Chapter 1

I don't think I'd ever seen Mom as happy as she was when she raced down the sidewalk only to halt, out of breath, nearly out of control, and hear the voice of her goddaughter again. Maybe it was because Karen had told Mom, in no uncertain terms, that she was going to marry me.

More likely, though, it was because Karen had called her "Mom." We had talked about that before Mom and Dad got home, and Karen had insisted that this was her home, and that these were her parents. She knew that they'd never replace her real parents; in fact, I told her that, if anything, they'd help her 'find' her real parents. But the only "parent" she'd known for the last twelve years had been a sham, and she wanted a real family to anchor her life to.

So to her she was as good as adopted. It was her family, and her mom and dad. She'd asked me if I minded sharing them, and I told her I didn't. As long as she didn't mind a little incest in the family. That's why that spot on my arm was so susceptible to that second pinch on the front steps.

I also don't think I'd seen Mom or Dad any more impressed than when explained how I'd managed to produce their goddaughter only a few weeks after they'd revealed her existence to me. Karen and I had rehearsed that before they got home, since there were only a few instances where I was willing to let my story correspond to the truth, and I was a notoriously bad liar.

"It was all your doing," I told Mom once we'd all gone inside and I'd given them a bare outline of the facts.

"How's that?" she said. She had trained herself not to react to sucking up like that, but I could tell she was eager to claim at least a tiny part of the credit.

"Well, once I figured out who Kerry might really be," I explained, "I decided to gain her confidence before I came right out and asked her, to establish some rapport."

Mom nodded sagely. This was one of the lessons she'd taught me. Karen was still holding my arm, listening to me shovel this shit.

"So that when I finally told her I knew who she was, she wouldn't panic and run away. 'Cause she was obviously hiding something, you know."

"Don't use 'you know, '" Mom said.

I stared at her for a few seconds — I found your goddaughter and you're correcting my English? — before continuing.

"And then we started talking, you kn — over a period of a few weeks, and we finally realized that her so-called aunt had been lying to her, too. 'Cause you guys told me that Karen's parents had died in a car accident. And her aunt — "

"Stop calling her my aunt," Karen said. "Please."

"The bitch?"

I got a nod.

"The bitch made up some really sick story to keep Karen under her thumb. So after that it was just some old-fashioned detective work. You know how much I liked all those Hardy Boys books you bought me."

Both parents just stared at me. Probably a little too much sarcasm.

"I did most of it on the Internet."

They both nodded at that. That made sense to them — the Internet. Neither one was really what you'd call computer literate. Both of them knew enough about the Internet to find sites they needed in their specialties, but if I'd told them that you could find out the location of the lost continent of Atlantis on the Internet, they'd have fallen for that, too, hook, line, and sinker.

I smiled at Karen and rubbed her arm. She smiled back at me.

I'd put the dolls back in my closet that morning and Karen never gave me any reason to take them out. Or frankly, any time. My parents furnished a very lovely bedroom for her, an upstairs room my mother had been using as a second study. On Saturday, they bought her a beautiful queen-sized bed, a chest of drawers, and a new desk, and had her pick out new colors for the walls and the trim. Of course, the painting meant that Karen had to spend the first few nights elsewhere, and the guest bed was too soft. The living room couch was too hard. My bed, oddly, turned out to be just right. After that, she never seemed to be able to find the time to move back to her own room. Not for sleeping, anyway. We liked to use her slightly springier mattress as a change of pace sometimes.

The dolls were still gathering dust in my closet three weeks before the end of the school year, when Karen sashayed into our bedroom with practiced nonchalance.

"Andy Richardson asked me to the prom today," she said matter-of-factly.

"Richie Rich?" I blurted. "But I thought that we — that is, I figured —"

I'd just assumed she was going to go with me. The junior prom took place on the last weekend of the school year. I'd helped Karen pick out her dress, while she approved the tux Mom had bought me on New Year's Eve. But I'd never actually asked her to go with me.

And now I'd been upstaged by Andy Richardson. It was a sign of how much Karen had blossomed over the last couple of months that the guy who was universally agreed to be one of the best-looking guys in our class, not to mention the wealthiest guy, or at least the son of the town's wealthiest lawyer, had asked her to the junior prom.

My horror at what I'd done, or more precisely what I'd left undone, was apparently obvious on my face, because after a few more seconds of her haughtiest expression, Karen burst into giggles.

"What a gulli-bull," she laughed. "What a nin-cow-poop. What a —"

"That's enough, Bugs," I cut her off.

"I didn't say I'd go with him," Karen said. "I just said he'd asked. You don't think I'd dump my fiancée just cause Richie Rich starts hittin' on me, do you?"

"Whew," I said, breathing again. "What about Julie anyway?"

Julie Pinsky had been dating Andy Richardson since, like, forever. When he was elected head of the student council at the end of the school year two years ago — as a rising sophomore, for crying out loud; when he'd run for reelection last spring nobody even bothered to run against him — Julie was on his slate as the nominee for secretary. She was very attractive, kind of a prerequisite to being a cheerleader, and a really nice girl. If she'd sat down at our table with a signed, witnessed, and notarized acceptance, Gordon Ackerman would have been all over her.

"I don't know," Karen said. "I couldn't believe he asked me. But they were still sitting together at lunch. I wonder what's going on with them. Do you think she turned him down?"

"Julie?" I snorted. "Rumor has it that she hasn't turned down Andy for anything. By which I mean, anything. More likely she's just like me, assuming they're going together."

"Until she finds out he asked me out," Karen said sympathetically. "The poor girl — she'll freak. I mean, don't you think?"

"It is possible to find out," I said slowly.

"How?" she said.

My eyes drifted over to the closet.

"The dolls!" her eyes lit up. "I forgot all about the dolls. You've been a very good boy, not playing with your dolls, haven't you?"

