Peaches

married. She asked her about her schoolwork and the summer and how she planned to spend her time.
    On her way over, Birdie had pictured spilling to her mom about Enrico, the way the girls on 7th Heaven and Tampax commercials seemed like they might do. Several times she started to mention him and then stopped.
    After the check came and went, Cynthia swept up and smoothed back her hair. Birdie stood up beside her. “Tell your dad he needs to get those papers back to me, okay, hon?”
    Birdie held her hand to her stomach protectively, touching the soft fabric of her nicest shirt. They walked out into the parking lot. “I’ll call you soon, sweetie.”
    “Yep.”

    When she got home, Birdie went straight to the study, Honey Babe and Majestic trailing behind her and taking up their post by the door. She looked at the piles of papers on the desk, squinting at them as if there were some solution her dad just wasn’t seeing. She shuffled through bills, then looked over theprofit-and-loss statements, getting confused by all the columns and numbers. She wasn’t very good with figures anyway. She wasn’t into things she couldn’t touch with her hands.
    Birdie knelt on the floor, trying to organize what was there. The old natural disaster insurance form was buried underneath a stack of papers beside the trash can. She wondered if she should renew it, just in case, behind Walter’s back. She held it up, then dropped her forehead into her hands. She stuffed the corner of the paper into her mouth and bit it without having any idea why.
    “What’d your mom say?”
    Birdie looked up and yanked the paper out of her mouth. She swallowed. “She said you should send her the papers.”
    Walter looked at the carpet, studying it, his shoulders sagging.
    “Right.”
    Birdie stayed on the floor a long time. If her dad had given up and her mom had given up, then how could she hold things together on her own?
    She crumpled up the insurance form and lobbed it at the trash. It went in, nothing but net.

    As usual, Murphy was late for school. She rattled through the pantry for a box of Froot Loops, eyeing her mom’s bedroom door, which contained her mom and Richard. She sank onto one of the kitchen chairs to eat a few handfuls straight out of the box, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, which she could see from where she was sitting.
    The door cracked behind her. Damn.
    “Hey, Richard.”
    “Hey, Murph.”
    “It’s Murphy.”
    Her mom appeared behind him, stroked his back, and smiled blissfully. “Well, next time I want to hear Sonny and Cher, I’ll check with you,” she said low, and giggled. She looked at Murphy, noticing for the first time that she was there, then looked at the clock. “Murphy, you better get going, baby—look at the time.”
    “I know. I know.”
    Murphy hopped down the front steps and into her car. “Bring on death,” she said out loud as she turned the car on. It gave its signature rattle, loud enough to announce to the classes in session at Bridgewater High School that she was arriving at 9:10.
    To make itself look like a big modern facility instead of the podunk dump that it was, Bridgewater High School had installed a huge tiered fountain at one corner of the building, engraved with some words in Greek. Everyone had long since forgotten what they meant. Murphy tossed the last of her handful of Froot Loops into the water as she passed by it and pushed through the double doors into the hall, making her way down to Brit Lit.
    Mr. Meehan taught the class, and he had a major crush on her. He only nodded quietly at her as she slipped into the room and into her desk.
    Her textbook was full of little drawings she’d done—of food (when she was hungry), of band logos, of herself, and more recently, of peach trees, which she couldn’t get out of her head.She was a subpar artist, but she practiced a lot. She searched for an empty, relatively large space and started sketching a baby tree, with the white stuff wrapped around it and a pair of hands making it secure.
    Mr. Meehan droned on about the Wife of Bath and Murphy sank onto her hands. She never listened in class since she much preferred reading on her own. She used class time as a kind of brain vacation. Behind her, Allan Brewer, who she’d let touch her boobs in tenth grade, pushed on her bun from behind and whispered, “Beep beep.” She lifted her hand behind her back and gave him the finger.
    On their way out of class, Allan caught up