"Do you really want me to answer that?" Lucy asked.
"I euess not."
Lucy pushed me toward the vanity chair in her bedroom. "Sit." I gazed into the mirror with concern, focusing on the hair between my brows, which Lucy had said constituted a linking section. Since it was a well-known fact that no girl with a monobrow could ever have a happy life, I had no choice but to put myself in Lucy's capable hands.
Maybe it was just a coincidence, but the next day I had an unexpected encounter with Hardy Gates that seemed to prove Lucy's claim about the power of brow-shaping. I was practicing alone at the communal basketball hoop at the back of the subdivision, because earlier at gym class I had revealed I couldn't make a free throw to save my life. The girls had been divided into two teams, and there had actually been an argument over who would have to take me. I didn't blame them—I wouldn't have wanted me on my team either. Since the season wouldn't end until late November, I was doomed to more public embarrassment unless I could improve my skills.
The autumn sun was strong. It had been good melon weather, the hot days and cool nights bringing the local crops of casabas and muskmelons to full-slip sugar. After five minutes of shooting practice, I was streaked with sweat and dust. Plumes of powdered fire rose from the paved ground with each impact of the basketball.
No dirt on earth sticks to you like East Texas red clay. The wind blows it over you and it tastes sweet in your mouth. As the clay lurks under a foot of light tan topsoil, it expands and shrinks so drastically that in the driest months Martian-colored cracks run across the ground. You can soak your socks in bleach for a week, and you won't get that red out.
As I puffed and struggled to get my arms and legs working together, I heard a lazy voice behind me.
"You've got the worst free-throw form I've ever seen."
Panting, I tucked the basketball against my hip and turned to face him. A hank of hair escaped my ponytail and dangled over one eye.
There are few men who can turn a friendly insult into a good opening line, but Hardy was one of them. His grin held a wicked charm that robbed the words of any sting. He was rumpled and as dusty as I was, dressed in jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves ripped off. And he wore a Resistol hat that had once been white but had turned the olive-gray of ancient straw. Standing with relaxed looseness, he stared at me in a way that made my insides do somersaults.
"You got any pointers?" I asked.
As soon as I spoke Hardy looked sharply at my face, and his eyes widened. "Liberty? Is that you?"
He hadn't recognized me. Amazing, what removing half your eyebrows could accomplish. Suddenly I had to clamp my teeth on my inner cheeks to keep from laughing. Pushing the loose hair back from my face, I said calmly, "Of course it's me. Who'd you think it was?"
"Damned if I know. I..." He tipped his hat back on his head and approached me cautiously, as if I were some volatile substance that might explode at any moment. That was certainly how I felt. "What happened to your glasses?"
"I got contacts."
Hardy came to stand in front of me; his broad shoulders creating a shadowed lee from the sunlight. "Your eyes are green." He sounded distracted. Disgruntled, even.
I stared at the front of his throat, where the skin was tanned and smooth and dappled with a glitter of moisture. He was close enough that I could smell the intimate salt of his sweat. The crescents of my fingernails dug into the pebbled surface of the basketball. As Hardy Gates stood there looking at me, really seeing me for the first time, it felt like the whole world had been snatched up in a great unseen hand, its motion arrested.
"I'm the worst basketball player in school." I told him. "Maybe all of Texas. I can't make the ball go in that thing."
"The hoop?"
"Yeah, that."
Hardy studied me for another long moment. A smile curled one corner of his mouth. "I can give you some pointers. Lord knows you couldn't get any worse."
"Mexicans can't play basketball," I said. "I should be given a waiver because of my heritage."
Without taking his eyes from mine, he reached for the ball and dribbled a few times. Smoothly he turned and executed a perfect jump shot. It was a show-off move, looking all the better for being done in a cowboy hat, and I had to laugh as Hardy glanced at me with an expectant grin.
"Am I supposed to praise you now?" I asked.
He retrieved the ball and dribbled slowly around me. "Yeah, now would be a good time."
"That was awesome."
Hardy managed the ball with one hand while using the other to remove his battered hat and send it sailing to the side. He came to me, catching up the ball in his palm. "What do you want to learn first?"