Well, I didn't know I was in love at the time, but the first time I was in love, I was sixteen. You get to know someone, and watch her struggle, when all the odds are against her, and all you really can do is to stand by and offer support, and then you discover it. When it hurts you more than it hurts her, when she's smiling and laughing, and all you want to do is cry, that's when you realize you love her.

I was sixteen, and had just gotten my license. I'd had the Learner's Permit for half a year, and had made the appointment a few weeks before I was eligible, and I had the road test two days after I was permitted to take it. Mom and Dad were really cool about it, having paid for Driver's Ed, and they lent me our winter beater car, this big old Caprice gas guzzler with rusty corners and a huge cloth covered split bench seat. It was blue, and it really felt like a giant boat, slinging a wake behind it when you pulled out of a parking spot and turned at the same time, while getting on the gas.

My friend Janie was always wild, she was just a little out-of-control. She'd always gotten into trouble as a kid, and could always talk her way out of it. My third weekend with the car, I drove her to the mall, and we were going to go window-shopping, make up wish-lists for Christmas, that sort of thing. Yeah, it's a girly thing to do, but you know, I would have done anything for Janie back then, she was my best friend.

Janie was bored, I guess, liked to live life dangerously, the adrenaline and thrill of doing something illicit was her thing. She got me to try pot, she got me to have my first - and fourth - drink, and she got to clean me up afterwards. She smoked cigarettes from time-to-time, even though I wouldn't. They made her breath stink, and her clothes stink, and after she'd smoked, I think she'd kiss me just to gross me out.

So there we were, at the mall, me and Janie, and no adult supervision. What do you think happened? I couldn't have predicted it, either. I argued that a lot, later, but it may only have mitigated things.

Janie and I were separated for a bit, I was in the book store, browsing over new Science Fiction and Fantasy titles, grousing that there was never anything new or good. I didn't know where Janie went, but when I left, she found me near one of the restrooms.

The mall had restrooms down a corridor, and there were these large exit doors, solid doors, without windows just further down the corridor. There weren't fire alarm thingies, those paddle things that say "Alarm will sound", just those stainless steel bars that open the door when you push on them, and Janie dragged me past the restrooms and opened the door.

Laughing, she bet me she could race me to the car. I won, of course, my legs were longer, and she smoked. But our running called attention to us, I guess, and we were seen driving away.

In the car, Janie was alive and full of sparks, her humor crackling. I knew her well, and I had wondered what she had done to get so emotionally high.

When the police knocked on the door, and my Daddy called me downstairs, I found out. Janie had been busted by the video camera in Strawberries, sort of a Sam-Goody 'we have every record ever made' place, and she'd been busted stuffing cassettes in her purse.

Security had seen us running to the car, and gotten my Daddy's license plate off the car, and here were the police asking questions, ones like, "Who was in the car with you, Miss?"

Lawyers got involved, and it came out that Janie had a long history of shoplifting, and couldn't help herself, sort of. The DA apparently thought differently, and when her defense got her sprung, he decided I was a good target instead.

I pled to fleeing the scene of a crime, but not accomplice, and I was given five hundred hours of community service, two years' probation, and a promise of expungement of the record when I became an adult if I were never arrested or suspected of a crime again.

Life's not fair, sometimes. Life's funny that way.

Five hundred hours before I could leave the state.

Mom and I worked it out: 2 hours 2 days a week, plus four hours on Saturdays, and the family would get to take vacations in one year, two months, and two weeks from when I started. It was just that the only decent indoor job was at the county hospital. Mom would not let me work an outside job unsupervised; she knew as well as the rest of my family how badly I got screwed by the DA and by Janie. There hadn't been any public outcry, mostly because Janie's parents got her enrolled in a reform school for girls five hundred miles away, and no one else seemed especially interested in my story. Mom knew I was 'responsible', meaning 'would behave', but I guess she didn't trust the average person on the street, and with the probate hanging over my head I wanted to be indoors, too.

So, I signed up with the hospital. And there was a commitment there, too; I needed to sign for 6-month stints if I were to do it at all, and this meant an extra three months and two weeks on my sentence - voluntarily.

I told Mom and Dad they could go and take my younger brother Chris with them; I'd stay in town with the Chief of Police if he'd have me, or with my uncle's family if not. "We'll see," was all that my Mom said.

At first, it was bedpan duty. I guess they wanted to see if I'd quit, I'd suppose a lot of kids in my situation did, deciding to pick up trash along highways or mow cemetery grass instead. Well, what they had me doing wasn't quite bedpans, it was 'orderly' duty, and I was bussing dirty dishes back from inpatients' rooms to the dishwasher. Lots and lots of dishes, thank you, and not a lot of time to sit around and talk; it being an older hospital there was only one service elevator for me to use, and I did a lot of walking on hard floors.

There had been a crime wave recently, I guess, or the DA was being 'tough', either he was new, or he was trying to be re-elected. This translated into a lot of people trying for hospital-duty to work off a community service obligation. Things got competitive, for a while, and I really didn't know if I would keep the job.

