“More beautiful than Princess Diana,” her mother told Mol y that morning as she helped her get dressed.

“I need more bobby pins,” her sister replied.

Isabel a sat on the bed with her hair in a tight French braid. Early that morning, the hairdresser had teased and twisted her hair back, stuck baby’s breath in it, and sprayed it with an entire can of hairspray. From the side, it looked like a plant was growing out of her head. She kept touching it lightly to make sure the braid was stil there, and every time she did, she was surprised at the crispiness of her hair.

“Isabel a,” Mol y said. “If you keep touching your hair, you’re going to ruin it.” Isabel a put her hand in her lap and watched Mol y fluff her own crispy hair. Mol y stared at herself in the mirror until her face got white. “I feel funny,” she said. “A little sick.”

Isabel a walked downstairs, where she saw her mom running around like a crazy person and her dad walking briskly and trying to look busy so he wouldn’t get yel ed at. “Mol y thinks she’s going to throw up,” she announced. Her mom took the stairs two at a time to get to Mol y. Her dad gave her a little smile with no teeth, and continued his pacing.

The Mack family had been getting ready for this wedding for over a year. It was al they talked about, al they thought about. It was getting tiresome. Isabel a’s parents wanted everything to be perfect. They’d had the trim on the house repainted and the garden redone. “What’s the point?” Isabel a asked. “No one’s going to see the house.” Her parents just shook their heads at her and Mol y rol ed her eyes.

Isabel a’s mother and father went on a diet. They walked every morning and ate fish for dinner. When Isabel a’s dad ordered a steak or put butter on his bread, her mom would shake her head and say, “Oh, Frank.”

“What’s the difference?” Isabel a asked. “No one’s going to be looking at you guys.” As soon as she said it, Isabel a felt bad. She hadn’t realized how mean the words sounded until they were out of her mouth, which had been happening a lot recently. It surprised Isabel a, how nasty she could be without even trying.

Isabel a’s mother hung the wedding picture in the front hal . It was the first thing people saw when they walked into the Mack house. If you looked at it quickly, it was just a blur of blue dresses and big hair. As the years went by, it began to look like something you would see in a magazine, in an article titled “Fashion Mistakes of the Early ’90s.” Even the faces in the picture seemed to change. The bridesmaids began to look embarrassed to be caught in such blue dresses. But there was nothing they could do about it. They were trapped there, framed for the whole world to see.

“Whoa,” Isabel a’s friends would say when they saw it.

“I know,” Isabel a would say. “It’s horrendous.”

Before Isabel a moved to New York, her mom made her clean out her closet. “There are things in there that you haven’t worn in years,” she said.

“Let’s get it al cleaned out and I’l give it to the Salvation Army.” She said it in an upbeat voice like it would be a fun thing to do. “You’l feel so much better when it’s done,” her mother added.

“I real y doubt that,” Isabel a said.

Isabel a sorted through old notebooks and shoes. She threw out T-shirts from high school sports teams and col ages she’d made in junior high. In the back of her closet she found the blue floral beast. It was even worse in person. Isabel a thought the color would have faded over the years, but it was just as vivid as ever. She held it up for a moment and then brought it to the dress-up chest in the playroom. Maybe her nieces would like to play with it. She shoved it in with the pirate costumes and princess dresses and forgot about it.

New York in September was busy, like everyone was in a hurry to get back to real life after the lazy summer. Isabel a liked the feeling of it, the rushing around, and she let herself get swept along the sidewalks. She walked quickly, trotting beside the crowds of people, like she had somewhere important to be, too, like she was part of the productivity of the city, when real y she was just going to Bed Bath & Beyond to get a shower curtain.

Isabel a had decided to move to New York because she didn’t have a plan, and New York seemed like a good one. Her friend Mary was moving there to go to Columbia Law. When Mary announced this, Isabel a was floored. “You got into Columbia?” she asked. “How?”

“Thanks a lot,” Mary said. But Isabel a knew she didn’t real y care. It wasn’t that she thought Mary was dumb. She just didn’t know when Mary had

found the time to make a life plan, study for the LSATs, and apply to schools. Isabel a had barely finished her final photography project senior year.

