"Sunscreen, May," Emily reminded me, putting the bottle in my hand. Her face was colored in concern as I took a deep breath and rubbed my exposed skin with the white cream. As I set the bottle down, she handed me a palm full of pills. Six vitamins and that one large white pill. The most important pill.

I took three large gulps of juice and washed them all down.

"Do you want fruit? A pepper?" Emily suggested, scratching her left leg with her right foot, poking around a basket on the counter. She padded around in her bare feet, the orange of her bikini showing off her bronzed skin. College had been kind to her, giving her body the soft curves that begged for hands to find, to feel and hold and strum into motion. That face, the face that always seemed ready to smirk with a secret, was calm and steady. The way she looked when she had to work.

When she was facing down a problem.

Could you solve me, Emily? Can you research this, can you pick it apart?

Her hand put a pepper in mine. "Come on, Maybelle," she urged. "You can rest on the beach, the sunlight is good for you. Ups that serotonin." Her arm looped with mine, and we headed out the back of the condo towards the beach where Jeremy was reading a book, his eyes following Stacey, Miranda, and Erin bouncing in the ocean.

"Hey, you got her up," he grinned, putting down the novel. He gestured to a large beach towel under the umbrella. "You can lay out here, May, okay?" I nodded, splaying down next to him. Emily spread a light beach wrap over my body, and I felt myself slipping back into sleep.

But I heard her whisper to him, "I thought this was over. She's back on her meds, Jeremy, why isn't she better yet?"

"It can take a week or two to kick in. Just be patient," he murmured, and his hand ran over my shoulders, as if he was wiping off rain.

When I woke, everyone was sitting around on towels, making their way through a large pile of fried chicken. I rubbed at my eyes and mumbled, "What time is it?"

"One-thirty," Erin answered, looking at her watch. "You've been out for over three hours, babe. Feeling better?"

I slumped my shoulders down. Miranda handed me a piece of chicken. "Jeremy made it," she smiled. "It's fantabulous—and there's, like, potatoes and coleslaw and corn and everything. It's so Southern, I love it."

"No, no, Southern is barbeque—actually, Logan makes the best damn barbeque sauce," Erin said, licking her fingers. "That's so your dinner Sunday night. Hell, that's my dinner Sunday night. I'm inviting myself over." She bounced the chicken in the air like a baton.

Stacey laughed, swallowing a bite of potatoes with her hand hiding her mouth. "Our house is totally, like, the home for the wayward. Everybody's welcome, everybody gets to cram in. I'm thinking of snagging strangers from off the street—we got room in the dining room! Hell, crash on the hammock, how many more!"

"Poor May—not how you thought your first months of marriage would go, huh? Sharing the honeymoon with half of flippin' Stoneybrook," Miranda giggled, poking my ankle.

It was too close to the truth. I began to cry, leaning into Emily and weeping into her thin blonde hair. There was a scramble of bodies, and Miranda's arms pulled me into her embrace. "May, honey, what's wrong?"

"I don't know," I sniffed. No. No. I was not going to slip down. What do I do: come on, Mary Anne, think. Be the smart, smart girl. What do you do when you're sinking?

Get up.

"I need to move," I breathed. "Can someone help me? I want to go on a walk."

Stacey jumped to her feet. "Me and Jer will go with you. We've totally bonded—mathletes!" she crowed, and they exchanged a high five. The two of them helped me to my feet, and I put my arms around their waists as I clunked down the sand to the water's edge, trying to get my footing in the sand, cold from the lapping of the ocean.

We walked in silence for a while until I prodded them to talk. I wanted noise. Not the silence of my head, the steel-plate of this sickness. They chatted over me about math, about Jeremy's boyfriend, Aaron, about Stacey's duties as a Dollie. "Not just a dance team," she declared. "I am Stanford."

"So, Stanford is girls in short skirts, dancing provocatively, with white gloves?" Jeremy laughed. "Glad I turned them down."

"Where else did you get in?" Stacey asked. "I got into NYU, USC, and Berkeley, but I always knew I wanted Stanford. Dawnie and I decided we really wanted to go to California together, and I had my fingers crossed so damn tight that she would get into a San Fran school because I was so hot for the Farm. Dude, my freshman year, I interned with the SSE—sorry, um Stanford Student Enterprises? We run, like, a real business, a real Store, like a bookstore? And this year, I get to work with the Capital Group, and we do banking and investing and stuff—I mean, I can't imagine going anywhere else, Jeremy."

Jeremy grinned at her and squinted his eyes in thought. "Um. Cornell, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Florida State. My mom works there as a secretary, so I kinda felt like I had to," he shrugged. "Duke gave me a lot of need-based money, and it was close to home. I decided at the last minute, though—I could be in the tundra of northern New York State if I hadn't read that Duke's totally gay friendly," he grinned, squeezing my hip.

I tilted my head against his shoulder. "I could be in Austin right now. Didn't I almost say yes to Texas, Stace?"

"You should have seen her," Stacey cackled. "May's been obsessed with Duke for years, but she got full rides chucked at her? And there was this huge drama when Duke only gave her a partial—guess they aren't as big of suckers for the sob story, huh?"

Jeremy snorted. "Oh, I know. All she has to do is sneeze cancer survivor, and everyone falls prostrate at her feet. It's just lame. You are lame!" he grit, shaking his finger at me. "You did it on purpose, getting cancer, to garner sympathy. Admit it."

"I did," I said, a smile spreading on my face. "And look at me now—I got a guy out of it, I got a school and money and everything. Cancer—it's the golden ticket."

"Can I ask you something that's going to come out really forward?" Stacey asked me, scuffing her feet in the sand. I nodded, staring at her. "Why haven't you gotten implants?"

I sighed. "I can feel—in my left breast, my nerve healed, so I can feel…well, yeah," I blushed. "That means more to me than having a normal chest. Though it doesn't mean that I don't get down about it sometimes. Most people don't notice—I mean, some girls are just flat chested. But I've heard comments."

"Whatever. Boobs are overrated," Jeremy sniffed. "Personally, I find them boring."

Stacey and I stared at him for a moment before breaking into laughter. "So that's why you're gay," I managed, holding myself up by clutching her arm.

"And now you know why I was drawn to you," he said, wiggling his eyebrows. He kissed my cheek. "Best day of freshman year. Well, until I met Aaron. Meeting you, and then meeting your Erin. The Erry to my Jerry. We're totally Three's Company—that's what we did for Halloween last year. I was Jack, May was Janet, and Erin was Chrissy. She even dyed her hair blonde, tube socks and everything. It was awesome."

