I stand over Adelaide's bed, watching her shoulders rise and fall heavily, hearing the intermitent, inelegant clap of her snoring. One half of her face is buried in her Little Mermaid pillow case; the other exposes her half-open mouth, drooling lightly in her slumber. I smile. Not much grace to that little creature, not much grace at all, but something about her always warmed me. Tate was an ordinary kid and I loved him as much as could be expected, and Beauregard-well, let's be honest, Beauregard was fucking terrifying-but Addie was something else.

My little girl. My beautiful, clumsy little one. I think I feel a little bit like shit.

I rub her hair for a second and I vanish, reappearring on the front porch with a cigar in my hand. I light it, inhale. I look up at the night sky, watching the tail lights of a plane flicker across the expanse until I can't see them anymore. I deserved this, I guess. I was nothing to write home about as a father and I wasn't shit as a husband, but to be totally fair, I had some rough breaks. Two kids born retarded, and to say that Constance wasn't easy to live with would be the understatement of the century. Tough little bitch, though, in the end. Hell of a shot.

Still, though, I can't bullshit-I did enough of that when I was alive-and what would be the point of that now, anyway? Who would even listen? Nah, I did this to myself; I picked out, marked, and dug that third-rate grave I'm lying in. I did everything but throw myself in there. I wish I could tell you why, but I've never been any good at that shit, you know? I was born a man in 1947. I grew up on cap guns and stiff upper lips. The heroes in the TV sets had quick, icy one-syllable names. A tip of the hat was about as far as they went in terms of showing affection.

I never felt any real desire to subvert that. It wouldn't have been me. I've got very little tenderness and even less morality, but I did love my kids, and I never did a damn thing in life that I didn't want to do. If I have to be stuck here, at least I'm stuck here knowing that.

I didn't expect myself to look like this at fifteen. In the black halter dress mom let me buy at Wet Seal, I am beautiful. I love the way that the slinky, stretchy fabric feels against my skin, skimming perfectly against the new curve of my hips and pooling like water at my feet. I don't want to wash it because I know that it will go thin and pilled and ill-fitting. Clothes do that.

My room smells like hairspray and Victoria's Secret Love Spell perfume. I'm wearing a thong for the first time, and a strapless bra. The bra pushes my breasts up and out, padding the bottom, making them look bigger than they are. God, I can't stop looking at myself. You're not supposed to say so, but fuck, I'm just so beautiful. I'm proud to be beautiful. I don't always feel smart, and a lot of girls don't like me. Knowing secretly that I am beautiful makes me feel a lot better. It makes me always feel okay, no matter what.

I spin in the mirror and see the tag of my dress sticking out the top of the back, loose and cheap and irritating. "Amber," I call across the room, "can you come cut this off?"

Amber cuts it off awkwardly with an old pair of Playskool safety scissors. I rub body glitter into my cleavage from a thick pink stick. It smells like cotton candy. I straighten the ends of my hair again, and I am perfect in the mirror. Nothing is out of place.

"Ugh, Hayden, will you stop freaking looking at yourself and go already?" Asks Amber. "The guys are gonna be here soon and I want some pictures first that are just us."

I put lipgloss on my mouth from a tube with a sticky rolling ball. It tastes like strawberry pie. We go downstairs.

"Ta-da!" I cry, opening my arms like a showgirl when I see my parents. I hand the digital camera to my dad. "Will you take pictures of us, daddy?" I ask.

He looks at me like nothing is there. "What are you supposed to be," he says, "a hooker?"

I feel like he slapped me.

The new girl who lives here is in love with the blonde boy who died in the nineties. I think it's mean, what he's doing to her. He's letting her fall in love with him when he knows full well that he's a ghost and can never marry her or anything. I don't understand what she sees in him, anyway. I find him creepy-always skulking around here like he's looking for small animals to maim-and I don't think he's handsome. I've always liked classically handsome men, older and stronger and masculine. He reminds me of a child, or a girl.

I can't help but feel jealous, though, watching them. I never had a boyfriend. Growing up I had my younger siblings, all six of them, to help take care of. When I went away for nursing school I thought that maybe it would happen, that maybe there'd be time enough, but then... well, you know what happened.

And I do not have messy blonde hair that falls in my eyes or a way with manipulation or a perfect, tragic backstory. I am, and I have always been, just big stupid Gladys, sensible and wry. No one is going to move in here and fall in love with me. I'm not the leading role in stories such as that. Never have been, never will be. That's just life. Or death, rather, I guess.

I watch the sunset and I look down at the cross around my neck. I don't know why I still wear it. Obviously it was bullshit-I died and here I am, no streets of gold, no angels, no reward. I guess I keep it in the vain hope that just maybe, if I'm good enough, He'll come for me. Like a leading man with a strong jaw in a black-and-white movie, He will come take me away from here, come give me what He promised. I'll be good enough at last.

