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drank a lot and they fought all the time, so.
 Do you still see your dad?
 Yeah, a couple times a year maybe. And we talk on the
phone. He s in North Carolina.
 Mine just got divorced last spring, Mike said.  I haven t
seen my dad since he left.
 Really? I felt sorry for him.
 Yup. He picked up his guitar and strummed it.
 Do you know where he is, though?
 Yeah, he lives in Annandale. He calls here sometimes. I
don t want to see him, though. He punched me right before
they broke up.
 God. How come? Nobody in my family had ever hit me.
 He told me not to get this haircut I wanted. When I got it
anyway he freaked out and hit me. Mom threw him out, and
we sold the house and moved here.
MI KE 85
 What was the haircut?
 It was like shaved on the sides.
Mike lowered his head over his guitar. He was hard to hear
since he wasn t plugged in, but I was enthralled by the way his
hair flopped over his eyes and how his fingers flew up and down
the fret board. I scooted back on the bed and leaned against the
wall, where I could see out his window. The view was of the
sidewalk out front and the adjacent row of parking spaces that
were only about a quarter filled. I studied the way the still, late-
afternoon sun shone on the tops of the cars as the pot tingled
through me. Mike s mom had stuck up for him. I didn t know
what my mom would do if William hit me. When I was twelve
I kept forgetting to lock the front door when I went out and
William got so angry he ignored me for a week. Mom acted
like nothing out of the ordinary was going on, even though he
was absent at dinner and came home from work without ac-
knowledging my presence.
 I m actually not talking to my father right now either, I
said.
Mike stopped playing guitar.  How come? he asked.
I told him my secret. How I wasn t really Polly Clark, but
Polly Hessler. I told him that even though my dad had a college
degree and a job, he still couldn t support me.  It s probably
because he s an alcoholic, I said.  He spends all his money on
liquor.
Mike was quiet, and I worried I d said too much. I held my
breath as he rose from the bed and carefully set the guitar back
on its stand. Then he crossed back over to the bed and swooped
down on top of me. He reminded me of a seagull. He was on
his hands and knees, and I had to strain my neck up to kiss
him. He was a seagull, and I was a crane. We stayed like that,
kissing, until without any kind of warning he pushed himself up
into a kneeling position and began unbuttoning his pants.
I propped myself up on my elbows. I could see Mike s pais-
POLLY
86 POLLY
ley boxers peeking through his fly. I was confused. He hadn t
even been up my shirt yet, and here he was taking his pants
off.
 What are you doing? I asked.
Mike took me in with bloodshot eyes.  I don t know.
He lay back on top of me. I could feel his warm breath on
my neck. He didn t seem to have an erection. It was hot under-
neath him, and a puddle of sweat was forming in the center of
my bra. I wriggled down so we could kiss some more.
The next day we were walking from my locker to first period
when Mike pulled another drawing out of his backpack. This
drawing was abstract. He had used green, brown, and orange
markers, and each shape he had drawn blended into the next.
The edges of the paper were saturated with color. I was im-
pressed.
 You re really good, I said.
After class I hung it up in my locker. I borrowed some
tape from Bethany, who inexplicably kept masking tape hanging
from one of her locker s coat hooks. She peered around the
edge of her locker door at the drawing. I could tell she wanted
to ask about the picture but didn t.
In the weeks that followed I fell into a pattern of going over
to Mike s after school to get stoned and make out. He didn t
try to have sex with me. Instead, I gave him blow jobs. It was
the easiest way to put off sex, especially after what had hap-
pened with Jason. The best part was I didn t have to take off
my clothes. I was hoping Mike couldn t tell what kind of body
I had. There wasn t anything I could do about my face, but I
liked to think that my body was my secret. I had a dark, oval
MI KE 87
birthmark on my lower back, about an inch long. Mike didn t
know about it. My T-shirts and sweaters were baggy, and my
posture was slightly stooped. I liked to think people couldn t
tell whether I had boobs. I longed to wear my combat boots
with short skirts, but my legs were still too skinny. Instead I
wore my boots under my jeans like a guy.
Carrie and Lyle dropped us off each afternoon, and Wil-
liam picked me up on his way home from work. I would have
preferred for Mom to pick me up having William do it was
embarrassing but she worked in the opposite direction and
Mike s house was on William s way. Mom and William didn t
make much of a fuss over  my new friend, as Mom referred to
him. William didn t even see Mike when he came to get me;
he d just honk his horn at 5:15 and I d run out, half an hour
before Mike s mom was due home. On the ride home William
listened to NPR and bitched about Reagan.
 Trickle-down economics! Give me a break! Anti-missile
weapons in outer space! Jesus H. Christ!
I didn t respond. He wasn t talking to me.
I waited for Mom and William to grill me about Mike,
but they left me alone. At the dinner table, they talked about
work. Mom was frustrated. She was nothing but a glorified
secretary at her property management job. She was one of the
most knowledgeable people in her office, but the sanctimonious
men above her didn t care. William was supposed to be spend-
ing his time designing software, but the idiots he worked with
bombarded him with stupid, unrelated computer questions all
day. He got more done at home in two hours than he did all
day in the office.
When they got finished complaining about their jobs they d
pause to watch Dan Rather, who droned from a miniature TV
on the counter. Then they d start in on politics, venting about
Iran-Contra and Ollie North. I hated him, too, for his military
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88 POLLY
haircut and his self-important, bully s face.
 He looks like an older version of the meanest jocks at my
school, I said, which made them both laugh.
After dinner I d go up to my room to do homework and think
about Mike. I d lent him my Bad Brains T-shirt, and he d given
me a bracelet he made out of fishhooks. I had to take the
bracelet off to shower because it got caught in my hair when I
washed it, but otherwise I wore it all the time. I even slept in
it. And Mike was there at my locker every morning, waiting to
walk to first period together. We were obviously a couple for
anyone who cared to notice. I pretended that everyone did.
On the days that I didn t go over to Mike s I went over to
Lyle s basement to watch their band practice. They had decided
on the name Massive Hemorrhage. Lyle s basement was full of
boxes with labels like UPSTAIRS LAMPS, SKI STUFF, and GRANDMA S
THINGS, and Carrie and Theresa and I had to squeeze between
them to get to a couple of scratchy, worn-out couches. I loved
Lyle s basement. Like my house, his was built on a hill, so
the basement had a sliding glass door that led to the backyard.
Other than that it was nothing like my own basement, with its
rust-colored rug and big TV and spotless furniture. My mother
was not one to waste space on storage. She gave so much stuff
to Goodwill that they called whenever their truck was going to
be in the neighborhood. The night before a pickup she d roam
through the house with a trash bag, looking for things to get
rid of.
 Do you really think we re going to use this waffle iron
again? Who makes waffles in this house?
 These hand weights are just cluttering up the laundry
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