“You’re wasted in I.T.,” she told him. “You should have been a nurse.”

“I’m only interested in your spots.”

New ones kept materializing, including a five-cent-piece-sized monstrosity on the end of her nose.

“Oh, gross!” said Kara, delivering a cup of tea from Michael one morning. I’m glad I had chicken pox when I was a baby! That one on your nose—man!”

Lyn laughed, put her hand to her face, and started to cry.

“Oh, no!” Kara was beside herself. She put down the cup of tea and crawled onto the bed next to her. “I’m such a bitch! And it’s not that bad.”

“I’m only crying because I’m sick and emotional. It’s O.K.”

Kara slung an arm around her. “Poor Lyn.”

Lyn sobbed harder. “Oh! When you were a little girl you used to hug me all the time. Remember your Crafty Case?”

Kara patted her kindly on the shoulder but obviously thought the disease had spread to her brain. “Daaad!” she shrieked. “I think we need you up here! Like, now!”

Kara came in after school that same afternoon, carrying a plastic bag from Kmart and a Women’s Weekly magazine.

She showed Lyn a picture in the magazine of a mobile with silver stars and moons, hanging in a child’s bedroom. “I thought we could make this together for Maddie,” she said. “To take your mind off, you know, how bad you look. I’ve bought all the stuff we need.”

“You lovely girl.” Lyn pulled cardboard, glitter, glue, and crayons out of the bag. “But what’s this?”

It was a new black bra with a label promising “fuller, firmer, more beautiful br**sts” and a picture of a woman demonstrating two magnificent examples.

“That’s a get-well present for you,” said Kara, elaborately avoiding Lyn’s eyes, as if she needed to be tactful. “It’s your size. I checked in the laundry basket.”

“Well, thank you!” said Lyn. Teenagers really were perplexing. “Thank you so much.”

“Yeah, O.K.”

An hour or so later, when the bed was covered with cardboard shapes, Lyn asked, as casually as she could manage, “What were you and Gina talking about with Cat the other day? Was it an assignment?”

“Ha,” said Kara. She was cutting out a star, and Lyn noticed that when she was concentrating she still stuck out the tip of her tongue just like when she was a little girl. She wanted to say, There you are! I’ve missed you!

“It’s just these e-mails Cat sends me and my friends. She started last Christmas.”

“Oh.” Trust Cat not to even mention it. “E-mails about what?”

“Stuff.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“You know, stuff. It started out just for me after Christmas, when I got depressed about something. But then I showed it to a couple of friends and then everybody started wanting copies. Girls have started e-mailing her questions and things. It’s like a newsletter now. She does it every week. It’s cool. She cracks you up.”

Lyn pushed her luck. “I don’t suppose I could see it?”

Kara sighed and put down her scissors. She looked at Lyn with stern benevolence. “It’s sort of private, you know. But you can look at the last one for like ten seconds, if you really want.”

She went off to her bedroom and came back with a sheet of paper that she held in front of Lyn’s eyes while she counted out loud, “One elephant, two elephant, three elephant…”

Lyn just had time to read the headings:

The problem with diets

The problem with boyfriends like Mark

The Donna/Sarah/Michelle dilemma

Handling Alison’s mum

Ideas for cheering up Emma (& anyone else suffering from Emma-type symptoms)

ANSWER FOR MISS X: No, that does not sound like herpes!

“…Tenelephant!” Kara snatched the paper away.

“Thank you,” said Lyn humbly, praying that Kara wasn’t Miss X. “You know, you can always ask me things too. About—stuff.”

Kara groaned and rolled her eyes. “The whole point is that it’s stuff you would never in a million years ask your parents. And even though you’re not my real mum, you sort of are.”

You sort of are. Lyn picked up the tube of gold glitter and poured a little pile into her palm. She looked back up at Kara and smiled.

“Oh no,” said Kara with disgust. “Please tell me you’re not going to cry again!”

The next day she felt well enough to sit for a while on the balcony. She lifted her spotty face up to the sun as Michael pushed a cushion behind the small of her back.

“I spoke to Georgina yesterday,” he said. “She rabbited on about changing her next weekend with Kara, but I think the real purpose of her call was to tell me she’s doing a tandem skydive.”

“Why would she want to tell you that?”

“When we were together she was always frightened of doing anything physical, or even sporty. I think she’s implying I made her like that. Or I was holding her back. I don’t know.”

“What an idiot.”

“It happens, though, doesn’t it? When you’re in a relationship you get stuck playing out your different parts. With me, she was the princess. Now she wants to say, See, there’s more to me than you thought!”

“We’re not stuck playing different parts.”

“Of course we are. You’re Wonder Woman and I’m—who am I? I’m Donald Duck. No. I’m Goofy.”

The tiny thread of bitterness in his voice dismayed her. She stretched out her fingers and battled a mad desire to itch and itch and itch until her skin lay in bloody shreds at her feet.

“You’re not Goofy!” she cried, and her itchiness made her sound frenzied.

Michael looked amused. “Thank you, honey.”

She burst out with it: “O.K.! I’ve been having these ridiculous panic attacks in parking lots and I’m frightened I’m turning loony like Nana Leonard and I know I should have told you and, oh my God, my God, I want to scratch!”

That afternoon, while Lyn slept, dosed-up on aspirin and slathered in cold calamine, Michael did a Google search and downloaded every word ever written about panic attacks and parking lots.

Four days after the picnic, Lyn felt strong enough to withstand a visit from her sisters.