She barely seemed to hear me. “You’re so lucky to be an only child.”

“It has its disadvantages.”

“Like what?”

I motioned to Josh. “For starters, I don’t have an older brother to drive me to school.”

She let out a huff. “Or watch your every movement.”

“No.” I told her. “My parents do that for me.”

“I bet you get lots of presents at Christmas.”

“But I don’t have anyone to share them with.”

She shook her head. “Get real. Brothers and sisters don’t share presents. We do share rooms, though, and clothes and the small allotment of money our parents have left every month for allowances.”

Josh added, “It’s impossible to get a turn in the bathroom now that Elise is beautifying herself every morning.”

I hadn’t expected to feel emotional about the subject, but I did. Josh and Elise had each other and didn’t even appreciate that fact. “I’d share everything,” I said, “if it meant having a sister. When my best friend moved away a few months ago . . .” I didn’t say more because I couldn’t explain how alone I’d felt when I lost Anjie—how I’d realized for the first time that friends always moved on eventually. Family was the only constant—the anchor in your life that everything else flowed around. And I would always be short on family.

Elise was still listing her woes. “You’ve probably never even ridden in a minivan, have you?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Right. I rode in your car. It’s an Accord. The closest my family will ever get to an Accord is ‘discord,’ which is what we have every time we get into the minivan.”

I countered with, “I don’t get away with anything. If someone tracks in mud, my parents know who did it. As a child I was never able to steal cookies from the cookie jar.”

“As a child,” Elise said, “there were never any cookies left when I got to the cookie jar.”

“I don’t have anyone in my family who’s been a teenager in the last two decades to give me advice.”

“I have too many.” Elise looked pointedly at Josh.

I sighed. “After my parents are gone, I’ll be all alone in the world.”

“But you’ll get a big inheritance.”

Josh broke into our contest. “How come your parents stopped after one child?”

Usually when people asked this question I said, “My parents got perfection with me. Why try for more?” It was Mom’s line. She didn’t like to talk about her infertility. I could tell that Josh actually wanted to know, though. “They wanted more children,” I said, “but they had some problems with that. Then, when I was about five, Mom had a tubal pregnancy. When the doctor went in to take it out he found evidence of cancerous growth. She had to have a hysterectomy.”

Josh frowned. “That’s too bad.”

“Yeah,” Elise said, then added, “I’d be willing to sell them a few Bensons.”

“My parents are all right about it now,” I went on, ignoring Elise, “but they expect me to make up for it later by providing them with lots of grandchildren. It’s another one of those disadvantages I’ve been telling you about.”

We swapped a few more hardship stories. I told them about all the times I’d had to play Monopoly by myself and the time I tried to blame a broken window on my invisible friend. Elise told me about constantly having her makeup stolen because her little sisters wanted to play beauty parlor and the time she had to walk home three miles from swimming lessons because her parents forgot to pick her up.

We continued the conversation once we got to school. As we climbed up the steps, Elise said, “I’ve been a model child for the last two weeks. I haven’t cut any classes. I’ve done all my homework. Not a drop of beer has passed over my lips. It doesn’t matter to my parents. They haven’t even noticed.”

Josh had, but I wasn’t sure I should point that out. I didn’t want to tell her he’d asked me about her. So I said, “Your parents are busy getting their store off the ground. That doesn’t mean they don’t love you.”

Elise didn’t reply to that.

We split up to go to our lockers. When I got to mine, one of the guys in the chess club, was standing nearby. Bob was a tall, thin senior, who slouched when he walked and had curly unkempt hair. I hadn’t ever said much to him outside of chess club.

“Hi,” I said and started in on my combination. “Are you looking for someone?”

He tapped his hand against his leg nervously. “Actually, I came to talk to you.”

“Oh.” I waited for him to say more, but he only stared at me. I wondered if the chess club was setting up a tournament or something. “What did you want to talk about?”

More nervous tapping. He looked like he was playing the drums on his jeans. “I was wondering if you were going to the homecoming dance. You’ve probably been asked already, haven’t you?”

“No.”

He paused. “No, you’re not going? Or no, you haven’t been asked?”

“Both.”

He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Both because you haven’t been asked yet, or both because you have something else planned for that night and can’t go?”

“I haven’t been asked yet.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t say anything more, and I wondered if we were finished with our conversation. For all I knew he was finding out for someone else or taking a general survey. I finally said, “Any particular reason you wanted to know?”

“Oh—I didn’t ask you, did I? Would you like to go with me?”

I smiled in what I hoped was a normal manner. “All right.”

“All right. I’ll see you then.”

“When?”

He got a panicked look on his face. “Next Friday, the night of homecoming.”

“No, I mean what time will you pick me up?”

“Oh. Six o’clock.”

“All right.”

He smiled sheepishly and walked down the hallway.

I had been asked out on my first date. I was going out with Bob. Bob and I. We were going to the dance. It was sort of an anticlimactic feeling. Not that Bob wasn’t a nice guy. He was. He just wasn’t Chad.

At lunchtime, while Elise and I walked to the cafeteria, I told her about it. “Bob from chess club asked me to the homecoming dance.”

“What did you say?”

“I said yes. What else could I say?”

“You could have said no.”

“He’s a nice guy.”

She let out a snort. “He’s a geek. He wears those black glasses like people in the fifties wore. Hasn’t anyone ever told him about contacts?”

I looked through my lunch sack to see what my mom had packed for me. No chocolate. I could have used some today. “At least he’s smart. He’ll probably be a great conversationalist.”

“Well, you better hope he can dance. It isn’t called the homecoming discussion group.” She shook her head. “It almost makes me glad no one has asked me. Almost.” She looked around at the crowd of students with evident dissatisfaction. “You know, the guys here all suffer from an incredible lack of good taste. I have yet to have anyone even ask for my phone number.” She let out a sigh. “I knew I shouldn’t have joined the chess club. What if only the Bobs of the world ask me out?”

I tilted my chin down. “Go ahead and say it: ‘What if I end up like you, Cassidy?’”

“Naw,” Elise said, teasing. “It could never get that bad.”

I smacked her arm. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

“Yeah, I do. That’s why I just smacked you.”

“I only meant,” she said, ignoring my comment. “That I like guys with a little more danger to them.”

“Bob is plenty dangerous. How many of your dates have ended with the guy offering to take you to the emergency room?”

“Okay,” she conceded, “Maybe dangerous guys are overrated.” Then she laughed.

I rolled my eyes at her, but ended up laughing too. Laughter was as good as chocolate at making things seem all right.

* * *

Mom and Dad were thrilled that Bob had asked me to the dance. Evidently he was the type of young man they wholeheartedly approved of. For the next week they gave me all sorts of helpful dating tips.