The Six Rules of Maybe

was a senior and beautiful. Not just ordinary beautiful, not just cheerleader or popular beautiful, but really beautiful. The kind of beautiful that seemed like it was too much even for Alicia Worthen. She tried to get rid of it, the same as you give away something you have two of—she tied up her chestnut hair and went without makeup on her olive skin. But it was there no matter what she did. Alicia Worthen’s beauty was the determined sort.
    I wondered for a moment what kind of pull Buddy Wilkes had over beautiful girls. He went through them fast, like they were paper towels to be used and thrown away. He’d had three girlfriends in one week, I’d heard once. Juliet had been with him the longest, but if she thought he was faithful, she was an idiot.
    “Would you hurry it up?” he shouted again, and maybe that was my answer about beautiful girls. Maybe he found that dark place that even they have, that hollow and impossible to understand need to not be good enough.
    Nicole arrived then, grabbed my arm. “Jesus, girl, what’s that look on your face?” she said, but before I could answer, Derek arrived too, talking all about how Kevin Frink got caught in the boys’ locker room with a pipe bomb and how he might get expelled. I’d never heard Derek speak quite so many words. Bombs got him pretty excited, I guess. We got into the car, and I watched Alicia get into Buddy’s El Camino as we left the parking lot and turned the corner.
    “I just don’t get the need to blow things up,” Nicole said.
    “It’s a reordering of your personal universe,” Derek said, causingNicole to look at me and shrug and for me to shrug back. “A bomb will change things forever.”
    Looking back, I would remember his words. You’d have never guessed that Derek, with his C -minus average and motor-oil hands, was some sort of prophet.

Chapter Eight
    A s soon as I got out of Derek’s car, I saw something unusual on the sidewalk across the street where Goth Girl’s drawing had been. When I’d left messages before, they’d just get washed away with the drawing itself, by the rain or someone’s garden hose, leaving the cement clean and empty as if she’d always been silent. But even from across the street I noticed something different now. The drawing was gone, but my words were still there. A new color had been added. I crossed the street to look.
    I knelt down. My heart rose. All around my own message were the tiny, tiny words thank you thank you thank you written in a circle.
    I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe this sudden progress, this new place where Fiona Saint George had now put the two of us. I felt so happy, the kind of happy that makes you want to sing, or kiss, or eat cake. I had reached out and she had reached back and it was fantastic. I looked around to share the great moment with someone, anyone; I would have smiled and waved at Ally Pete-Robbins,even, or scooped up Ginger, but no one was outside. There was only the whick-whick-whick of the Mr. Pete-Robbins’s sprinkler system shooting jets of water in an efficient circle.
    I heard a screen door slam, and I was ready with my smile and friendly words for whoever it might be, ready for generosity to bring generosity and more generosity. That’s how good I felt about what had happened. But the whole train of joy and good will stopped with sudden screeching brakes.
    It was Clive Weaver. But, oh God, wait . This was not what I was hoping for—not at all. This was some sort of emergency. It was Clive Weaver, and Clive Weaver was naked, completely naked, and heading out toward his mailbox. Gone were his usual blue shorts and white knee socks, shirt tucked in tight. Instead, there was only his round white stomach and dangly, embarrassed penis. Blue veiny legs, and a wide, flat floppy butt. I shielded my own eyes and gasped. Oh God, what was I supposed to do? I peeked to make sure he wasn’t going to dodge out into the street. I could hear that nasty ice-cream man, Joe, with his cheerful truck and tinkly music and glaring eyes, somewhere on the next block. It would be a death or bad accident Clive Weaver didn’t deserve. Death by Creamsicle. Death to the tune of “The Entertainer.”
    Through the space between my fingers, I could see that Clive Weaver wore his old man slippers, too, and worse yet, his former mailman helmet, which all gave him the unfortunate look of an old nude guy in search of a mail safari. I felt a little panic. Should I do