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my first time would be on dirty sheets.”
    She hiccupped a sob. “What am I going to do, Katie? What am I going to tell Tony? What if Voodoo tells him first?”
    “Didn’t you feel anything? With Voodoo, like, didn’t you—”
    “I just told you,” she said, frowning, impatient. “Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I’m talking about Tony now.”
    “You think Tony hasn’t been with other girls?”
    “It’s different with guys,” she said. “You know it is.”
    “Besides,” I said, picking my words delicately, “it’s not like Tony—like you and Tony—”
    “I love him, Katie,” she whimpered. “The night before he went back, he stood outside my house throwing little rocks at my window. Like we were kids, right? And when I opened the window, he just looked up at me. Didn’t say a word. Just kept looking up at me. Then he went back to his car, and he turned around and lifted his hand in this, like, wave. It was so romantic.” She closed her eyes again and began nodding. “He never said, ‘I love you.’ But I know what was in his heart.”
    “Let’s go back inside,” I said, taking her arm. But Nanny stayed surprisingly firm against my grip. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Wait one fucking minute. Just tell me the truth, Katie, that’s all I want. Do you think Tony will think I’m a slut if he finds out?”
    I’d seen Tony go ballistic when someone sat in the seat he wanted on the early bus going home from school. He would have beaten Porter Jacobs, the poor kid sitting in it, to a pulp if the bus driver hadn’t pulled over and thrown Tony off the bus. They didn’t call him Tony Fury for nothing.
    “How is Tony going to find out?” I asked, making my voice strong. “You aren’t going to tell him—”
    “I have to tell him,” Nanny said, sounding sorrowful, like someone had died.
    “You don’t have to do anything,” I said. “You don’t have to tell him a thing. Voodoo isn’t going to say anything. I mean, what, you think he’s going to write him a letter? And Tony won’t be home until Christmas, right? Leave it alone till then, man. Leave it alone, Nanny babe.” That was what her mother called her. Nanny babe.
    Suddenly her eyes swung open, like rolled-up shades that snapped. “Should I confess?” she whispered. “Maybe I should go to confession. Not with Father Donnelly, but maybe Father Tom—”
    “Nanny,” I said. Confession was supposed to be anonymous, but thepriests at St. Timothy’s had known most of us since birth and now knew even our footfalls by heart.
    “I’m so scared,” Nanny said. “Katie, I’m so fucking scared. What if I’m pregnant? All he did was pull out, he always says he’s sterile because he never knocked anybody up, but what if I’m—”
    “It’s not time to worry yet,” I said, firmly. That’s what Atticus Finch used to tell Jem and Scout in
To Kill a Mockingbird
. Sometimes I said it to myself, inside. I found the words comforting.
    “I wish,” she said haltingly. “I wish . . .” Nanny’s eyes closed again. She began rocking on the heels of her flip-flops. I looked toward the lighted windows of the lounge at The Starlight Hotel. The door was open and I could hear Bobby Darin singing “Mack the Knife.”
    “I’m going back inside,” I said. It was making me too sad, standing in the alley with Nanny. Luke barely knew I was alive, Tony Fury had never even bought Nanny a Coke. It felt like we were living in some kind of half-love twilight where everything was possible but nothing ever happened. I wanted to get back inside where there was light and music and Luke. By now, maybe the crowd around him had dispersed to play the jukebox or go out on the piazza to get high, and I could catch him alone, maybe grab the seat next to him at the bar and start a conversation that didn’t sound stupid.
    “Am I a slut, Katie?” Nanny asked again, her eyelids flinching. “Tell me the truth. Do you think I am?”
    “No,” I said