I wasn't so tense and jittery now, just that little bit of conversation helped. The mirror still showed brassy red hair, though, and I wondered what auburn would look like on me. Maybe it would go all right with my brown eyes. I was pretty, sure enough, and I'd be getting even prettier in time – a dozen grown-ups had said so. But it was still nice to hear it again – beautiful – especially from someone like Bernadette, someone who really meant it.

The brush-strokes helped, too, so smooth and steady, a lovely familiar feeling – all the lovelier for what it signified, clearing up my last remaining doubts. Nothing to fret about anymore! My secret was still safe, apparently, everything was the same as before – the naughty book and the pink underwear and the secret within a secret. And meanwhile I had seen one of life's mysteries unraveling, the kind that, other kids just didn't know about. Only in pictures, of course, but a lot more interesting than those dumb stories about the birds laying eggs and the bees buzzing around and carrying pollen from flower to flower. Who cared about naked birds and bees? Or even naked babies! But naked grown-up women…

Lesbians. A book about lesbians. A naughty one, too – all that hugging and kissing and sticking tongues into each other – why would sweet Bernadette even have such a book?

Out of curiosity, I took a sneaky look into the mirror, angling for a different view this time. Her hair really was a mess, not as bad as dirty old straw exactly, just a dingy darkish blonde with no shine at all. Then, suddenly, something changed right then and there, her skin turned rosy, a real deep blush, and I realized that our eyes had met in the glass for one tiny instant. And it transferred itself to me, whatever it was – now I could only wonder if my own blush was as visible as hers.