With a snicker, Stacey admitted, "I wore a pinstripe pants suit with a tie and everything, slicked back my hair? Carried a cigar and called it 'Penis Envy.' I was a hit."

"Oh, my God, that's so Season One Project Runway!" Jeremy screamed, dropping his arm from my waist to bounce with her in the sand.

I blinked. Okay. I reached down to the ground and plucked a piece of brown glass, the size of my thumbprint, smooth and almost dull, dusted over from the erosion of the water. What had it been before? A beer bottle, maybe? Can you know these kinds of things?

I sighed, pressing the glass hard in my palm. I ran my fingers in the string sides of my bikini—the spring break trip to the Virgin Islands, I wore this, Barbara and I running into the clear water, water the color of my lover's eyes. I wore his watch all week, setting a timer for thirty minutes to reapply sunscreen, and after the first two days, my skin was beginning to brown, the color of my radiation therapy. The color my chest was turning now.

Stacey stopped and tilted her face up to the sun, adjusting her huge sunglasses. "Do you think Cinderella really lived happily ever after? I had this dream last night that she got to the castle, and she and Prince Charming were finally able to talk, and she realized that he was a bit of an ass, and he thought she was boring, and then they were like, Shit! What do you think?"

Pushing out his lower lip, Jeremy said, "Well, they were totally love at first sight, right? I'd hope that ol' Cindy and the Prince's visceral connection belied a greater connection that was translated through that first physical reaction."

I nodded. "It's pheromones—scientists believe that love at first sight is actually a chemical compatibility, that is, your body and the body of your instant love are on this really fundamental level connected. Almost like you're made for each other. If you have that kind of elemental bond with someone else, the hope is, your desire for the other person can allow you the strength to adjust your personalities into alignment."

"Wow," Stacey snorted. "I just fell into the Kingdom of the Nerds, didn't I?"

"You're lucky Erin isn't here," Jeremy laughed.

She shrugged, kicking at the sand. "I don't know, I just have this feeling. I want Cinderella to be happy since she had just a shitty time of it, but she probably has no backbone, so she'd just do anything for Prince Charming. Him being a dick is just her cross to bear. And now she's married to him, and I bet Happily Ever After Land lacks a divorce court, so what's she gonna do?"

"Find Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, form a feminist book club, and start a revolution," Jeremy declared, thrusting his fist in the air. "I've always been bugged by the fact that those girls needed to be rescued by the men, but the feminist interpretation is that these women rescued the men right back—they were searching for something, and in these girls that were facing adversity yet keeping a sense of self, they found their true loves. Instead of thinking of Cinderella as waking up with a man she doesn't know, it's that he's picked her because of a strength that she has internally that he manifested physically."

I grinned at Stacey as he took my hand. "We took a lit class together last semester, and it was about folk tales—we read Wicked, went to see the musical down in Atlanta, and we talked a lot about subverting the paradigm. How to defy gravity, as it were," I added, squeezing his hand.

"May's our own Elphaba—'As someone told me lately, everyone deserves a chance to fly.' And nobody, in all of Connecticut or Duke, no father or sickness that there is or was, is ever gonna bring her down," he said, ringing a finger over my chin.

"I love Wicked!" Stacey gasped, clapping her hands. "'Popular' is my fucking theme song, are you kidding me? 'That's what makes me so nice! Whenever someone needs a makeover, I simply have to take over, I know, I know, exactly what they need.'" She pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. "I still think Cinderella's screwed," Stacey stated. Then a smile slicked over her face. "I think May makes a great wicked witch. She's got a hidden bitch streak that's quite impressive."

"Oh, what, the passive-aggressive dance when she's mad at you?" he snickered.

I put my hands on my hips and glared at both of them. "I'm much better at overt bitchery now. When I'm angry, I say it."

"'Jerry,'" he whined in a high-voiced sigh. "'I guess we could go shopping. If that's what you want. If you really think that it's okay to not do our homework, to risk losing our scholarships and getting kicked out and ruining my life and everything, but if you really want to, I'll go. No, no, I'm not mad, why would you think I'm mad?' Followed by complete silence at the mall as she lets out large heaves of breath as I try on more jeans. 'No, I'm fine. I'm happy that you're doing what you want, Jerry.'"

I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the water, splashing kicks of water at his body as I hurled him into the insistent surf. "You are such an ass! That was once!"

"Drama queen!" he yelled, yanking me down next to him and covering me in the bitter salt of the ocean as he splashed me back.

"Smart aleck," I shot back, dumping an armful of water on his head.

"Nerd," he laughed, grabbing a handful of sand and stuffing it down the back of my tube top, the glop of it sliding down the saran wrap Emily and I had layered on my skin to keep my catheter dry.

I slapped sand on his face. "Nerd? Look in the mirror much, mister?"

"Tar Heel lover," he shouted, splashing me again.

"Whoa, that's low!" Stacey called as I gasped, jumping on top of him and pounding his shoulders with light punches. When I was too tired from screaming with giggles to fight him anymore, I rested my head against his chest, bony and hollowed where Logan was solid. Jeremy reminded me physically of the boy I dated for most of high school, Pete, with his skinny frame and flop of messy hair. I had noticed that first when he sat down next to me in my first psych class—a familiarity surrounded him. Maybe his passion for the subject, like my own. Maybe his dry sense of humor, like Emily. Or maybe it was a strange twist on that love at first sight—you remind me of someone who was once special. Who once made me feel special.

Who ended up not being enough. Though Jeremy was.

He was not Barbara, though. I had emailed her at the end of that first week: I have met some great people, I'm so relieved! Though, none of them are you, so no worries. I punctuated that with a smile, and when she replied, coping that sentence, all she had put in response was another smile with two exclamation points.

Amelia had died, and I had come into Barbara's life. Amelia had led us together, Barbara believed. Amelia wanted Barbara to move on, to find someone new.

Barbara had died, and it had been so long now. When would she lead me? I had played a game during freshman year, one that Logan said was unfair—the If You Were game, he called it. If You Were a little more like this, then you could be Barbara to me. That one person who I'd connect to with the ease of a puzzle piece. If Erin were a little less insecure about herself, making me live in a constant state of reassuring her or soothing her, then she'd be Barbara. If Jeremy were a girl, someone who I could invite over for a night of silly frilly things that unlock secrets, stories told about ourselves over wet nails or the braiding of hair in the middle of the night, then he would be Barbara.

