He looks over at me and smiles. I smile, too.

Now what? After Vanessa and Roland make love, they usually hug and kiss each other for the rest of the show, tell each other secrets. I rest the tips of my fingers against Sean's dirty cheek and kiss him full on the mouth.

He smiles at me when the kiss breaks and then looks away. "I should probably get going," he says. "I haven't finished with the hedges yet." He wipes a smear of dirt from my forehead and then kisses the spot before getting up to fetch his clothes.

I pull my shorts back up, noticing droplets of blood between my thighs. I wipe them as best I can with my fingers and then stand up, feeling dirt slide between my legs, noticing how sticky I feel, hiding my dirty hands behind my back.

Sean has already dressed. He turns to leave but then stops. And for one relieving moment I think he's going to say something really great. But instead he just smiles, lingers a few moments before turning away.

I watch him leave before washing myself off with the garden hose. A few moments later I hear the lawn mower turn on next door, the sound of the motor revving, like it never even happened-like Sean was never even here. I decide I will clean myself up and then vacuum the dirt out of the pool before going to pick up Maria, so we can prepare for Kelly's welcome-home once and for all.

SAt.u.r.dAY, AUGUST 12, 11:45 A.M.

Sadie's about to cut me. She's got the safety pin pressed up to my forearm. Her hands are all jittery, like someone's leaked all the blood out of her veins and shot them up with Pixie Stix sugar. There are smiley faces across her fingernails, bright pink ones-some with missing eyes where the paint has chipped, others with half chewed-off mouths.

"Hurry up," I say. "If you don't do it, you'll have to go home."

"No!" she whines.

I tear the sign from her T-shirt. This is the second time this week she's come over with a torn piece of notebook paper pinned to her shirt, the words PLEASE DO NOT FEED SADIE handwritten in pretty cursive letters across the page. Must have been a bad week.

"Don't!" she shouts at me.

I laugh at her and crumple the sign up into a paper ball, throw it toward my Tupperware garbage pail. "Your mom's f.u.c.ked. I'm surprised you don't just tear it off yourself." She looks scared, like I really screwed things up for her. "Hurry up," I say, referring to the pin, trying to take her mind off it.

Her eyes spill over with drippy tears. "Please, Maria, no," she whines.

"Don't act like such a baby. I thought you wanted to be my friend."

"I do." She nods toward the pin, like it will help her.

"Then prove it."

It's been a little goal of mine this past year-to get all my friends to cut me. Not that Sadie's a real friend. She's just a kid who always comes around to bug me. But she thinks she's my friend, so that must count for something.

I kick my bare legs back and forth on the bed, my heels bouncing against the naked mattress. I'm thinking about getting a tattoo, one on my arch maybe, but not a b.u.t.terfly or a snake, or anything lame a.s.s like that. I want a tattoo that no one else has-a squashed chicken with bulging eyes, maybe, or a bunch of rusty nails. When my ex-boyfriend James turned eighteen, he had my face tattooed to his chest, because he said I'd always be in his heart. I laugh whenever I think of him with another girl, with my face coming at her while they're trying to do the nasty.

I look over at Sadie, at how her barrettes, her T-shirt, and her open-toe sandals are all Tinker Bell-theme coordinated, like she's five. Even the trim on her white tennis skirt has tiny magic wands floating against the swirly pink fabric.

"How old are you now, anyway?" I ask.

"Eleven," she answers, really concentrating on that pin.

"Well, I'm six years older than you and I don't like hanging out with babies."

If I can get Sadie to cut me, then there'll just be Nicole left. Nicole's the kind of girl who draws smiley faces and happy hearts all over the covers of her notebooks and still believes in stuff like happily ever after and making birthday wishes. She's also the only person I know who works at all these different places for free; who partic.i.p.ates in walkathon causes, and donates her old stuff to Goodwill and starving children.

I've been trying to get her to cut me for a while now, but every time I ask, she gets all Al-Anon on me; she hugs me extra tight, kisses my cheek, and then doesn't even justify the question with an answer.

Me and Nicole have plans together later. I'm hoping I'll get her to do it then.

