"What's the point," I said. "Marching across the stage like ducks in a shooting gallery."

Yvonne sighed. "If I was you, I'd be proud."

I smiled. "If you were me, you'd be me. Whoever the hell that is."

Mrs. Luanne Davis suggested applying to City College, I could transfer anytime, but I'd already lost faith. A future wasn't something I could forge by myself out of all these broken pieces I had, like Siegfried's sword in the old story. The future was a white fog into which I would vanish, unmarked by the flourish of rustling taffeta blue and gold. No mother to guide me.

I imagined the lies the valedictorian was telling them right now. About the exciting future that lies ahead. I wish she'd tell them the truth: Half of you have gone as far in life as you're ever going to. Look around. It's all downhill from here. The rest of us will go a bit further, a steady job, a trip to Hawaii, or a move to Phoenix, Arizona, but out of fifteen hundred how many will do anything truly worthwhile, write a play, paint a painting that will hang in a gallery, find a cure for herpes? Two of us, maybe three? And how many will find true love? About the same. And enlightenment?Maybe one. The rest of us will make compromises, find excuses, someone or something to blame, and hold that over our hearts like a pendant on a chain.

I was crying. I knew I could have done better, I could have made arrangements, I could have followed up, found someone to help me. At this moment my classmates were going up for their awards, National Merit, Junior State. How did I get so lost? Mother, why did you let my hand slip from yours on the bus, your arms so full of packages? I felt like time was a great sea, and I was floating on the back of a turtle, and no sails broke the horizon.

"So funny, you know," Yvonne said. "I was sure I was going to hate you. When you came, I thought, who needs this gringa, listen to her, who she thinks she is, Princess Diana? That's what I say to Niki. This is all we need, girlfriend. But now, you know, we did. Need you."

I squeezed her hand. I had Yvonne, I had Niki. I had this Raphael sky. I had five hundred dollars and an aquamarine from a dead woman and a future in salvage. What more could a girl want.

THAT SUMMER we flogged our stuff at swap meets from Ontario to Santa Fe Springs. Rena got a deal on zebra-striped contact paper, so I zebra-striped barstools, bathroom scales, shoebox "storage units." I striped the hospital potty chair, the walker, for the zingy seniors. The cats hid.

"Display," was Rena's new catchword. "We have to have display."

Our dinette set already went, striped and varnished. She got four hundred dollars for it, gave me a hundred. She said I could stay as long as I wanted, pay room and board like Niki. She meant it as a compliment, but it scared me to death.

At the Fairfax High swap meet, we had a blue plastic tarp stretched over our booth, so the ladies could come in and look at our clothes without having sunstroke. They were like fish, nibbling along the reef, and we were the morays, waiting patiently for them to come closer.

"Benito wants me to move in," Yvonne said when Rena was busy with a customer, adjusting a hat on the woman, telling her how great it looked.         . < . :

"You're not going to," Niki said.

Yvonne smiled dreamily.

She was in love again. I saw no reason to dissuade her. These days, I had given up trying to understand what was right or wrong, what mattered or didn't. "He seems like a nice guy," I said.

"How many people ask you to come share their life?" Yvonne said.

"People who want a steady screw," Niki said. "Laundry and dishes."

I shared a mug of Russian Sports Mix with Yvonne, a weak brew of vodka and Gatorade that Rena drank all day long.

Rena brought a sunburned woman over to meet me, hoisted the striped American Tourister hardsider onto the folding table.

"This is our artist," Rena said, lighting one of her black Sobranies. "Astrid Magnussen. You remember name. Someday that suitcase worth millions."

The woman smiled and shook my hand. I tried not to breathe Sports Mix on her. Rena handed me a permanent marker with a flourish, and I signed my name along the bottom edge of the suitcase. Sometimes being with Rena was like doing acid. The artist. The Buddhist book I'd found on trash day said you accrued virtue just by doing a good job with whatever you were doing, completely applying yourself to the task at hand. I looked at the zebra bar and barstools, the suitcase disappearing with the sunburned woman. They looked good. I liked making them. Maybe if that was all I did my entire life, wasn't that good enough? The Buddhists thought it shouldn't matter whether it's contact paper or Zen calligraphy, brain surgery or literature. In the Tao, they were of equal value, if they were done in the same spirit.

"Lazy girls," Rena said. "You have to talk to customer. Work up sale."

She saw a young man in shorts and Top-Siders looking at the barstools, turned on her smile and went out to hook him. She saw those Top-Siders fifty feet off.

Niki finished her mug of Gatorade cocktail, made a face, poured some more while Rena had her hands full. "The things we do for a high."

"When are you going?" I asked Yvonne.

"Tomorrow," she whispered, half-hiding behind her curtain of smooth hair.

I stroked her hair back with my hand, tucked it behind her small, multipierced ear. She looked up at me and smiled, and I hugged her. She burst into tears. "I don't know, Astrid, do you think I should? You always know what to do."

I laughed, caught unaware. I squatted down by her seat on a rickety director's chair. "Me? I know less than nothing."

"I thought you didn't lie," she said, smiling, holding her hand in front of her mouth, a habit to conceal her bad teeth. Maybe Benito would marry her. Maybe he would take her to the dentist. Maybe he would hold her in the night and love her. Who was to say he wouldn't?

"I'm going to miss you," I said.

She nodded, couldn't talk, crying while she was smiling. "God, I must look like such a mess." She swiped at her mascara that was running down her cheeks.

"You look like Miss America," I said, hugging her. It was what women said. "You know, when they put the crown on? And she's crying and laughing and taking her walk."

That made her laugh. She liked Miss America. We watched it and got stoned and she took some dusty silk flowers Rena had lying around and walked up and down the living room, waving the mechanical beauty queen wave.

"If we get married, you can be maid of honor," she said.

I saw the cake in her eyes, the little bride and groom on top, the icing like lace, layer after layer, and a dress like the cake, white flowers glued to the car and everybody honking as they drove away.