During the last almost-month I’d cycled around to my second period a bit earlier than expected (May thought they’d regularize soon and if not we’d call Dr. Blake), but by Saturday morning it had disappeared—as with the first time my flow had been heaviest on the first day and even that had been what May had called “light.” She had characterized the cramping as light too, saying that, unless something changed and since I was sexually mature though I still had some growing to do she didn’t think it was likely to, I could count myself among the lucky girls who normally experienced a light cycle. Yay! I still tried not to think about the fact that my cycle meant that every four weeks my sexually mature young body would ovulate and I’d be fertile.

  (And why did it bother me? I wasn’t going to be doing any fertilizing any time soon, still couldn’t even contemplate the associated activity applied personally.)

  After some last-minute shopping and errands, over a light lunch of sweet tea and sandwiches at Mrs. Thompson’s place, I finally introduced her to May. Grace surprised me by telling May about her own changeling status, telepathy and all, then and there—I supposed she must have been encouraged by whatever she felt of May's “thought-vibes”—and demonstrated our discovered mutual changeling-compass ability to locate each other by “feel.”

  May took it well—not even blinking at the one-in-a-million coincidence of two changelings, each one in a million, living two doors down from each other—but when she asked me what it felt like I completely blanked. It felt like . . . a ghost of a hint of warmth on my skin telling me where the sun was, a certainty that wasn’t even a tingling. It was a felt presence with no way to explain it. It was just the “alien sense.” May had just “Hmmm’d” at my stumbling description, obviously adding it to the data-points she was collecting in her head, and invited Grace to Sunday dinner.

  Grace had graciously accepted.

  Which left the rest of Saturday before the party for me to stew, interrupted only by a call from Pinky going over the game plan and what she needed to know for it. Carl drove me to the party spot, a nice home in the Seven Hills neighborhood in a gated community that felt more like a country club.

  ****************************************

  Okay, wow.

  Even for Seven Hills, a neighborhood an income step or two above Twain Street, we could see as we drove up that the place was next-level. The architect had obviously gone for “Italian villa,” and its tall windows, white stucco walls, and red-tiled roof, bright in the fading light, would have fit right into the hills of Tuscany. They’d even planted cypress trees on the manicured grounds.

  “Okay, they’re loaded,” Carl echoed my thought as we sat looking at it. Car windows down, we could hear music drifting from the place. “And I say that as an aspiring one-percenter. So are you ready for this, old man?”

  No. I nodded. “It’s just a business party, right? They’re potential business associates. I schmooze, network, don’t get drunk, don’t say anything stupid?”

  He sighed. “I won’t say ‘Try and have a good time.’ May is of the firm opinion that if you just get out of your own head and forget about everything, you’ll find yourself having fun. I know how outside your social wheelhouse this is, I know it’s not going to be fun for you.”

  “Gee, Dad, tell me how you really feel.”

  “Hey, I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass. But you’ll survive and not bomb in there and next time will be easier, and after that you might be able to, like your mom says, get out of your own head and enjoy it. If you find out it’s what you want to do.”

  “Did you ever enjoy the parties?”

  “I enjoy May. And when she had a good time, she made sure I had a good time if you know what I mean.” He winked.

  “Eeuw, eeuw, eeuw! Mom’s supposed to be the only one who overshares!” I was not going to imagine May giving Carl a good time after a party; that way lay sex-dreams and not looking at my dad over breakfast ever again.

  “I meant she kept me from being bored at these things.” (He did not.) “What do you think I meant, old man? Got your cellphone?”

  I slapped my pocket, annoyed I’d fallen for his gambit.

  “Great. Call when you’re ready to come home or when you need me to come back and beat someone up. Seriously.” I could tell he meant it and for all my social-anxiety nerves it warmed me. When he hit the door-unlock, my signal to bail, taking a deep breath, I unbuckled.

  “Thanks, Car—” I stopped and huffed. “Thanks Dad. I’ll call when I’m ready.” Then I was out of the car without looking back to see how he took my non-sarcastic use of the D-word.

  And stuck on the curb looking at the house. After the last weeks I was a lot more comfortable in my body, but what lay ahead of me was almost as much part of my teen-years PTSD as high school. I can do this. Business mixer. Schmoozing. The lying liar self-talk at least got my feet moving, and I found Pinky waiting for me at the top of the flagstone walk to the front door.

  “So that’s your stepdad, huh?” she asked, looking past me. Her sartorial choice for the evening was a super-short summer dress patterned with bright yellow sunflowers crowding out the white background and strappy sandals. It was basically a swimsuit coverup and, where with my t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers I looked ready to hit the waterpark, she looked ready to grace the beach at a fancy resort.

