I felt myself tensing up. I took a deep breath, willing my muscles to relax. “The guys you’ve dated. Did you do this with any of them?”

“Not this exactly.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. Yes. Once. That was enough. For me and for him.”

“What about . . .” I paused. For God’s sake, I thought, out with it. “Has there been anyone like me?”

“Never like you. A woman, yes. My roommate freshman year. It didn’t last long. Do you remember her?”

“Vaguely. She came home with you once. A redhead with an English accent.”

“That’s the one.”

“What happened?”

“She went home to England.”

“Were you sad?”

“For a while. I missed her. She called for a few months, and then she met someone else.”

“Another woman?”

She nodded, and I sat up. I was surprised to see my reflection in the mirror on her dressing table. My cheeks were flushed, my eyes bright, my hair sticking out in every direction. My lips were swollen and red. I pulled the covers up to hide my bare chest.

Susan laughed. She put her hands behind her head and stared up at the ceiling. “Cheryl and I were together constantly. After she went home, I thought about going to England. A visit or a student exchange program, maybe.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“You ought to know. My mother. I can’t leave my dad to handle her on his own. I can live exactly as far away as Chapel Hill, where I’m out of the house and away from the everyday annoyance but can drive home at a moment’s notice. I can pour her into bed or take her off to another pointless spa to try and dry out.”

“What about . . .”

“Say it, Poppy.”

She took my hand and rested it in the hollow between her breasts. I felt her heartbeat and the rise and fall of her chest. Her breasts, like my own, were covered with red marks, a map of every place visited by mouth or hand.

“What about us, Susan? Why me?”

“Last night, everything seemed to fall into place. It was like the music of the spheres. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“I don’t have a clue.” She pulled me back down and put her arms around me. “Unless you’re talking about those spheres Mick Fleetwood’s wearing in that poster.”

She laughed until I grew embarrassed and kissed her.

“You’ll be eighteen in August,” she said.

“And you’ll be twenty in November.”

She nodded. “In two years, I’ll graduate. Then four years of medical school, two years of residency, and I’ll be a doctor.”

“You’ll be twenty-eight.”

“I suppose so. What will you be, Poppy?”

“Twenty-six.”

“I know that. I mean what are your plans? You’re going to major in English.”

“I want to be a professor. I like to write. I think I’d like to teach.”

“So, that’s four years of college, two years for a Master’s, and four for a Ph.D. That’ll make you . . .”

“Twenty-eight,” I said. “Same as you.”

“Except that I’ll be thirty,” she laughed. One of her hands began tracing a path up my arm and over my right shoulder. “You have such a strong back. The muscles in your shoulders . . .”

“What about them?”

“They’re bigger than Brad’s.” I had moved my hand down to the curve of her hip, but this made me pull it back. “Stop that,” she said, replacing my hand. “That was a compliment. I’m glad you’re strong. You’re tall but you’re not bony. You’re not all knees and elbows.”

“I’m not feminine.”

“No,” she agreed, “you’re not. With your clothes and this new hair cut, you could pass for a boy.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Well, what did you want to be? Scarlett O’Hara?”

“That would make my grandmother happy.”

She laughed. “Scarlett in bed with Melanie, I like that idea. Relax, Poppy. You’re perfect. You just need to get used to your own skin, stop listening to people who want to make a regular girl out of you. There are all sorts of ways to be a woman.”

“Not in my family, there aren’t.”

“Oh yes, there are. Your mother’s not exactly Scarlett herself.” Her fingers, which had been tracing small circles on my shoulder, stopped now and grabbed my arm. She gave me a shake. “You’ll never be a Southern belle, but you’re very attractive. Now stop fishing for compliments.”

Tomorrow, her parents would be back, and at the end of the week, she’d go back to Chapel Hill. There was something more I wanted to hear, something I wanted to ask her about. She traced her hand up the length of my spine, and I forgot what it was.

Chapter Seventeen

Ever since I’d gotten my driver’s license, my mother had let me drop her off at work in the morning and take her car to school. It saved her the cost of a parking space downtown and me the shame and horror of riding the bus. I loved driving. Most of my friends were still nervous and tentative behind the wheel, but not me. I’d driven Hunter’s van up and down the dirt road at great-grandma’s farm since I was thirteen. The license examiner who gave me my test told my mother that I was the only sixteen-year-old he’d ever seen who already had bad driving habits.

At dawn, I’d left Susan’s house reluctantly and gone home to shower and change. If her parents hadn’t been due back from the beach, I’d have fabricated an illness and skipped school. My mother didn’t mention the apartment on the ride to town. I hoped it was just a passing fancy. My mother had talked before about moving out of my grandparents’ house, but it never amounted to anything.

I missed my turn on Jones Street and had to weave my way through the traffic on Edenton to get to New Bern Avenue, past the state capital, to drop my mother off at the back door of Olivia Raney. Some afternoons, I went straight downtown after school and waited for my mother to get off work, feeding the birds or just wandering around. Today, I had other plans. I was going to skip softball practice, go home, and finish all of my homework for the entire week. My mother had agreed to take the bus home.

I could have taken New Bern Avenue all the way to school, but I turned left on North Bloodworth, and then right on Oakwood. I liked to drive backstreets whenever I could, taking the true Raleigh resident’s pride in knowing at least five different ways to get anywhere. I especially liked the Oakwood Avenue route to school, which took me past the Oakwood Cemetery and St. Augustine’s College. The proximity of a Confederate graveyard to an excellent black college seemed to sum up what people called the New South. The old white bones buried beneath those enormous leaning monuments couldn’t have imagined a world in which black people were allowed to read, much less get college degrees. I wondered if their spirits were restless and thwarted, or if death really did lead to enlightenment.

I drove past the front gates of St. Augustine’s, turned right onto a small, crowded street, and stopped at a shabby duplex with white paint flecking off its clapboard siding. I parked in front of number twenty-two and waited. I made this stop five days a week and knew better than to blow the horn. The curtains twitched in the front window and a minute later Abby came tripping down the front walk in a starched white blouse and a pair of dark blue jeans with crisp creases ironed down the front of the legs.

Unlike me, Abby never looked like a bum. She always looked like she’d just stepped out of an advertisement for laundry detergent. My shirts were perpetual magnets for pizza sauce; Abby wore white with impunity. It suited her, a dramatic contrast to her warm brown skin. She was extraordinarily pretty. Her hair was combed into a perfect black cap, and she wore some hair care product that smelled like coconuts. I loved that smell. I found myself leaning toward her sometimes, sniffing. Abby thought that was funny. She said my hair smelled like grapefruit.

“You’re early,” she said, slinging an enormous backpack into the front seat and climbing in beside it. “Edna’s having a fit. She wants to know why I’m in such a hurry, am I meeting some boy?”