The second book in the Arly Hanks series, 1988

Carol Alice Plummer clutched her teddy bear to her post-pubescent chest. "I don't know what I'm going to do," she moaned, rocking back and forth on the edge of her bed. "It's so damn awful, I may kill myself and save everyone the bother of watching me fade away into nothingness."

Heather Riley put her hands on her hips and glared down at her best friend in the whole world. "Get real, Carol Alice, and stop talking like that. You know perfectly well, that you aren't going to kill yourself. I don't even like to hear you say it."

"I might as well. I mean, there's no point in life if Bo Swiggins and I can't get married."

"You can't? I thought you two were almost engaged. You've been going together for more than a year now, and he took you out to dinner on your birthday and gave you a present and everything." Heather bit down on her lip, wishing she hadn't used the word "everything." She wasn't supposed to know that Carol Alice and Bo had engaged in "everything" in the backseat of his uncle's '73 Trans Am, but she knew. Everybody in Maggody knew that sort of thing within fifteen minutes of its happening. Which was the only reason she'd made Billy Dick McNamara keep his hands to hisself the night he'd taken her to the movie in Starley City, and Billy Dick was the best-looking boy at school even with the harelip.

Carol Alice politely overlooked the lack of tact. "Today after school I found out that we're totally, hopelessly incompatible. There's no way to get around it, even if I change my name-and my pa'd whip me silly if I even said I was thinking about it. But as for Bo and me, it's our vibrations. We can never be harmonious." Carol Alice squeezed her bear hard enough to make his little button eyes bulge. "We could get married, but we'd end up fighting and screaming every night, worse than my oldest sister and her husband what live in Hasty. I might as well tell Bo the truth and break up with him after the game this weekend. See, I already put his letter jacket in that sack to give back to him, along with that chain he gave me for my birthday and that sweet little stuffed dog he won me at the county fair less than a month ago." She began to sniffle. "Then I'm going to commit suicide and kill myself."

Heather sat down next to her. "I don't guess there's any way to get around vibrations," she said solemnly. "After all, it's cosmic fate-yours and Bo's. And Lord knows you don't want to end up like Terri Lee and that jerk she married. Their baby's right cute, but I don't know how she stands him hitting her and getting drunk and everything."

"Bo's such a gentleman; he'd never act like Terri Lee's husband! It's not poor Bo's fault we're so dadburned incompatible and doomed to discord. But there's no closing our eyes to the fact that he's going to be too materialistic for a cosmic mother like me, and we'll grow to hate each other."

"A cosmic mother? That sounds real mysterious. What does it mean?"

Carol Alice flopped back against the daisy-covered pillow sham and sighed. "Well, if I weren't going to kill myself-which I am-I'd make a good nurse or housemother for sweet little mentally retarded children. But if I act all arrogant and ignore my Life Path, I'll end up fat and slouchy…like Dahlia O'Neill. Can you imagine me in one of those tent dresses, stuffing Twinkies down my throat and belching like a sow in heat? That's reason enough right there to kill myself!"

"Why don't you talk to Mr. Wainright about it? Maybe he could tell you what you ought to do." Giggling, Heather poked her best friend in the world. "Besides, it'd give you a reason to talk to him, and he's such an incredible hunk."

"There ain't no point in it, that's why. I've got more guidance than I can stand right now. It's fate. There's nothing anyone can do."

"Oh, Carol Alice, I feel so sorry for you that I could just cry."

Carol Alice handed a tissue to her best friend in the whole world. "How many aspirin tablets do you reckon it'll take to kill myself?"

"Probably a whole bottle," Heather said, blinking. "You ought to get those coated ones that won't give you an upset stomach. I think I've got a coupon in my purse."

Nothing, and I repeat, nothing ever happens in Maggody, Arkansas. The good citizens of Maggody, all 755 of them (counting household pets and a couple of dearly departeds out behind the Baptist church), would agree that the last event of any importance happened well over a year ago, and it wasn't worth talking about within a matter of weeks. Before that, the spiciest topic of conversation involved the night Hiram Buchanon's barn burned down and a cheerleader got caught dashing out in flagrante delicto, smoldering panties in hand. That was a good twelve years ago. Other than that, we're talking five-legged calves, brawls at the pool hall, and shenanigans under the straw of the swine barn at the county fair.

Maggody isn't a quaint, picturesque little village in the Ozark Mountains, and it wouldn't qualify for a Norman Rockwell painting. The grand tour takes about three minutes, presuming you get caught by the one stoplight and have to sit and fume while a stray dog ambles across the highway. If you come in from the west, you'll see a few signs welcoming Rotarians, Kiwanians, and Lions, but the only members of local chapters are out behind the Baptist church I mentioned a while back and not holding the sort of meetings most of us would prefer to attend. The bank branch is on the right and the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall on the left, followed by a bunch of boarded-up stores with blind, dusty windows. The pool hall's in there somewhere; you can see a smattering of broken beer bottles in the dust out front, and sometimes on Sunday mornings a drunk out there with them.

After a few clumps of crabgrass and some telephone poles decorated with faded posters, you'll see Roy Stivers' Antiques & Collectibles: Buy, Trade or Sell on the left. I live upstairs in what would politely be called an efficiency flat, were anybody inclined to bother to call it anything. I call it cheap. Catty-corner to my apartment is the Police Department, a small red-brick building with perky gingham cafe curtains across the window and two parking spaces out front with Reserved signs in front of them. Competition's not real keen for the spaces. It has two rooms, known as the front room and the back room. It also has two doors, known as the front door and the back door. We are accurate in Maggody, if not especially inspired.

Across from the PD is the Suds of Fun Laundromat and the Kwik-Stoppe-Shoppe (or Kwik-Screw, as we locals call it), owned by our illustrious mayor, Jim Bob Buchanon. Hizzoner and I have a history of ill will, but neither of us gives a hoot. Especially during the summer months, when the town's hotter than a sauna turned on full blast, which it had been three months ago when I escaped for a few months. Too hot to hoot, so to speak.

A little bit farther on the right you'll see Ruby Bee's Bar and Grill, a bizarre pink building with a tile roof and a couple of rusty metal signs tacked on the side that still promote Happy Daze Bread and Royal Crown Cola. I never cared for either, myself. In one corner of the parking lot is a sign for the Flamingo Motel, although you won't see said motel since it's out behind the Bar and Grill. Six units, usually rented by the hour. The locals call it the Stork Club, when they bother to call it anything at all. My mother, who happens to be the infamous Ruby Bee, lives in #1. She offered to let me have #2, but I felt obliged to decline her kind gesture. Listening to bedsprings squeal half the night would make me crazier than I already am. Living next door to my mother would qualify me for the butterfly farm, full scholarship.