"Maybe there isn't just one person, Tess," Logan would say. "You have so many great people in your life, maybe that's the point. You have different people to turn to for what you need. I mean, no offense, Babs," he would add, looking up at the ceiling, "but she wasn't exactly A Beautiful Mind, you know? When you wanted to talk about, like, school-y stuff, you'd go to Emmy or me."

"Yeah, but Barbara would listen to me if I wanted to rattle on about something that'd I read or whatever," I'd protest. "If I wanted to discuss something, then yeah, I'd call you or Em. But if I just had to tell someone that I had, oh, read a really neat article on the frontal lobe development of teenagers and how that leads to the importance of their dreams, she'd listen to me. And if she wanted to prattle on about how George Clooney should be The Sexiest Man in America for the rest of his life, like, retire him from People's annual thing because he is inherently that guy? I'd listen to that, even when it was like, Are we really talking about this for an hour? Because I just wanted to talk with her, angel. I just wanted to hear the sound of her voice."

I miss the sound of her voice.

I closed my eyes. She'd be twenty-one today.

"Hey," Stacey murmured, offering me her hand as I unwound myself from Jeremy. "Where did you just go? In this last moment, I could see you fuzz out. Where did you go in your head?"

"To Babsie," I admitted. "I've really been missing her lately."

"Well, of course," Stacey replied, brushing the sand off of my back. "Of course you'd want your best friend. If I had to go through something this hard without Dawn, I think I'd go nuts. We're all trying, though. Not to be Babs, but to be enough."

My hand froze on her shoulder. "Do you get enough, Stacey? I mean, you say you have friends at Stan—uh, the Farm," I corrected, grinning as she winked at me. "Are they enough?"

"You mean, do I put too much in Dawn?" Stacey asked, raising her eyebrow. Jeremy washed the last of the sand from his body and joined us as we walked back to our beach. "I bet I do. I haven't told a single person about the rape at SU. Not Kaia, not Skylar, not Marilynda. It's not that I don't trust them? It's just—something like that changes you in their eyes. I mean, how much do you have to trust someone to tell them you had cancer?"

I screwed up my mouth and looked back at Jeremy. He took a breath and shrugged. "May's pretty good about the cancer thing—she and I belong to a service frat, and she's really open about being a survivor, and she coordinates the breast cancer fundraiser in October and the cancer run in the spring. And, I mean, she gets scholarship money from cancer organizations, and she talks about that, too. But, I think Stacey's right. You don't tell people what cancer you had unless you get really tight with them. What May says is that it was soft tissue and lymphatic cancer if people ask what kind."

"It's the truth," I insisted. "Just…not the exact truth." I looked at her—into her, into those eyes that had once been so distant but were now open, clear. Welcoming. "It does change people. To quote ol' Wicked again, 'If I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying free.' The more people who know the dirty truth, the harder it is to rise above it. But Stace," I said, taking a breath. "I've told people. Erin, Jer, three of my really good girl friends from the dorm—I've told them. It's who I am, I'm a breast cancer survivor. Just like you are a survivor, too."

"It was scary to hear," Jeremy said, his shoulder twitching. "But, you think, this person that I really love is this girl because of where she came from and what's happened to her. It makes you appreciate your friend more after the shock wears off. Honestly."

Staecy's head bobbed as she scuffed against the sand. "Maybe."

"I saw Mary Anne's chest—once," Jeremy continued. "She found a lump towards the end of the semester last year. I mean, it ended up being benign, but…God, that was terrifying—she pounded on my door at one in the morning, just in hysterics. And I had never seen Logan at our dorm before, ever since the beer bottle incident, but he was there because he had felt it? And she dragged me to her room and begged me to see if I could feel it, too. Erin went to get Marissa and Jenny, and May took off her shirt, and I have never felt so little in my life. And my dad called me the most evil things when I came out to him, but I got through it because I knew, I knew that I was okay under my skin with who I was. Call me a faggot, whatever, Dad, I am who I am."

"Your father said that to you?" Stacey whispered, stopping and staring at him with her mouth open. "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry."

Jeremy waved his hand at her. "Hey, like I said, it wasn't easy, but I couldn't live a lie to him anymore. I couldn't. I had to be me."

"When I told my dad I was raped, he threw a lamp at the wall. My mother cried so hard, she started choking, but my dad—he wanted to kill the guy, and he couldn't, so he killed a lamp," Stacey said, letting out a cough of a laugh. "And I felt so helpless. It was like being raped all over again, you just have nothing. You just have to take it, take all of the pain." She licked her lips and glanced at me. "When you show people—what is it like?"

"Erin saw when I was changing—dorm rooms are tiny things, y'all," I noted with a weak smile. "And she didn't care at all. Her aunt had breast cancer, she was the best person to see first. I don't really remember much of that night, to be honest, Jeremy," I said, looking at him. "After Logan said he felt something, it all becomes a blur."

He shook his head. "You were just devastated. And—Stacey, you're right. You feel so damned helpless. I mean, here I'm staring at my best friend, and she looks like one of those Iraqi war veterans who got shredded by shrapnel, and she's begging me to tell her that I don't feel anything when I do. All we could do was stay with her that night. Me and Marissa and Jenny crashed on the floor, but I couldn't sleep. I think May cried all night, and I could hear Logan singing to her the whole time." He looked at Stacey and gave her a gaze that made her mouth buckle. "Maybe that's how it is with you and Dawn. I mean, Logan was the only one that really got it. He wasn't scared. Neither is Dawn."

"But—when you give other people time, they aren't scared, either. I remember feeling better because there were other people who knew. And in the morning, when Logan took me to the hospital, they all hugged me, and I felt so loved? Stacey, it's worth the risk," I murmured, staring at Erin as we grew closer to our friends. "If some people look at your different, they weren't meant to be yours. Don't be scared, Stace. Besides." I let my fingers slip in with hers. "You'll still have us."

Jeremy grinned at her. "I'm not freaked at all by it, Stace. I think you're one cool chick. Mathlete!"

She pounded her fist against his. "Forever, fellow math enthusiast!" She gathered me in her arms. "Thanks, May. If I call my friend Skylar this week, would you be there? I mean, with Dawn, of course, but I'd like it if you were there, too."

"Of course," I said, ruddering my fingers up her spine. "I hope you know—you were a wonderful friend to me back during the breast cancer. You were. A little dictatorial with the whole room decorating, but, you know, you were never scared to be there with me."

