I was about six then, and I loved to stand there and brush my fingertips over the beads, watching them swish back and forth. They made the softest sound, like little bells. I could peer through them and still see my mother, but now she looked almost exotic, like a fortune-teller or a fairy, a maker of magic. Which was what she was, but I didn’t know it then.

Most of the remnants of our apartment years had been long lost or given away, but the beaded curtain had made the trip to the Big New House, as we’d called it when we moved in. It was one of the first things my mother hung up, before even our school pictures or her favorite Picasso print in the living room. There was a nail so it could be pulled back out of sight, but now it was down, a little worse for wear, but still doing the job. I leaned closer, peering in at my mother. She was still hard at work, fingers flying, and I closed my eyes and listened. It was like music I’d heard all my life, even more than “This Lullaby.” All those keystrokes, all those letters, so many words. I brushed my fingers over the beads and watched as her image rippled, like it was on water, breaking apart gently and shimmering before becoming whole again.

Chapter Two

It was time to dump Jonathan.

“Tell me again why you’re doing this?” Lissa asked me. She was sitting on my bed, flipping through my CDs and smoking a cigarette, which was fast stinking up my room even though she’d sworn it wouldn’t, since she had it halfway out the window. Even before I quit I’d hated the stink of smoking, but with Lissa I always let things slide more than I should have. I think everyone has at least one friend like that. “I mean, I like Jonathan.”

“You like everybody,” I told her, leaning closer to the mirror and examining my lip liner.

“That’s not true,” she said, picking up a CD and turning it over to examine the back. “I never liked Mr. Mitchell. He always looked at my boobs when I went up to do theorems on the board. He looked at everybody’s boobs.”

“Lissa,” I said, “high school is over. And besides, teachers don’t count.”

“I’m just saying,” she said.

“The thing is,” I went on as I lined my lips, turning the pencil slowly, “that it’s summer now, and I’m leaving for school in September. And Jonathan… I don’t know. He’s just not a keeper. He’s not worth working my schedule around if we’re only going to break up in a few weeks anyway.”

“But you might not break up.”

I leaned back, admiring my handiwork, and smudged a bit along my top lip, evening it out. “We’ll break up,” I said. “I’m not going to Stanford with any other entanglements than absolutely necessary.”

She bit her lip, then tucked a springy curl behind one ear, ducking her head with the hurt expression she always got lately when we talked about the end of the summer. Lissa’s safe zone was the eight weeks left before we all split for different directions, and she hated to think past that. “Well, of course not,” she said quietly. “I mean, why would you?”

“Lissa,” I said, sighing. “I didn’t mean you. You know that. I just mean”-I gestured to the bedroom door, slightly ajar, beyond which we could hear my mother’s typewriter still clacking, with violins drifting in the background-“you know.”

She nodded. But in truth I knew she didn’t understand. Lissa was the only one of us who was even slightly sentimental about high school being over. She’d actually cried at graduation, great heaving sobs, ensuring that in every picture and video she’d be red-eyed and blotchy, giving her something to complain about for the next twenty years. Meanwhile, me, Jess, and Chloe couldn’t wait to get across that stage and grab our diploma, to be free at last, free at last. But Lissa had always felt things too deeply. That was what made us all so protective of her, and why I worried most about leaving her behind. She’d gotten accepted into the local university with a full scholarship, a deal too good to pass up. It helped that her boyfriend, Adam, was going there too. Lissa had it all planned out, how they’d go to freshman orientation together, live in dorms that were in close proximity, share a couple of classes. Just like high school, but bigger.

The very thought of it made me itch. But then, I wasn’t Lissa. I’d powered through the last two years with my eyes on one thing, which was getting out. Getting gone. Making the grades I needed to finally live a life that was all my own. No wedding planning. No messy romantic entanglements. No revolving door of stepfathers. Just me and the future, finally together. Now there was a happy ending I could believe in.

Lissa reached over and turned up the radio, filling the room with some boppy song with a la-la-la chorus. I walked over to my closet, pulling open the door to examine my options.

“So what do you wear to dump somebody?” she asked me, twirling a lock of hair around one finger. “Black, for mourning? Or something cheerful and colorful, to distract them from their pain? Or maybe you wear some sort of camouflage, something that will help you disappear quickly in case they don’t take it well.”

“Personally,” I told her, pulling out a pair of black pants and turning them in my hands, “I’m thinking dark and slimming, a bit of cleavage. And clean underwear.”

“You wear that every night.”

“This is every night,” I replied. I knew I had a clean red shirt I liked somewhere in my closet, but I couldn’t find it in the shirt section. Which meant somebody had been in there, picking around. I kept my closet the way I kept everything: neat and tidy. My mother’s house was usually in chaos, so my room had always been the only place I could keep the way I chose. Which was in order, perfectly organized, everything where I could easily find it. Okay, so maybe I was a little obsessive. But so what? At least I wasn’t a slob.