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She deflected his kiss in the passenger seat of his Chevy. “Am I your girlfriend again? Was I ever?”

Everett, whom Linnea thought was immune to insecurity, tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and chewed his thumbnail. The only time she’d seen this mannerism was early in their relationship when they’d gone upstairs from his bedroom in hushed giggles and found his mother passed out on the living room floor, a thin trail of drool trickling from her open mouth. He’d walked over and pulled her skirt down to cover her underwear.

“Yeah, you’re my girlfriend,” he said, shifting the car into gear.

And so followed the subsequent restoration of her popularity over the next weeks and months. It was such a satisfying relief, Linnea knew she’d do anything to never lose it again. She made sure to degrade Ulla’s reputation, to bury her so deep she’d suffocate. She’d nod emphatically when Everett would explain to everyone that Ulla got creepy and possessive of Linnea once they started dating. That she was drunk and made up the nonsense about them being lesbians. She’s the lesbo, not Linnea.

And then it happened.

Soon after Ulla’s eighteenth birthday, the first week in February, Linnea passed Ulla in the hallway toward the front entrance. The two girls, now used to avoiding one another, both paused, fleetingly, and Ulla carried on, but Linnea caught her eyes. For once Ulla’s blue eyes were not cold, nor despondent. They were almost happy again. Linnea followed her at a distance, peeked outside the double glass doors and watched as Ulla climbed into the T-bird, not with Ronja but with a strange man, one that could easily pass as her father with his handsome, light-colored features.

Linnea wondered, is this Peter? The Peter Johansson that was supposed to ruin the lives of Ronja and Ulla? Was supposed to deliver certain horrible revenge that Linnea had so desperately and impulsively wanted that night she called him, needing something to do in her state of drunken humiliation. She’d called so many numbers, asking through her angered tears, “Are you Ulla Bergstrom’s father?”

He’d been the only one not to hang up. Simply drew a quiet breath and didn’t even ask for Linnea’s name, or why she was calling. “Where is she?”

She watched Ulla hug Peter warmly before lowering herself into the car, assuaging Linnea’s sliver of guilt she could not tweeze out. Orchestrating Ulla’s social pariahdom turned out to be enough revenge.

They were even now.

Yet somehow the sliver didn’t go away. It was replaced by something else. Something she didn’t want to acknowledge. She missed Ulla. She missed Ronja, and everything about the Bergstroms. The way they bantered in Swedish, the way Ronja would braid Linnea’s hair at night, or how every midsummer Ronja would insist they stay up all night, and they’d pork out on Ronja’s smorgasbord of candy, chocolates, and popcorn, and play Skitgubbe.

The news of Ulla’s father spread like wildfire. Ulla had a dad? Wasn’t he dead?

Still, a deep, insidious pit opened in Linnea’s stomach, yawning.

Linnea replaced the Bergstroms’ home with the Barneses’ home. She felt special that she was the only one Everett allowed over, fully. She even began to stay overnight most of the time, and in the bathroom her Suaves and Baby Softs sat next to his Dep gel and Calvin Klein. She took care of his mother, deployed her tried and true tactics to minimize the alcohol available, cooked for her, cleaned their house.

But one night, Linnea's efforts backfired when Mrs. Barnes raged through the house screaming that Goddammit there’d been at least half a bottle of Smirnoff in the cupboard! and accused Everett of stealing it. He eventually went out and bought her a new bottle to shut her up, slammed it on the counter, grabbed Linnea’s hand, and they stayed over at her house. They snuck into her bedroom, quietly got naked, and she lodged a hand between his teeth to mute his animal groans, hoping not to wake her parents. Afterwards, he got up and wandered around her room, explored her closet as if on some archaeological excavation, fascinated that perhaps Linnea was a rare specimen, especially when he found Ulla’s Dala horse.

“What’s this?” he’d asked, holding it up and squinting.

Linnea had held that horse over the trash so many times, yet in the end, buried it in a Coors box with books she’d collected. She turned her back to him and shrugged, hoping to sound cool and not tearful. “A stupid toy. You can have it.”

“These jewels look real.”

“Doubt it,” she said and heard him put it back before he joined her. She felt his stickiness against her skin and he chattered on in her ear, like he often did after they had sex, as if the act unlocked all his secret plans for world domination, as Linnea liked to tease, pressure-testing them on her. They both enjoyed playing with numbers, too, figuring out how to manipulate them. You’re pretty smart, Lin, he’d say, which she didn’t know whether to take as an insult or a compliment, as if he expected her to be dumb. Smarts without confidence, though. Not sure where that would get her in life.

The sex increased exponentially. Sometimes twice in one day. In the car, bathroom stalls, and once in the alleyway of the ice arena. Everett complained endlessly about having to use rubbers.

She counted the days to her eighteenth birthday when she could go to Dr. Olsen’s office, the female family doctor, and ask for birth control. She couldn’t ask her parents. Her mother might say yes. But she also might call her a slut.

When her birthday finally arrived, the day of her appointment, it snowed. One of those spring blizzards that spoiled everyone’s mood. She stomped the snow off on the welcome mat, filled out the requisite paperwork, and was weighed and measured. 5’6, 127 lbs. Down ten pounds from what she would’ve guessed. She’d been skipping dinner and refusing to eat at Dairy Queen ever since dating Everett, afraid of losing his gorgeous endearments.

Dr. Olsen, with her youthful, permed bob, had recently moved here out of training, and Linnea found it to be serendipitous. She couldn’t ask Dr. Mendelssohn, the regular family practice doctor. He sponsored all the booster clubs for the boys’ sports and had six kids.

Dr. Olsen finished her interview, and Linnea grew restless. The doctor had already asked, “Do you have a boyfriend?” followed quickly by questions about graduation, summer plans, and college. Was Linnea going to have to bring it up herself?

The doctor left upon finishing her physical exam. Linnea balled the sanitary paper on the examination bed into her fist, listening to it crackle.

When Dr. Olsen returned, Linnea was in the middle of a slow-motion buttoning of her jeans.

The doctor pressed her hands together with a amiable laugh. “I’m sorry, Linnea, I forgot to ask about you and your boyfriend. Are you sexually active?”

Instead of nodding, Linnea shook her head.

“If you ever need birth control let me know.”

Linnea had one foot out of the exam room when she turned and said, “Actually . . . ”