I pull a lighter out from the bib pocket of my overalls. "Think your fingernails could be a little dirtier? The least you could have done was wash them. That's so rude." They're all sticky and gross from eating up all my circus peanuts. I grab the safety pin from her grubby fingers and run the point under the flame a few seconds. "Make sure you don't touch me with those. I'll get infected."

I hand Sadie back the pin and she points the tip into my skin. "Worthless," I sing. "Waste of my time."

Her eyebrows st.i.tch together and her mouth forms a tiny frown, her cheeks all extra red and puffy. "No, Maria!" she finally fumes. "I can't. I can't do it." She throws the pin down and turns away from me on the bed.

I'm tempted to lash out at her, to tell her to go home and that I never want to see her again. But I can't. I need to play cool, appeal to her desperate side, use reverse psychology. I say, "That's fine, Sadie. I completely understand. It's not for everybody. I mean, just because all my other friends have done it, doesn't mean that you have to, too. You're just not ready to be my friend, that's all." I stand, head for the door, and open it a crack to let her out.

"No," she whines, pulling at her lashes. "I don't want to leave."

"Will you do it then?"

She shrugs.

I check the clock. It's almost noon. I still have another hour before Nicole is supposed to pick me up. "How about if I take you to Scoops for a double dip. Then will you do it?"

She smiles patty-cake wide, like I just asked her to be my best friend or something.

I peel my wallet open. A buck. One friggin' dollar. That won't even buy us the sprinkles. "Wait here," I tell her.

I peek in on Uncle Luke in the family room. The TV's on, some science show-the mating habits of the mosquito-with crickets chirping in the background. Luke's asleep, his head lolling against the back cushion of the armchair. There's a purple Tupperware tumbler resting in his lap with a stalk of celery sticking out. b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, no doubt.

I tiptoe across the rug toward him, doing my best to avoid stepping on the Tupperware orders my mother has scattered across the floor. He keeps his wallet in the front pocket of his pants. I know it's there. The brown wrinkly calf-leather edge is sticking out between his thumb and pointer. I'll have to move his hand to get at it.

Luke churns a bit in his sleep. I scooch down beside him, doing my best to clear away enough room on the floor and be quiet at the same time. His snoring has caused his T-shirt to draw up and expose about an inch and a half of hairy belly. The blub stares me in the face, as does one bright, cherry-red nipple peeping through a dryer-eaten hole. If only his kitchen appliance-buying customers knew what he wears under all that Sears polyester. I reach out for his wrist and he lets out a cartoon-like snore, flops his head to the other side. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

I lift his wrist upward and hold it midair, use my other hand to reach into that pocket. And then he grabs me. Throws me across his lap and starts tickling me under the arms. And now it's me who's snorting, wriggling in his grip, trying my best not to p.i.s.s myself.

"What do you want, huh? What do you want?" he says, jabbing at my sides, snapping my bra. He's such a pig. "Are you looking for some of this?" He pulls his T-shirt back down to cover the blub and takes out his wallet.

"Yeah, I want some of that."

"Well, you know, all you need to do is ask."

Luke stops and I concentrate hard on him, wait to hear what he wants. I watch the way his squinty blue eyes spy at me from behind a pair of tiny, gold-rimmed gla.s.ses, the way his lips spout like he's trying to think up what to say, and how his ears are as tiny as mine. I try to imagine what he looked like at my age, before his face got all saggy, and wonder if he might have been kind of cute.

"What do you need the money for?" he asks.

"It's no big deal, Luke. Me and Sadie are just gonna buy ice cream." I curl my tongue so that the barbell pokes out of my mouth. I want to stretch the hole to a size eight or nine, big enough to squirt water through it, right at him.

"Hey, that's Uncle Luke to you." He slides his wallet back into his pocket.

He's not my real uncle. My mother's an only child, but that's still what she insists I call him. She also insists that Luke's just staying with us for a while. Staying with us, not moving in and taking up valuable sofa s.p.a.ce for the past eight years. My real father was some guy my mother met one night while tending bar at Majors downtown. Apparently, she never saw him again after that night, doesn't even know his name, but she swears she'd recognize that creamy, Swiss-chocolate skin and that perfectly chiseled chin anywhere.

