hurt.
    “What d’you mean, no thanks to me? You got home before eleven,” Jack said. “What did you do today?”
    I tried to slow my hammering heart. “You might need to sit down. I got up at six and went for a run on the West Side Highway, then I started marking up Mr. Collins. I’ve been at it ever since, except for an intermission to hear some Billie Holiday.”
    “I played several good records after you left. Do you know Leadbelly? He laid down some nice stuff back in the twenties. Hang on—”
    A woman’s voice asked something, and he mumbled a reply.
    “I’ll put that on for you tomorrow.” He came back on the line. I heard the woman laughing.
    “That would be great.”
    “All right then, I’ll let you get back to work.”
    I heard a click, and hung up. Jack Kipling just called me. On the phone . I went to get their latest record and put it on, staring at his picture on the cover. Suddenly I was really anxious. What will we talk about tomorrow? Maybe I can ask about their new album—then again, maybe he can’t discuss it yet. I wonder if anything will happen at his place. But maybe he just wants to play some more blues for me, like he said.
     
    Vicky hadn’t gotten in touch on Saturday, and I wanted to give her some breathing room. The next morning I called her.
    “Boy, my limbs feel like jello,” she said.
    “You’re just trying to make me jealous. Had fun, hmm?”
    “It’s true about those Southern guys; they really do aim to please. Guess what, Sammy said Jack likes that you’re smart. His last few ladies were total airheads. And he was amazed that you’re into the blues.”
    I told myself to take this with a grain of salt; “last few ladies” indicated his short attention span.
    “So be nice to him tonight, okay?” Vicky continued. “You resisted him once, but now you should go for it.”
    “I don’t know. I’d feel awful if we slept together and then he never called me again.” I went over to the