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Her mother had hated the haircut, of course Like Billy Idol, Lina Do you really want to look like Billy Idol?
The truth was, her her compliment and, besides, today was the perfect day to look like Billy Idol
It was Lina’s sixteenth birthday, and she was ready tofor it
Because there was only one present she wanted to receive—and when she asked for it, a truckload of turds was gonna hit the fan
She reached inside her leather biker jacket and pulled out a crushed pack of Marlboro Lights She lit one, then took a long drag Her lungs burned and she coughed, but it orth it
Mom hated it when she smoked
Sh the Martha Stewart-perfect front yard, toward the white fare wraparound porch It stood alone at the end of the street, this house that had once been in the middle of a hundred acres of farmland Noas the only old-fashioned home on a street of cookie-cutter tract houses As always, every bush and tree was precisely trireen Pots of autumn color lined the steps up to the porch
The only thing that looked out of place in this picture postcard of suburban do sitting in the driveway She noticed a new dent in the rusted front fender and wondered briefly who he’d nailed this time
On the porch she paused, running a hand through her hair again She knew she looked especially bad today—cheap and sleazy and in trouble—exactly the way she wanted to look Three earrings in her right ear, four in her left Blood-black lipstick and blueholes and a stained white men’s T-shirt
She kneas immature to dress this way just to irritate her perfect h reason Everything she did was designed to get her in Mary of eous after a ten-hour shift at the hospital and never see Every time Lina looked at her mother, she felt small and stupid and inept It used to bother her, used towhy she wasn’t more like her flawless mother
But it had gotten so boring, all that crying and wanting and needing This year she’d realized that she’d never be like herto get good grades andwell She had flourished in her rebellion, reveled in it
After a while, though, even that wasn’t enough And finally she had begun to understand rong
Daddy
It was ridiculous that she thought of hiy, but she couldn’t help herself She re her father Not in a vague I-wish-he-were-here way, but with a serious gnawing-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach sense of loss
It had been in the sixth grade, a year before she started her period She’d finally found the nerve to ask her mother about hiotten a sad, faraway look in her eyes and said that he had left theo That he wasn’t ready to be a father But it had nothing to do with Lina, Madelaine said fiercely Nothing at all