When she was paired with Courtney in social studies to make a timeline of the American Revolution, Josie had groaned-she was sure she’d be pulling all the weight. But Courtney had invited her over to work on the project, and Josie’s mother told her that if she didn’t go, she would be stuck doing all the work, so now she was sitting on Courtney’s bed, eating chocolate chip cookies and organizing note cards.

“What?” Courtney said, standing in front of her with her hands on her hips.

“What what?”

“Why do you have that look on your face?”

Josie shrugged. “Your room. It’s totally different than mine.”

Courtney glanced around, as if seeing her bedroom for the first time. “Different how?”

Courtney had a wild purple shag rug and beaded lamps strung with gauzy silk scarves for atmosphere. An entire dresser top was dedicated to makeup. A poster of Johnny Depp hung on the back of her door, and a shelf sported a state-of-the-art stereo system. She had her own DVD player.

Josie’s room, in comparison, was spartan. She had a bookshelf, a desk, a dresser, and a bed. Her comforter looked like an old-lady quilt, compared to Courtney’s satin one. If Josie had any style at all, it was Early American Dork.

“Just different,” Josie said.

“My mom’s a decorator. She thinks this is what every teenage girl dreams of.”

“Do you?”

Courtney shrugged. “I kind of think it looks like a bordello, but I don’t want to ruin it for her. Let me just go get my binder, and we can start…”

When she left to go back downstairs, Josie found herself staring into the mirror. Drawn forward to the dresser with makeup on it, she found herself picking up tubes and bottles that were completely unfamiliar. Her mother rarely wore any makeup-maybe lipstick, but that was it. Josie lifted a mascara wand and unscrewed the cap, ran her finger over the black bristles. She uncapped a bottle of perfume and sniffed.

In the reflection of the mirror, she watched the girl who looked just like her take a tube of lipstick-“Positively Hot!” the label read-and apply it. It put a bloom of color in her face; it brought her to life.

Was it really that easy to become someone else?

“What are you doing?”

Josie jumped at the sound of Courtney’s voice. She watched in the mirror as Courtney came forward and took the lipstick out of her hands.

“I…I’m sorry,” Josie stammered.

To her surprise, Courtney Ignatio grinned. “Actually,” she said, “it suits you.”

Joey got better grades than his younger brother; he was a better athlete than Peter. He was funnier; he had more common sense; he could draw more than a straight line; he was the one people gravitated toward at a party. There was only one thing, as far as Peter could tell (and he’d been counting), that Joey could not do, and that was stand the sight of blood.

When Joey was seven and his best friend went over the handlebars of his bike and opened a cut over his forehead, it was Joey who passed out. When a medical show was on television, he had to leave the room. Because of this, he’d never gone hunting with his father, although Lewis had promised his boys that as soon as they turned twelve, they were old enough to come out with him and learn how to shoot.

It seemed as if Peter had been waiting all fall for this weekend. He had been reading up on the rifle his father was going to let him use-a Winchester Model 94 lever action 30-30 that had been his father’s, before the purchase of the bolt-action Remington 721 30.06 he used now to hunt deer. Now, at 4:30 in the morning, Peter could barely believe he was holding it in his hands, the safety carefully locked. He crept through the woods behind his father, his breath crystallizing in the air.

It had snowed last night-which was why the conditions were perfect for deer hunting. They’d been out yesterday to find fresh scrapes-spots on live trees where a buck had rubbed his antlers and returned to scrape over and over, marking its territory. Now it was just a matter of finding the same spot and checking for fresh tracks, to see if the buck had come through yet.

The world was different when there was no one in it. Peter tried to match his father’s footsteps, setting his boot into the print left behind by his father. He pretended he was in the army, on a guerrilla mission. The enemy was right around the corner. At any moment now, he might be surprised into an exchange of fire.

“Peter,” his father hissed over his shoulder. “Keep your rifle pointed up!”

They approached the ring of trees where they’d seen the rub. Today, the antler scrapes were fresh, the white flesh of the tree and the pale green strip of peeled bark chafed raw. Peter looked down at his feet. There were three sets of tracks-one much larger than the other two.

“He’s already been through here,” Peter’s father murmured. “He’s probably following the does.” Deer in rut weren’t as smart as usual-they were so focused on the does they were chasing, they forgot to avoid the humans who might be hunting them.

Peter and his father walked softly through the woods, following tracks toward the swamp. Suddenly, his father stuck out his hand-a signal to stop. Glancing up, Peter could see two does-one older, one a yearling. His father turned, mouthing, Don’t move.

When the buck stepped out from behind the tree, Peter stopped breathing. It was massive, majestic. Its thick neck supported the weight of a six-point rack. Peter’s father nodded imperceptibly at the gun. Go ahead.

Peter fumbled with the rifle, which felt thirty pounds heavier. He lifted it to his shoulder and got the deer in his sights. His pulse was pounding so hard that the gun kept shaking.

He could hear his father’s instructions as if they were being whispered aloud even now: Shoot underneath the front leg, low on the body. If you hit the heart, you’ll kill it instantly. If you miss the heart, you’ll get the lungs, so it will run for a hundred yards or so and then drop.

Then the deer turned and looked at him, eyes trained on Peter’s face.

Peter squeezed the trigger, sending the shot wide.

On purpose.

The three deer ducked in unison, unsure of where the danger was. Just as Peter wondered whether or not his father had noticed that he wimped out-or simply assumed Peter was a lousy shot-a second shot rang from his father’s rifle. The does bolted away; the buck dropped like a stone.

Peter stood over the deer, watching blood pump from its heart. “I didn’t mean to steal your shot,” his father said, “but if you’d reloaded, they would have heard you and run.”

“No,” Peter said. He could not tear his eyes from the deer. “It’s okay.” Then he vomited into the scrub brush.

He could hear his father doing something behind him, but he wouldn’t turn around. Instead Peter stared hard at a patch of snow that had already begun to melt. He felt his father approach. Peter could smell the blood on his hands, the disappointment.

Peter’s father reached out, patting his shoulder. “Next time,” he sighed.

Dolores Keating had transferred to the middle school this year in January. She was one of those kids that slipped by unnoticed-not too pretty, not too smart, not a troublemaker. She sat in front of Peter in French class, her ponytail bobbing up and down as she conjugated verbs out loud.

One day, as Peter was doing his best not to fall asleep to Madame’s recitation of the verb avoir, he noticed that Dolores was sitting in the middle of an ink stain. He thought that was pretty funny, given that she was wearing white pants, and then he realized that it wasn’t ink at all.

“Dolores has her period!” he cried out loud, out of sheer shock. In a house full of males-with the exception of his mother, of course-menstruation was one of those great mysteries about women, like how do they put on mascara without poking out their eyes and how can they hook a bra behind themselves, without seeing what they’re doing?