It had been a month since Jason died. Dee was telling me what I should’ve thought and how I should’ve felt.

"Child, you do care," she told me as she rummaged through her pocketbook, while Cora fixed her hair. We weren’t even talking about Jason, but here I was, thinking of him again. Someone had looped the words "Go Class of ’66!" on the edge of the dull mirror in catchy, red lipstick. The only one of us with enough nerve to wear makeup, Dee leaned close to the cloudy glass and slid on a matching shade.

"I don’t," I insisted. Propping myself against the streaked tile wall, I used fingernails and a tight grip to tug at my coffee-colored stockings. Those things were three shades too dark for my legs, and had a finger-sized run climbing up my right ankle. I gathered the top of my skirt underneath my belt, hiking the hemline from the middle of my calves to my knees. None of the senior girls at Alston wore their skirts past their knees. I wasn’t going to be an exception.

"I don’t think it’s fair." Cora spoke up from the corner, where she fluffed her hair around her shoulders. "I thought you and Belton had the same average."

"His average has to be higher, don’t you think?" I asked. "Even just a little?"

"I guess." Cora said. "I bet he don’t do nothing but go home and study. You’re always at those student council meetings, or at band practice, and you still get your work done."

Dee calmly smoothed her pageboy. "You need to talk to Mrs. Jenkins."

"I’d rather not go to graduation anyway, but my mother wouldn’t stand that," I told her.

"Especially if you went with your knees showing," Cora said with a smirk.

"Just wait till next year." I swished my skirt around. "I’ll wear slacks if I want to!"

I thought of the brochures in a neat stack on the coffee table at home, and on top of them, an acceptance letter. It didn’t matter if I was class valedictorian or not—finally, I was leaving Summerville! Dee and I both got into the University of South Carolina—I’d gotten a full scholarship—and Cora would be at the College of Charleston.

"Lordy. I’m so glad we’re getting out of here. I’m sick of this little town!" Dee hollered as all three of us left the bathroom. I could barely hear her over the noise: people shouting to each other, shoes scuffing against the floors, teachers calling students out for running in the halls.

Some students yelled to me.

"Hey Minnie, heard you’re salutatorian!"

"Congrats, Minnie."

"Minnie, great job!"

I nodded and smiled in the direction of each voice, even though I knew no one could see me in that crowd. I was pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with dozens of other people, my books squeezed against my chest. They’d talked about building a bigger high school for years, but that was never going to happen. Still, I knew Alston’s student body would seem so small once I got to the University. There’d be so many people—hundreds, even. And almost everyone white. Lord, it scared me when I thought about it.

Cora waved goodbye as she went the other way to her homeroom. I could only see the tips of her fingers above a row of heads. Resting her books on her hip, Dee shouldered her way through the traffic, saying, "These folks need to start skipping school more."

"Way to go, Minnie Peterson!" someone else shouted.

"Congratulations!"

It was as if I’d accomplished all I could have. But like I said, I was leaving Summerville. So I didn’t care if I was only salutatorian.

Dee pushed her way past the taller boys crowding the door to homeroom, and I stayed tightly at her side. The boys kind of shuffled around, each taking a turn to look at her rear end. Our homeroom teacher would be late as usual, so no one could reprimand them, not that Dee minded. Mr. Kelly was also the principal, and he had to make the morning announcements over the P.A. system.

"Good morning," Dee said coolly as she passed, pretending not to notice as one boy dropped something just to stoop down for a better view.

"Oops," he said, grinning. "Dropped my pencil."

"Hello, Jerome." Dee gave him a wry smile as the other boys guffawed and snickered. It was a game they played each morning.

Yesterday, it was a red notebook that fell to the floor with a loud slap. Dee and I were getting in a little late, just as Mr. Kelly’s voice crackled out of the loudspeakers: "I’m proud to announce the valedictorian and salutatorian for Alston High School’s Class of ’66! Valedictorian: Mr. Belton Lewis. Salutatorian: Miss Minnie Peterson. Congratulations, Belton and Minnie."

