Zoe stares at the whiteboard, watches Mr. Crain scrawl numbers across it, but the white, the glare, the white that seems to wrap around her and hold her, white that squeezes her, glimmers, white that shines like water, like porcelain,

the white is all she sees.

Shimmering white that holds water and secrets. Grandma knows. She tosses the word secret to Carly, knowing she will toss it to Zoe, like a key that will let Grandma in. Let Grandma control her. The porcelain white that she sees every day of her life. Mr. Crain dissolves away. She only sees a glimmering white tub, and her mind travels around and through every shiny inch of it.

Is it possible for a grown man to drown in sixteen inches of water? To be so drunk that when he slips beneath the surface he can’t find his way up again, so that up mixes with down, dry mixes with wet, air mixes with liquid, until all is blackness and he is gone? Was it possible for Daddy to be so stinking drunk he could slide beneath the water and not know it? To breathe in the warm, gray water and think it is air? Not even convulse automatically upward for a breath? Can anyone be that drunk? The investigators said maybe, yes, probably, and then they saw that the overflow was clogged. A few extra inches in the tub. How could that make a difference? Maybe. It could. But then again. But Grandma hollered and wailed, and the insurance company settled. A few extra inches and Daddy being drunk didn’t matter anymore. He drowned in their tub because of a clogged overflow. But there was more they didn’t know. Would never know. Only she, Grandma, and Mama knew.

They knew more about that night he drank himself into oblivion in a tub full of water. Some secrets were worth money. Some secrets were worth silence. And now Grandma throws it in her face. The night Daddy died and the bath he never should have taken. The suspicion. The night and the wondering that can never be answered because Daddy is gone. The wondering that eats. Daddy is gone because he couldn’t face staying.

The official story is it was an accident. The investigators said so. The insurance company said so. Grandma said so. It probably was. But Mama never said a word. She just cried. The secret was not mentioned. Couldn’t be mentioned.

Daddy never took baths.

The bell rings, and words and numbers appear on the whiteboard. Numbers that have no place in her secret white world. Zoe closes her book. She doesn’t write down the homework assignment. It doesn’t seem to matter.

Two points for Grandma.

Twenty-Eight

Reid holds her arm. “Well? Tonight, okay?”

“Reid, I’m going to be late!”

He holds on, waiting for an answer. She managed to maneuver away at lunch. She can pull distractions from thin air. But Reid has caught on. He holds her so distractions can’t slip in, not even being late to class.

“You mean all of you?” Zoe asks. She doesn’t have to emphasize the “all,” she knows he will catch it. Words and delivery are his life.

Reid squints. “Yeah.” He pauses, nods. “All of us.”

She knows that may not have been his plan. Not all of them. But so what. Life sucks. Get over it. “Sure,” she says. “Nine or so. I gotta—”

The bell rings.

“—go.” Shit. She is only three steps from Mrs. Garrett’s door. Three lousy steps, but it might as well be three miles. She slips in the door, her breath tucked in. The room is seated. Silent. Mrs. Garrett does not look up from her lectern; her eyes are fixed on the folder she is fingering, penciling with marks. Two seconds. Three. It is a breath, a pause, a big fat nothing, before she is in her seat. She barely slices the silence. So what?

Mrs. Garrett looks up, stares at the bug Zoe has become. She sweeps her eyes across Zoe, slowly, like the effort barely interests her. It’s three fucking seconds. Three. But it’s more than that. Zoe knows. More than three seconds, more than the word fuck spoken aloud in a classroom on the first day of school, more than a mispronounced name.

It’s being. Wanting to be. More than. Less than. Something. Anything. She can feel it. It pushes against her ribs; it is heavy in her stomach. She holds it in. Pins it away to a secret part of her soul. Mrs. Garrett thinks Zoe will break. In what reality? She has said it before. She tells herself again. Mrs. Garrett is a cakewalk. She opens her book and prepares to enter her invisible world for the next hour. She is getting used to it. Cake. Walk. I. Am. Not. A.

Bug.

A paper is returned at the end of class.

Zoe barely glances at the grade scrawled across the top before she slides it into her notebook. She can’t let on that it matters. It’s all about maneuvers. Her face is blank. But the B-minus pushes at the corner of her mouth. She is making it. Zoe Beth Buckman. Zoe, who can hold it in. Zoe, fourth on the tennis team and moving up. Zoe, who pays her bills on time. Zoe, a B student. Zoe, having friends over to her room. Her own room at 373 Lorelei Street. The room that is working. Cakewalk. Yeah.

Twenty-Nine

The usual afternoon breezes vanish. Heat wells in layers, one pressing on another. The black asphalt surrounding trailer 10A shimmers like tar, like the late summer heat has melted it back into ooze. Zoe is melting, too. But still, she would rather be on the courts getting in more practice than sitting in an air-conditioned trailer with Mr. K. She has a match today. Practice matters.

The ramp pings and warps as she walks up, but this time she doesn’t care if he knows she is coming. It is her third meeting, and she understands Mr. K now. She knows his game. Waitressing has been good for her in that respect at least. If you hope to make decent tips, you have to know what people want. Not just food. Food is nothing. It’s more than that. It’s when to be quiet, when to be chatty, when to smile, when to fade a

way. Mr. K wants chat. She can give him that without revealing a thing, and in return she might get an early release from this tin prison. Leaving early will mean catching the bus to the match, and that means saving gas. Like practice, gas matters. It all works together to keep the room.

The door swings and barely cool air hits her face. It smells of dusty carpet, stale popcorn, and body odors that should be reserved for second grade. Thank you, Mr. K, but in her next cool breath she knows it is not Mr. K who must be thanked.

“Come in. Here. Come.” A twitchy, hawk-nosed man motions to where she sat last week. She doesn’t move. He is nervous. Sweaty. Why? He swings his angled body toward her and holds out his hand. Cripes! Who is this geek? “Mr. Beltzer. I’m filling in for Mr. Kowalashosky. From the district office.”

She doesn’t like him. His eyes move too fast. His skin is waxy and colorless. And he does strange things with his upper lip. It crinkles and smacks like something is wedged in his front tooth. This was not part of the deal. Suddenly she wants Mr. K. She wants his calmness, his rounded belly, his slow, smooth movements. Suddenly she thinks she did want to talk to Mr. K after all. She wanted him to listen. She wanted to think thoughts aloud and have his quiet way make sense of it all.

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