Just before Sherri left Bill’s office, Honey gestured for her to wipe the powder off her nose. “You can do it here next time,” she said, pointing at her rear end. “Keep your nose good.”

“You can put that in your butt?” Sherri was disgusted.

“Sure you can!” Honey began to laugh so hard she couldn’t stop. “In your butt!”

When Sherri returned to the pool, she wiped her nose again and grew taller with every step, proud of what she’d done. She found Mitch surrounded by bikini-clad Ginger and Carmen and a few middle-aged golfers, chatting and drinking, already the life of the party.

“You’re right,” Carmen said admiringly. “Mitch really is cute!”

“You have any brothers?” Ginger asked. She was as tall as Mitch. “All the guys around here are two inches shorter than I am.”

“He’s mine!” Sherri said, playfully inserting herself into the group, coming back to life. The water, the sky, the trees: everything was in technicolor. Her rib no longer hurt. She felt like helium had been pumped into her veins. She looked at the lifeguards and the guests in their lounge chairs, Mitch, her friends: Did they feel what she felt? She was queen shit, that’s what she was, illuminated from the inside. All this time she’d been told she was beautiful: by those creeps with the camera, Arthur, the guests, the little kids who stared at her in the hallway. She’d been flattered, but she hadn’t really believed them. Now she knew what beauty really felt like.

“Guess what?” She reached into her purse and pulled out the tickets, scraping them playfully under Mitch’s chin. “Allman Brothers are playing tonight at Alpine Valley, and I’m on the list for backstage passes. Want to go?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

They drove to Lake Geneva in Mitch’s shiny beige Excalibur with the hood down. She loved the warmth of Mitch’s arm resting behind her on the leather seat, and the feeling of her hair whipping into a crazy froth.

The fields were lush and green, punctuated with rolls and rolls of hay. “Hey Mitch, see those cows? I feel sorry for them. You know why?”

“No, why?”

“They can’t get a square meal. Get it, square?” That was Roberta’s joke. It always made Sherri laugh and laugh.

Judging by the slow traffic heading into downtown, it seemed everyone in the world wanted to be on the lake that day. On Broad Street, the tacky souvenir shops and ice cream parlors were jammed with people, and the sidewalks bustled with pedestrians who openly admired Mitch’s car. He smiled, smug and confident. With all the news of the recent wedding of Lady Di and Prince Charles, Sherri felt she understood what it meant to be royalty. When they parked, he wiped the bullet mirrors with his handkerchief and fixed the collar on his shirt before opening her door.