“That’s not what I meant,” Isabel a told her. She thought for a moment, and then she said, “Maybe I’l move to New York too.” Isabel a hadn’t considered this before, but as soon as she said it, she knew it was a good idea. She had a roommate and a city al picked out, and that was something.

Isabel a told her parents that she was moving to New York. She expected them to ask more questions, to want to know the details of what she planned to do there. But Isabel a was the youngest of six, and her parents were not nostalgic about their children moving out of the house. Each time one of their children left, another one returned, and they had started to think they would never be alone again. “New York sounds great,” they told her. “We’l help you pay rent until you find a job.”

Isabel a was almost insulted, but she understood. They wanted her out of the house and on her own, so that she didn’t end up like her brother Brett, who graduated from col ege and then moved back home for two years, where he spent most of his time playing video games in his pajamas.

During those two years, her parents had many whispered conversations where her dad said things like, “Five years to graduate from that col ege, and the kid’s just going to sit around here and pick his nose? Not on my watch.”

The apartment that Isabel a and Mary found was barely bigger than Isabel a’s bedroom at home, but the broker told them this was as good as it would get. “For this neighborhood,” she said, “with a doorman, this is the size you can expect.” She sounded bored, like she’d given this speech to thousands of girls just like them, who were shocked at the amount they would have to pay to get their own shabby little corner in the city. The broker didn’t real y care if they took it or not, because she knew there was a long list of girls just like them, fresh to the city and desperate for a place to live.

If they didn’t take it, surely one of the others would.

Isabel a and Mary signed the lease and moved into the apartment, which had gray wal s that were supposed to be white and a crack in the ceiling that ran from the front door al the way to the back windows. When Isabel a stood in the bathroom, she could hear the upstairs neighbors brushing their teeth and talking about their day. They were from somewhere in the South, and their accents made everything more amusing. Isabel a often found herself sitting on the side of the tub, her own toothbrush in hand, task forgotten, listening to one of the girls talk about a date she’d been on.

Sometimes the neighbors smoked cigarettes in their bathroom, and the smoke traveled down the vent, seeping into Isabel a’s bathroom and making the air hazy.

They hung mirrors on the wal s to make the apartment seem bigger, and put up bright yel ow curtains to distract from the grayness. They put up a fake wal to make Mary’s bedroom, a slim rectangle that held her bed and desk and not much else. The wal was thin and Isabel a could hear when Mary sneezed or turned a page. Mary was always shut up in her room working, which drove Isabel a crazy.

“What are you doing?” she’d ask through the wal .

“Studying,” Mary always replied.

“Again?” Isabel a would ask. Mary would sigh.

“Yep. Again.”

After the first month, Mary started to go to the library more. “I’m too easily distracted,” she told Isabel a. It was quieter in the apartment with Mary gone so much, but Isabel a never real y felt lonely. And if she did, she’d go to the bathroom and listen to her neighbors chat, breathing in their smoke and laughing along with them as they said things like “Y’al knew he was a bump on a log” and “Back that train up!”

Isabel a got a job as an assistant, working for two high-level executives at a mailing-list company. She wasn’t sure what they did exactly, but she did know that they cal ed her their “executive assistant” and that her main job every morning was to get Bil a corn muffin with raspberry jel y and to get Sharon a chocolate chip muffin. Bil asked for his muffin, and Sharon did not. This was part of the game. Each morning, when Isabel a placed the muffin on Sharon’s desk, she said, “Oh, I shouldn’t!” but she stil ate it. “I was just getting Bil ’s muffin and I thought maybe you’d want one?” Isabel a would say in response. As long as she did this, they seemed happy.

Isabel a’s days and weeks fel into a routine, but she always felt like there was something else she should be doing, something better that was waiting for her. Sometimes on Saturday afternoons, she and Mary went to the park across the street and ate hot dogs in the sun. Mary always brought her textbooks with her, and took notes and read. Isabel a just stared at people.

“This is the first fal that I haven’t gone to school,” Isabel a said to her once.

“Mmm-hmmm,” Mary said. She turned a page and uncapped a highlighter.

“Maybe that’s why I feel so weird al the time,” Isabel a said.