She winked, tugging at my hair. "The sister of my best friend is my sister." She strode off of the wet strip of sand that the ocean touched and skipped into the soft dry stretch of yellow beach up to our umbrella. "Tell me that there is still tons of chicken."

"Hello, I made enough for an army," Jeremy scoffed. "What have you three been up to?"

Emily tucked her wet hair into a ponytail. "More body surfing. Miranda lost her top. It was hot."

"My milkshakes do bring all the boys to the yard," Miranda grinned, taking a sip of her beer.

"Then it was like a freakin' Dairy Queen out there," Erin laughed. "The guys in the condo next to ours were really appreciative." Jeremy rolled his eyes, grabbing his cell phone and heading a few steps away. Erin made kissing noises at him; she took a bite of potato salad and looked at me. "How was the walk?"

I grinned. "Great! Getting up and moving really helped. Oh, and we decided that Stacey is totally Galinda the Makeover Witch."

Miranda raised her eyebrows as she swigged the last of her beer, pitching the empty bottle aside. She grabbed another Corona and twisted it open; as she jammed a lime in the neck and pressed the open mouth while turning the bottle open, she said to Stacey, "Remember when you said that we were like The Wizard of Oz? May was Dorothy, always looking for a home, Emmy was the Cowardly Lion because of the whole asshattery around her and Navit, I was…oh, shit, hold on. Babsie was the Scarecrow because she was always thinking with her heart, and I needed a heart because, like, I threatened people too much. Which is bullshit, I'm sorry, some people just deserve to get their asses kicked."

"And I'm Glinda, goddess of fashion," Stacey giggled, "and Dawn would be..."

"The Munchkins. The Lollipop Guild? Hello, it's a union. Dawn was so their Norma Rae," Emily laughed. "If the house hadn't crashed on the Wicked Witch of the East—who, I'm sure was Kristy Thomas, that bossy-ass—Dawn would have led a revolt for the proletariat in due time."

Stacey slapped my shoulder. "And Claudia's the Wicked Witch of the West! Or Cokie, I'm willing to negotiate. And the rest of their little buddies are the flying monkeys."

"And Logan's the guy hiding behind the curtain, and Abby Stevenson would be the great big loud head trying to distract everyone," I supplied, bouncing a bit.

Stacey pulled an iced tea out of the cooler. "Of the original BSC, I think…I was Dorothy, searching for a place to belong after, like, fleeing NYC. You would have been the Cowardly Lion, Claudia was the Scarecrow, and Kristy was the tin man." She grinned, popping off the top. "Dawn is still the Munchkins."

"Then who are Jessi and Mal?" I snickered. I slapped my hand over my mouth. "Oh, that was mean, I'm sorry!"

Emily shook her head at us. "I've said it before, and I will say it again. The BSC was so weird. Culty. It went from a neat idea to a cult. The rest of us just thought you guys were weird. I mean, you didn't do anything in eighth grade that wasn't the club."

"I tried," Stacey protested. "I tried to be a cheerleader, but they bitched me out. To their folly, for now I'm a Dollie!" she crowed, clinking her bottle with Miranda's beer.

Emily shrugged. "Babsie and Amelia and I would sometimes be like, They're insane. I totally admit to getting way to into the news stuff, absolutely, but I also did German Club and JCC stuff with Temple. It might not have seemed that way, but I did have a life outside of the newspaper. You guys were your club. If it wasn't for their group project, Babs wouldn't have gotten to know May at all."

"You guys totally ditched me," Miranda grumbled. "You and Kristy. Ry and I were so pissed, it was like, Oh, so we're not good enough now? Because we're not wild about kids?"

"I've apologized so many times," I protested, but Miranda waved a hand at me.

"Oh, relax. And I've told you a billion times, I blame Kristy. You were so her minion." She and Emily stuck out their arms and rolled their eyes back in their head. They started groaning, "Zombie Mary Anne, aaahhh."

"Stop it," I snapped, flicking sand at their legs. "Honestly."

Erin tightened the knot on her beach wrap. "I just think it's so funny that you guys had a baby-sitting club. I'm sorry, but I hated sharing my clients. I totally wanted their money, I didn't want to share with anyone."

Stacey grumbled, "We so undercharged. We put every other baby-sitter in town out of business. It was pretty evil of us. Though, I mean, why weren't we getting combat for some of our clients? Hellions, unbalanced hellions."

Laughing, Erin took a few steps out from under the umbrella, a beer in hand as she spread out a towel in the hard eye of the sun. "Sorry, guys, but what I always wanted was a sleepover club. Totally. I loved those books."

"Me, too!" Miranda gasped, and I smiled as the two of them gushed over those books, over the Saddle Club series and Sweet Valley High. Emily rolled her eyes, pulling out a book of her own. Stacey reached into her tote and slipped on a Marquette shirt.

I raised my eyebrows at her, and she glared at me. "Not a single word," she warned.

"Hey, I respect the awesomeness of the Golden Eagles—I wear a signed Davis Dial sweatshirt around campus like the proudest sister-in-law in the world. That's what Dave started calling me last year," I grinned.

"I'm really glad that they are still so close," Stacey nodded, tugging at the hem. "A successful long distance relationship, as it were."

"Oh, Stace, you have no idea," I snickered. "During the season? They send each other gifts, like cookies and balloons, lots of balloons. 'Cause of—"

"Seashells and balloons, I know," Stacey said with a shy smile. "I used to joke that Davis was breaking the first commandment with his false idolatry of Al McGuire. And he got all serious and said, 'Anastacia, he's no false idol. The man is a god.' When Marquette upset Duke, you know, back in fall of '06? The asskicking to end all asskickings?"

"Shut up," I snapped. "It's been three years, I'm still trying to recover from the massive mocking voicemail he left me that night."

Stacey cackled a bit. "Yeah, that was funny to see you go purple the next morning, ah, good times. Anyway, he called me and was screaming and crying and just hollering, 'Seashells and balloons, Anastacia, it's better than anything I've ever felt in the world!'" And her breath snagged in her mouth, and her face bottled up a deep look of sadness. "'Next to loving you.'"

I reached out my hand to her, but Stacey shook her head so quick that her hair tumbled down out of its clip. "Please, May, I don't want to talk about him. Or it. Please."

Stacey, I know your secret, I wanted to exclaim. I know, I know. That you put your heart out for who you thought would care for it. I know how you were hurt. Stacey, I'm here for you. Stacey, tell me yourself.

Stacey, why are you punishing yourself. Why do you still push people away.

