no surfing today," he'd tell us first thing each Saturday. "Bobby's dad don't want him doing that no more." Mr. Marconi had made that pretty clear early on. Bobby had come home with a knot on his forehead, and his father had wanted to know why, so he'd explained how we always surfed the milk truck. It was fun, he said, and not really dangerous because my father never went fast. Which was true—you _couldn't_ go fast in a milk truck if you tried.

But the next Saturday, when we pulled up in the truck, Mr. Marconi came out, too, and took my father aside. "Tell me about this surfing," he demanded, leaning toward him aggressively, his birthmark a bright purple. Lately, things had gotten a little easier betweenthe way he was rubbing his chin that he was trying to come up with another explanation. I, too, found it hard to believe, though for reasons more rooted in my world than his. The Beverlys simply _couldn't_ move away, because if they did, the perfect symmetry of my junior high world would crumble. Nan Beverly had to remain in Thomaston to counterbalance Karen Cirillo—the light girl and the dark. Could either exist without the other? I didn't see how. Even contemplating the possibility made me queasy, so while my father tried to come up with another meaning for the FOR SALE sign, I developed scenarios whereby Nan's parents would move and she'd stay on with an aunt and uncle I'd invented on the spot to take her