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done the drill on her ratty old mannequin and had done it better than Mrs. Cathcart.
    One of my high-school teachers told us about little a boy, maybe eleven or twelve years old, who was enrolled at Duke University. She explained to us that the little boy was a prodigy, and that’s exactly what Sara Jane Farquhar was like when it came to hair.
    I don’t think Mrs. Cathcart knew what to make of Sara Jane. I could see a part of her was proud Sara Jane could do the mannequin drills faster and better than her own example. Still, you could tell she was jealous. Mrs. Cathcart liked helping us, especially when we got flustered. Whenever she walked by Sara Jane’s mannequin, she just nodded and smiled a phony smile that said, I’ll stump you yet, Sara Jane Farquhar.
    We’d taken our first written test from our ratty blue textbooks. I was pretty sure I had done well. When Mrs. Cathcart laid my paper facedown in front of me, she said, “You did a fine job, Zora.”
    I turned the paper over. She had circled 100 in red in a way that made it look like a happy face. I blushed and looked over at Sara Jane. She rolled her eyes at me and showed me her paper. Mrs. Cathcart had written STUDY across the top in big letters, under that a 27 was circled in the same gaudy red ink.
    “What happened, Sara Jane?” I asked during our break.
    “With what?” she answered. “That test? I can’t pass a test to save my soul. Shoot, it took me six tries just to get my GED, and I don’t think I passed. I just wore them down.”
    “I’ll help you study.”
    Nina Price, otherwise known as the crying girl, and a few others who didn’t do well on the test were huddled in a corner of the canteen. Some of them cried right along with Nina. In contrast, Sara Jane stood there with her perfectly colored blond hair drawn up in a loose bun on top of her head and little golden tresses hanging down around her gorgeous face. From the neck up, she looked like one of the heroines on the cover of a Gussie Foyette romance. And she wasn’t the least little bit concerned about grades.
    “I won’t pass.” She shrugged off the words with a thin smile.
    “You have to, Sara Jane. I’ll help you; my God, you’re so talented. You can do anything with hair, even better than Mrs. Cathcart.”
    “I know I’m good at hair, but I can’t remember much of anything after I read it, especially the names of muscle tissue or nerves in the human head.”
    “But you’re so good at this.”
    “I’m not good at the books. Shoot, the stock boys and the guys in the meat market across the street are betting on how many weeks I’ll last. The big money is on six weeks. I’m really trying to make it past then just so daddy’s new stock boy will win. He bet I’d make it all the way. He didn’t know any better.”
    Sara Jane Farquhar read every romance novel she could get her hands on. Heaving breasts and throbbing loins engrossed her so much that at first I just laughed it off. But it was sad that she couldremember the tiniest details from books Nana Adams would have rightfully called smut, but she couldn’t retain one word from a textbook.
    “Sara Jane, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you here if you know you aren’t going to pass?”
    “I wanted to do something; Mama knew I had a knack for fixing hair and thought it would be a good idea. She knows I won’t pass, either. I got it from my daddy, whatever it is that makes me so I can’t learn. Grandmamma let him drop out of school when he was in the eighth grade.”
    “I’ll help you study. Every day. Please, Sara Jane.”
    She smiled at me and brushed one of the wispy curls that dangled seductively near her green cat eyes. “Sure we will. We’ll have a real good time.”
    *
    The sound of Winston’s car in the driveway surprised me. Sara Jane and I had been studying so hard for the next exam, I’d completely forgotten to cook his dinner. The two of us rushed to my bedroom window and watched him get out of