That missing hour from her life. Stacey, I know what it's like to die and come back. To lose yourself and then resurface.

And I knew, I knew what Stacey was so scared of. I knew what I should have said to Dawn Thursday night when she asked me how you know you're in love. Love is surrendering yourself to someone else, trusting them with all of the vulnerable places of yourself—your heart. Your soul. Your self. That night in Durham when Logan moved his markers over my body, blanketing me in stars, I put myself in his hands. I trusted him with me, and I was given back a Mary Anne that took my breath away, a Mary Anne that shone through all of the fear, all of the uncertainty, that beamed through it all. I turned myself over to him, and he gave me back, plus a girl that I had yet to meet. A girl that I loved, too.

Love is a loss of control. Love is trust. Love is something terrifying to someone who has had piece of herself ripped away without any choice, any say. The time that man raped Stacey, the time she spent waiting on a disease test—that was her life taken away, giving it over to someone else and getting back a Stacey she didn't want.

I sealed my lips together and tucked all of that into my heart. I could wait to tell her. When she was ready, I would tell her. The night I died, Stacey had stood there with my sister and declared her faith that I would live. I had the same faith in her, I did. And I would help bring Stacey all the way back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The candles on the cake were nearing their end, the wicks so close to drowning in the wax. We would wait. That was the rule—no one blew them out. They either extinguished on their own or burned themselves to their own death.

Because she was not here to blow them out herself.

Erin wiped her mouth on her napkin. "Barbara, I am glad your favorite foods are so damned delicious," she grinned, looking up at the starred over sky. "You have great taste—ha! Get it? Taste?"

"Boo," Miranda giggled, swatting at her. "That was a bad pun."

Erin shrugged, and I tossed a chunk of chicken at her. "Just stick to waxing intellectual, babe. It's your strength," I nodded.

"Fine. Then I'm sorry that all y'all lack the cerebral synapses to appreciate my forays into the realm of comedy and base humor," Erin sniffed. "That better?"

Emily grit her teeth, her fork full of fried rice suspended in front of her mouth. "That's pretentious as fuck, dude."

"Welcome to my world," Jeremy sighed.

"Whatever, you're just as bad!" Erin squawked, and the two of them shoved each other as they chattered with laughter.

The last candle swallowed its flame, pluming smoke all over the table. Emily held up a knife and waved it in the air. "Okay. So what happens now is, we cut the cake, and before we can eat, everyone has to share their favorite memory of Babs." She glanced at Jeremy and Erin as she pressed the knife through the thick frosting, revealing the chocolate cake. "I know you guys didn't know her, it's fine."

"No, I have a Barbara story," Erin said, holding up her index finger. "It was the first time Babs called where I answered the phone. May was in the shower, and so I said, Oh, do you want me to have her call you back, and she said, Nah, let's give her a moment or two to see if she shows, and so we chitchatted for maybe thirty seconds before May came back in with her shower basket, and she had a towel wrapped around her body? And I said, It's Babs, and May grabbed the phone and started jumping up and down, and the towel fell off—so she lets out the loudest scream, drops the phone, and tries to recover herself up. And she's screamed so loud that the RA came running, bursting open the door just as May's gotten the towel back on—and then May screamed again, and I could hear Babs yelling, What's going on! Are you okay! After we cleared up all of the confusion, May sat down and told Barbara everything, and Babs starts hollering, 'I got you naked! I got you naked!' Oh, my God, I hadn't seen Mary Anne laugh that hard, so hard that she was crossing her legs so she wouldn't wet herself."

Miranda slipped off of her chair and balled her body up under the table. I could hear the gasps of her laughter. "Oh, shut up, that's fantastic!"

With a pout, Emily handed me a piece of cake. "I thought I was the only girl who could get you naked."

"Stop it," I teased, sticking out my tongue at her. She bit into her grin and wrinkled her nose, giving a plate with a sliver of cake to Stacey.

Jeremy took a breath. "Mine is, first time I came to May and Erin's room, Mary Anne was taking down all of her photos and telling me about her personal life. Like, this is my sister Dawn and her best friend Stacey—hello, lady," he said, nudging her side. Stacey smiled as he continued, "This is my dad and stepmom, this my Logan, and these are my best friends. So, she tells me about you two," he said, waving his fork at Miranda and Emily, "and then she goes, And this! Is my Babsie. And so I'm staring at this photo of a sweet girl with the adorable little red spiral curls down to her shoulders, the big eyes, the big smile, the white sundress, just so cutesy. A total Babsie."

He raised his eyebrows at me. "And then Mary Anne chirps, and I quote, 'Babs knows twenty-two different ways to kill a man.' Hello! Excuse me? That girl? Like, note to self: never make May angry. She'll sic Killer Babs on me."

Emily nodded. "First thing she told me when she called after basic training was that line. And I was all, Well, okay then. How many ways are there to kill a woman?"

"Twenty-three," Miranda and I answered with solemn mouths.

Stacey's eyes bugged out. "Um. Right. So!" She giggled and scratched her nose. "Me and Babs were choreographing our first routine of the basketball season—okay, she was, and I was being helpful by making her sex it up a bit. She was just so precise, she could forget the purpose of it all."

"To be a whore?" Miranda suggested, and Stacey glared at her, tossing a candle at her head.

"No," Stacey hissed. "To make it, like, electric and stuff. Make the routine really rock. Pop out at people. What Jessi calls the Eye-off Effect: you can't keep your eyes off of the dancer because of…and for poms, it's the sexiness. Barbara was too into being clean and accurate, not enough of the fun stuff. So, anyway. Babs wanted to do something special for Lee—that's what we call Logan to annoy him—so she had picked the song that he listened to right before a game starts which, that season, was Jay-Z's song 'Show Me What You Got,' okay? So, we had the gym all to ourselves, and we had that song on a loop, right, and we were messing around with moves and stuff, and then Babs runs up the bleachers a bit and starts rapping along with Jay-Z."

Stacey took a sip of water. "It's nothing too funny or special, but just…I was at midcourt, she was running around the bleachers, and we were just shouting along and being totally lame. And then Babs tried to teach me to do a tumbling pass, but that didn't happen, and…we just had so much fun, I can't really put it into words. Football season was fun, and we had been getting along really well, but that was the first moment that I think I thought, Babs Hirsch is actually my friend. And I was really happy about that."

"She loved poms. She had so much fun with you, Stace," Miranda said, her voice soft like feathers. She turned to Erin and Jeremy. "Barbara's sister, Celia, was a great dancer, and Babs worked so hard to be as good as Celia, and I think she was better than her sister by the end of senior year."

