I rode my white mare past where Mary lived. The trailer-house looked like it had been dropped accidentally in front of a gray barn. She came out to the white dirt road to talk to me. Her two little brothers stood in the yard and stared. I never rode past her house again, even though she was my friend at school. It was too weird.

Mary was stringy. She was thin like a white string, and had stringy blonde hair. She was my only friend in school who wasn't in special ed.

She was the only girl who wouldn't take her underwear off to shower after gym class.

Mom and I went to Buffalo Bills for pizza, and my dad was there, eating pizza on the other side of the restaraunt, with Mary and her step-dad. I knew they were friends because my dad had mentioned him.

"My dad is smart, he's getting all As in college." I said to Mary. I went on an on about how intelligent my dad was, which I believed because he frequently sat at our kitchen table and talked endlessly in philosophic tones.

"He's not smart." she said, looking directly at me. She looked away and said it again more softly.

Mary wasn't walking right, I noticed as we went toward our freshman choir class. All the sopranos circled around her, both out of protective instinct and curiosity. She lifted her shirt and her midsection was black. Her mom had beaten her to make her lose the baby.

The fourteen-year-old girls escorted Mary to the school counselor's office. Someone called her parents to warn them that the police would be coming out to question them. Mary's step-dad went to the barn and shot himself in the head with a shotgun.

My dad disappeared, but I knew where he went. He spent fifteen years watching TV at his mom's house, nervously looking out the windows.

Mary went into a group home and gained weight. She didn't look like a string anymore.

I rode my white mare past where Mary had lived. The place was abandoned.