Sherri didn’t tell a soul about her job for a few days, even though she wished she could shout the news from the top of the bandstand on the square. But then she’d look around at the practical farmer’s wives and staid church parishioners and hold her tongue. A bigger part of her wished she could live a secret life that nobody would know about, but that was impossible in East Troy. Word would get around soon enough, and she’d no longer be thought of the same way ever again. She could already imagine the tongues wagging. Did you hear about Sherri Taylor?

Raylee was at the apartment as usual, working on homework at the kitchen table, yammering on and on about how many pull-ups she could do and how she’d burned her leg climbing the rope in gym class. Sherri only half listened, because she was sorting through piles of paperwork and worrying about bills. The invoice from the funeral parlor had just arrived. It seemed to Sherri that hearses and caskets ought to be free. At the funeral, she’d overheard Jim Kubiak from the feed store knock the thin aluminum casket Sherri had chosen with his knuckle and, after hearing the tinny sound, say to his wife, “Sherri must have got a good deal.”

Jeanne, Sherri’s fallback friend after Roberta became cool, stomped up the stairs and entered the apartment without knocking. She’d started checking in on Sherri when she finished her shift at Marshall’s. She was quiet and reliable. She had short, frizzy hair and wore a constant uniform of thermal shirts and Earth shoes, and dreamed of becoming a park ranger.

“Guess what?” Sherri said to Jeanne, figuring she’d need to tell people sooner or later. “I found a job in Lake Geneva.”

“That’s great! At one of the stores?”

“No. I’m going to be a Bunny at the Playboy resort.”

Jeanne fluffed her hair and stuck out her chest. “Ha! Me too.”

“No, I mean it.”

Her friend’s face went pale. “You’re joking, right?”

Sherri thrust the Bunny Mother’s letter in Jeanne’s face. “I’m completely serious.”

“No. A Bunny! Think about that, would you?”

“You’re going to be a Bunny?” Raylee said, genuinely confused. “How?”

“Oh no she’s not!”

“Am too!” Sherri put her hands in front of her and scrunched up her nose for Raylee’s benefit and began hopping around the apartment, causing her mother’s china to clink in the cabinet. Her mother had thought of herself as a Yankee blue blood. She believed that owning good china was important and felt her Wedgwood collection set her apart from locals who ate off of unbreakable Corelle dishes and drank juice out of old jam jars.

Raylee laughed, but then she saw the alarm on Jeanne’s face.

“You’ll set us back, you know,” Jeanne said.

“Us?”

“Women.”