As a result, my skin is chocolate milk-a shade caught somewhere between mocha and latte. A far cry from creamy Swiss chocolate. And an even farther cry from my mother's porcelain white.

She says I sort of look like him, that my chin sort of juts out the way his did and that's where I got my egg-shaped face. She also says I have his dark, nut-brown lips and his even darker mahogany-brown eyes. I'm not sure. I don't know who I look like, or if I even look like anyone.

I just know that my blood is always red.

"Where's your mother?" Luke asks.

"Out. Tupperware meeting." Keeping her status as Diamond Manager requires her to be out a lot.

"Well then, what are you doing later? How about we run down to Movie Mayhem and rent ourselves some Stephen Kings?" Stephen King's my favorite. He knows this.

"What for?"

"Just want to spend some time with my girl."

"Whatever."

"What's that supposed to mean? You used to like to spend time with me."

"Yeah, well, I also used to like to chew aluminum foil, and I don't do that anymore, do I?"

To this, he snaps his fingers back and forth over his head, homegirl style. "What's the mat-ter, Ho-mey?" he raps. "Chick-chick-chick-chick-ah. Chew-chew-chew. Don't wanna hang loose with your Uncle Luke? Chick-chick-chick-chew. Chew-chew-chew. Spin some disks? Watch some flicks?"

"So cool," I say, interrupting, not able to hide my smile. I make the L-for-Loser sign with my hand and place it up to my forehead.

"You used to think so. Maybe that's just it; maybe you're too cool now." He touches my shirt collar to make me look, and when I do, he does that corny finger-glide-up-your-face bit. It's so stupid; I can't help but laugh.

"It's good to see you smile," he says. "For the past couple weeks I've been wondering if you lost your teeth."

Has it been that long?

He keeps me there for a couple minutes, rambling about how I remind him of his (long-lost) daughter, with my rusty voice and tight black corkscrew curls; how he used to take her fishing at some lake, and why don't we go. And I don't really mind listening to him and his dumb stories, even though I've heard them all before. It kind of makes me feel like I'm somebody else. Like I've been burped out onto the set of some made-for-TV movie, where I'm the typical girl-with-a-problem and he's the overprotective dad. Not Luke the Puke.

"Sadie's waiting for me," I say, looking toward his watch, picturing time melting away like those double dips. "Are you gonna give me the ice cream money or not?"

He shrugs, a stupid grin on his face, like he's having fun, dangling money over my head. "If you do a little something for me," he says finally.

I nod, feel my face fall, saggy like his. Like someone's clicked the channel back to reality TV and I'm Maria all over again.

Back in my room, Sadie's still there. She's sitting on the bed, using up all my blueberry nail polish. "Go outside and hide in the bushes underneath my window. No peeking in."

"Why do I have to go outside?" She's trying to cover up those pathetic little smiles with the blue.

"Because I said so." I position myself in the doorway to show her that I mean business. "Just say good-bye, slam the door, and wait for me there. Then we'll go."

Sadie's bottom lip quivers. "Why?"

"Because you want to go to Scoops. And if you want to go to Scoops, you have to do what I say."

"Why can't I just wait here?"

"I mean it," I insist, ignoring her question. "No peeking. I'll know if you do."

Sadie palms the nail polish and makes her way, slowly but surely, down the hallway, into the kitchen, and out the back door.

The chair in the family room creaks. Luke is getting up.

I leave my bedroom door open a crack--just wide enough so he can see-and then stand in the middle of the room, a stack of dirty ceramic plates at my bare ankles, dinners for one. Facing sort of sideways, not toward the open door, but not away from it either, I unhook the straps of my overalls and flip the bib part down. I recite the Pledge of Allegiance one full time to myself before sliding the overalls down over my hips and past my knees. Stepping out of the pant legs, I pause through the chorus of "b.l.o.o.d.y Wand," my favorite Cryptic Slaughter song, playing in my head. Then I kick the overalls and they hit the wall, landing on the heaping stack of Harlequin novels Nicole brought over to Band-Aid me and James's breakup four months ago.