I smiled a lot, and was friendly and cheery, and didn't complain at the rotten little jobs. I didn't lie, or cheat, or tell stories or brag. I was, even then, I think, pretty likeable, if lacking in a lot of the character the job would bring me in later years.

They liked me and trusted me enough to work in the Oncology ward, but that was really, really hard. I learned to play Hearts, and Spades, and Canasta, and Bridge, and Gin, and... I read books to the patients. It was tough on me, to stay cheery in the face of chemotherapy patients retching, and radiation treatment, and all the horrible things that happen in the Oncology ward. I got pretty good at picking out the survivors, the ones who were hospitalized for blood clotting from the Mustard and Vinblastine, and whatever the hell it is they give various people who have a treatable cancer. Those are the ones I'd play cards with. I'd read stories to the longer-term patients, before they moved out to the hospice.

I could only do this job for two months, before I had to ask to be rotated to another ward. I got lucky, and got the Children's ward this time. Here I got kids who were getting better, usually. Kids who weren't getting better got moved to the state capitol, where there were better hospitals.

About a month before my seventeenth birthday, I was sweeping up pieces of construction paper and sparkles when I heard two girls arguing. One sounded really tired and cross, the other was just being bossy, I thought.

I moved around to the other side of the room, and went to dump my dustpan, when I saw Lindsay and Rainey for the first time. I wasn't quite sure I saw what I thought I did, but out of the corner of my eye, they looked like a pair of girls sharing a blanket, one hugging the other from behind, her chin on the other's shoulder.

A short while later, there was another hour on my shift, and I'd been playing Candyland with one of the younger patients, before his parents came to visit. I'd put the board away, when Lindsay called me over.

"Hey," she'd said, "Do you like, work here?"

I turned toward them, and I remember thinking, "That's strange, they haven't really moved."

"Yes and no," I told her. "I'm here to be friendly and play with the kids." Even then, I tried not to tell people why I was there, especially not the kids or Oncology patients. Most of them either wouldn't care, or they'd prefer not to know.

"We're kids. Play with us." It was Rainey, and she looked up at me from over her sister's shoulder, I thought.

"Okay," I shrugged. I grabbed a deck of Bicycle bridge cards, and a cribbage board on the off chance they could add to fifteen, since most of the kids I saw in the ward didn't do too well at the game.

I brought the cards over, and I was trying to puzzle out what was eluding me about the two of them, when I asked what they'd like to play.

"Silly, we can't play most card games," Lindsay said.

"Too difficult to shuffle and deal," Rainey said from her sister's shoulder again.

"And I see her cards when she tries to look," Lindsay finished.

"Huh?" I said.

"She didn't know," Lindsay told Rainey.

"Yep. We should be nice to her."

I was really confused. "Be nice to me?" I'd asked.

Rainey lifted the blanket from her shoulder with her left hand, and I suddenly saw that it was her only hand. Lindsay had one hand, too, I thought, numbly, while I tried to understand what I was seeing.

"We're conjoined," Rainey said, kindly.

"Dicephalic," Lindsay said, sweetly.

"Oh," I said.

I was being rude, it occurred to me then. "I'm Ginny," I introduced myself.

Lindsay was looking at me curiously, and Rainey just seemed happy to meet me. "I'm Lindsay," she said.

"And I'm Rainey," she greeted me. "You're not running away, screaming."

"Why should I do that?" I was puzzled.

"Well, we get that a lot when we first meet people," Lindsay told me.

"Well, that wouldn't be very friendly of me if I did?"

"She'll do," Lindsay told Rainey.

"She'll do," Rainey agreed.

That's how I met the two of them. It turns out both of them were good at finding fifteens; we played cribbage for two hours. I learned that Rainey didn't have control over their legs, and when a car had beeped its horn at them, Lindsay slipped off a curb, and they'd torn a knee ligament. They were getting surgery in the early morning.

"We're used to it," Rainey assured me. "Lots of surgeries."

"Yeah, like the one where they removed my left arm," Lindsay said. Seeing my expression, she hastened to tell me, "It was vestigial, and rested on Rainey's neck. It had to go."

Raney gave her a grateful smile, from her slightly lower vantage point.

"You two are the most amazing people," I told them. "I'm late, and I'll get in trouble if I don't go home soon. Can I have you guys' phone number? Maybe we can play some more cribbage?"

They shared a look, and then Rainey said, slowly, "Okay. But not if you're just doing this to ask us lots of questions."

I looked her in the eyes as best as I could, since her head was slightly cocked even in its natural position. "How else will I get to know you?"

"She's got a point," Lindsay said.

"We'll read you our address," Rainey said.

At first, my Mom was suspicious when I told her I'd made two new friends at the hospital. She insisted on driving across town with me when I went to visit the first time, a few nights later. I didn't say anything to my Mom to warn or prepare her.

Fifteen minutes after arriving, my Mom was friends with my friends' mom. And thirty minutes later, I was staying for dinner, and my Mom had told me she'd pick me up at eight.

We'd played some more Cribbage, Lindsay and Rainey and I, and we'd talked a little about boys and school. I went to the prep school, and they went to the local high school, but we'd agreed to not let that come between us.