Something twisted in my chest. I had turned and faced Dee. She looked just as confused.

"I thought you were Val, Minnie," she’d said. "I thought if two people had the same average, they look at what activities you do."

"I thought so, too." I had glanced at the loudspeakers, as if they’d give me answers. "As far as I know, Belton and I have the same average."

But I was in the drama club, I was treasurer of student council, and I played clarinet in the marching band. Belton didn’t do anything.

Now, Dee rapped on my desk with an unsharpened pencil. "Can I see your math notes?"

I told her they were in my red folder, or maybe my green notebook. She’d have to dig for them herself.

"Good morning!" My classmate, Sarah White, slid into the desk on the other side of me. I replied with much less enthusiasm.

"You should be excited." She smiled as she uncrossed her ankles, and the hem of her pale pink dress fell to the middle of her slender calves. "Congratulations."

"Thanks." I laid a sheet of paper on top a textbook to finish up an essay for my English class. I couldn’t write on the surface of my desk. The wood was deeply scratched and grooved from decades of students carving their names and messages. Some students colored in their markings with pencil, the silvery lead standing out against the dull wood. These etchings were so old, this past fall when I’d scoured my desk for familiar names, I found Daddy’s, tucked below the note: Don’t care.

So I wondered, what was it he didn’t care about? Was it a D on a test? Was it an equation scrawled across a blackboard, one he couldn’t figure out, or couldn’t see a use for in his life? Was it a pretty girl who sat two rows up, who wouldn’t let him walk her home?

I never asked him, but I thought of borrowing his pocketknife, the one he took fishing sometimes, and making my own crude engraving. But what could I say? Minnie Peterson, Salutatorian, Class of ’66.

I wouldn’t write that. I wouldn’t carve anything on this desk, not even my initials. There must be better ways to leave something of yourself.

"Oh, look who’s here." Dee tapped on my desk with her pencil again. Daniel Gaines stood in the doorway, smiling, fingers spread wide in a wave. His pants were freshly creased, as always, and his blue shirt looked new.

"Who’s he waving and grinning at, you or me?" I pulled my fingers through my hair. Now that my sister, Kitty, had left for South Carolina State this past fall, Mama was back to pressing my hair again Sunday nights. Like it was when I was a little girl.

Dee smiled at Daniel like she was Miss America, wiggled her fingers him, and then whirled around in her desk toward me. "Get your butt up!" she whispered sharply. "Go talk to him!"

"Oh, come on, Dee." What was I supposed to say to him? But I stood up anyway, going to the doorway.

"How are you?" I asked, giving him a friends-and-nothing-more smile, my arms crossing my waist. "You got a haircut yesterday?"

"Yeah." He grinned and ran a hand over his close shave, which made his ears look a little pointy. Still, he was handsome. Noticing his haircut was practically complimenting him, so I glanced out into the hallway and tried to look disinterested.

He tilted his face eye-level to mine. "I didn’t see you after school yesterday."

"I had a headache, so I figured I’d go right home."

"Your mama picked you up?"

"No, I meant I figured I’d go right to the bus and sit down. The noise in the hallway wasn’t helping much. I didn’t want to wait there."

He patted my shoulder. No, it wasn’t really a pat, it was more like a rub. Like a massage.

"Congratulations," he said. "You should be pretty proud of yourself."

I shrugged. "Thank you."

Mr. Kelly’s voice rumbled through the loudspeaker with the morning announcements.

"I should sit back down." I gave him a quick smile. He grinned before he walked down the hallway, his knapsack thrown over his shoulders. Dee hurriedly copied my notes as I gathered my books together.

"I’m almost done."

"I don’t care." I’d been saying that all morning, almost like a mantra: I don’t care. I don’t care. But that wasn’t who I was. I took care with things, like my grades. That wasn’t who I was at all.