  “That’s Carl,” I said. In our phone conversation I’d filled her in on my new document-supported background, and she’d advised me to not tell anyone that I was only just now living with my mom and “step,” or that I was actually eighteen despite coming in as a tenth year.

  Or as she’d put it, “Don’t shout around that you’re eighteen and lived with your aunt.”

  “Why?” I’d asked.

  “Because if some mean girl wants to spread shit about you it’s a hook,” she’d said. “They get to tell a story about why you’re a tenth year when you should be a—your birthday was just this month? A twelfth year. And why you’re only just now living with your mom. I know you’ve got perfectly good reasons, but can you get your story out there faster than they spread theirs?”

  That had made me ask if I was going to meet any “mean girls” tonight and I’d practically heard her eyes rolling over the phone. “Of course you will. Delia, the queen bee? She used to be my friend until last year, when she tried hard to switch up my nickname from Pinky to Twinkie. Because of my natural padding? She cut it out and has been super-nice to me ever since, but sometimes I still want to cunt-punt her.”

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  I’d winced and wondered what I was getting into, and now seeing me look at the big open doors with trepidation, Pinky grabbed my hand as if she could read my mind. “Too late now, wave to your hot stepdad and let’s go.” Turning I saw that Carl was waiting for us to go in. He pulled away when I waved, driving slowly. “So let’s do this!” she laughed when I looked back at her, pulling me through the open doorway and into the noise.

  The villa home’s big living, dining, and family room spaces were all beyond the entryway with no walls between them, only changes of flooring and décor to distinguish them, and they’d been largely cleared of what furniture wasn’t pushed against the walls to make room for everyone. Everyone was a lot, and I realized it wasn’t everyone when I spotted a patio through the open French doors in back.

  The dining room space had been turned into a dance floor, beach music providing the rhythm for gyrating bodies in summer clothes and beachwear. So many bodies and I felt my social anxiety rising, but only a few kids glanced over at our entrance before going back to whatever they were doing (mostly talking and sipping from red plastic cups while watching the dance floor and each other). Pinky took us straight through the house and out to the slightly less crowded patio, to a group that included the one other person I recognized. Brad stood talking to a cute brunette in a skirt and top a lot like the one I’d worn my first full day as a girl, and beside him talking to two other guys was the girl who could only be Delia the Queen Bee.

  Tall and fit, with perfectly styled dark wavy hair with highlights, she wore a bikini top and sarong that showed off her toned, tan figure. Drink in one hand, she was waving the other to illustrate a point when Pinky pushed us through the ring of teens standing around them. Her court, I supposed.

  “Pinky!” Delia chirped, cutting off her story. “Glad you could make it. Is this April?” Well, that’s right to the point. All eyes turned to me as she looked me over, giving a decisive nod I supposed implied approval. “Pinky says you tested into Hadley at the last minute, blew up the lit test. Good for you. Has she introduced you around?”

  “Hardly,” Pinky laughed. “I came to kiss your ring first.”

  Something flitted across Delia’s face without breaking her perfect smile. “As well you should.” Her smile widened, looking totally sincere and not practiced at all. “Nice to meet you April. This is my little sister, Tracy.” She nodded to the brunette Brad had been talking to. “Pinky said you’ve already met Brad, these other two goofs are Chet and Bret. Bret is one of Brad’s cohort-bros and Hadley’s aspiring tortured artist.”

  Chet and Bret, good God. Dark-haired Chet was almost as tall as and definitely as cut as Brad, as their brightly colored, unbuttoned, just-slightly-too-small vacation shirts made absolutely clear. They probably challenged each other in their workout programs, football players together. (I couldn’t remember seeing him on The Green, but hadn’t been looking at anyone but Brad, really.) Bret didn’t match either of them, just as tall but just skinny, like he didn’t pay attention to mundane things like food and exercise. Or to the sun; he was almost as pale as me without the red hair to justify it. His dark blond mop looked carefully neglected, like he wanted us to think he’d forgotten it about in pursuit of his muse, and why the hell did I dislike him without a word?

  Fuck. Was I still not over Lorrie fucking Waters?

  I swallowed my nerves, holding up my hand in a frozen wave. “Hi, Rex. Tracy. Chet. Bret. April Seever.” At least in adulthood I’d learned to function while riding a cresting wave of jitters; first time around, I’d have been a stammering muppet by now.

  “You’ll have to sit at our table, come Monday,” Delia decided. “Pinky, you have to introduce her to Charlotte. If she goes for the English Lit track, they really need to meet.”

