I could probably find her father’s books in the library. He was a famous lawyer who I’d seen on TV talking about the rights of the indigenous people. I’d heard he’d made a lot of money because they turned his book The Salish Tribe into a CBC mini-series. Ivy’s mother was a former model who lived in Paris during the riots of ’68. I knew all about the Mercers because every time the newspaper did one of those Prominent People in Our City stories, there would be a big photo of the Mercer family in their glass Gordon Head home. Ivy’s father looked very wise as he posed beside carved statues. Behind him was an eight-foot-high window with a view of the ocean far below. Ivy’s mother, she was a young wild bride, like Everly, but obviously she didn’t drag her family into some free-love commune.

Once, in art class, Ivy made the mistake of boasting quietly about how she’d been Accepted to Smith College. She was going to study poetry just like Sylvia Plath, her heroine. If you admire poet chicks so much, Dale said, why don’t you just cut to the chase and stick your head in the oven? The burnouts all thought that was pretty funny. I probably laughed too because at the time I was still trying to fit in. But really, I couldn’t believe someone in our school planned to do something like study poetry in a famous school in America. It seemed so hard to believe. Even though I’d laughed at her, after school I followed Ivy out to the parking lot. I watched. Her mother drove up in a green Volvo. I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Mercer sympathetically tousling Ivy’s hair as if to say, It’s almost over, darling, soon you’ll be out of this hellhole. During the next week, I followed Ivy to the parking lot every day. I lingered, not sure of what I wanted to say. I just looked at her as she waited for her ride. Climbing into the green Volvo with her canvas knapsack jaunty on her back, she’d kiss her mother on the cheek. Maybe she said to her mother, There’s the girl who never says a word in class. I think she’s a retarded mute.

Hey, Ivy, I said to her the next day, two words that took all my strength and nerve. She looked down at her shoes, black leather boystyle Oxfords, and didn’t smile or wave. Like all the girls at Mount Drug, she really didn’t want anything to do with me.

But now that I was good, maybe I could hang out with her. After dinner at the Mickelsons’, she would help me with my college application form.

Hey, I yelled when I saw Mrs. Mercer in the newspaper room. She was reading the New York Times.