"She didn't try out for cheer in middle school because she was too scared, she wasn't ready," Emily said. "But then we went to Israel, and she just came back with so much strength? And that's my favorite memory. Babsie and me in Israel, a day after the whole Navit thing exploded. When we arrived—" Emily's voice crackled, and her eyes welled over with tears. She started fanning at her face, but she couldn't make it stop. She began to weep, and Miranda put her arms around her best friend, rocking her back and forth, whispering that it was okay. To take her time. That it was okay.

It was okay to mourn.

Emily swallowed hard and struggled her speech over her tears. "Babs fell to her knees when she got on the ground, she just collapsed, she was so overwhelmed. And, I mean, I'm Jewish and all, but not like her or Anna Stevenson, right, but even I was really overwhelmed to be there, but watching Barbara, it was like—I understood Zionism so well in that moment, that all of us are searching for a home. And Barbara had been so depressed after Amelia died, she had been so lost, and I was watching her hold the earth in her hands as she cried, and this soldier leaned over and rubbed her shoulder and held her, and he had tears in his eyes, too. It was the most incredible moment."

Wiping her eyes with the balls of her fists, Emily took in a ragged breath. I felt the burn of tears spilling out of my eyes as the song in the stereo switched over and bled out Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones, and I will try to fix you. Emily breathed in and out and said, "So, we were at a kibbutz, and I kinda fell in love with my host sister, Navit, the most incredible person I had ever met. She was intense like me, but she knew how to listen, too, and…she was me. But a grown up me, and I just…yeah. And Barbara and I spent some time apart, but I would see her and see her growing so strong and confident, like she was getting her feet back from under her for the first time since Amelia died. The first time, though, that we spent real time together was after we left the kibbutz, when no one else was speaking to me but her. And she swore that she still loved me, and that she was there for me."

I knew what was coming next, and I tried to brace myself. I tried to make it stop, but the crying was something larger than me. It was coming from a place inside that had really never stopped crying after all of these years. Water, water from the former firegirl.

"We went to Jerusalem for a few days, and the first day, we went to Yad Vashem, the big Holocaust remembrance memorial—lots of museums and things and all. We had all day, so Babs and I spent it together. We went through all of the museums, we walked along the Avenue of the Righteous, we saw Oskar Schindler's grave and left stones…it was so moving, I can't really put it into words. And then, Barbara wanted to go over to the military cemetery next to Yad Vashem. So—we did—and we were just winding through it, and she started to cry, and she fell down to her knees again, holding the necklace of Amelia's that Mr. and Mrs. Freeman gave to her, and she was thanking Amelia in Hebrew. Because Amelia led her here, to Israel, and…Babs looked up at me."

This—this is what I am going to do, Barbara whispered, staring around at the cemetery, at the graves. One hand tucked around that necklace, one hand clutching at her curls, a hand full of red hair, red like blood. I am going to fight for Israel, Emily. This is what I was meant to be. I have to.

Emily sat down next to Barbara. Are you sure? Babs, really? You want to…be a solider? This isn't like America—I mean, you could get sent to Iraq now, but…Israeli soldiers are always ready for war, honey. Are you sure you'd want that?

This is my purpose, Barbara breathed, gasping over her tears. This is why I was born. To fight for Israel. I know it. I can feel it inside of me.

"I wish I had been there to see that," Miranda whispered, brushing Emily's face with her own wet fingers.

"Me, too," I sniffed.

Miranda cleared her throat and wiped her face. "Mine isn't sad, I promise," she said in a rushed voice, her arms still around Emily. "It's not my favorite, exactly, but I just had this one on the brain. Okay. So, Babs dated this ass named Trevor for way too long, and he dumped her sophomore year. And for, what, two months, May? Two months, Babs was just devastated. And I admit, I wasn't the greatest friend for the tail end of that—I had just started dating Logan, and at the beginning, things were really awesome with us, and we were kinda in our own world—especially when he let me in on his family situation, from there on out, we were kinda…"

"Annoying as fuck?" Emily supplied, rolling her still-bright eyes. "Completely shutting us all out and lying as to why? To this day, I'm still furious you didn't just tell me why his mom was so depressed. You know I wouldn't have told anyone."

"I know," Miranda sighed. "But—you didn't see some of the shit that went on. It didn't feel right to tell his secret. I couldn't, not when I was, you know, so into him. Once I woke up from the stupor, then I wised up. At any rate," Miranda said, shaking her hands to wipe it away. "So, I'm at the Brunos', making dinner with Logan, and the doorbell rings, and he jumps a foot in the air because nobody comes over to their house, and guess who it is."

"Oh, I know!" Jeremy crowed. "Babs!"

"Yes!" Miranda giggled. "And Logan's just about to shoo her away, but she barrels right in, all crazed, and she's going, May's leading Group, and Emily's at the JCC down in Greenwich, and you have to help me! This guy asked me out!" Miranda tucked a wad of her thick hair behind her ears, rolling her eyes, "And I'm sorry, since when is that grounds for a panic attack? Anyway, this junior who was in band with her, Nick, asked her out, and she was just like, What do I say! To which I say, Say, Hell yes! So, right there in Logan's kitchen, she called Nick back, just squeezing my hand right off, and she just turned bright red listening to him, just so excited because he was telling her that he had wanted to ask her out for a long time and whatever. She was so adorable, it broke my heart."

I clapped my hands. "You were there when it started!"

"I was—I take credit for getting the two of them together, thank you," Miranda said, bowing slightly at the waist. "Okay, May, your turn."

I chewed on my lip. "Well, Logan and I were talking, and he had reminded me of the time that he and Babsie got kicked off the Ferris wheel at the winter carnival for the popcorn throwing, which is a great memory, but I guess…well. Logan and I flew to Indiana to see Barbara—right in the middle of the week, when he didn't have any games, he got permission from Coach, and we both skipped two days of classes, but we had to. We wanted to see Babs so bad."

"Yeah," Emily whispered. "Miranda and I got there on Thursday, so we all had that one day together."

"Well, my favorite moment—or, my favorite moment at this minute—was when Nick had Logan and Babs go get us all coffee for our breakfast? And he sat the three of us down," I said. Keep talking. You can cry, but you have to keep talking, Mary Anne.

Nick had us sit on the couch, and he sat down on the floor in front of us. His apartment was packed, ready for his move to Israel the next month. "So, okay, this is no surprise," he blushed, pulling out a small jeweler's box. "She knows it's coming."

