“that’s one f—ed up little prince,” said the caterpillar to the butterfly

“Hey Jenny, listen to this.” Dan took a drag from his fourth unfiltered Camel that day and cleared his throat.“You have hair like the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat. . . .” He stopped reading and looked up at his sister, who was lying on her stomach in the middle of their dusty living room, drawing on a sketch pad with fat sticks of charcoal. “It’s like the kind of thing I want to say. I’m just too embarrassed, but in a poem it’s different. It’s like everything’s a metaphor, and even if you’re really saying what you mean, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, because it’s the poem talking. Get it?”

Jenny stared at her brother for a second and then went back to smudging the lashes on her charcoal angel’s eyes. She had no clue what Dan was talking about, but she knew it made him feel better to rattle on in this way, so she didn’t say anything. She and Dan were alike in that way. In public they appeared shy. At home you could not shut them up.

“That’s from The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He’s French. This is a translation.” Dan took another puff of his cigarette and paged through the slim secondhand hardcover book with its delicate black-and-white illustrations. He’d been smoking on a regular basis, cultivating his image as an angst-ridden poet. So far their dad hadn’t said anything about it, but it took him a long time to notice things. “It looks like a children’s book, but it’s really this profound existential work. And it’s really romantic too—he falls in love with this rose, who he knows he can’t really have a love affair with. But he loves her—he can’t help how much he loves her.”

Jenny was barely listening. Obviously everything Dan said was in some way related to his obsession with Serena. Yesterday she’d noticed that some of her angel drawings were missing from her portfolio. She stormed into his room and found them Blu-Tacked to the wall. His shamelessness was pathetic.

“I’m proud of your work,” he’d told her defensively when she pointed out that he’d taken them without asking.

Right.

Jenny let him keep the drawings, although she was a little concerned that her big brother was turning into a psychopath who talked to himself and had delusions that one day Serena would just appear in their kitchen and ask him out.

If only.

Dan continued to read. Mr. Sohn, his history teacher at Riverside Prep, had assigned The Little Prince to illustrate what creative people were doing and thinking during the Nazi regime. Mr. Sohn was cool. He liked to demonstrate whenever he could that you didn’t have to be a boring lawyer or bond trader when you got older. He tried to introduce role models like this Antoine de Saint-Exupéry guy, who was a naval pilot and also this incredible philosopher-writer-illustrator. He sounded so dashing—even his name was dashing.

“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.” Dan recited the name aloud, rolling it off his tongue with a dramatic French accent.

Jenny looked up from her drawing again. “You need friends.”

“That’s where I come in,” a girl’s hoarse voice rang out from the hallway. Rufus appeared in the doorway of the living room wearing electric orange Adidas track pants and a faded red-and-green-plaid flannel button-down shirt. It hurt Dan’s eyes to look at him.

“I just came back from buying saffron for my squid-ink paella and I found this rather sweet bald girl in the lobby,” he told Dan with a goofy wink. “She’s not a blonde, but I asked her to stay for dinner anyway.”

Dan closed his book and stood up. “Vanessa?”

Rufus stood to one side to allow Vanessa to enter the room. “Hi,” she greeted Dan, and then glanced at Jenny. “Hi.” She didn’t know why she’d come without calling or anything. She’d just been thinking about him so much, and she suspected that Rufus had forgotten to give Dan her message since he hadn’t called her back. Maybe he was just super shy.

All the more reason to be super aggressive.

“I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies,” Rufus quoted, pointing at Dan’s book.

So that’s where he got it, Vanessa thought to herself. Dad was a literature buff.

Jenny sat up and crossed her legs. She was still wearing her pleated navy blue wool Constance uniform but had taken off her boring white polo shirt in favor of a black tube top that showed off her new boobs marvelously. Her wildly curly dark hair tickled her bare shoulders so that she looked like some sort of prepubescent Medusa. “Hey, you go to my school,” she observed perkily. “You’re a sophomore. Do you know Serena?”

Vanessa sat down on the floor in front of Jenny with her back to Dan, who was still seated on the worn brown leather sofa. “Maybe you can tell me,” she began in a confidential tone, “why everyone is so obsessed with Serena.”

