The door to the locker room squeaked open and a buff, sweaty woman strutted in. Hanna stuffed her duffel in a locker, spun the combination lock, and tottered toward the fitness classroom. Mason and James stopped their pull-ups as she passed. They nudged Mike. Hanna pretended not to notice as he turned and looked, rocking her hips back and forth and praying that her butt looked amazing.

“Welcome!” A woman in a skimpy black leotard and tights and tall eighties bangs waved as Hanna walked through the door. “You’re new, right? I’m Trixie.” The instructor gestured to a spare pole in the center of the room, right next to Colleen. “That pole has got your name on it.”

Hanna sauntered up to it and shot Colleen a smile. “Oh, hey!” she chirped in a mock-surprised voice, as though their meeting was completely by accident and Hanna hadn’t strategically planned this out from the moment she’d heard the boys talking about it in the locker room at school.

“Hanna?” Colleen looked Hanna up and down. “Omigod! How fun! I didn’t know you pole danced.”

“It’s not like it’s hard,” Hanna sniffed, summoning her inner Ali. She checked out her reflection in the mirror. Her hips were thinner than Colleen’s, but Colleen had bigger boobs.

“Well, you’re going to love this class,” Colleen said. “Of course, if you pole dance all the time, you’ll probably find it really easy. I bet you’re really good.” She leaned in closer. “And we’re cool about Mike, right?”

Hanna wasn’t sure if Colleen was genuinely being sweet or diplomatic, so she stuck her nose in the air. “Whatev,” she said coolly. “Mike was just too much work for me. There was so much pressure to look like a Hooters hostess. And he’s always checking out other girls at parties—it used to drive me crazy.” She shot Colleen an apologetic smile. “I’m sure he doesn’t do that to you, though.”

Colleen opened her mouth to speak, looking so worried that Hanna wondered if she’d gone just a teensy bit overboard. Just then, the song “Hot Stuff” blared through the speakers. Trixie sauntered to the front of the class, hooked her leg around her pole, lifted her butt in the air, and did a half-raunchy, half–Cirque de Soleil spin. “Okay, everyone!” she squawked into a headset. “Let’s start off with some low squats!”

She bent her knees out to the side and lowered herself toward the ground. The class followed, pumping in time with the beat. Hanna peeked at Colleen; her squats were low, balanced, and perfect. Colleen glanced back at her and gave her a broad smile. You’re doing great! she mouthed. Hanna fought the urge to roll her eyes. Could she be any more nauseatingly positive?

Trixie led them through a series of neck rolls, shoulder raises, and provocative hip bumps. Next, they tried out a series of dance moves that involved whipping around the pole like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. Hanna kept up just fine, her heart pounding hard and just the teensiest bit of sweat beading on her forehead. Sexy sweat, of course.

The next time Hanna glanced over her shoulder, the boys were sitting on the mats outside the classroom, staring at the girls like ravenous dogs. Fueled by their presence, she scooped up her hair and dropped it behind her back, wiggling her butt at them. James Freed visibly shuddered. Mason whistled. Colleen noticed the boys and did a sexy shimmy. The boys nudged each other appreciatively.

Colleen gave Hanna a conspiratorial wink. “They can’t get enough of us, huh?”

Hanna wanted to smack her. Didn’t she realize they were competing?

“Advanced students only for this next move,” Trixie announced as the soundtrack shifted to a sultry Adele song. She marched up to the pole, wrapped her arms and legs around it, and climbed it like a monkey. “Use your thighs to grip the pole, girls!”

Colleen proceeded to wriggle up the pole. She took one hand off, arched her back, and hung upside down for a moment. The boys applauded.

Hanna gritted her teeth. How hard could the move be? She grabbed the pole and began to climb. She was able to stay up for a moment, but then her thighs gave out, and she began to slip toward the ground. She sank farther and farther until her butt kissed the floor. Her reflection in the mirror looked ridiculous.

“Good try, Hanna,” Colleen chirped. “That move is really hard.”

Hanna dusted off her butt, then gazed around at the other girls in the room all making love to their poles. Suddenly, they didn’t look like strippers, just chubby middle-aged women making fools out of themselves. This was the most idiotic fitness class she’d ever taken. There was a much easier way to get the boys’ attention.

She turned to the window again and eyed the boys. When she was sure they were looking at her, she casually tugged down her leopard-print, too-small shirt, exposing the top of her red, scalloped-lace bra.

By the looks on the boys’ faces, she knew they saw it. Their jaws dropped. James grinned. Mason pretended he was going to faint. Mike didn’t crack a smile, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. It was good enough for Hanna. She sauntered out of the class, swishing her hips to the strip-club beat.

“You’re not staying?” James called out, his voice full of disappointment.

“Gotta leave something for your imagination, don’t I?” Hanna said coyly. She could tell without turning around that Mike was still staring. She also knew that Colleen was watching her in the mirror, probably feeling a little confused. But whatever. She knew what Their Ali would say if she were still alive: All’s fair in love and pole dancing.

