Peaches

in a pink nightdress.
    Murphy considered running. She scanned the porch as she looked for the best route. The house lights flicked on and created a wide circle around the statue of Saint Jude, and suddenly Murphy found her answer.
    Saint Jude was the patron saint of lost causes.
    When Cynthia Darlington was renovating the Darlington house in 1989, she accidentally plastered her birth control compact behind a wall. It was five and a half weeks before Cynthia squeezed out the time to visit the gynecologist, and then it was only to find out that her prescription wouldn’t do her much good for the next eight months.

Chapter Eight
    B irdie hoisted her suitcase down the stairs, and the papillons followed her to Camp A, where all three moved onto the couch in the common room.
    Birdie had a little thrill running through her as she unpacked her stuff into the bureau that held the TV, though she hadn’t felt this when Walter first announced that he wanted her to stay down at the dorm so that she, Majestic, and Honey Babe could keep an eye on Leeda and Murphy McGowen.
    The other night, when she’d come downstairs to see what all the noise was about and found Poopie irritably rubbing Leeda’s legs with alcohol, the first thing she’d felt was hurt. Birdie had ducked out of sight, feeling embarrassed and left out. It was embarrassing that Leeda—her cousin, whom she’d known her entire life—had snuck out with Murphy, while she, Birdie, had gone to bed at ten o’clock after watching a rerun of Dawson’s Creek. It made her feel like a freak of nature, an eighty-year-old trapped in a fifteen-year-old’s body.
    And then Walter had made it worse by sentencing her to the dorms, tearing her out of her comfort space. And here she was.Only between then and now Birdie had realized that sleeping in the dorms also meant sleeping approximately fifty feet away from Enrico, and that was what made her a little breathless. She looked out the window toward the men’s dorm, wondering which was Enrico’s window and if he kept his blinds open.
    She was leaning onto the windowsill, still looking, when Murphy came in from the field, covered in white dirt, with dry leaves in her hair as if she’d been taking a nap in the grass. Murphy came to a dead stop in front of the couch.
    “Hey,” Birdie said quietly, forgetting Enrico and blushing slightly.
    “What’re you doing here?” Murphy asked, her full lips parted as she waited for Birdie to stammer out an answer.
    “Um—uh, my dad wants me to stay down here to, um, stay for a while.”
    Murphy sank onto one hip. “To spy on us, right?”
    Birdie swallowed, avoiding Murphy’s eyes. Her gut sank. “Um, not spy on you, just to…” Birdie searched her head for a euphemism for spying. She looked at Honey Babe, then Majestic, as if they could supply one. Her excitement of a moment before had completely vanished. “I’m going to help….”
    Murphy held up her hand in a stop motion, smiling sardonically. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.” She scowled at the dogs, at Birdie, then trudged up the stairs.
    Murphy had just vanished onto the upstairs landing when Leeda walked in and closed the front door behind her, looking puzzled when she saw Birdie and the blanket-strewn couch. Her trepidation was thinly veiled—very thinly.
    “Are you sleeping over?” she asked.
    “Dad wants me to stay down here for the rest of spring break.”
    Leeda’s shoulders actually heaved in disappointment. She looked around the room, apparently trying to think of something to say, and then finally realized she had nothing. Leeda walked up the stairs too. Birdie could see the backs of her legs covered in brutal red bumps.
    Birdie went back to unpacking. Deflated, she shoved her things irritably into the little bit of space left in the bureau and then put her toiletries into the cabinet under the sink.
    Birdie felt humiliated. Did Leeda think “keeping an eye on them” was her idea of a good time? But the most humiliating part was that Birdie had never snuck down to the lake with anyone, and she lived here. Life was chugging along, and Birdie had never even gotten on the track. She was stranded at the station while people like Murphy and Leeda were actually living, moving forward, looking back at her like she was some kind of alien spy.
    The thing was, she didn’t know how to get out of herself. She just didn’t know.
    “I don’t know,” she said to the dogs, who obviously thought she was fabulous either