"Can you tell Mr. Kelly I’ll be a little late, please?" I asked her.

Still staring at my notes, Dee nodded, saying, "Daniel looks good in blue, don’t he? But then, he looks good in anything he has on."

"You can have him."

"He’s just trying to be your friend, Minnie," she said as I walked out the room. He should have tried that a month ago.

In the empty hallway, I picked at a sliver of beige paint that peeled above the brown wall paneling. The paint was coming off in shards, some of them as big as my fingers. I thought of the run in my stockings, which had spread like a seam up my calf. I’d heard the high school on the other end of Summerville had just gotten a fresh coat, but I knew one thing—nobody was coming to our school with drop-cloths and ladders. That’s why, even though I was scared to death, I still couldn’t wait for college. The classrooms would be painted, the desks new, and my sister Debbie told me you can even buy books that’ve only been used two or three times. Because of all those white kids going to school there, Debbie said. White kids can be pretty picky.

The door of the counselor’s suite creaked sharply as I opened it, and I could hear a typewriter in the other room, a slow, careful hunt-and-peck. The green walls were decorated with crooked, dusty portraits of Yellowstone National Park: images of steamy geysers, of bison nosing through snow. Mrs. Jenkins was at her desk, bent over a stack of papers, and on the wall behind her was a picture of a grizzly bear. Her desk was crowded with pictures of her ugly kids.

"Can I help you?" she asked. Her tone implied that was the last thing she intended to do. She had a thick, rolling twang in her voice, pronouncing "help" like "hep."

Well, if she wasn’t going to be friendly to me, I sure wasn’t going to be friendly back. Folding my arms, I jutted out one hip.

"You can," I said. My mother says that for a good girl, I still have a hint of an attitude.

Mrs. Jenkins glared at me. "I know what you’re going to ask me."

Then she pulled lazily through a stack of papers, taking several minutes to do so, while I listened to that aggravating sound of the person struggling to type in the other room. Click-clack. Pause. Click-clack. Longer pause. Click-clack. Eternity.

Mrs. Jenkins looked up with a frown. "You and Belton Lewis have the same average. But he has perfect attendance." It sounded like she said Belton had "perfect tendons," but I knew exactly what she was telling me.

"Perfect attendance?" I clenched my arms tighter against my chest. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"School policy states when two students got the same average, the student with the highest attendance record will be awarded valedictorian," Mrs. Jenkins said dryly, as if she’d memorized a statement. "You missed half a day. In April."

"Fine." I wasn’t going to say thank-you, because she didn’t "hep" me at all. Pivoting out of her office, I yanked the door closed. The hinges screeched a goodbye. So that was it.

I didn’t want to be angry. Valedictorian was just a title, just a meaningless title. But the fact it was over an attendance record, that part bothered me. The same attendance record I’d cried over messing up. Lord, I’d have felt better if they drew his name from a hat.

And as soon as I turned the corner, I saw him. Belton Lewis, wandering down the hallway, looking like a doofus. He tapped his fingers against the walls, pulling at those stupid slices of paint that were falling off. His sweater vest was at least a size too small and his glasses were huge on his narrow face.

When he saw me, he grinned like he just won money. Or a brand-new ego. "Hi, Minnie. Where are you off to?"

"Homeroom." I walked past him. "Congratulations."

"Are you coming from the counselor’s office?" he asked. I’d gotten halfway down the hall then, but I stopped, turning around to scowl at him.

"Yeah, I am."

"Mrs. Jenkins called me in yesterday." Belton came and stood in front of me. His eyes looked tiny behind the thick lenses of his glasses. "I wouldn’t let all of this bother me."

"Of course you wouldn’t. You’re the valedictorian." There was that attitude again.

"You’re a very smart girl, Minnie," Belton said. "And very pretty."

I squinted at him. Where did pretty come in?

"Would you like to go out sometime?" he asked.

I would have rather died. I remembered my geography teacher last year looking at both me and Belton as our hands shot up in class at the same time.

