With her red blush, thick eyeliner, and blue mascara, Roberta looked like she was ready for a night on the town. They’d been best friends their whole lives, a friendship that felt predestined and sisterly because their mothers had delivered the girls on the same day. When they were younger, Roberta had buck teeth so severe that she needed to wear headgear to school, while Sherri had massive curls like Slinkies for hair, and a loud laugh.

The girls had been lost in their own private world. They’d wear their clothes inside out and their shoes on the wrong feet, and they’d walk backward down the hallways, their ponytails on their foreheads. When the kids looked at them funny, which they always did, Sherri and Roberta would say, “Didn’t you hear? It’s backwards day!” and squeal with laughter. They were boy crazy. In winter, they’d spend long afternoons in Roberta’s bedroom composing love notes that they’d never send to their latest romantic interests. In summer, they’d have picnics in the square, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drinking milk out of Roberta’s dad’s empty whiskey bottle because they thought it made them look cool. They’d lie on their backs and stare at the sky, planning their weddings at Linden Terrace and picking names for their children. One summer, Sherri and Roberta both had a crush on Trent Eagan, the lifeguard, and they’d go to the deep end of the public swimming area at Booth Lake and practice the dead man’s float, holding their breath almost as long as the Japanese pearl divers they’d read about in Social Studies, trying to trick him into thinking they needed to be saved.