Rufus stood his ground in the doorway. Silently Dan prayed that his dad wouldn’t say anything embarrassing about how Serena was basically all Dan and Jenny talked about. It was kind of strange for any of them to be talking about some poor innocent girl who lived across town and had no idea they even existed.

Kind of.

“She’s perfect,” Jenny finally answered earnestly as she selected a fresh stick of charcoal.

Vanessa rolled her eyes and Rufus excused himself to work on his paella. “Okay, now it’s time to change the subject,” Vanessa declared, tugging her maroon polyblend uniform skirt down over her pale, shapeless knees, which were very definitely not her best asset. She pointed at Jenny’s charcoal drawings. “What’s all this?”

Jenny bit her lip. She knew Vanessa was sort of an artist herself. Her creepy, depressing black-and-white photographs of people on the subway had been on exhibit in the hallway outside the science labs all winter. “I’m entering that hymnal design contest. You know the one Mrs. M put up notices about? It’s supposed to only be for upper school girls, but Ms. Monet kind of made me enter. I don’t know. It’s good practice, I guess.”

Vanessa pulled one of the drawings closer and studied it. Jenny had that uncanny ability to be neat with charcoal. Her lines were so precise it was as if she were copying something. “You’ll win,” Vanessa assured her. “You’ll totally win.”

Jenny liked her at once. She’d noticed her before and had always been a little scared of her, especially now that she was bald. But she wasn’t scary, she was just . . . confident. And she had good boobs. Not huge, but definitely there. Jenny stuck her chest out and looked down at herself, checking for signs of cleavage.

“That’s really not a good look,” Vanessa observed. “Tube tops should be illegal.”

“Thank you,” Dan agreed, squeezing his pale, knobby knees together. It was weird the way Vanessa had come over unexpectedly and then spent the whole time talking to his sister. But he was grateful she hadn’t noticed that he was sitting there in only his white Fruit of the Loom boxer shorts, which is what he always wore when he was doing homework.

“I’m kind of conducting an experiment, on my . . . chest,” Jenny explained, tugging up on the tube top. “I’m taking these supplements, and every day when I come home I put on this tube top and measure myself. It’s really working. I’ve already gone from a no cup to almost an A cup, and this is only day four.”

“Jesus.” Dan shielded his face with his hands.

“Quiet over there, Captain Underpants,” Vanessa snapped, and then giggled to herself. All the time she’d been sitting there, she’d been aware of Dan’s presence behind her. It made her feel giddy and careless and electric. “Jenny,” she said a little more seriously, “you’re what—twelve, thirteen?”

Jenny nodded. “I’m in seventh grade.”

“Do you think I could see what’s in the supplements you’ve been taking?”

Jenny hurried away to fetch the canister of supplements hidden beneath the Target Shabby Chic pink dust ruffle on her bed. She couldn’t believe she’d told Vanessa about her breast enhancement pills, but it was kind of nice to share. Perhaps the bald-headed, black-Doc-Martens-wearing sophomore was the solution to her gaping no-mother, no-big-sister void.

“I’m not through with you,” Vanessa informed Dan while they waited for Jenny to return. “Your dad told me on the way up here in the elevator that you write poems. I’m starting this arts magazine at Constance and you should see some of the crap people are turning in. If your poems are any good, I want to publish them.”

Dan’s face turned beet red. All of his poems were about Serena.

“Here they are.” Jenny dashed back into the room and handed over the big white plastic canister.

Vanessa turned it over and read the label out loud. “‘Yams, fenugreek, macca root, barley, ginseng, biotin, sea kelp, gelatin.’ Sounds pretty healthy, although I have no idea what macca root is.” She unscrewed the lid and sniffed the supplements. “They even smell good for you.” She screwed the lid back on and handed back the canister. “I don’t think those things are doing you any harm. The ingredients sound pretty much like what my crazy sister eats every night for dinner. She’s macrobiotic. But my theory is, your boobs will keep on growing without these things. Believe me, by the end of seventh grade I went from totally flat to looking like this. She lifted up her black T-shirt to reveal her sturdy 36Bs encased in a plain black cotton bra made by Playtex for Kmart. “I know they’re not huge, but I’m pretty sure they’re still growing.”

