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cabinets with the map of the world and a map of Mississippi thumbtacked on.
    Then she showed us to the powder room even though nobody needed to go. Mary Alice's mother had set up the powder room with a full supply of cosmetics and hairspray just for us.
    I attempted to fit in to this craziness. These girls were carrying around empty white patent leather purses with gold clasps and wearing matching shoes and pillbox hats, all the things their mothers wore every day, or so I imagined. I was of course dressed as my mother, looking more like a coed and not a posh lady with pearls and kid gloves. Mary Alice's little brother, Jeffy, buzzed around us dressed as an astronaut in a silver space suit that zippered up the front, silver boots, and a big plastic bubble the size and shape of a fish tank over his head. Each time he circled around to me, he kicked my shin. Nobody said anything.
    Mary Alice led us all upstairs and over to a silver tray set up with glasses and bottles on the dining room table. She offered us drinks, pouring cherry Kool-Aid from a rum bottle. We sat at the table eating fish sticks, potato chips, and Twinkies.
    It came time for Mary Alice to open her birthday presents. While we all gathered round and watched, Mary Alice ripped open colorful packages of headband sets, a shorts outfit, a record player that lifted up like a little suitcase, a record holder for all her 45s, and most all the hits she didn't already have.
    Mary Alice was fifteen, and I had gotten her exactly what I wanted, a sparkly Hula-Hoop. It was wrapped in the Sunday funnies. Whenever a present needed wrapping my mother had me use the funny papers because, she said, it was "artistic." I knew it was just plain cheap. When Mary Alice came to my gift, she hesitated, actually reading one of the comics and smiling.
    "This is really funny," Mary Alice said, not laughing.
    "So funny I forgot to laugh," I heard someone say.
    Mary Alice put the Hula-Hoop aside. I thought I heard someone whisper something about my crazy mother and cheap kid toys.
    Little Jeffy forgot he had the astronaut bubble on his head as he tried to eat a Twinkie. His face was pinched up into a little fist. I laughed at him. I knew it was mean of me to laugh at him, but he
had
kicked me, and I laughed even more when I saw that the inside of his fish tank bubble was getting nasty-looking with all his mouth slobber on the side.
    Mary Alice laughed too, not at me, but at her own little brother. Then she said I was funny. I wasn't sure what to say to this. Someone said something about if you kissed your elbow, you'd turn into a boy.
    "Who wants to practice kissing?" Mary Alice said.
    They all squealed and ran toward Mary Alice's room. I followed. I had never been to Mary Alice's room. I had never kissed or practiced kissing. I was never so scared in all my life. Why couldn't we just tell ghost stories or braid one another's hair like we used to do at all the other birthday parties in all the other towns I'd ever lived in?
    Mary Alice had all-white bedroom furniture—even her own desk with three drawers and a matching chair. Everything matched, with gold hardware. Her walls were a pink she called "blush," and she had a pink bedspread, a pink bed ruffle, a pink ruffled lampshade, and a pink canopy on her bed. I had always wanted a canopy bed.
    By the time I finished looking around, somebody had turned out the lights and every girl was already kissing and hugging a pillow in the corners of the room. Luckily there were no pillows left. While the other girls giggled, Jeffy stomped and jumped in circles, pestering them. He burrowed between girls and pillows while Mary Alice screamed that he was acting like a pervert.
    I excused myself to the powder room down the hall. On the way, I passed another bedroom, with walls almost completely covered with posters of rocket ships, and astronauts standing in front of their machinery at Cape Canaveral, and pictures of planets taped to the ceiling above