When she was younger, she'd loved watching Anya and her mother decorate the many-tiered wedding cakes. Sitting on a high stool in the bakery's kitchen had been one of her first memories. And when she'd finally been given the responsibility of a real job, Keely had been too excited to speak. Every Wednesday afternoon, she'd dust the glass shelves that held the cake toppers and wedding favors and crystal goblets. She had passed the time by making up romantic stories about each of the little ceramic couples on the cake toppers, giving the grooms dashing names like Lance and Trevor and the brides pretty names like Amelia and Louisa.

She'd been just a kid then and her idea of true love had been more of a fairy tale than anything else. It wasn't the clean-cut, heroic guys that caught her attention now. Instead, Keely had found herself interested in the kinds of boys that her mother would call "bowsies" and "dossers." Boys who smoked cigarettes and boys who cursed. Boys who were bold enough to walk right up to a Catholic schoolgirl and start a conversation. Boys who made her heart beat a little bit faster just to look at them, and boys who weren't afraid to steal a kiss now and then.

Keely took one last look at her skirt, then jumped down from the bed. She grabbed her schoolbag. She'd always worked so hard to please her mother, but slowly she'd come to realize that she was not the kind of daughter her mother really wanted. She couldn't remain a little girl forever. She was twelve years old, nearly a teenager!

And she couldn't always be the dutiful daughter, couldn't always remember her manners and the proper way to sit in a skirt or eat soup with a spoon. There were times when she didn't care to think everything through and make the right decision. She reached into her schoolbag and pulled out a lipstick tube. A wave of nausea washed over her, and for a moment she was certain she'd throw up, just as she had after she'd walked out of the drugstore.