“You have it all there, Odilie. You have the makings of someone.” Peri’s hand lingered, outstretched in the air like the painting of Adam and God’s fingers touching, the only proof that it had grazed Odilie’s skin, had made her flesh tingle.

“The makings of what?” Odilie heard herself say, a feathery whisper. She wanted Peri’s nail back on her skin, on her spine, counting the knobs.

Peri smiled, those teeth like white shiny pebbles, sanded and polished by the beach’s waves. “You have gumption. That’s all. That’s all I mean.” And with that she opened her car door, stretched herself in, like a cat in the sun. “Babe, you’re about to burn yourself,” she said, cigarette dangling out of the window. And then reversed out of the parking lot, a plume of smoke disappearing behind her.

And Odilie felt the hot prick of the ember dying down on her fingers, the cigarette burnt down to its filter. She enjoyed it, the searing pain, for a moment, before she let it drop on the asphalt. Before she walked back to her own car, her index and middle fingers blistered on the inside. She sat for a second, her hands on the wheel, staring into the sky darkening into a hazy blue, clouds wispy like the smoke, her teeth aching, quivering with need. But for what, she did not know.

Gumption.

The word danced around her as she sat at dinner. For once in her life, Page was in trouble. She had gotten a B+ on a math test. Page was a genius. The one her parents cherished. The one who, though she was five years younger, had shown more promise at age five than Odilie had in all of her twenty years. A wunderkind. That was what some crotchety elementary school teacher had called her. Could read at three years old. Knew her multiplication tables before she graduated from kindergarten. Had won the science fair, the spelling bee, the poetry contest, the girls’ soccer championships year after year after year. She would go on to win homecoming queen, prom queen, in a few years’ time; Odilie could sense it.

Page was the Pattersons’ prize. Page was Wyneck’s prize.

No one had expected Odilie to go to a four-year college. When she announced she had matriculated at Wyneck Comm, there had been a thirty-five-second pause at dinner—Odilie had counted. “Well, that will be a good way to spend your days for now,” her dad had responded, his voice devoid of enthusiasm.

Which was perhaps why her parents were so desperate for her to meet someone, to start a life with children and diapers and nap times and routines. If she wasn’t going to excel in school, she had to excel at being a mother, right?