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this way.”
    “I didn’t know I was relegated to hiding in closets now,” I grumbled. “She’s starting to get on my nerves.”
    “It’s about to get worse.”
    I hadn’t told him about the night of the party. “Why?”
    “Graham told her he thought girls with rockabilly hair and tattoos were hot. Ditto for bad reps.”
    “Is he
trying
to get me killed?” I blinked. “Wait, does that mean my rep suddenly got worse?”
    “Bianca said you shoved her and then made a giant bird fly at her head.” He snorted. “Drunk girls are so cute,” he said sarcastically.
    My mouth dropped open. “She shoved
me
!”
    “Her lemmings are backing her up. Now that Graham’s involved, she wants to prove she’s tough. Well, tougher than you anyway.”
    “That’s just great. Is it pistols at dawn, or what?”
    “Fistfight under the bridge.”
    “Get out,” I squawked. “I’m not doing that. That’s just stupid.”
    “I know.” He motioned to our cramped and dirty surroundings as if they were a palace. “Why do you think I booked the best room for you?”
    I sighed when her sulky voice drifted under the door. “Guess we’re stuck here for a while.”
    “If she was a guy, I’d go out there and stuff her in her own locker. But I can’t punch a girl.” He offered me the bag. “So have a chip.”
    I crunched gloomily on a handful of salty chips. “I can’t punch a girl either, despite my reputation.” And despite my family history. My father, before he’d left us when I was a baby, had been violent and angry. Mom had a small scar on her chin that she wouldn’t talk about. She assured me that kind of behavior wasn’t inherited. But I didn’t want torisk it. Bianca had no idea how lucky she was that I was shy and obsessed with self-control. And that Devin was such a great friend.
    We were stuck in the supply closet with the brooms for another ten minutes. More memories trickled in, without anything to distract me: the haunted sadness in my aunt’s face when she thought I wasn’t looking. The small, strange gifts she gave me whenever she saw me: ivy plants, red thread wrapped around a rowan twig, bags of hydrangea-petal potpourri that made me sneeze.
    But the harder I tried to remember details, the more my head ached.
    When the bell rang and the hall cleared, Devin went to his last class. I was glad I was working a shift for Uncle Art at the tattoo parlor after school. I didn’t want to go home, where Mom was both avoiding me and watching me with a worried expression.
    Bluebird Ink Tattoos was as much a second home to me as Jo’s family farm. And at the parlor, no one blinked at my makeup or my clothes. There were girls dressed like me in the waiting room, in the magazines on the tables, sending e-mails on the business website. They had short, curled Bettie Page bangs and wore 1940s and 1950s–style dresses and red high heels with tight capris. Uncle Art was at the drafting table when I came in, the short sleeves of his bowling shirt displaying his heavily tattooed arms as he worked on a sketch. His black hair fell in a curl over his forehead, likea young Elvis Presley’s. The only other artist, Lee, was in one of the rooms with a customer. The soft drone of a tattoo needle buzzed under the ever-present music from the speakers and the burble of the aquarium in the window.
    “Hey, kiddo,” Uncle Art, whose real name was Felipe, said. “Just in time.” The phone rang. He looked at it like it was a bomb he couldn’t figure out how to diffuse. “Help. It won’t stop doing that.”
    “There’s a way to fix that, you know,” I said, tossing my knapsack under the desk. I picked up the receiver. “Bluebird Ink, how can I help you?”
    I booked an appointment for the man on the other end of the line. People wandered in to look at the framed flash art on the walls and ask questions. I tidied up the desk and sorted through messages and updated the appointment book. I decided coffee was a good idea, and by