"At least you didn't let her pick out her own ring," Miranda told him, reaching forward to pat his shoulder. "That would have been too easy."

He grinned at me. "Yeah, well, having May's assistance was a big help."

"The internet is a wonderful place," I laughed. "I had so much fun building rings? I very much hope that your own fiancé's use my vast knowledge," I noted, pointing at the girls.

Emily shook her head with an annoyed grunt. "I trust Jake Gyllenhaal to pick out the right ring on his own."

"Right, then," Nick said, rolling his eyes. "Anyway. I want to propose tonight, after the game at dinner. With all of you there, but…before that. I asked her dad for her hand at her graduation, and he said yes, and—"

"Not Stepmonster? Gee, Nick, what a loss," Miranda giggled, putting the back of her hand on her forehead.

"Anyway," he said loudly, "asking her dad? Whatever. The big one is…well, you girls are her family. So. I'm asking. Do I have your permission to ask the lovely Barbara Idit for her hand in marriage?"

Emily glanced at Miranda. "To be real? I think the person you have to ask is May. She's Babs's girl, you better make sure it's cool with her if you take her Babsie away."

I smiled as Nick wheeled around to face me, scooting his body so close that I could smell the birch scent of his cologne, the tang of nervous sweat on his skin. "So, Mary Anne. May I marry your best friend?"

"Please, please do," I said, bounding out of my place to leap in his arms. "I'm so happy for you!"

"Me, too!" he squealed, holding me tight. "This is just—this is—" He shook his head into my shoulder. "I'm so happy, my smile is, like, cutting off all of the oxygen to my brain."

I kissed his cheek as the door to the apartment burst open. "We got muffins," Barbara sang, dancing into the room with a bag in her arms and a cardboard tray of Starbucks cups. She blinked, staring down at the heap of her love and me. "Are we interrupting?"

Nick opened his mouth, sneaking the box back into his pocket, as I blurted out, "Yes. You are. I'm sorry, but we can't hide it anymore—Nick and I are in love."

Barbara's eyes widened, and she tipped back her head and laughed, her curls ringing like bells around her face. "Oh, don't even," she gasped, holding her stomach. She put the food and drinks on the small table and ran over to us, pouncing on our bodies. "Catfight!" she squealed, grabbing a pillow off of the couch and thwacking me on the back with it.

"Oh, I am so in on that," Miranda yelped, taking another pillow and hitting Barbara. Emily laughed, jumping onto the floor and pounding Miranda with a green pillow. We leapt around each other, screaming with laughter until the pillows billowed open, snowing the room with feathers, covering us in white, the bright, light feel of being together, being here, and being so happy that we could cover the world in it.

Why did it have to end? So soon after that—why did it have to end?

I blinked, bringing the table back in focus. I raised my fork full of cake into the air. "Happy birthday, Babsie."

"Happy birthday," the others echoed, and we tapped our forks together before taking the first bite of her cake.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Emily fanned the small fire, her face curling in satisfaction as the flames began to lick higher in the pile of wood and newspaper. "I give good fire," she grinned up at us.

Miranda tipped a sparkler into the fire, and when it hissed to life, she held it up in the air and curled out, Randa is the bomb. I stared at her, and she gaped at me. "What? Sparklers make me feel self-congratulatory."

My laughter began in silence, cracking to life as I bent over on my knees. Miranda slapped me on the shoulder. "Dude, when you were little, didn't you write your name and stuff with sparklers? I just took it step farther—I love seeing my name in lights."

"Please," Emily snorted, opening her purse. "Okay. I have letters from Celia, Stacey, Dawn, Logan, Rabbi Zalman, Davis, and the three of us." She glanced up at me. "Nick never wrote you back?"

"No," I sighed, sitting down next to her. I stared a few feet away at the ocean, its whispers against the sand a lullaby. "Logan called him, and Nicky said he still isn't ready. I don't think he ever will be."

Emily's voice grew thick as she asked, "Do you think…in five years, do you think anyone else will care but us? When we ask, do you think they'll still celebrate her? Or miss her?"

"I don't know," I choked out, putting my arms around her. Miranda tossed her sparkler into the fire, balling her body against ours. "I think Celia will, of course, and maybe Stacey. Logan will. But I don't know."

Emily pulled her knees up to her chest. "I don't want them to forget her. I don't want to forget her. Ever." She grabbed me hard by the shoulder and gave me a fierce shake. "We will not do this for you, Mary Anne Spier, do you understand me?"

"Emmy and me can't do this for both of you," Miranda sobbed, slumping against me. "You're not allowed to be with her, never, never. You stay here with us, understand?"

For a while, all we did was cry, the sound of our tears folding under the snapping of the fire, the hum of the water rumbling to shore. Finally, Emily pulled back, snorting back her stuffy nose. "Okay. Well. Now that's done."

"And for the record," Miranda added, tapping me on the head, "if you die, your poor angel will be all alone because this is not a Lifetime movie. Nobody here is going to do you the favor of falling in love with him and stuff. We know him too well," she said, rolling her eyes.

"But—guys, I'm really, really serious," I said, holding both of their hands. "I know, no dying, but I have to say this. I'm terrified of what he would do. And if he's alone with a baby…please, promise me that you'd take care of him. Don't let him slip away."

Miranda took in a breath. "I know how to help him through a rough time. I promise you, if you get hit by a car—because you are not going to die of cancer, May, we will only accept acts of fate or what have you—I will take care of him. He shouldn't be left to his parents." She pulled back her thick mound of loose curled hair into a ponytail holder. "They'd screw him up more. Don't worry. Emmy and I discussed this."

"Should we?" Emily asked, pointing at her purse. As I frowned at the two of them, Emily pulled out two more envelopes and handing them both to me. They were open across the top, the ragged mouths worn from too much touch. I pulled out the first letter.

Dear Emily: Congratulations, and welcome to the class of 2011 at Duke University!

I gasped, dropping the letter and covering my face. Miranda poked me with the other envelope. "Read, read," she urged. With shaking hands, I pulled out a letter that exclaimed, Dear Ms. Schillabar: We are excited to inform you of your acceptance for transfer to North Carolina State University at Raleigh!

