She even sprang for some new makeup and perfume at the local K-Mart.

Might as well do it up right.

* * *

The party had been nice enough, and Larry had complimented her on how she looked, and for a while Lucy had been able to forget about the desperate faces of her parents and the feeling that she was dying inside.

After the party, when they climbed into his pickup truck, Larry leaned over and kissed her. It was so sudden, so abrupt and unexpected, that Lucy froze. Larry pulled back and blushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to just, y’know, surprise you like that.”

“Oh it’s...it’s okay,” said Lucy. “I mean, I just didn’t expect it.” She laughed softly, shaking her head.

“What is it?” asked Larry.

“I’m just...sometimes I think maybe I’m really out of it. I mean, I didn’t think you even knew I existed.”

“I noticed you.”

“I noticed you, too.”

“A lot of the girls who work in the store, they got this superiority problem. They think that just because they get to wear uniforms and deal with customers that they’re, I don’t know, better than us guys who work the stockroom, that because we don’t come to work in nice shirts and wearing ties that we’re low-class hicks. I don’t think it’s right, judging someone on account of how they dress or what kind of work they do. Do you?”

“No,” she whispered, unable to meet his gaze. “Not at all.”

Larry looked at his watch and smiled. “Wanna go on a picnic?”

“Yeah, that might be nice. Maybe next week on my day off we could—”

“I mean now,” he said, reaching behind the seat and pulling out a wicker picnic basket.

Lucy stared at the basket. “You’re kidding?”

“Huh-uh. Hasn’t anyone ever taken you on a picnic at night before? It’s pretty cool, out there on a blanket at night, chowing down under the stars. It’s only ten-thirty. C’mon, whatta you say?”

“Did you plan to do this all along?”

“Yeah. I would’ve brought you flowers but someone said you were allergic.”

“I am.” She felt as if she’d awakened in some old Russian fairy story to discover that she was a princess.

How could she have said no?

They wound up on Horn’s Hill (a popular make-out spot in Cedar Hill) overlooking the abandoned rock quarry just beyond the county line. Another couple, Jim and Wanda, who hadn’t been at the party, were already waiting for them, a red and white checkered tablecloth spread on the ground and paper plates and plastic forks all set. They’d even brought along a portable cassette player to provide music. Gordon Lightfoot. Larry introduced Jim and Wanda, and they seemed nice enough.