“That wasn’t Christian,” she says.“Brilliant observation, Mother.”“What happened?”“He’s in love with another girl,” I say, and pull the silver laurel out of my hair.”

“That guy with the silver hair, he’s your dad, right?” Amber questioned, surveying the scene. “Yes,” I said, reluctant to say anything but, considering what was happening, figured was the least of my worries. “Ooo la la. He’s, like, totally diesel. Look at those arms.” She went on, admiring my dad to a sickening degree. “All right, jailbait, back off. It’s practically incest.”She sucked air through her teeth. “I know,” she said regretfully. “But a girl can dream. And I have a feeling he’s going to be starring in a lot of them.”

“What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. The Beatles. And me.”

“Silver” is what I called girls who were natural beauties but who also smoothed on a layer of pretty from a jar. It wasn’t just how they looked, it was how they were. The name came from a song my mother sang sometimes when she was getting dressed to go out somewhere special. She sang along with Aretha Franklin at the end: “Sail on, silver girl… Your time has come to shine. All your dreams are on their way.”

“hi, puppy."she's not a puppy. She's a girl," Nancy's mother says.Nancy pats me and says, "Good puppy. Nice puppy." When he mother bends down to pull her away, she wraps both arms around my legs and wails. "No! My puppy!”

“You know what Hans told me last week?" she says as I open the door of my fitting room. "He told me to write down a list of everything I wanted to say about that women-and then tear it up. He said I'd feel a sense of freedom.""Oh right," I say interestedly. "So what happened?" "I wrote it all down," says Laurel. "And then I mailed it to her!”