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their parents. Like Johnny Yallenz, whose mother, Gladys, has been seeing Mr. Moore, the television repairman, for the last ten years, even though there’s a Mr. Yallenz. Johnny makes excuses every time he sees Mr. Moore’s repair truck in front of his house, conveniently when Mrs. Yallenz is home and Mr. is not. The television tube blew yesterday. We’re thinking of getting another colored TV, a bigger one, or, the reception is fuzzy and Mr. Moore is checking it out. Lies, all of them.
    When you’re a kid, you expect your parents to tell the truth. When they say Aunt Sue is having a baby and her husband is in the service and you’ve never heard anybody talk about the guy, don’t even know his name, you accept it because you’re just a kid. But when you slip into those teenage years you start to wonder why Aunt Tess says the guy’s name is Joe and Uncle Fred calls him Tom. And when Aunt Sue never moves out of that little bedroom in the back of her parent’s house, the one with the pink ruffled curtains and the white fluffy rug, then you do the math, and then you figure it out—Aunt Sue’s husband wasn’t a husband after all. And the more you figure out, the deeper the lies, the tighter the web, until you’re part of it, telling the same tales to your eight-year old cousin, Cindy, who’s asking the same questions you did before you figured out the truth.
    So, when Jerry comes up to me in the backyard, and says Peter was looking for me last night and asks why I didn’t show up at Mini-Mart, I open my mouth and do it. I lie.
    “You looked fine to me yesterday afternoon,” he says, his tall form casting a shadow over me.
    I am kneeling in the grass, digging in my mother’s rosebushes, shoveling peat moss on top of brown soil. It is a ritual she performed every summer, once the blooms were wide open. Dressing them up from the bottom , she said. Now it is my ritual. I don’t look up. “I got a bad headache.”
    “Peter was looking for you.”
    “Was he?”
    “Y eah. I didn’t even know you were supposed to be there.” Silence. “When did all that happen?” His tone says he doesn’t like it, that he is hurt.
    I shrug. “Yesterday. In the car.”
    “In the car? I didn’t hear anything.”
    “It wasn’t really a big deal.” Lie.
    “Huh.”
    If I turn around right this minute, Jerry will be biting his lower lip, squinting as though he can actually figure out whatever is confusing him, but of course, he won’t be able to. Life confuses Jerry. He’s the kind of guy who will head to Penn State after graduation and study engineering or some equally boring field where his calculator and slide rule will be his best friends.
    I scoop another shovel of peat moss from the bag and layer it on the left side of the yellow roses. The yellow ones were always Mom’s favorite. She said they stood for friendship and joy, but she thought they stood for hope, too. Maybe she was hoping he’d put down the bottle. She must be awfully disappointed.
    Jerry clears his throat, moves to the side so he can see my face. His shadow shifts and the sun’s heat beats down on top of my head. “Anyway,” he says, “Peter’s not your type.”
    I stop digging. “What does that mean?”
    He shrugs his lanky shoulders, stares at his size 13 sneakers. “I don’t know. He doesn’t seem like somebody you’d go out with.”
    “Who said anything about going out? He asked me to meet him at Mini-Mart, maybe hang out together for a little while. That’s it.”
    “He’s not like the guys around here.”
    “I know.” Thank God.
    “He drives around with a flask under his seat. And he smokes, too.”
    “Right.” Why can’t Jerry just accept the fact that I might be interested in a guy who isn’t from Norwood and who isn’t him?
    “Honest.”
    “So, if Peter Donnelly is drinking and smoking, what are you doing with him? Are you doing it, too?”
    “No.” He lets out a disgusted sigh. “You should know better.”
    I do know