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someone step up behind me. I turned my
head, and there was this girl, a total stranger, standing there in a skimpy orange bikini and matching thick platform flip-flops.
She had olive skin and thick, curly dark hair pulled up into a high ponytail, and was wearing black sunglasses and a bored,
impatient expression. In our neighbourhood, where everyone knew everyone, it was like she’d fallen out of the sky. I didn’t
mean to stare. But, apparently, I was.
    ‘What?’ she said to me. I could see myself reflected in the lenses of her glasses, small and out of perspective. ‘What are
you looking at?’
    I felt my face flush, as it did any time anybody raised their voice at me. I was entirely too sensitive to tone, so much so
that even TV court shows could get me upset – I always had to change the channel
when the judge ripped into anyone. ‘Nothing,’ I said, and turned back round.
    A moment later, the high-school guy working the snack bar waved me up with a tired look. While he poured my drink I could
feel the girl behind me, her presence like a weight, as I smoothed my two bills out flat on the glass beneath my fingers,
concentrating on getting out every single crease. After I paid, I walked away, studiously keeping my eyes on the pocked cement
of the walkway as I made my way back round the deep end to where my best friend, Clarke Reynolds, was waiting.
    ‘Whitney said to tell you she’s going home,’ she said, blowing her nose as I carefully put the Coke on the pavement beside
my chair. ‘I told her we could walk.’
    ‘Okay,’ I said. My sister Whitney had just got her licence, which meant that she had to drive me places. Getting home, however,
remained my own responsibility, whether from the pool, which was
walking distance, or the mall one town over, which wasn’t. Whitney was a loner, even then. Any space around her was her personal
space; just by existing, you were encroaching.
    It was only after I sat down that I finally allowed myself to look again at the girl with the orange bikini. She had left
the snack bar and was standing across the pool from us, her towel over one arm, a drink in her other hand, surveying the layout
of benches and beach chairs.
    ‘Here,’ Clarke said, handing over the deck of cards she was holding. ‘It’s your deal.’
    Clarke had been my best friend since we were six years old. There were tons of kids in our neighbourhood, but for some reason
most of them were in their teens, like my sisters, or four and below, a result of the baby boom a couple of years previously.
When Clarke’s family moved from Washington, D.C., our moms met at a community-watch meeting. As soon as they realized we were
the same age, they put us together, and we’d stayed that way ever since.
    Clarke had been born in China, and the Reynoldses had adopted her when she was six months old. We were the same height, but
that was about all we had in common. I was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, a typical Greene, while she had the darkest, shiniest
hair I’d ever seen and eyes so brown they were almost black. While I was timid and too eager to please, Clarke was more serious,
her tone, personality and appearance all measured and thoughtful. I’d been modelling since before I could even remember, following
my sisters before me; Clarke was a total tomboy, the best soccer player on our block, not to mention a whiz at cards, especially
gin rummy, at which she’d been beating me all summer.
    ‘Can I have a sip of your drink?’ Clarke asked me. Then she sneezed. ‘It’s hot out here.’
    I nodded, reaching down to get it for her. Clarke
had bad allergies year-round, but in summer they hit fever pitch. She was usually either stuffed up, dripping, or blowing
from April to October, and no amount of shots or pills seemed to work. I’d long ago grown used to her adenoidal voice, as
well as the omnipresent pack of Kleenex in her pocket or hand.
    There was an organized hierarchy to the seating at our pool: the lifeguards