"You two should have kids together," he’d said. "They’d be geniuses." Belton had grinned, showing his huge teeth. I had wanted to punch him in the nose—him and the teacher.

"I’m going out with Daniel Gaines." I crossed my arms over my chest.

"Oh, Daniel." said Belton. "He’s a great guy."

I wrinkled my nose. "Yeah, I guess."

Belton looked completely puzzled.

"I’ll see you later." I started to walk back to homeroom, but then he called me. I turned back around.

"Weren’t you going out with Jason Grant?"

"We only went on one date," I said. "That’s not ‘going out.’ In case you didn’t know." Then I turned the corner, walking quickly through the hallway, wishing I had a door to slam.

We could have gone out twice. A month ago, Jason and I had gone for pizza, and then we had ice-cream in downtown Summerville. I hadn’t been interested in Jason, but I had been crazy about Daniel. Absolutely crazy about him. And I read in Seventeen that if you went out with a boy’s best friend, the boy you liked would notice you. So when Jason Grant asked me on a date, I jumped at the chance.

But it didn’t work. Jason died the same weekend we’d gone out. It was a stupid idea, anyway.

In homeroom, Dee handed me my math notes just as the bell rang.

Smothering a giggle, I gathered my books. "Guess who asked me out?"

Her eyes widened. "Girl, I told you Daniel likes you!"

"No, not him! Belton. Belton Lewis asked me out."

"Belton? Really?" Dee made a face like a gargoyle. Both of us squeezed through the doorframe at the same time.

"I told him me and Daniel are dating."

"Just make sure Daniel don’t know that." She waved at me as she walked the other way to her class.

Sarah caught up with me, her pink skirt fluttering around her legs. She must have heard part of my conversation, because she asked, "Are you and Daniel going out?"

"No, I just told someone that, that’s all."

"You shouldn’t lie," she said in a Sunday-school-teacher voice. Come to think of it, she’d make a good one.

"You shouldn’t, but you have to sometimes." I veered the other way in the hall, even though Sarah and I were going the same classroom.

And usually, I wasn’t one to lie. I knew that saying things like, "Jason, I really like you," were wrong if you didn’t mean them. I hadn’t said that, but a month ago, I’d wanted to as we stood outside the ice-cream shop. Before going out for dessert, Jason and I had pizza, and we spent the whole time making fun of the teachers and administrators we hated, including Mrs. Jenkins. I’d laughed so hard, and had such a good time, I felt like I was cheating on Daniel. Even though I wasn’t his girl yet.

The Jolly Shop had closed for the evening, so Jason and I had to stand out in the empty parking lot to finish our ice-cream cones. It was almost nine-thirty, the curfew I’d begged from Daddy, and it was cool for April. The street was still moist from a brief shower earlier, and striped with pale light from passing cars. We stood below a buzzing streetlight, its yellow bulb orbited by moths.

I’d gotten vanilla ice-cream with brownie pieces mixed in. Jason chose strawberry. And he must have read my mind, because he smiled and looked at the ground, saying, "You know, I really like you, Minnie."

I had warmed. I’d never had a boy, any boy, tell me he liked me.

Then quickly, Jason amended, "Whoops, I shouldn’t have done that."

I was taken aback, until I realized he’d sucked on the bottom of his waffle cone. Ice-cream dribbled out of the hole that had been created, making lines of little pink dots across the black asphalt.

"You should try to write your name with them," I joked.

He laughed, holding his head to the side, letting the ice-cream leak into his mouth. I tried to hand him a paper napkin just as a huge dollop slid down his shirt, but he dropped the napkin. Jason shrugged as the scrap of paper wafted to the ground. Blotting at the stain myself, I felt the contour of his chest beneath his cotton shirt. My face immediately burned. Jason’s fingers slid over mine as he took the napkin from me. His skin was warm, and sticky with melted ice-cream.