  “I saw her going inside,” Brad said. “I’ll show you guys.” He detached himself smoothly from the other two musketeers, leaving his spot next to Delia to be filled by an interchangeable boy. “And bring me another drink!” Delia commanded her faithful courtier with a parting red cup-lifting “Laters,” to Pinky and me.

  “That was smooth,” my big sister approved as we headed back in. I thought she was talking to me until Brad laughed.

  “Yeah, I told her about our Three-and-Three. She thinks Charlotte and The Mayor should be your other two.”

  “Charlotte? The Mayor?” At least the second one had to be a nickname. And at least my jitters from the crowd were keeping me from melting down under Brad’s attention again.

  “Charlotte for Charlotte Bront?,” Pinky supplied. “And The Mayor is our class president. She’s been our class president since ninth year and she makes the other class presidents cry. Neither sit at Delia’s table but they’re both big in their circles.”

  “I’m going to introduce her to Big, Q, and Joe,” Brad said to Pinky over my head.

  “Do I dare ask?” I quipped. (And look at me, acting semi-normal.)

  “Big’s our class thespian, Q’s our class brain, and Joe’s our class Rotsee booster. We’d be introducing you to tenth-years but the plan is to let them come to you when they see who’s talking to you.”

  “Rotsee?”

  “Junior ROTC,” Brad chuckled. “Rot-sea. That’s Joe for G.I. Joe. Joe’s the school battalion’s Cadet Major.”

  I nodded, head spinning. It sounded like Three and Three meant a meet with the top influencers in eleventh year. Which made sense; since the party was a Delia Party—as Pinky had explained it, the first pecking order-reaffirming party of the schoolyear—it was mostly the eleventh-year elite, their sisters or cohorts, and tenth-year wannabes added to pump up the numbers.

  The twelfth-years were off having their own official school cotillion tonight. A cotillion. Really.

  “Drink?” Brad asked, leading us to the open kitchen separated from everything else only by a bar counter space with wide flow-through on either side. The whole main section of the house really was designed to be an open social space, and the bar had been set up as a real bar with everything but alcohol. As Pinky talked, I skipped the fancy sodas to grab a red cup and half-fill it with ice before pouring orange juice, less lemon juice, and even less apple cider vinegar and unflavored syrup into a mixer with a sprig of mint (clapped to release the scent) and more ice. Capping it and shaking it all up, I smooth-poured it into the red cup and cracked open a short can of ginger ale to add to the mix and ice until it all floated up to the right line. Dropping an orange slice on top, I looked up at Brad and Pinky. They’d stopped talking.

  “What?” I asked. It was just an orange mocktail.

  Pinky closed her mouth. “Can I have one?”

  “Sure. Brad?” He nodded and since there were plenty of ingredients I passed Pinky the one I’d just made and mixed two more. Pinky cocked an eyebrow at Brad as he tried his, turning to me when he nodded. “Wait right here.”

  “Okay . . . What’s going on?”

  She just grinned. “Three times three, girl, three times three.” She disappeared into the crowd, leaving Brad with me. Sipping his drink again, he looked at it. “I watched you mix this, but I’d swear there was alcohol in it.”

  “I’m not a—” I started to say “big drinker” but closed my mouth. Not a thing an eighteen-year-old would normally say. Probably. “Um. My stepdad worked a bar in college, and he’s been teaching me his mixer moves. How to make any cocktail or mocktail?” (Carl really had paid for his last couple of years of college with a bartending job and before all this had been teaching me on our chess game nights as a break from the microbrewery beer.) “I concocted this one, I call it the Hemingway, as in The Sun Also Rises? Because he liked cocktails and because of the orange?” I cut off my babbling. The recipe really had been my creation, my “cocktail journeyman’s work” according to Carl.

  “It’s really good.”

  “Thanks? I can teach you the—” Pinky emerged from the crowd, interrupting me. “April! Can you mix more?” Behind her followed two more girls, and with a nod from her Brad vanished. Oh. Ohhhhhh. “Sure! Hi, I’m April.”

  By the time I’d finished two more, handing them off to Charlotte (Cindy Stoval) and The Mayor (Cindy Trevor), Brad had returned with three guys and of course they were Big (Mike Wallace), Q (Alex Brandt), and Joe (Joseph Alexander Cray). Before I’d finished loading them up (switching to a bigger mixer to do two drinks at a time), Delia and her court from the patio had gotten someone’s text and wandered in to be where the action was. By the time I finished serving Hemingways to her circle, telling my stepdad story again, I had my Hadley nickname. I was Hemingway.

  And my arms felt ready to fall off. Sticks! They were sticks! But everyone else seemed to want a taste of my creation and, inspired by desperation, I taught Delia how to mix them and gave her my blessing to mix them at all her parties before scarpering off out of there, alone.