Behind her she could practically hear the sweat dripping off Dan’s palms. God, he was cute.

Dan didn’t want Vanessa to leave, but he wished they could talk about something else, and that Marx the cat or someone would cause some sort of ruckus so he could dash into his room, put some pants on, burn his black notebook, tear down the angel pictures on his wall, and kill the smell of whatever Rufus was currently cooking up in the kitchen. The air smelled like spicy earwax.

Jenny frowned down at the large container of supplements. “So you think I should stop taking them? The directions say full results won’t occur until you’ve taken them for at least three months.”

Vanessa stared at her, realizing now how serious Jenny was about growing boobs. Obviously she’d given it a lot of thought and done a fair amount of research. “I think you should stop taking them for a week, but keep measuring yourself. If you keep growing, you’ll know it’s you, not the pills. Believe me, our bodies are capable of some crazy shit.”

Dan shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. He really didn’t want to hear about his sister’s chest anymore. “Are we finished with this discussion yet?” he demanded rudely.

Jenny wasn’t so sure. “I’ll think about it,” she agreed tentatively and carried the supplements back to her room. She didn’t like being told what to do by someone she barely knew, but Vanessa had planted the seed of doubt. After all, in some of their family pictures her mom really did have quite a nice rack. Maybe if she just waited for Mother Nature to do her thing, she’d grow an even bigger one.

“Okay, naked man.” Vanessa whipped around and slapped Dan’s bare thigh. “Show me your stuff.”

Blushing fiercely, Dan fished around in his backpack and reluctantly handed over his notebook. If they were going to be friends, her reading his poems was inevitable. So was her finding out about his obsession with Serena. His lameness would also become apparent, but that was inevitable too.

Vanessa held the black leather book in her lap and thumbed through the pages. It was the ones after Valentine’s Day she was interested in. After they’d met.

AV?

Say

California, never been there

Does anyone smoke in California?

Are they clean, pure, do they kiss with tongues?

Do they wear black like you?

Do you know me?

I think you do.

We only just met but

I suspect you know a lot about

What’s lurking beneath

This rock.

Hey, Black Widow,

Bite me.

Vanessa read the entire poem through twice, feeling almost completely positive that the poem was about her. It was even sort of shaped like her. Do they wear black like you? Eager for more, she turned the page.

Turn around bright eyes

I know that’s

Some kind of dumb ’80s shit song

But it suits you

I can even picture

You in a fishnet ’80s shirt

Your blond hair all freaky

Sitting on my bed

Polishing my toes

And chewing gum

Blow a big bubble

Chew me up and spit me out

So she didn’t have blond hair, but maybe Dan had imagined she’d had blond hair before she’d shaved it.

A shaved head does leave a lot to the imagination.

She flipped back to the previous poem, which she liked the best. “Do you think I could publish these? I wouldn’t use your name, since it’s supposed to just be for Constance students. I could just call you Anonymous. I’ll make you famous,” she promised with a sly smile.

Dan slowly grinned back. Vanessa was basically offering him a surefire way of getting his message out to Serena. She would read the poems and gradually it would dawn on her that they were all written for her. Then Jenny would let it slip that Anonymous was actually her dashingly handsome poet of a big brother, and their dreamy love affair would commence.

“Dinner!” Rufus bellowed from the kitchen.

“I’ll make copies and give them to Jenny to take to school.” Dan took the notebook back from Vanessa and stood up. “You can stay for dinner. I just have to warn you, my dad’s cooking is totally insane. Usually Jenny and I just pretend to eat, and then we have donuts or something later.”

Vanessa beamed happily back at him. The Humphreys’ apartment wasn’t as bookishly elegant as she’d thought it would be. Of course there were lots of books, but they were stacked on the floor in dusty piles and there wasn’t a vase of flowers in sight. The place probably hadn’t been cleaned in at least ten years. Still, she’d fallen in love with the whole family, especially Dan. She was pretty sure she could eat anything if it meant she could sit next to him, watching the adorable way his hands shook as he wrestled with his steak.

Or his flambéed eggs with candied nuts and ham.