My history teacher passed out yesterday’s graded exams, and she handed me a folded sheet of paper with a 98 scrawled across the top.

"How’d you do?" asked Sarah. I slid my exam to her. She showed me the 94 scribbled on her test, as well as a smiling face and the words "Good Job!" Miss Baker had stopped drawing smiling faces on my tests first semester, when she realized I made A after A after A. It was like she didn’t care anymore.

She scrawled on the board in that colored chalk she liked to use, talking about trench warfare in World War II, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking about Daniel. He’d be sitting in math right now, the class I was going to next. I could imagine him gazing at the blackboard: his dark brown complexion, and his dimples as he frowned at a problem.

A month ago, I really wanted him to like me, and now I didn’t care that he did. Things had changed. I had watched him slouching in his pew at the funeral, his face crumpled while he tried not to cry. When his eleven-year-old sister handed him a handkerchief, he seemed to pour himself into her shoulder.

I had cried, too, but not because Jason was dead. I cried because I missed a half-day of school the morning Mama told me what happened. I just couldn’t make it before the lunch bell. I couldn’t even stir my oatmeal.

"I never missed one day of school," I told Cora as I leaned onto my own lap and sniffled, wiping my face with the balled-up-hem of my dress. "From kindergarten, not one day. Never."

We’d been waiting in her brother’s car for him to take us to the burial. My oldest sister, Georgette, had come down for the funeral, but I’d asked to ride with Cora. School had been closed the day of the service, and people milled outside the church like it was just another Sunday, except everyone wore black.

My mother sat on the steps of the church, her knees pressed together and her calves split apart, while Daddy stood nearby and talked with my uncles. Mama held my baby nephew on her lap, vigorously rocking him, soothing him as if he were colicky. But he was silent and big-eyed, taking in the quiet commotion around us all.

"Perfect attendance," I told Cora as I dried my face. "Perfect, perfect attendance." I didn’t know why it seemed so important, but it did. Especially since I couldn’t make myself cry over Jason.

On the steps of the church, Pastor Bowman wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. People surrounded him to tell him how good the sermon was, I could tell from the way they patted his arm or shook his hand. Just like on Sundays.

But instead of Mrs. Grant chatting and fanning herself like she always did after church, she was silent as one of the deacons led her down the stairs to a waiting sedan. She wore a simple Juliet cap, a lace veil shielding her face. She clutched a fringed shawl around her shoulders, as if she were cold. But it was a warm day in April, so warm I actually saw honeybees moving about like members of the congregation. They buzzed around ears and inquired of women’s perfumed throats. And they circled the flowers crowning Jason’s casket as it was hoisted down the stairs by his cousins, and by Daniel; and by Mrs. Grant’s remaining sons.

That evening after the service, I lay on my bed, head buried beneath a pillow, and I tried to cry about Jason. I imagined him the last night I saw him, a spot of pink ice-cream on his lips. He had light brown eyes and freckles dotting his short, turned-up nose. Jason’s nose would’ve looked awkward on anyone else, but it was handsome on him. I had wanted to trace it with my finger.

My bedroom was too quiet for me to cry, I decided. I used to share the room with my four older sisters, before they left, one by one, for college, or husbands, or both. The whole house was empty. Georgette had driven back to Greenville after the burial, and Mama and Daddy sat on the back porch.

So I stepped outside to join them. Daddy husked corn and Mama shelled peas for tomorrow’s supper, chores which would have been mine had we not all gone to a funeral that day. I was thin enough to slide between them.

"You all right, baby?" was all Mama asked. I could see from her face she knew I wasn’t. She was wearing her nightgown and no robe, and she hadn’t even set her hair in rollers. She’d just braided it into a lumpy pigtail. She sat the way she had on the church steps, knees pushed together and ankles spread apart, except she balanced a bowl of peas on her lap instead of my wide-eyed nephew.

