“It was not,” Isabel said. She smeared a handful of the green stuff across her face, covering her cheeks and forehead.

“Plus I was ten feet taller than any of the boys,” Morgan went on. “And since my mom never wanted to buy me any new clothes and I kept growing, all my skirts and pants were too short. My nickname was Highwater.”

“Do we have to talk about high school?” Isabel said. Now her entire face was green, except for a tiny bit of white around her eyes and mouth. She handed the container to Morgan.

“You’re right.” Morgan spit out the Fireball and sat cross-legged, scooping out a green handful. “I’m depressed enough already.”

“Wait, wait,” Isabel said. “I don’t want to talk about Mark, either.”

But Morgan was already going. “The thing is,” she began, a glob of green in one hand, “it was stupid for me to get so upset, anyway. I mean, it’s not his fault his schedule is so crazy right now. He might be getting moved up to Triple A next year, the team is doing really well . . .”

“Whatever,” Isabel said. The green stuff on her face, which I had finally figured out was some kind of beauty mask, was hardening and forming tiny cracks whenever she spoke.

“. . . and the last thing he needs when he finally gets a chance to see me is to be bombarded with details about the wedding and our future. It’s no wonder he gets so irritated when I bug him about it.”

“Morgan,” Isabel said. Her voice sounded strange; she was trying not to move her mouth. “Don’t forget how upset you were this morning.”

“I haven’t,” Morgan said, glancing at her ring. She spread the mask across her face, carefully, using her fingertips.

Isabel leaned back, pulling the cigarettes out of her pocket. “Because that’s what you always do, you know. You get all upset and then just forget it away.”

“You can’t smoke in here,” Morgan snapped. Then she got up and went to the kitchen, turning the music up even louder.

“I wasn’t going to,” Isabel shouted after her. Then she nodded toward the face stuff. “Go ahead,” she said. “It’s your turn.”

I picked it up, peering down into the green contents.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never done this before,” she said.

“Well,” I said.

“Oh, God.” She crouched down in front of me. “Give it to me.”

Morgan was still in the kitchen, washing her hands. I could see her green face reflected in the window over the sink.

Isabel scooped out a handful of mask and leaned close to me, spreading big gobs of it across my skin. It was cool and smelled like leaves.

“All natural,” she explained, her finger brushing my lip ring as some slipped into my mouth. It tasted terrible. “Deep-cleans your pores and tightens the skin. What kind of person has never done a beauty mask before? When I was fifteen I was obsessed with this stuff.”

“Colie’s not like we were,” Morgan said, coming back to sit beside me. She’d pulled her hair back in a clip on top of her head and looked like a big asparagus. “She doesn’t sit home and read Seventeen every Saturday night. She has a life.”

Isabel kept spreading the mask. I waited for her to say something about Caroline Dawes and what she’d heard, but she didn’t. Instead, she just sat back and looked at my face, studying her work. “Oh, right,” she said. “A life.”

Morgan reached over and picked up the phone. “Hello?” she said.

I was confused for a second until I realized it must have rung. Morgan, obviously, had doglike super hearing.

“Turn that down,” she hissed, pointing at the CD player.

“Who is it?” Isabel said, getting up.

“Just turn it down.”

“Oh,” Isabel said, slowing down considerably. “It’s Mark.” She cocked her head to the side, hard, to punctuate the name.

“Turn it down, Is.”

Isabel turned it down and the noise was sucked out, gone, just like that. Then she came back over, plopped down on the floor, and opened another beer.

“I wasn’t mad,” Morgan was saying, her mask cracking as she did so. She wrapped the phone cord around her fingers. “I just really wanted to have a chance to talk about our future. . . .”

“Oh, God,” Isabel said loudly, and Morgan turned her back.

“I know. I know how busy you are.” Morgan examined her nails, one by one. “I just always forget how little time you have to spend with me.”

Isabel made a gagging noise. Morgan stood, picked up the phone, and started dragging it toward the bedroom, still talking.

“Ask him why he’ll never give you a number where you can reach him,” Isabel called out as the cord slid along the floor. “Ask him why he only calls you once a week.”

Morgan waved her off angrily, trying to get the door shut.

“And ask him about that girl in Wilson, Morgan. Get a spine and ask him for once about that.”

The door slammed. Isabel threw up her hands.

“That girl,” she said, in the same loud voice, “wants to be hurt. And I am so sick of standing by and watching her do it.” Her green mask was splitting open across her cheeks. “Let me tell you something about men, Colie.”

I waited. My skin felt strange, tight, and I was concentrating on not moving any part of my face.

“Men,” Isabel said, after pausing to suck down some beer, “are wired, by nature, to take everything they can from you. It is their basic instinct to screw you over.”