"Hey, you know Shakespeare?" She beamed, spine pulled straight as though someone had tugged a string at the back of her head. "No way!"

I answered with a sour smile. Why did everyone assume that because I was good with equations, I was only onedimensional?

"Methinks thou doth protest too much, Ophelia." I rolled a pencil across the desk. "No more stalling. Time to do some algebra."

6.

For the most part, Mona wasn't hard to live with. She slept all day and worked all night. And we generally agreed on all the rules.

The first rule (no bad grades) was easy. I'd always done well in school.

The second rule (no trouble) was a broad umbrella encompassing a dozen overprotective restrictions. Like, don't hang out with the neighborhood kids, don't wear skanky clothes, and stay out of the principal's office. These were easy too. I wore whatever T-shirts and jeans Mona brought home from yard sales and consignment shops. The sizes always ran too big, and covered too much, which was fine by me. And I had no interest in hanging with the neighbor-hoodlums anyway.

Mona and I shared the third rule, which was good for both of us. I didn't need a boyfriend; touching was complicated. But for my mother, it was also dangerous. Butch, the bouncer at Gentleman Jim's, made sure all the patrons respected the only rule at the club. He liked to brag about the time he'd broken a man's arm for trying to touch my mother while she was working. He'd given me self-defense lessons in the alley behind the club when I was old enough to make a fist, and he drove her home each night after closing. I'd hear his van crunch over the gravel, the click of the locks, and know she was home safe when her bedroom door shut.

Butch never came inside. There hadn't been a man in our trailer since the year after my father left, when Mona had brought one home from the club. They'd both smelled like booze and sweat, but her cheeks were flushed for the first time in months, and she was smiling. She'd gone to her room to change clothes. The man sat down on our couch and reached for me. My stomach twisted with the wrongness of his taste, and the cloying, putrid-sweet smell of him. I twisted out of his grip and screamed "Don't touch me!" My mother had come flying out of her bedroom, and kicked him out. She pulled me tight to her chest, saying "it's okay" over and over. I felt the hole open up inside her, wider and deeper than before, like I was eating it away myself. It was the last time I touched her.

Her door was still closed now, and I could hear her soft, breathy sounds through the thin walls. She'd only been in bed for a few hours and slept like the dead. I reached into the ceramic Santa Claus cookie jar. It was full of cash-our grocery money and rent for the month. Thursday nights were busy at Jim's. She rarely noticed the few missing bills I took on Fridays. The way I figured it, the money belonged to men who bought bits and pieces of my mother away from me every day. I was only taking back what was rightfully mine.

The problem with the rules was, while they were designed to get me into a good college, they didn't tell me how to pay for a good college. But Mona didn't seem all that concerned. For the last three years, she'd scattered college brochures all around our trailer. Georgetown, Tech, GMU, and Hopkins- top-rated schools, all within a tight radius of home. My own wish-list put more distance between me and Sunny View, but the problem of cost and deferred student loans only grew with every mile I imagined myself out of state. I told myself I didn't care what school I got into, as long as I got out of Sunny View.

On Sunday I wanted to give a little something back to her. It was Mother's Day. She didn't celebrate her birthday-she was the oldest dancer at Jim's and we never knew how many birthdays there'd be until she was out of a job-but Mother's Day made her smile. She'd wake up early and let me bring her coffee in bed. Then she'd ask me about school and we'd talk about my grades. Her eyes would shine a little.

I pulled the trailer door shut quietly, locking the dead bolt behind me, and headed toward a collection of tables on the next street. Friday was yard sale day in Sunny View, and the trailer park was buzzing as people wandered, poking through boxes, and kids headed to school.

A girl with magenta streaks in her hair leaned against a lamppost, smoking a cigarette while she waited for the bus. It was the same street corner she slouched at in the evenings while she waited for men she probably didn't know to pick her up. We gave each other tight awkward smiles, like we sort of knew each other, both of us probably grateful we didn't.