I grinned at her.

"I have enough trouble with the real you."

She hurried to the closet and pulled out the brunette.

"I'm sorry," she turned to me, "I forget how they work."

I explained the protocol.

"Can you get men with them?" she asked with a sly grin.

"No," I answered.

"When did you ever try to get a man?" she started laughing.

"I didn't," I said. "I'm just telling you that you, Karen McCarthy, can't use them to get men."

"So what you really mean is that I may not use them," she said, her eyes twinkling as they always did when she had a chance to correct my grammar. "I may not use my boyfriend's cute little Barbie doll to get George Clooney, hunky actor, life-size."

She hugged the doll's lips to hers, closing her eyes as she waited for the transformation.

"Stay right there," I said after nothing had happened. I touched the doll. "Let me try. So you're looking for a life-size version of George Clooney, hunky actor, who co-starred in that movie 'Oceans Twelve' with the actress Catherine Zeta-Jones."

I stepped back and watched Karen, her eyes closed, kissing Catherine Zeta-Jones, who appeared in a lovely pair of white shorts and a white top. Karen's eyes popped open. Without breaking the kiss, she looked over at me, narrowed her eyes to turn the look into a glare, and then closed them once again and returned her attention to the kiss. Oh, God, was this hot!

"Very nice," she was a little out of breath when she finally broke the kiss. "Now turn her back. We have work to do."

I turned her back to a doll, and Karen turned her into Julie Pinsky. Julie was wearing her cheerleader outfit, her face flushed with the exertion of practice.

"Hello, mistress," she said sullenly.

"Ooh, that's weird," Karen turned to me.

"It's happened before," I said. "You should have seen Gail Dodge the first time I summoned her. Or Kerry Marshall. Now there was a weird -"

"That's enough from you, Mister Thompson," she said, turning back to the doll. "I need you to answer some questions, Julie."

"Yes, mistress."

"Do you know that Andy asked me to the prom today?" she began.

"I — I figured he was going to."

"Why?"

"'Cause you're number one now," Julie explained.

"Number one?"

"Number one on the junior babe list."

"There's a junior babe list?" I burst in.

"There's a junior babe list?" Karen repeated.

"Yeah, the guys in Andy's group rate the girls in each class. You just made it up to first. I used to be first. So I knew he'd ask you out."

"So why did I suddenly go up to first?" Karen asked.

"At the beginning of the year, you were tenth on looks alone. But they figured you were a real drip 'cause you never talked to anyone. Ever since, like, the middle of February, when you suddenly started being nice to everybody, you've been rising pretty steadily. And apparently you smiled at Bobby last week."

Bobby was one of Andy's assistant rich kids. Currently, he was the vice-president of the student council.

"God damn assholes," Karen looked at me.

"I don't do it!" I held up my hands in surrender.

"So why the hell do you date him?" Karen turned back to Julie.

"Well, you know," she said slowly. "I'm not smart like you guys. I'm just a... a cheerleader. My mom's always told me that I was never gonna get a guy with my brains. But I got Andy. And my mom is..."

"All proud that you landed a rich one," Karen prompted her.

Julie simply nodded.

"And your dad?"

"They're divorced. And I only see Dad on the weekends. He actually hates Andy, even though he works with Andy's dad all the time."

"Is your dad a lawyer, too?" I asked.

Karen shot me a look.

"If you feel you need to chime in," she said with quiet sarcasm, "could you at least say something intelligent?"

"Excuse me?" I raised my eyebrows at her.

"You do know there's a local paper, don't you?" she asked.

"Well, yes," I said, slowly, "the Journal. But —"

"And the big story splashed all over the front page last week?" she continued. "About the Eagles?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "That was cool. Some local bank financed a guy who bought, like, 25 percent of the team."

"See?" she turned to Julie. "Mention sports and they perk right up.

"And the picture that went with the article?" she turned back to me.

"Well, ya got me there," I said.

Karen sighed.

"Was of Gene Pinsky, president of Hardwood National Bank," she said. "Who arranged the financing. And who is Julie's?"

"Father," I finished.

"Good for you," Karen smiled at me like I'd just said something clever. And like I was four. She turned back to Julie. "So if Andy asks you if you'll go to the prom with him after I turn him down, would you go?"

"Well, yeah, sure," she said. "I mean, like, who else is going to ask me?"

Just about every unattached boy in the eleventh grade, I thought, would cut off his arm for the chance. Of course, not with Richie Rich in the picture. Karen and I traded looks.

"And I suppose you've fucked him, too, huh?" Karen continued.

"Well, yeah," she said. "How else would I, um, you know, keep him?"

"God damn asshole," Karen said. "Is he any good?"

Julie looked puzzled.

"In bed," Karen said. "Is he any good in bed?"

"I guess," Julie said. "How do you tell?"

"Well, you do orgasm, don't you?"

"I guess. I mean, it feels good while he's doing it."

"And how long does he usually do it?"

"Five minutes?" Julie wrinkled her brow.

"Five minutes?!" Karen was incredulous.

"Yeah," Julie acknowledged. "I usually have to blow him first so he can last that long."

"Yeah, they all tell you that," Karen said with another glare at me. "And then he does you?"

"Does my what?" Julie asked.

"You know," Karen said, "returns the favor."

The expression on Julie's face was priceless, and I was holding my stomach trying not to laugh out loud. Karen gave me a hard stare.

"Is he at least big?" Karen asked.

"Well, he's bigger than the other —" Julie slammed her mouth shut.

"Wait a minute," I butted in. "You've been dating Richie, er, Andy, since the ninth grade. You didn't have sex before then, did you?"

Julie remained frozen in place.

"Answer him, Julie," Karen said gently. "Tell the truth."