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he’s going to kiss me. But that’s not possible. He can’t kiss me.
    I’ve never been kissed.
    Still, I think I might like it…if Ricky is my first.

six
    There are two hotels in Lincoln—one that only rich people can afford to stay in and one that normal people like me and my father can afford to stay in.
    Tonight we’re eating at Solange. It’s the ritzy restaurant with food I can’t pronounce let alone eat on the menu. It’s located on the lobby floor of the Nokland Hotel—the one that rich people can afford.
    I guess this is what’s meant by marrying up. In that case, Janet did well for herself. My father draws a comic strip that appears in lots of different newspapers, including the New York Daily News. That wasn’t glamorous to Janet, but to me, I thought it was like having my own personal celebrity. Janet always said my father needed to grow up.
    So a month ago she married Gerald. He moved us out of the apartment we were renting down by the lake and into a four-bedroom, three-bath house that looked more like a bed-and-breakfast than a home. He told Janet she didn’t need to work, which I think Janet really liked. In New York she worked at Macy’s doing makeup at the Clinique counter. That’s all she said she could do since she never graduated from college. A fact I sometimes felt she was trying to blame on me. But I don’t even know how she’dfix her mouth to say that was my fault. I didn’t ask to be born and I’m sure my father didn’t force her to have sex. Maybe she should have taken the advice she always gave me about unprotected sex.
    Maybe those thoughts are rude or out of line. But they’re my thoughts so nobody can censor them.
    Anyway, we’re at the restaurant and Gerald is walking with his shoulders back and his nose tilted high, like if he lowers it he might smell something he doesn’t like. Janet’s right behind him and I’m behind her. They sit and I follow. They pick up their menus and I stare straight ahead, out the window that stretches over the whole wall on the other side of the room.
    It’s dark outside; we didn’t leave in fifteen minutes as Gerald had originally said. Instead we’d had to wait for Janet to change into “something more suitable for going out.” She really has changed since moving to this small town and hooking up with this big idiot. She’d had on jeans, a blouse and nice open-toed shoes. She looked fine to me. There was really no need for her to change. But Gerald is pleased that she did because the long cream-colored skirt and peach blouse she is wearing goes a lot better with his beige suit and burnt orange tie. It is all about “the look” with them now.
    I still have on the jeans I’d worn to school and a T-shirt. Gerald had frowned at me and was about to say something when I saw Janet put a hand on his arm and shake her head. The movement said I was a lost cause.
    She is probably right.
    “Look, Krys, they have chicken on the menu,” Janet says all bright and smiley. She’s happy to be here, probably happy that all three of us are out looking like a real family.
    I try not to be so sulky by sitting up in the chair and picking up the menu. But as I read, the gloom of my normal mood returns and I see the chicken she’s referring to is achicken tender meal in the lower corner of the menu titled “Kids’ Meals.”
    So now I’m a “kid”? A fifteen-year-old, five-foot-four, with every bit of an A cup breasts, kid. I drop the menu as if it were burning my fingers. “I don’t like chicken fingers.”
    “Well, I know how much you like fried chicken so I figured this would be the same.”
    Janet rarely eats meat; that’s probably why she thinks fried chicken and processed chicken tenders are the same thing.
    “Not,” I say solemnly.
    “Then order something else,” Gerald says quickly. Sternly. I’m getting on his nerves, like I always do.
    That’s just fine because he gets on my nerves, too. If Janet hadn’t married him maybe