My days with Leila at the carnival are growing longer. One afternoon I am walking home so late that I see Angel Valentine coming home from work in the other direction. I look at my watch. Sure enough, it is after five o’clock.

Angel waves to me, bangle bracelets jingling. She is wearing a white lacy blouse so clean, it is almost sparkling, a red and orange and yellow striped skirt that falls in soft folds from her waist to below her knees, and a wide black leather belt. I think she looks a little like a gypsy or maybe a Spanish dancer.

I wave back, feeling very plain in my shorts and T-shirt and no jewelry of any kind. Even so, I run down the street to Angel so that we can walk back to our yard together. I don’t get to spend much time alone with her.

“Where’ve you been?” Angel asks, dabbing at her damp temples with a hankie.

“The carnival,” I reply.

Angel smiles. “The carnival. Wasn’t that something?”

I know she is talking about the night the carnival opened.

“Did you have fun?” I ask. I am desperately hoping she will tell me something about the Frankie Avalon guy.

“We had a fine time.”

“Did you go with …” I think I am blushing, but I have to ask anyway. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“Henry?”

“The guy with the convertible.”

Angel smiles again, but this time the smile is more for herself. “Well, we haven’t known each other long. But I suppose Henry is my boyfriend. We like each other very much.”

“Is that what makes a boyfriend and a girlfriend? Liking each other very much?” I ask as we turn onto our walk.

“There’s a little more to it than that, Hattie,” says Angel, and then we both jump a mile when from behind a lilac bush a voice bellows, “Hattie! Hattie Owen! And the lovely Miss Angel Valentine! A great good evening to you both!”

“Adam!” I let out a gasp.

Where did he come from? I think he has been waiting for us, and this sudden appearance has made my heart pound.

Adam stands just a little too close to Angel and me as he says, “The gods are smiling down upon us on this heavenly summer’s eve, smiling down like great Cheshire cats, Cheshire cats in the sky. Hattie and Angel, Cheshire cats in the sky.”

I take a step back and notice that Angel is backing up too. There is something about Adam’s grin, something about the way he has narrowed his eyes just slightly, that looks all wrong. Then Adam turns, runs to the porch, crashes down into a chair, and sits, leaning forward, rubbing his hands together. Angel and I follow him. Gingerly we sit on the porch swing. In seconds Adam transforms himself. He melts into the back of the chair, his breath coming more evenly, and says, “Angel Valentine, you look like a summer garden this evening.”

“Why, thank you,” Angel replies. “This is a new skirt.”

“It’s very becoming,” says Adam primly.

I see that his eyes have slipped down from Angel’s face and have landed on her chest again.

Maybe it’s because of this, maybe not, but Angel stands up suddenly, which joggles the swing, and says, “I’d love to sit out here and chat with you, but I have a date tonight.”

I almost say, “With Henry?” but I do not think Adam is going to want to hear about Angel’s boyfriend. I cringe, waiting for an explosion, for Adam to stomp off the porch, to shout, for the tears to come. Instead, he looks interested and says, “A date! A date on a Monday night. Very cosmopolitan, Angel Valentine. Very chic!”

Which is exactly what I am thinking.

Angel smiles charmingly. “We’re going to a French restaurant,” she adds.

The nearest French restaurant is all the way over in Sargentsville. This must be some date.

Adam says, “Lucy ate snails in a French restaurant and she didn’t like them one bit. Don’t eat any snails at the French restaurant, Angel Valentine.”

Angel smiles and promises not to. Then she glides inside.

I watch Adam. For once he is not watching Angel. The moment she has disappeared up the stairs, Adam jumps to his feet, stands stiffly in front of me with his hands behind his back.

“Hattie Owen, my old friend,” he says, and he sounds as if he is going to give a speech he has memorized. “As you know, your birthday is coming up.” He pauses.

I guess I am supposed to say something. I nod. “On Saturday.”

“And Leila Cahn and I would like to do something special for you. You must have a birthday party. You absotively must. Everyone has enough friends for a birthday party. Because, you see, you only need one friend for a party. One is enough. Two is enough. Anything is enough.” Adam pulls a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to me.

I open it. Big crawly handwriting swims across the page.

“Read it, Hattie!” cries Adam. “Read it out loud.”

I clear my throat. “ ‘You are invited to a party,’ ” I begin. “ ‘Date: Friday, July fifteenth. Place: Fred Carmel’s Funtime Carnival. Time: starting at three-thirty P.M. in the afternoon on the dot. Occasion: Hattie Owen’s twelfth birthday. Given by: her friends Adam and Leila.’ ”

I lower the paper. “Wow, Adam. This is great.”

“You can come, can’t you?” says Adam. He is wringing his hands, and his eyes are begging me to say yes.

