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sleep. She thinks every vagina needs to air out after being cooped up all day.
    Lily always leaves a Splush on top of my pillow. A Splush is a pebble-size bit of dark chocolate wrapped in purple tinfoil with a gold
B
stamped on it. It is my absolute all-time favorite Ballentyne product. It is one of the poshest chocolates in the whole line. A bag of them costs twelve dollars.
    Despite the renowned ecstasy of this top-shelf chocolate, it’s not something I’m supposed to indulge in. Ever. Babs doesn’t let me eat chocolate or any sweets, no matter what. She refuses to have a fat daughter, and I don’t dare do anything to risk such a fate.
    I always carefully unwrap the Splush Lily has left for me, but I never put it in my mouth. Just smell it. I don’t want to disappoint Lily, so I leave the tiny bits of purple-tinfoil wrapping on my bedside table so she can see it in the morning. As for the chocolate itself, I wrench open my window and hurl it outside into the night.
    I sometimes wonder what becomes of all of these discarded
Splushes. Do they hit the people walking below on Walton Street on their way to Water Tower Place for a movie or dinner? If someone gets hit, does he think a bird has pooped on him or maybe that he has been assaulted by an angry pellet of air? But really, I couldn’t care less about the subsequent trajectory of the chocolate. I am smashed and Splush-less
.
I’ve earned another night’s sleep in my own bed.

5. Thrash
January 1980
    I HAVE SWIMMING PRACTICE AFTER school. Leaves me physically spent. My body and hair are stripped of dirt by the chlorine, and I decide not to take a bath and smash. Read a book instead.
Madame Bovary
. In English. It’s a hard book, but I am picking away at it the best I can. I do know some French, but not enough to read
MB
in the original.
    I have spent every June, July, and part of August since I was five in Cap d’Antibes living with Cécile, a cousin of Babs.
I need the summers off,
Babs says. It is the best present Babs has ever given me. I’m adding French to my skill set and can use it throughout my life. Even though Babs goes to France pretty often, she makes no effort to learn the language. The way she talks resists translation.
    Cécile is from Babs’s mother’s side of the family. Like Babs’s mother, Eudy, Cécile is a great beauty, but she is middle class, which Babs considers the same as being poor. Poor might be interesting, but it is not fun.
    I’m still reading when Babs comes to my room for a chat. Mack must have taken the night off. She saunters over to my bed, wearing only her bra and underwear. Carries a goblet of Perrier with a lime in one hand and a fistful of Duchess Golden Lights in the other. I take it Babs has a long conversation in mind. She would never pace her smoking to match the length of our exchange should it get interesting. She has a stack of mags tucked under her left arm, and she spreads them out on the end of my bed.
Vogue.
W.
Harper’s Bazaar.
She sits down next to me.
    “I’ve been thinking. We haven’t been putting enough effort into your shoes. People always notice what you have on your feet. This might be the key to your popularity at school.”
    I doubt it, but when Babs proposes a project, I always count myself in.
    She continues. “I thought you and I could go through these, find ones that are downright fabulous. You and I can hit Saks or even I. Magnin tomorrow and buy them. This is worth missing school for. Finding your size shouldn’t be a problem. There are many women who have the bad taste to be short and have small feet. I’ve already marked a few pages I like.”
    I pick up the
Vogue,
ignoring the models’ tiny bodies and concentrating on their feet. I flip through the pages and see green suede boots, red satin high heels, black lizard flats. Even if I don’t really like any of them and can’t imagine wearing them to Chicago Day, I’m still excited. Babs shops without a budget, and we could spend all