I told her I was fine. The sounds from our backyard were different from the silence in the empty parking lot of the ice-cream shop. There was life here—the chirps and drones of cicadas, crickets, and tree frogs. The patter of the green peas Mama dropped into a bowl, the dry rustle of corn husks being pulled from the ears. Even the wet heat that puffed my hair and lacquered Daddy’s forehead had its own life, its own depth. It was so hard to believe only days before, Jason was alive.

The night after we went out, Jason rode through Summerville with some guys he knew from Charleston. When the car crashed, he was thrown from the front seat. His friends were unhurt, except the driver, who cut his forehead. None of them even told anyone that Jason had been with them—not their parents, not even the police. They didn’t want to get into trouble. The next evening, some kids found Jason’s rain-soaked body in a ditch.

My mother thanked the Lord he died instantly, because that’s what Officer Reynolds told her. Then Daniel said something else when he met me after school.

"My sister plays with those kids who found his body," he’d said as he walked with me to band practice. "They found him curled up like a baby."

"That can’t be true. Officer Reynolds said he died as soon as he hit the ground. He didn’t feel any pain."

Daniel had shaken his head and sighed, as if he was talking to a child. "That was just something he told Jason’s mother. He had to lie. It just makes things easier for everybody."

"He wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true," I insisted. I trusted Officer Reynolds. I’d known him since I was six. But even as I spoke, I thought of Jason’s mother, being led to that black sedan as if it were the gallows.

Before Jason died, we talked about my losing valedictorian.

"They’re going to find some reason to make Belton Lewis valedictorian instead of you," he said the night we went out. He’d finished his ice-cream cone and was wiping his lips with another napkin.

"Why would they do that?" I’d asked.

"Alston High School has never had a girl valedictorian, and it doesn’t want one now." He tossed the white square of paper into a trash can.

"They wouldn’t do that." I felt a little miffed.

Jason had smiled, the freckles spreading out on his face. "You’re still smarter than anyone else at that school, me included."

He’d paused as the streetlight flickered off, and buzzed back to life again, as if changing its mind. Then he said, "You know, Minnie, you’re going to change a lot of things in this world. I know it. And if you don’t get valedictorian, you definitely should care. But you shouldn’t let it matter."

Smart or not, I didn’t understand what he meant. Not that day.

Jason folded his fingers around mine. "It’s nine-twenty-two, so I’d better get you back home to your daddy," he said, cracking a wider smile. "If I want to live another day."

In my American History, Miss Baker still wrote on the board in colored chalk, and I doodled along the margins of my notes.

"So if everyone could turn to page 452, we’re going to go over the exercises ya’ll should have done for homework," she told the class. "Now ya’ll did do your homework, right?"

A series of groans went up across the room as students shuffled through their things. I had my assignment on my desk already.

Yesterday, I’d heard Mr. Kelly’s voice over the loudspeakers, and felt an empty sensation I didn’t know how to name. Now, I wished, more than anything, I could have gotten to know Jason Grant a little more. He’d asked me that night at my doorstep, "So I’ll see you again?"

I’d told him yes. Yes, definitely. I did not say goodbye.

Now, I imagined him, the silhouette of his body, the right-angles of his shoulders as he walked down the gravel path from my house to his uncle’s car. Had he been smiling? Was he excited I might go out with him again? Was he angry at himself for not trying to kiss me? He could have asked to kiss me. I might have let him.

I had watched him drive away, that same empty feeling turning in my chest, even though we could have gone out the next night if I wanted to. If I’d asked him. Instead I just moped in front of the television the next evening, watching The Ed Sullivan Show, wishing Daniel at least knew my last name.

I chewed on the end of my pencil. Maybe it didn’t matter what I had and hadn’t said to Jason. The way I did, and did not, say goodbye. He’d left me with something, hadn’t he?

In her thick, emphatic handwriting, Ms. Baker scrawled more notes on the board about death in the trenches. She’d written the sentence "What could have happened......" in large, bold letters. I looked at the trailing ellipsis, the thick, pink dots across the blackboard.