“I know you’re not stupid.” I try a little more conviction this time. She looks at me doubtfully and sniffles. She rummages through her bag again, just in case there’s more beer in there. There isn’t. She studies me for a minute, picks a last flake of red polish off her thumbnail, and looks up at me again. Her eyes are cinnamon brown, and soft and bright.

“My period’s late,” she announces.

“Oh.”

“Two weeks.”

It takes me a minute to get it. “Oh. Oh my God.”

She doesn’t take her eyes off me. While I gaze back at her, her eyes get dull and old, like she’s suddenly on the other side of the big divide and she will never get back to where I am.

“But do you know, have you gotten—”

“Tested? It would be the only test I ever took where I actually knew the answer.”

I reach for her hand again. We can handle this, I want to say. The four of us—we can handle anything as long as we stick together. We can’t let anything drive us apart—nothing. Just as I’m trying to figure out how to tell her all this, she takes her hand back and turns away from me.

“So what are we going to do with those teeth?” she asks. She stares at the bear trap. “Let’s do something really nasty to it.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like, I wish we had some better—paint, or something.”

“Rack.”

“What?”

“We’re in a hot-rod shop.”

“So?”

“So what color paint do you want, Candy Red or Maui Blue?” She screams, literally screams with joy, twirls around, picks me up, and hugs me.

We work until we hear the seven o’clock morning whistle at the Arms. Twenty minutes later, the early bell rings at the high school, and we stand back to admire our creation. The senior float has become a pair of red plush lips. While we were looking for paint, we found a roll of deep crimson polyester fur and covered the bear trap with that. With two-by-fours and some chicken wire, we’ve made a long cigarette held up by two fingers. We made a pink smoke ring using fiberglass insulation, which we pulled out of the wall. The fingernails are long and shiny, painted with Metal Flake Candy Red.

Our slogan? Smoke the Cougars.

Homecoming is a perfect football day—raw and cold and windy, with the year’s first hint of snow. The sky is the color of concrete and hangs about ten feet over our heads. At the parade, our float is disqualified as sending the wrong message. The sophomores win it with—guess what—a purple and gold rocket. The smoking lips are banned from the game. But we take it anyway and park it outside. Everyone loves it.