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ivy, even in Gwyneth 20

    Paltrow’s garden, you’re still just itchy as hell and knee-deep in shit. And that’s in the summer. In winter, he’s camped in his Barcalounger with the heat down.”
    I laugh. “It’s so insane to think of them filming at our school, isn’t it?”
    “Do you think we’ll all be in the background?” he asks.
    “With Jase’s flexing bicep front and center?”
    “My mom was standing behind Courteney Cox in the
    ‘Dancing in the Dark’ video—you can see her for, like, a split second. I’m guessing this’ll be like that—an anecdote we can bore people with into our forties.”
    “Cool.” His eyes warm; he nods.
    “Yup.” I nod back, struck that he is, like, two inches taller than when I took trig with him last year, seated behind him, four rows back, two seats to the left, to be precise. We stop nodding and for a moment stand totally still, flakes of snow falling in the inches between us. His eyes are so brown, and he stares down into me, his brows knitting together and, through the cloud of attraction, I feel a pang of sympathy. “I’m really sorry about the breakup—”
    “One of us has to back up—” he says over me.
    “Right.” I look down, realizing there’s no way around each other in the narrowly cleared path. “I’ll just—”
    “No, I will.” He steps backward, and I follow him as his sneakers crunch in the silence. “Don’t let me fall.” Half-grin. Don’t let me . And then we’re in the plowed driveway, still standing as close as we were in the foot-wide path.

21
    “Too bad your coat isn’t red,” he says, the cloud of his breath warm against my face.
    “Yeah.” To do: Get red coat.
    “Like you’re going to Grandmother’s house.”
    “I totally got that,” I lie. “That makes you the wolf,”
    I recover.
    “No way, I’m the woodsman who saves the day.”
    My turn to smile. “Well . . . ”
    “Back to your Spanish methadone clinic?”
    “Look, you never know when you’ll need to do a needle exchange at the Barcelona train station.”
    He laughs and for a moment I imagine the lights watt up so brightly a bulb could pop. I should leave first—on this high note of cute—wipe out the memory of me dancing. Leave! Leave first!! “Well, later.” I turn and walk reluctantly away.
    “Hey, Jesse?”
    I whip around, the width of the driveway between us.
    “Yeah?”
    “Thanks for . . . ” He trails off.
    For . . . my freak snow show? My down coat sexiness?
    My faint aroma of warm garlic? “Sure.” I shrug, realizing from the flicker of sadness across his face that he’s referring to my attempted sympathy.
    He tosses up his sweatshirt hood and jogs off, disappearing into the white.

22
    THREE
    Mom, Hampton High basketball star circa 1985, tosses the emptied Evian bottle over three rows of seating, and it rims the copper can under the Richardsons’ screening room wet bar before falling inside. I cup my hands to my mouth to do a fan roar.
    “What does it mean, Jess?” She looks up from her club chair as she finishes the remains of the lasagna on her lap tray.
    “Mom, you’re always asking that.” I drain the last of my milk.
    “Well, you’re saying XTV is coming to your school to make a show, and I want to know what it means.”
    “I don’t know! A new pool for the school and let’s see, 23

    um, nothing for me. I’m not that .” I point up at the glossy bachelorettes on the wall-sized screen anxiously awaiting their rose. “What does that mean?”
    “That’s not having clear goals and good values.” She lowers her tray to the floor and stretches her back as she stands. “That’s hitching your wagon to a millionaire who’ll leave you for the next model.” She fiddles with the remote until a green velvet curtain swings across the screen.
    “No.” She presses another combination of buttons, and a matching curtain behind us opens to a wall of frosted windows lining the covered pool. “No again.” A different button