“Fine, fine, what does it matter? Come back here at five-twenty and you’ll get your precious Karmelkorn. But not if I see you hanging around me again. That was the deal, remember?”

“Why are you so mad at me?”

“I just don’t want to hang out with a baby. Is that so hard to understand?”

She headed toward the Sears end of the mall, the corridor with Harmony Hut and Singer Fashions. Heather thought about following her, Karmelkorn notwithstanding. Sunny had no right to call her a baby. Sunny was the babyish one, crying so easily over the smallest things. Heather wasn’t a baby.

Once Heather had loved being the baby, had reveled in it. And when their mom had gotten pregnant, back when Heather was almost four, and they had started talking about “the baby,” it had bothered her. “I’m the baby,” she said hysterically, pushing a finger into the middle of her chest. “Heather’s the baby.” As if there could be only one baby in their family, in all the world.

That was when they moved to Algonquin Lane, to the house where everyone could have her own bedroom. Even then Heather could recognize a bribe when she saw one-you can have a bedroom, but you won’t be the baby. The house was huge compared to their apartment, big enough so that four children could have their own bedrooms. That made Heather feel better somehow. Even the new baby wouldn’t always be the baby. And Heather would get second dibs on whatever room she wanted. She thought she should get first dibs, given that she was losing baby status, but her parents explained that because Sunny was older, she would be in her room a shorter amount of time before going to college, so she should have first choice. If Heather really wanted the room that Sunny chose, then it could be hers for three years, most of high school. Even at four going on five, something in Heather rebelled at that logic, but she didn’t have the words to make an argument, and her parents were never impressed by tantrums. Her mother said exactly that when she tried: “I’m not impressed, Heather.” Her father said, “I don’t respond to that kind of behavior.” But he didn’t respond to any behavior that Heather could see. Look at Sunny. She played by their rules, marshaled her arguments and presented them in orderly fashion, and she almost never got what she wanted. Heather was much sneakier, and she usually got her way. She even got to stay the baby, although that wasn’t because of anything she did. As it turned out, the baby just hadn’t been strong enough to live outside their mother’s stomach.

When the baby died, their father made a point of telling Heather and Sunny exactly what a miscarriage was. To do that he had to explain how the baby had gotten inside their mother in the first place. Much to their dismay, he used all the proper words-penis, vagina, uterus.

“Why would Mommy let you do that?” Sunny had demanded to know.

“Because that’s how babies are made. Besides, it feels good. When you’re a grown-up,” her father had added. “When you’re a grown-up, it feels good to do that, even if it doesn’t make a baby. It’s a very sacred thing, the way you show love.”

“But…but-pee comes out of there. You might have peed inside her.”

“Urine, Sunny. And the penis knows not to do that when it’s inside a woman.”

“How?”

Their father started to explain how the penis grew when it wanted to make a baby, how it had this different kind of liquid inside filled with seed called sperm, until Sunny put her hands over her ears and said, “Eew, I don’t want to know. It could still get confused. It could still pee in there.”

“How big does it get?” Heather wanted to know. Her father had held out his hands, like a man showing the size of a fish he’d caught, but she didn’t believe him.

Given that she knew everything about baby making before she entered kindergarten, Heather was surprised when she got to Dickey Hill Elementary and discovered that sex education was not taught until the sixth grade and it was considered a big deal, requiring permission slips from all the parents. Still, she didn’t brag about her knowledge or draw attention to it. That was another thing that Sunny never understood, that it was good to keep things back, not volunteer everything at once. No one liked a show-off.

In fourth grade, however, Heather’s friend Beth’s mother got pregnant, and Beth’s parents told her that God had put the baby there. Like her father, Heather could not bear to let misinformation stand. She convened a quick class beneath the jungle gym on the playground, recounting everything she knew about baby making. Beth’s parents complained, and Heather’s parents were called to school, but her father was not only unapologetic, he was proud of Heather. “I can’t be held accountable for those who prefer to lie to their children,” he said, right in front of Heather. “And I won’t ask my daughter to say she was wrong for speaking the truth about something natural.”

Natural was good. It was her father’s highest form of praise. Natural fabrics, natural foods, natural hair. After he opened the shop, he had grown his hair into a large, woolly Afro, much to Sunny’s embarrassment. He even combed it with a Black Power pick, one whose handle ended in a clenched fist. He would, in fact, not approve of the Sta-prest pants, which definitely had something unnatural in them to keep them unwrinkled. Yet Heather was sure she could persuade him or her mother to let her have a pair, if she used her birthday money.

She walked toward the Pants Corral. Mr. Pincharelli, Sunny’s music teacher, was playing the organ at Jordan Kitt’s. Sunny once had a crush on him, Heather knew from reading her diary. But the last time they’d come to the mall together, Sunny had hurried by the organ store, as if embarrassed by him. Today he was standing up, playing “Easter Parade” with a lot of energy, and a small crowd had gathered around. Mr. Pincharelli’s face was shiny with sweat, and there were pit stains along the underarm seams of his short-sleeved dress shirt. Heather couldn’t imagine having a crush on him. If he were her music teacher, she never would have stopped making fun of him. Yet the crowd seemed genuine in its admiration and enjoyment, and Heather found herself caught up in the mood and she perched on the edge of a nearby fountain. She was puzzling over one of the phrases-you’ll find that you’re in a photo so pure?-when someone grabbed her elbow.

“Hey, you were supposed to-” The voice was angry, not loud, but sharp enough to be heard above the music, so those standing nearby turned and looked. The man dropped her arm quickly, mumbled, “Never mind,” and disappeared back into the throngs of shoppers. Heather watched him go. She was glad she wasn’t the girl that he was looking for. That girl was definitely in trouble.

“Easter Parade” gave way to “Superstar,” a Carpenters song, not the one about Jesus. Just last week Sunny had given Heather all her Carpenters albums, proclaiming them lame. Music was the one area where Sunny’s taste might be worth imitating, and if she thought the Carpenters lame, then Heather wasn’t sure she wanted any part of them either. Five dollars-that was enough to buy an album and still have some left over. Maybe she would go down to Harmony Hut after all, buy something by…Jethro Tull. He seemed pretty cool. And if Sunny happened to be at the record store, too-well, it was a free country.