Summary

Birdie, feeling lonely when her mother is working, walks into town to window shop, but she is taunted by a group of girls and runs home again. On the way, she’s picked up by Nicholas in the Marsh family’s Saab. He’s smoking something and chatting enthusiastically with Birdie all the way to her house. Birdie is enchanted.

Sandy announces that in order for Birdie to graduate from her home-schooled seventh grade, she must write a novel. Birdie invents a Mexican family as the subject of the novel, and develops a crush on the wayward teenage son, Richie Rodriguez, who is a physically abusive high school dropout. She masturbates while fantasizing about Richie and his girlfriend, but can’t decide which of the two characters she identifies with.

Sandy continues to have bouts of optimism mixed with periods of deep sadness. One evening, she...