I rub my hands over my hips and thighs, trying my best to smile, to like the way the skin feels. Instead I feel the leftover chicken pock on my upper back thigh. A Hershey Kiss-shaped birthmark on my right hip. I pull my T-shirt up, feel the air greet my gut, a chill wipes over my shoulders as each becomes free. And then it's just me, in my bra and panties.

And I feel nothing.

I toy with the straps of my bra, the frayed fabric at the hem, almost laugh out loud just thinking how old and ratty it is. Then I unhook the back, let my b.o.o.bs just dangle. I cup them and squeeze them, poke them and tweak them. And when I feel enough is enough, I place my fingers inside the hem of my panties. I shimmy them down in time to b.l.o.o.d.y Wand's instrumental part, fighting the urge to play the air guitar. I pick them up with my toe and press them against my cheek, stifle my yawn with the f.a.n.n.y part, all the while trying to act like they're good enough to eat. Yum, yum, yum. Then I slap my a.s.s a few times for my own amus.e.m.e.nt, have to stop myself from going too fast. Slow, slow, slow. I finger through the black, wiry hair between my legs and imagine fishing line, the days Luke was referring to-him and his daughter at the lake.

Done.

I get dressed quickly, pull a long T-shirt on over my tangerine bikini, in case me and Nicole go back to her house for a swim, poke my arms through the straps of my overalls, and slip into a pair of lime-green flip-flops. I open my bedroom door. There, waiting for me on the dining room table just a few feet away, is Luke's wallet. I open it, take out two twenties, and shove them into my pocket.

Enough money, but not enough time. Nicole will be here in a half hour. I'll have Sadie cut me and then rain-check her for that ice cream.

I look out my bedroom window. There she is, hiding in the azaleas, just like I told her. She's got her thumb lodged between her strawberry-shaped lips, sucking. "You can come back in," I say, opening the window.

I pull up on the screen so she can climb in. Only, her blub gets in the way and she barely makes it. It takes five full attempts at hoisting herself up before she's finally able to get up on the sill and push her arms all the way through. But then she gets sort of stuck there, midway, her legs sticking straight out the window. I give her a chair to lean on for support. This helps. With some extra pull from me, she makes it.

She takes a seat on the bed, and she's huffing and puffing, like climbing through a ground-floor window is any big deal. I hand her the safety pin. She frowns and pulls at her eyelashes.

"Just do it and then we'll go."

She holds the pin up to my arm, but then starts the shaking thing again.

"Do it!" I say, between gritted teeth. "Cut me!"

She scratches me. One long, white slit along my inner forearm, just below the elbow where the skin is dry. Her eyes fill with baby tears. More and more and more. I wonder if she can even see straight.

"Harder," I demand. "You need to press down to break the skin."

It takes her a few times to actually make me bleed. And when she finally does, it's a pretty decent line, about an inch and a half. It doesn't even hurt, just feels like I scratched myself on something sharp. I guess I can't expect too much from a thumb-sucking eleven-year-old.

The blood fills the slit and I wait to see if it'll drip. I move my arm a bit to guide a trickle, but it just stays put. I'm tempted to squeeze it, but when I glance up at Sadie, she looks like she's gonna hurl. She's staring at her finger. It's got the tiniest bit of blood on it and she's all sick about it.

"Just wipe it," I tell her.

She does, on my bed, but it doesn't help one bit. Her mouth is all hangy and her tongue is sticking out over her teeth. I'll have to wait to squeeze.

Sadie lifts her shirt to blot at her eyes with Tinker Bell's wings, exposing a roll of fat over her skirt. Like pizza dough.

I pluck the b.l.o.o.d.y safety pin from her fingers and lean across the bed to grab my lunch box. I pull out Sadie's name tag; I've already written her name across it. The name tags are really price tags, the tiny square ones with the string attached where the salespeople tie it to stuff-I managed to collect a bunch of them from the thrift shop before I quit. I blow a bit on the point, to dry the blood, and then tie her name tag to the pin.

There's a bunch more like it in my box, safety pins with their owners' names attached, those who've cut me. I like to carry them around so I always know who my real friends are. Not that Sadie will ever be one.

"Now you have to leave," I say. "Nicole will be here any minute."