12

WORDS OF WISDOM

That night, Emily stood in the hallway at Holy Trinity, the church her family attended. A bunch of construction-paper balloons bearing psalms and Bible verses were tacked up on the walls. A long gold runner stretched from one end of the hall to the other. The air smelled like a mixture of incense, stale coffee, and rubber cement, and the wind whistled noisily under the door. Years ago, Ali had told her that the whistling wind was the wails of the people buried in the cemetery out back. Sometimes Emily still believed that was true.

A door at the far end of the hall opened, and a graying man peered out. It was Father Fleming, the oldest and sweetest priest at the church. He smiled. “Emily! Come in, come in!”

For a second, Emily considered turning and bolting back to her car. Maybe this was a huge mistake. Yesterday, when she’d come home from swim practice, her mom had sat her down at the kitchen table and said she and her dad were considering postponing their trip to Texas. “Why?” Emily had asked. “You’ve planned this trip for months!”

“You just don’t seem like yourself,” Mrs. Fields said, folding and unfolding a cloth napkin again and again. “I’m worried about you. I thought, with the scholarship to UNC, you’d turn a corner and put everything behind you. But it’s still weighing on your mind, isn’t it?”

Tears inadvertently filled Emily’s eyes. Of course everything was still weighing on her—nothing had changed. Even worse, the woman who’d wanted her baby had found her. If A didn’t tell everyone about her pregnancy, Gayle probably would. And then what would happen? Would Emily still have a home to live in? Would her parents ever speak to her again?

She put her face in her hands and murmured that everything was so hard. Mrs. Fields patted her shoulder. “It’s okay, honey.” Which made Emily feel even worse—Emily didn’t deserve her mom’s sympathy.

“I have an idea.” Mrs. Fields picked up the cordless phone from its cradle. “Why don’t you talk to Father Fleming at the church?”

Emily made a face, thinking about Father Fleming. She’d known him forever. He’d listened to her first confession when she was seven years old, telling her not to sweat calling Seth Cardiff a walrus in the schoolyard. But admitting to a priest she’d had premarital sex? It seemed so wrong.

The thing was, Mrs. Fields wouldn’t take no for an answer—in fact, she’d already set up a meeting with Father Fleming the following day without asking Emily first. Emily relented, if only to reassure her parents that it was okay for them to go to Texas as planned. They’d left for the airport that morning, although Mrs. Fields had left a miles-long list of emergency contacts on the kitchen table and arranged for several neighbors to check in on Emily during the time they would be gone.

But now here she was, shuffling toward Father Fleming’s office. Before she knew it, she was hanging her coat on a hook shaped like a hand making a thumbs-up sign on the back of the door and looking around the room. The décor took her aback. A ceramic head of Curly from The Three Stooges leered from the windowsill. The sanctimonious preacher from The Simpsons gave her a puckered-lipped pout from next to a gooseneck lamp. There were a lot of religious texts on the bookshelves, but Agatha Christie mysteries and Tom Clancy thrillers as well. On the desk were two tiny handmade Guatemalan worry dolls.

Father Fleming noticed her looking at them. “You’re supposed to put them under your pillow to help you sleep.”

“I know. I have some, too.” Emily couldn’t hide the surprise in her voice. She didn’t think priests were superstitious. “Do they work for you?”

“Not really. What about you?”

Emily shook her head. She’d bought six worry dolls at a head shop in Hollis shortly after what happened in Jamaica, hoping that placing them under her pillow would calm her down at night. But the same thoughts still zoomed through her mind.

Father Fleming sat down in the leather chair behind his desk and folded his hands. “So. What can I do for you, Emily?”

Emily stared at her chipped green nail polish. “I’m okay, really. My mom was just worried about my stress levels. It’s not a big deal.”

Father Fleming nodded sympathetically. “Well, if you want to talk, I’m here to listen. And whatever you say goes no further than this room.”

One of Emily’s eyebrows shot up. “You won’t tell my mom about . . . anything?”

“Of course not.”

Emily ran her tongue over her teeth, her secret suddenly feeling like a festering sore inside of her. “I had a baby,” she blurted. “This summer. No one in my family knew about it except for my sister.” Just saying it out loud in such a holy place made her feel like the devil.

When she snuck a peek at Father Fleming, though, he still had the same unflappable expression on his face. “Your parents had no idea?”

Emily nodded. “I hid in the city for the summer so they wouldn’t find out.”

Father Fleming fingered his collar. “What happened to the baby?”

“I gave her up for adoption.”

“Did you meet the family?”

“Yes. They were very nice. It all went very smoothly.”

Emily stared at the cross on the wall behind Father Fleming’s desk, nervously hoping it wouldn’t shoot off of its hook and impale her for lying. Her baby was with the Bakers, but things had gone the opposite of smoothly.

After Gayle had met with Emily and Aria in the café, Emily couldn’t get Gayle’s offer out of her mind. The Bakers seemed special, but what Gayle brought to the table was special, too. Aria had scolded Emily for being so preoccupied with Gayle’s money, but she didn’t want this baby to grow up the way she had, listening to her mom agonize about money every Christmas, missing out on a Washington, D.C., field trip because her dad was out of a job, being forced into keeping with a sport she wasn’t interested in anymore because it was her only ticket to college. Emily wanted to say that money didn’t matter to her, but since she’d always had to think about money, it definitely did.