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the questionnaires again, the answers veering wildly between realistic and raunchy. There had to be somebody datable. She tried to read between the lines. Would a boy called “sexgod” be good for Lina or Mads? Could “zarg” be that cute guy in biology class?
    Then she came to “paco.” Under “What kind of person are you looking for?” paco wrote, “Madison Markowitz. Period.”
    Whoa! Who was this guy? Mads had to see this. It was almost noon. Mads should be up by now. Holly couldn’t wait to show her paco’s questionnaire.
    “Good morning, lovey.” Holly’s mother, Eugenia, sat at the kitchen table in silk pajamas and a robe, drinking coffee while Barbara, the maid, cleared up last night’s wine glasses. Eugenia was fine-boned and dark-haired with a raspy smoker’s voice, even though she’d quit smoking five years earlier. “Feel like driving up to Petaluma with your sister and me this afternoon? A friend of Piper’s has an art show up there. Or something. Maybe it’s a performance thing? Whatever.”
    “No thanks. Busy.” Holly fished her car keys out of her bag. “I’m going to Mads’ house.”
    “Be careful on the road,” her mother said. “You’re still a beginning driver, honey.”
    Holly had turned sixteen on January 5 and immediately got her driver’s license. Her parents gave her a new yellow VW Beetle for her birthday. She loved the car, but sometimes she thought Mads and Lina loved it even more. Lina’s birthday wasn’t until July 21, and Mads’ was even later, August 27. Mads gave Holly driving gloves for her birthday and a map showing the route from Holly’s house to hers, even though Holly knew the way cold. Holly was going to be designated chauffeur for a few months. She didn’t mind; she already loved driving. And it was way better than depending on her parents or Piper to drive her around, or worse, Mads’ older brother Adam, who was 19 and away at college anyway. He had to be the most cautious teenage driver on Earth. Holly’s grandma could beat him in a drag race with a blindfold on.
    Holly turned a corner and the car climbed Mads’ winding, hilly street. Holly felt happy every time she saw the Markowitzes’ house. It was built in the seventies and looked like a giant treehouse. Every room seemed to have multiple levels, so that it was hard to tell how many floors the house had. Her mother, M. C., short for Mary Claire, waved to Holly from the organic vegetable garden. She was on her knees, digging, in jeans, a flannel shirt, and red cat’s-eye glasses, her frizzy blond hair tied in a red bandanna. She looked like a blond Lucille Ball, just waiting for some hilarious catastrophe to happen.
    Mads’ parents were warmer than Holly’s, and not as slick. Mads thought they were embarrassingly uncool. Her father, Russell, was a good-natured labor lawyer, easily embarrassed and so mild-mannered his children jokingly called him “the Dark Overlord.” M.C. met him when she escaped her straight-laced parents’ Minnesota farm to go to college at UC Berkeley. She changed careers a lot. She’d been a yoga teacher, an astrological nutrionist, and the owner of a feminist bookstore. Now she worked as a pet psychiatrist, specializing in troubled dogs. Business was booming, Carlton Bay was a pet-shrink kind of town.
    Holly climbed the steep, zigzagging stone steps to the front door. Mads’ eleven-year-old sister, Audrey, opened it. She was dressed exactly like a Bratz doll in a midriff-baring t-shirt and low-riding pink sweatpants, her strawberry blond hair scooped high in a side ponytail. Holly didn’t know how two down-to-earth people like Russell and M.C. could have such a materialistic supertrendoid for a child.
    “Fatison is in her room,” Audrey announced, using her favorite nickname for her sister.
    When she stepped into Mads’ room, Holly was greeted with the rare sight of Mads in glasses. She usually wore contacts. Mads was sitting at her computer, still in her