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unattended. I am not the girl with the fire or the shovel. This is not my forest. These are not my doll parts burning, not my legs, my arms, my head, my smooth pink torso. I am not watching them melt, not watching their perfect plastic faces turn grotesque. Smoke is not chasing me and making my eyes sweat. My eyesare not burning. I am not crying. I am not standing behind my mother and she is not facing the wall and she is not saying, “Smoke follows beauty.”
    Smoke follows beauty. Smoke follows beauty. Smoke follows beauty.

(FOUR)
    â€œYou’re beautiful,” Alex says. It’s Friday night and we’re in my bathroom. It’s been a week since the disaster at James’s house and, for some reason, she doesn’t hate me. He thinks I’m a joke, but Alex says there’s more where he came from. I don’t know why she’s being so nice to me. She is standing behind me in the bathroom and we are looking in the mirror. The fluorescent light reflects off the puke-green walls and makes us look like we’re dead.
    â€œI think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known,” she says.
    I can see myself blush even through the thick foundation and powder I’m wearing. My eyes are lined in black and mylips are the color of blood. Alex showed me how to put on makeup and now I don’t recognize myself.
    â€œYou really think I look good?” I say.
    â€œYou look hot. Fuck James. You could get a high schooler.”
    â€œFuck James,” I say, even though I felt like crying every time I saw him at school this week, with that other girl on his arm and that look on his face like, “Look what you’re missing.” It was only bearable because I had Alex, because she kept reminding the lunch-table boys how hot I am and, no, I am not a tease and, yes, I’m available.
    â€œYou should have stayed.” She runs her fingers through my hair.
    â€œI know,” I say. If I had stayed, James wouldn’t have had to invite over that other girl, the tall blond slut in ninth grade, the one with bigger boobs than me. She wouldn’t have been the one to spend the night. She wouldn’t have been the one to give him what he wanted. It was supposed to be me who did that. It was supposed to be me on his arm at school.
    â€œWe should move to Portland,” she says as she pulls my hair back tight. I feel my whole face lift.
    â€œOuch,” I say.
    â€œShut up,” she says. “This looks good.”
    I look like I’m twenty-five.
    â€œWhy should we move to Portland?” I ask.
    â€œI don’t know. Because it’s somewhere else. It’s away from our parents. My brother’s there. He’s cool. You’d like him.”
    â€œMy dad says the best bookstore in the world is in Portland.”
    â€œYou are such a fucking nerd,” she says.
    â€œYour brother’s in a gang against fat people,” I respond, thinking it a witty comeback, but she grabs my hair even tighter and pulls my head back and looks at me in the mirror with a look on her face I have never seen.
    â€œNo he’s not,” she says slowly, her jaws clenched. “Don’t ever say anything about my brother again.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I say.
    She loosens her grip on my hair. “You know why he’s in Portland?” she says.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œHe left after he found my dad hanging in the basement.”
    I expect her to say more, to tell me that she’s joking, but she just pulls my hair into a rubber band and it feels like my scalp is tearing off. “I’m sorry,” I say again, but she looks like she didn’t hear me. I don’t say anything else because I don’t want to make her mad again, but there’s a picture in my head of a pale man with green hair and a rope around his neck.
    â€œWe should go soon,” she says.
    â€œGo where?” I ask.
    â€œPortland. As soon as we get some