She learned that if she dressed carefully and acted a certain way, the cool kids wanted to hang out with her. On Friday and Saturday nights, she told Gran she was staying at a friend’s house and went roller-skating at Lake Hills, where no one ever asked about her family or looked at her as if she were “poor Tully.” She learned to smoke cigarettes without coughing and to chew gum to camouflage the smell on her breath.

By eighth grade, she was one of the most popular girl in junior high, and it helped, having all those friends. When she was busy enough, she didn’t think about the woman who didn’t want her.

On rare days she still felt . . . not quite lonely . . . but something. Adrift, maybe. As if all the people she hung around with were placeholders.

Today was one of those days. She sat in her regular seat on the school bus, hearing the buzz of gossip go on around her. Everyone seemed to be talking about family things; she had nothing to add to the conversations. She knew nothing about fighting with your little brother or being grounded for talking back to your parents or going to the mall with your mom. Thankfully, when the bus pulled up to her stop, she hurried off, making a big show of saying goodbye to her friends, laughing loudly and waving. Pretending; she did a lot of that lately.

After the bus drove away, she repositioned her backpack over her shoulder and started the long walk home. She had just turned the corner when she saw it.

There, parked across the street, in front of Gran’s house, was a beat-up red VW bus. The flower decals were still on the side.

CHAPTER
THREE

It was still dark when Kate Mularkey’s alarm clock rang. She groaned and lay there, staring up at the peaked ceiling. The thought of going to school made her sick.

Eighth grade blew chips as far as she was concerned; 1974 had turned out to be a totally sucky year, a social desert. Thank God there was only a month left of school. Not that the summer promised to be any better.

In sixth grade she’d had two best friends; they’d done everything together—showed their horses in 4-H, gone to youth group, and ridden their bikes from one house to the next. The summer they turned twelve, all that ended. Her friends went wild; there was no other way to put it. They smoked pot before school and skipped classes and never missed a party. When she wouldn’t join in, they cut her loose. Period. And the “good” kids wouldn’t come near her because she’d been part of the stoners’ club. So now books were her only friends. She’d read Lord of the Rings so often she could recite whole scenes by memory.

It was not a skill that aided one in becoming popular.

With a sigh, she got out of bed. In the tiny upstairs closet that had recently been turned into a bathroom, she took a quick shower and braided her straight blond hair, then put on her spazo horn-rimmed glasses. They were hopelessly out of date now—round and rimless were what the cool kids wore—but her dad said they couldn’t afford new glasses yet.