Maria appears, sitting beside me. "Hey," she says in her soft voice, "you okay?"

I smile out of habit, wondering at how genuine it must look. Years of practice.

"Yeah," I say warmly, "I'm great."

Back in the hotel ballroom I can hear the phonograph still playing-some jazzy, trilly nonsense. I loosen my tie.

Martin stumbles out into the lobby, swinging an arm across my shoulders. "Charlie, ol' boy!" he cries gaily. He reeks of spirits.

I shake his arm off of me, but he is undeterred. "Charlie, you outta come back inside, friend! Have yourself a good time, away from all those books and all those dead things you cut up..." He burps.

"The night is over, Martin, everyone went home," I mutter, sipping the water I brought out here in a wine glass. I had two alcoholic drinks and even so, regretted it. I hate to partake. Why so many people seem to so enjoy a substance that functions to make them feel more is beyond me. I'd much prefer something that made me feel less.

"You graduate soon, no?"

I nod. "June. Two months now."

He laughs, a crow-like and horrible sound. "Doctor Charles Montgomery..." he slurs, grabbing my face. I back away. I think again, as I have since childhood, that everyone else in the world must have been given some kind of social script at birth, one that I and I alone have missed completely.

"You know, Charlie, we always laugh about you. So odd you are, so odd..."

I steel my face, unprepared for the coldness of the voice that comes out. "Martin, if you don't mind now." I gesture down the hallway. "Go on."

As he walks away, I peer out the third floor window and down, down, down. I wonder, as I have wondered many times, what it might feel like to jump and to be free, finally-free of expectation, free of people and the horrid clammoring trill of them, and all the things about them that I just don't understand.

Addie is my pretty sister, always in bows and singing and happy, and Tate is my gentle brother. He is kind hands, even when hands are little, not quick hands or grabby, pully hands like other little ones. He is gentle touches, pets and quiet words.

But Tate is tall now, and his gentle eyes are angry. He still talks to me because he thinks that I can't listen. He talks about guns. Tate has guns now, and a bad idea to go with them. I listen all about it. I think that maybe he has to use guns because his big hands are too nice to ever hurt on their own.

Tonight I listen to dinner. The glasses and the chewing and the forks make noise. The TV is voices, laughy and fake. I don't go down there now. Not since Larry.

After the dinner noise is gone, Tate comes. Tate says my name, Beauregard. He pulls a gun out of the inside of his long black coat and it is stupid in his gentle hand. Tate might hurt me, but the gun falls down and his eyes are angry like always now, and then nothing, and then gentle again, but sad-gentle this time. His perfect face makes an ugly shape.

His big black shoes are loud and Tate comes to me. His shoulders are too small and his black coat falls down on one, too big for him. I am in that shoulder and Tate is all around me, loving. Tate cries, making loud, ugly noise. I always make noise, so I don't think he knows that I am crying, too.

Troy and me sit by the radio all day, waiting to hear "Lust For Life". We play poker for candy and eat all the Otter Pops in the box mom bought until all that's left are a few Little Orphan Orange's and all the Alexander The Grape's.

"See?" Says Troy when it finally comes on at 3:15. "I told you. He's saying 'I've had it in the ear before.' It's about sex."

"What the hell do ears have to do with sex?"

"It's about having a dick in your ear, dumbass."

"That's nasty. Iggy Pop's queer as a three-dollar bill."

"Takes one to know one."

The last Louie Blue Raspberry makes a collapsing, plasticy noise as I suck the very last of the melted Otter Pop out of it. It's just sugary liquid now, lukewarm and gross.

"Can we go do something now?" I ask. A high school kid skateboards by and the heat makes wavy lines around him in my vision.

Troy reaches into his jeans pocket. "I've got something we can do right here." He pulls out a joint.

"No shit! Where'd you get that?"

He smirks. "I've got my ways."

"You're nuts. Mom and dad could come home and catch us."

His eyes roll. "Mom and dad aren't gonna be here for like, two more hours." He grabs a lighter from the porch railing and lights the joint, sucking in.

He doesn't cough or anything. I don't know if it's even his first time. Maybe he's been doing it for a while now, doing it without me.

I look at him, my twin in the hazy lines of summer, and in this moment he is flawless, the coolest kid on Earth. He can do almost anything-could probably be almost anything-without fucking it up too bad. I think I love him. He's always been around, anyway, and I can't imagine it ever being different, can't imagine us growing up and getting new lives, different haircuts and seperate houses.

Troy passes me the lit joint and I take it, hot and skinny in my hands, and suck in, trying to narrow my eyes just like he did.