The story of Grimshaw and me started in sixth grade. I had skipped a grade, so everybody hated me, this little kid coming into their class who knew all the answers. At the same time, Grimshaw failed sixth grade, so nobody had any use for her, either, and we found each other at the bottom of the social food chain. In sixth grade, Grimshaw looked kind of like a dirty shoelace. She was skinny and grimy and had big mats in the back of her hair. One distinguishing characteristic of the Grimshaws is they all have olive skin and dark hair, but their eyelashes are white—long, stiff, and white. It’s a genetic thing, she told me, from her father, who died. So at school, they started calling Grimshaw Pig-Eye, and made a game of it, like cooties. During lunch they would have to touch somebody else to get rid of it, and it would go all the way through the cafeteria—Pig-Eye, Pig-Eye, pass it on. It would go up one table and down the next, only it always skipped me, because I didn’t exist. One day, while Grimshaw sat across from me, calmly chewing on her welfare lunch, and the day’s game of Pig-Eye raged around us, I felt her eyes on me. I concentrated on my sandwich, but every time I looked up, there was her gaze—not friendly, not unfriendly, just steady and curious. Even though I was lonely, I didn’t want any attention from her. It’s a good thing I wasn’t included in the Pig-Eye game, because I probably would have played along. If I had, we never would have been friends. People don’t know this, but the Grimshaws have a lot of pride.

Even then, when she was little and dirty, boys were attracted to her. In seventh grade, my mother bought her some mascara, and that took care of the white eyelashes. Since then, she’s always had a boyfriend, usually somebody else’s, hence the hostility we have always enjoyed from every female in Colchis. Her relationships never last long: either they get serious and she gets bored with them, or they don’t get serious and she gets bored with them, and then she throws them back like a used fish. By the time we started high school, she had this special Melody Grimshaw allure, this way of moving and looking at guys and smiling at them in a way that makes them think she is promising something, which might be why she thinks she could be a good stripper. This is a girl in search of an audience.