My mouth couldn't make words escape. They just laid there, dumb and empty, on my tongue. Miranda blushed, rubbing her cheeks. "I'm still waiting on UNC—I tried transferring there for the beginning of sophomore year? But I got wait listed and didn't get off of it. So I kicked my ass this past year with classes and did more stuff on campus, so I hope I have a good shot. If not, I'm only twenty, thirty minutes away from you at most. I'm totally transferring—I need to get away from UConn. Too many SHSers." Her face clouded for a moment, and I could see a miserable flash in her eyes. "It's like high school all over again—I hang out with them, they're in my dorm, I see them at games? It's time to move on. Besides. I'm restless."

"But—you love snow," I managed.

"Yeah, but I was hoping to go to Emory—I can handle a couple years away. And then I'll go back to Connecticut, probably Stamford, get a marketing job there. It's just…okay, I'll be blunt. It's Alan. I could deal with the old crowd if he wasn't a part of it. As long as he's around, it's like…he's still hung up on Claudia Kishi, and there's a part of me that is still hurt that I couldn't measure up to that bitch, you know? Not like I'm some rapist," she spat. "And it's humiliating to be around him with everyone, to have them all know that he dumped me because he's still in love with the memory of her and what they had. I need to come somewhere where there aren't ghosts of who we were and what we used to do hanging around. And at UConn, I feel like I'll never grow up past Randa from SHS because everybody that I hang out with thinks who they are, the same way they were from back then, is good enough."

"We all have to grow up," I murmured, clutching the envelopes.

"Exactly. That, and I miss you and Emmy so much. I just can't handle the desert. I tried, but my visit to Arizona, I was dying, wasn't I?" she prompted Emily.

Laughing, Emily said, "Dude, she practically draped herself on the air conditioner and cried when the thermometer reached ninety-five degrees."

"In March!" Miranda howled. "That's inhuman!"

I shrugged, grinning at them both. "Logan and I really loved Arizona. We put it on our list of places for my PhD. He really wants to go to a school that's big on football—his cousin goes to Ohio State, and seeing a game there just spoiled him beyond belief. He loves hot weather, and sunshine is good for me. Serotonin," I said, and Emily gave me a knowing nod. "Anyway, what about you, Emmy?"

She took in a deep breath. "I'm not sure. If Randa hadn't gotten in to NC State—or hopefully UNC—yes, I would have come, no hesitation. We do not want you alone. I'm sorry, but after Babs, I can't handle the idea of you…without us, you know? But—" She sighed, pulling her hands through her hair. "On one hand, I'm really happy at UA. I love Tucson, I love the desert, I have a sweet ass gig at the paper…really, I cannot complain. But, on the other hand, I miss you both so much, and this would be our very last chance to be together, unless by some miracle May and me end up in the same city." She tapped my leg. "Arizona State, girl. Phoenix newspaper for me, school for you."

I grinned as she continued, "That, and my parents are flipping out, they are so excited. I mean, Duke's the fifth best school in America, they always thought I was slumming it at Arizona. And call me conceited, but I'm kinda liking the validation of this—you go to Duke, everybody thinks you're fucking smart. It's impressive. And? The ACC is a banging conference, I spoke to the editor of your school paper, and he practically shot his wad at the idea of me coming—he promised me a column like the one I have at UA, the one about girls and sports and whatever. Can't promise me a column like I have during the season, though. So, yeah, anyway, it's not just for you, don't worry. I have until August first, so I'm going to take my time and think it out."

"Good. Take your time," I urged. "I want you to come for selfish reasons, and also the fact that, as a proud Dookie, I think my school is the best in the world."

Emily snorted. "Gee, really?"

"At the very least, you'll have me. And maybe Dawn," Miranda added, raising her eyebrows. I waved my hands. We had talked that one out long enough. "I'm thinking that the baby should now be named Randa. Randa Spier."

"Um, baby would probably get his last name," Emily noted, rubbing my belly.

Miranda gave me a disgusted look. "Do not give in, May! Bruno is a weird name. Spier, much more attractive." She put her hand on my stomach, too, and their fingers curled against the thin fabric of my dress. For a moment, I thought it was the tumble of their touch. But no.

A flutter. From inside of my skin. Like the roll of pennies on the ground, rattling and spinning in place. And then again, in a spot a few inches away from the first feeling. Miranda and Emily didn't notice—they wouldn't, not yet—but I did. I could feel it.

Feel my baby kicking.

"Guys," I whispered, pressing my hands down on theirs. "I can feel her. Him. Kicking, I can feel the baby kicking."

Emily gasped, pressing down harder on my abdomen. I shifted her hand to where the fluttering was quick under my stomach, but she gave me a blank look, a desperate look, before shaking her head. I tipped my head back against Miranda and let out a ragged sigh of relief. My baby, my baby was well.

This baby was still there. Growing stronger, growing larger. Growing up.

"I'll need to call Logan," I said, beaming at them both.

"Why? It's not like he could feel it," Miranda grumped, shifting her hand around my stomach, her eyes narrowed at the bump. "Damn, you baby! Kick Mommy harder!"

Emily shoved her. "Be nice, I bet it can hear you. See?" She leaned down and said into my belly button, "This is Auntie Emily, the nice Auntie. Randa and Dawn are the crazies. Just remember who was sane and normal the first time you said hello, okay?"

"On Babs's birthday," I murmured. "I'll never forget this."

Emily squeezed my shoulder. "Let's finish up here, that way you can call him, and we can get some sleep." She helped me to my feet, and we stood around the fire. Emily let the letters for Barbara fall in the flames, and within a minute, they were eaten away into ash, the smoke of the paper swirling up into the sky, dissolving into the night on its path up to the stars.

Stars that sparkled like diamonds. Like eyes, crinkling at the corners and gazing down to watch over us.

Miranda handed out a sparkler for each of us and turned up the boom box, a horrible Nick Lachey song that Barbara loved streaming out of the speakers. "What we suffer through for Babs," she sighed, glaring down at the small stereo.

"For reals," Emily agreed. "We're so awesome sometimes." I giggled, bending down to set my sparkler alight. I held it up in the air like a baton. "To us," Emily declared. "To August 13, 2003, to finding each other at the exact right moment in time."

"To every good moment that the four of us had—and to the bad ones, for making us appreciate the good even more. To being this lucky," Miranda said, swishing her sparkler around, the spit of white light making her face look so pale and wistful in its halo.

"To Barbara Idit Hirsch, our Babsie. Because she loved us," I said, swirling my sparkler in the shape of her name. Over and over again, I drew her name bright like a shield against the canvas of the night, my baby's metronome of kicking echoing my heart. I drew and drew until Babs was burned into the inky air, until I could see it as clear as my hands when the sparkler extinguished and fell dark.