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that mean?” I asked her. For some reason, I didn’t think Miss Lucy would have black-painted walls.
    “You try so hard not to be frilly,” she replied, like she was the queen of frill.
    I must’ve looked a little put out, because she said, “Now, don’t be hurt. You can’t be hurt, ’cuz I wasn’t meaning to hurt you.”
    She came over and started to cuddle me into her, and it was like my mind stopped having any other thoughts about her besides
now now now.
             
    I was thirty minutes late picking my mother up.
    She took one look at me and said, “What happened to you?”
    Ashley,
I wanted to tell her.
Ashley’s happening to me.
    But instead I told her I’d gotten a flat.
             
    This was a stupid lie.
    “Where’s the old tire?” she asked when we got home.
    “The triple-A guy took it,” I told her.
    “You’re a very bad liar,” she said.
    “Your hair looks like a camel peed in it,” I said back, then stormed to my room and called Ashley to tell her all about it.
             
    “A camel peed in it?”
Ashley said, laughing.
    Suddenly it didn’t seem as serious.
    “Well, that’s what it looked like,” I said.
    Already the edge was gone. My life could be curvy again, and all it took was a laugh on her end of the phone.
             
    More weeks passed.
    I wanted something from her.
    I wanted the l-word.
    I wanted her to call me her girlfriend.
    I wanted to make her cry.
    I wanted to know I had the same effect on her that she had on me.
             
    I got careless.
    I tried holding her hand in school.
    “Slow down, Miss Lucy,” she said. “Slow down.”
    I said I wanted to see her house.
    Her room.
    Her bed.
    She told me they weren’t worth seeing.
    I asked her if there’d been other girls before me.
    She laughed and said yes.
    I asked: “Am I the second? The seventh? The thirtieth?”
    But she didn’t tell me any more than that.
    I had told her about Lily White, and now whenever I didn’t want to do something she wanted me to do, she’d tease me about getting back together with Lily White, about how we’d be perfect together.
    “Lucy likes to lick Lily,” she’d tease.
    “Don’t be mean to me,” I’d say.
    “I’m not,” she said. “It’s a joke.”
    Later, we’d be with each other and it would seem right—the perfect rhythm, the desire clouding us. Afterward, she’d hold me close—the perfect daze—and she’d say, “Miss Lucy, you and I are a pair, aren’t we?”
    But then she’d tell me not to be so attached.
    The more this happened, the deeper I fell in love with her.
    The more she made me want it, the more I wanted it.
    “Open your eyes,” Teddy told me, one of the few times I talked to him.
    But that wasn’t the problem.
    My eyes were wide open.
    Seeing her.
             
    All the conversations in our relationship started to be about our relationship.
    I was always the one who brought it up.
    “What am I to you?” I would ask.
    “Oh Lord,” she’d groan. “Not again.”
    “Are we girlfriends?
Lovers?
Nothing at all? What?”
    “I’m Ashley and you’re Miss Lucy. Isn’t that enough?”
    “No, it’s not enough!” I’d protest, not even sure what I was defending.
    “I don’t need this, Miss Lucy. Really.”

    Miss Lucy had a steamboat
    The steamboat had a bell
    Miss Lucy went to heaven
    and the steamboat went to

    “What are you mumbling?”
    “Nothing.”
    “C’mon.”
    “I love you.”
    “No.”
    “I do.”

    Hello, operator
    Please give me number nine
    And if you disconnect me
    I’ll chop off your

    The kissing was supposed to be the escape. The kissing was supposed to be the moment when nothing in the world mattered but us. The kissing was supposed to take me away from all the problems. All the thoughts. All the doubts.
    But now when I kissed her, I was always measuring how much of her was there. And I was wondering how much of me was left.

    Behind the ’frigerator
    There was a