But I am thinking that Nana’s cotillion is on Friday afternoon, and I actually don’t know whether this is a problem. I don’t want to disappoint Adam. And I certainly don’t want to go to the cotillion. But Nana …

Adam is staring at me intensely, the way you would stare in a staring game. He’s still standing, and he has placed his hands on his knees and is leaning into me, his face just inches from mine. Searching for my answer, I guess. How can I say no to him?

How can I say no to Nana?

I want to run inside and ask someone for advice. My parents are always busy with supper at this hour. But Miss Hagerty will be in her room.

“Just a sec,” I say to Adam.

I am halfway through the door when Adam grabs the back of my shirt and pulls. “What are you doing?” he says.

I fall into him. “I’m —”

“Don’t you want to come to our party?”

I look at my watch, look through the screen door, look at Adam’s face. “Let me walk you home,” I say. “I want to show your invitation to Nana. It’s beautiful. And it’s the first invitation I ever received to my own birthday party.”

This makes Adam smile.

We set off down the street. Adam is all uneven today, and I am a little afraid. He makes a lot of noise as we walk along. He jingles the change in his pocket and he hums under his breath. Sometimes he stops humming in order to puff his cheeks full of air, then pop them with his index fingers. I begin to think that the best I can hope for when we reach Nancy’s and Janet’s will be humming and jingling without cheekpopping. But we walk by their houses without seeing them.

Adam and I turn the corner onto his street, and I can see Nana standing on the front steps of the house. She waves to us, trying to look gay and pleased, but I know she has been feeling worried. She has probably called Mom and Dad, who have said they haven’t seen Adam or me all day long.

“Hi, Nana!” I call. “Look at this.”

I’m sure Nana wants to say something to Adam, but I am waving the invitation over my head. She frowns at him as she takes the piece of paper from me. “What is it?” she asks.

“Adam just brought it over,” I tell her. “He and Leila are giving me a birthday party.”

Nana reads the paper. Her frown is not going away. “Leila is the circus —?”

“Leila is Leila Cahn, whose family owns Fred Carmel’s,” I say. “She’s my new friend.”

“And Hattie is going to have a birthday party this year,” adds Adam. “We are going to give her one.”

“Hattie has a birthday party every year,” says Nana.

“With grown-ups,” says Adam. “Not with her friends.” I see a muscle move on the side of his face, and I think he is clenching his jaw.

“Well, Adam, this is a very nice gesture,” Nana says finally. “But Friday is the cotillion and —”

“But Hattie doesn’t —” Adam starts to say, and for one horrible instant I think that somehow he knows how I feel about the cotillion and is going to tell Nana I don’t want to go. “Hattie doesn’t want to miss her own birthday party,” he says.

“Couldn’t you have the party on the weekend?” asks Nana sensibly. “After all, Hattie’s birthday is on Saturday.”

“No, it has to be on Friday!” Adam is shouting suddenly. “Leila has to work on Saturday. It’s the busiest day.”

Saturday may be the busiest day at Fred Carmel’s, but I doubt that Leila has to work.

“Adam,” says Nana, and she has made her voice very quiet. She holds out her hand to him, and he swats it away. “How about Friday evening, then? Or sometime on Sunday?” She takes a step backward, bumps into one of the porch columns, and steadies herself.

“No! I can’t just change our plans. Our plans are important, they’re important, I’m important. We made plans. Why aren’t my plans important?”

“Adam, your plans are important,” I say. “I want to go to the party. I do.” I look at Nana. She is still holding on to the column.

“But Adam, Friday —” says Nana.

I see the red that is creeping up Adam’s face. Adam opens his mouth like he is yawning. No, like he is about to scream, to let out a bloodcurdling movie-monster scream. I put my hands over my ears, waiting. But then Adam closes his mouth, and his face crumples. He bursts into tears. He cries in the loud way a little child might. Betsy said to me once that she wished it were still okay for her to cry like that — to screw up her face, draw in a huge breath, and just let out a wail every time she felt frustrated. And that is what Adam is doing now.

After a few moments his wails subside, and he sinks down on the porch steps and sobs quietly.

“Nana?” I say.

Nana can’t answer me at first. She is about to cry herself, I can tell. She takes a step toward Adam’s back as if she might touch his shoulder. Then she draws away, says, “Of course you can go to Adam’s party on Friday, Hattie,” turns, and walks into the house.

I watch Adam. “Thank you for the party,” I say. “I can’t wait.”

Adam doesn’t answer.

I sit down next to him. I don’t know if it’s okay to put my arm around him, so instead I inch closer and closer until our shoulders are touching. Adam buries his head in his hands, then turns and leans in to me. At last I know it is okay to touch him, and I wrap both of my arms around him.

“No one knows,” says Adam, “what it is like.”

“No,” I reply, although I think I might know more than most people.

“You are not an alien, Hattie. I am the only true alien.”

But Adam is wrong. I am a true alien too.