TJ looked at the ground when I walked by. He sat on the edge of the rusted weight bench that was chained to the axel under his uncle's trailer, his knee brace dangled over his lap. A stack of free weights was padlocked to the bench, and he kicked it with the toe of his sneaker. As usual, neither of us acknowledged the other. Maybe it was too much like looking in a mirror, seeing another version of ourselves stuck where we didn't want to be. As soon as Vince's Camaro blew around the corner, windows down and music blaring, TJ threw on his backpack, scooped up his brace, and bolted off the bench. Vince reached across the passenger seat and threw open the door, and TJ jumped inside like he couldn't get out of the park fast enough. I couldn't blame him.

I waved away the gravel dust kicked up by Vince's car and made my way to the towers of knickknacks and boxes of mismatched trinkets. Nothing on Mrs. Moates's sticky lopsided table was my idea of a treasure, but I paused at a collection of mugs, lingering over one with a kitten dangling by his claws from a tree. A thought bubble from his head said Hang in There, and my heart squeezed a little.

"How much for the mug?" I asked. A mangy cat curled around Mrs. Moates's ankles.

"The one with the busted handle?" she lisped.

"No, the other one."

"Fitty cents." I gave her seventy-five. Not that a quarter could replace the cat who'd lived under her home. But the thing had been stuffed in a box with my name on it, and I felt responsible. The gesture, small as it was, made me feel better.

With the mug safely inside my backpack, I went to the Bui Mart. The bells jingled when I opened the door, and a 1980s hair band wailed from the overhead speakers. Bao looked up from the counter and smiled.

Everyone called Ahn's older brother "Bo"-though I'm pretty sure that's not the way Bao was supposed to be pronounced-the same way we all called Anh "Ann."

"Morning, Leigh." He already had my newspaper and chocolate milk laid out for me. I fished a chocolate donut from the day old bin. "Heard my little sister is kicking your ass in chem lab." Bao snickered. "Maybe all the crap you eat rots your brain."

"That crap is the breakfast of champions." I took a bite of the donut and headed for the cheap greeting card display, licked the frosting from my fingers, and picked a ninety-ninecent Happy-Mother's-Day-and-thanks-for-putting-up-with-me card. I stacked it on the counter with the rest of my loot.

Bao keyed them in and counted out my change, without looking at the register or the coins. He had to be bored out of his mind, running the family store. Bao was wicked smart. Maybe smarter than Anh. It was one of the reasons I liked him so much. I could forgive him his music and the obnoxious skinny jeans he'd paired with his Bui Mart polo T, and the fact that he was an incessant flirt.

"You should come over for dinner with the family sometime. I'll show you what you're missing." Bao looked me up and down like he was mentally removing my clothes. When he got to my baggy pant legs, he frowned. "You're too skinny. You're spending too much time with that country club kid. I know his parents don't feed you."

"Jeremy's parents won't even let me into their house. For that matter, neither would yours," I snorted, stuffing my purchases into my backpack. "What's your mom so afraid of, anyway? That I'll take my clothes off and dance on her table?"

Bao blushed.

"Don't worry about it," I said before he forced himself to suffer through some bogus apology. We both remembered the look on his mother's face when Anh brought me home after school in seventh grade. Anh had asked her mother what was so bad about being a waitress. Bao had kept his eyes on the floor. He'd understood more than I had back then. At least now we could joke about it. "Besides, I'm storing up all this fat and calories for my end of the semester sprint. Your sister will never see me coming."

"Don't make me poison your Yoo-hoo." He leveled a finger at me. "She's got her heart set on that scholarship. The whole family does. I might have to go all big-bad-ass brother on you." His playful voice didn't match the rest of him anymore. College had never been an option for Bao. He would work here for the rest of his parents' lives because that's what was expected of him.

He slapped the cash drawer shut. A wallet-size photo of Anh was taped to the register. He was as proud as any parent. Anh didn't need that scholarship as much as she thought she did. She already had so much. I wondered what it would be like to have someone like Bao looking out for me. Someone proud and protective and strong. Someone who would sacrifice his own future for mine. I tucked my newspaper under my arm. It felt unusually light.

"Here." He slid seventy-five cents across the counter. "Donut's on me. My money is still on Anh."

I opened the paper and thumbed through the sections. The classifieds were missing. I folded it up and set it on the counter. "Can you swap this for another paper? It's missing a section."

"All the important stuff is in there. Besides, what do you need the personals for? Everything you need is right here." Bao leaned against the corn dog machine and waggled his eyebrows at me.