Alexandra is in a Ross Dress for Less buying bras (34C), underwear (size 6) and a pair of jeans (size 4). Normally she wouldn't shop at Ross, but the airline has lost her luggage and she needs a quick, cheap change-of-clothes. As Alexandra approaches the check-out counter, she spies Number Seven in the aisle beside her, also buying underwear.

Number Seven is one of forty-eight. Alexandra is absolutely certain he's Number Seven—she could tell you this without consulting the list she's been keeping since she was fifteen-years old. She could also tell you who was Number One, as there's no forgetting the placement of Number One-Number One is always number one. And she remembers most the details of Number Ten, for Ten was her first official boyfriend-a wrestler who wasn't ashamed to love her. She cheated on Ten with numbers Eleven through Fifteen (and here she draws a blank on names and faces)—and with each one (Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen) she pretended to herself that she was cheating on the unforgettable Seven.

Alexandra assumes that, like herself, Number Seven no longer lives in this over-priced (some might say hoity-toity) Southern California town. Perhaps his luggage was also lost. Alexandra is visiting her mother and grandmother for Christmas; Seven is probably doing the same. Alexandra guesses that if Number Seven were to turn his head toward her now, he would not recognize her; they haven't seen each other in sixteen years. Anonymity, however, does not free Alexandra from the tumbling wash-cycle feeling in her gut.

Tenth Grade: Alexandra (who is called Zandra throughout high school) is walking down the open air hallway of La Mesa high when she sees Seven walking toward her. She has been watching him since he arrived at this school (two weeks ago) after his family moved from Los Angeles. He looks like people on daytime television—straight, square teeth; thick, choppy hair; glinty eyes; tan. She does not look like people on television, or if she does, it's the neighbor girl, the dork, the comic relief. Zandra is fat, blond, pale, stumpy-nosed. There are three girls in her high school who are money-earning, professional models. The rest go to the local modeling school so that one day they may get paid for what they were born with. Number Seven, whose name is Ty, smiles at Zandra. It is a knowing smile. Ty obviously has heard stories about Zandra sleeping with, or giving head to, a passel of boys (always one at a time, as that was the line she decided she would not cross). Zandra knows she could never date a boy like Ty, she is aware of her value in the beauty-centric hierarchy of high school. She is also aware of the strength of teenaged horniness and the fungibility of the female body. The best she could do would be to have sex with Ty, so that is what she sets as her goal for Spring semester. Zandra's best friend, Amy, is cute, petite, with hair sun-bleached into white straw and patches of red-scabby skin across her permanently sunburned face. Amy surfs, drinks beer with one hand in her pocket and one ringing the neck of the bottle. She cusses. Amy doesn't care that she's cute and she doesn't care that most of the girls in school are gorgeous and she doesn't care that Zandra is exceptionally fat. Amy cares about catching good waves and going to good parties with good beer. There is no one in this school who is anything like Amy. There is no one in this school who is anything like Zandra. They are together through process of default, although, over time, they have genuinely grown to admire each other. Amy calls Zandra one day in April.

"Kegger at Henry's," she says. Henry is not a person, Henry's is a beach—or what everyone in town calls this particular beach, even though a carved wooden sign near the entrance states Arroyo Burro Beach.

"Can I borrow your blue pumps?" Zandra asks. In this town, girls actually wear pumps to the beach—taking them off when they hit the sand and carrying them carelessly in one dangling hand.

"Will you fucking keep them?" Amy's mother bought her the pumps to make her daughter seem more feminine. Amy refuses to wear them. She is a flip-flops girl. Year round.

"You wanna drive, or me?"

"You," Amy says.

"I'll bring my clothes to your house so we can get dressed together."

Amy plays loud music in her room while she and Zandra get dressed. Her room is actually the bomb shelter—down a narrow, dark corridor at the far end of the otherwise Spanish-style house. No one can hear a thing from her room. Bomb-proof means sound-proof. Zandra takes a shower at Amy's. The shower is large and industrial-big enough for six people. Zandra loves showering there because she can walk around the shower, she can lift a leg and shave it, she can sit on the built-in bench, she can shout out to Amy, who rarely showers (she finds the ocean cleansing) and who listens to her with the same automatic uh-huh as a husband might listen to a wife. In Zandra's shower at home, she has to step outside the phone-booth sized capsule to shave her legs. If she bends over to pick up the soap her behind will push open the streaked, plastic door.

Zandra takes great care dressing herself. She puts on make up-shadows the sides of her nose to make it appear narrower-spritzes herself with perfume, blow dries her hair into a cap of feathers atop her head and makes sure that her shirt shows plenty of cleavage. Amy wanders around her room singing and playing air guitar. The only fashion issue she has is whether to wear a bra or not.

"It makes your boobs look perkier," Zandra says.

"It's like wearing handcuffs," Amy says, but she puts one on anyway as she doesn't like the boys staring at her untethered breasts.

At the party, Amy and Zandra stand near the keg and laugh. They are watching Bone-man Deugal climb the side of a stony cliff. He is so drunk that he tumbles down to the sand repeatedly, only to stand and approach the cliff once more.

"He's like Sisyphus," Amy laughs.

"He's got syphilis?" Zandra asks. She is worried because three weeks ago she got drunk at a party and she thinks, but is nowhere near certain, that she had sex with Bone-man. He swears they did everything but, and Zandra remembers doing everything but, however, she fell asleep or passed out after having done everything but, and has been suspicious ever since.

"No! He doesn't have syphilis, don't worry!" Amy hands Zandra her beer and decides that she will climb the cliff with Bone-man. Zandra is left alone now. She looks out at the black sea past the mass of kids who move and buzz with the same frenetic energy as bees. She is not part of this swarm. She is like a giant scarab beetle.

"C.S.!" someone calls to her.

Zandra looks around for the voice and sees Tom Richter, President of the Key Club, wagging his tongue at her. Lately he and his friends have taken to calling her C.S., although she has not bothered to find out why.

Zandra waves. She is glad he called out to her, it makes her feel like they have a special connection. In truth, she knows the only connection they have is the fact that she made-out with him (briefly) and gave him a hand-job (not quite as brief) in a sandy, craggy cave during the last keg party at a beach.

Tom works his way through the crowd toward Zandra. Behind him is Ty who looks golden beside plain, Charlie Brown-faced Tom.

"You know Ty?" Tom asks?

Zandra nods.

"This is C.S.," Tom says to Ty by way of introducing Zandra.

"What's your real name?" Ty asks.

"Zandra," she says, "I have no idea why they call me C.S."

"For Cute Stuff!" Tom says, and he smiles crookedly.

Zandra is flattered. Her ability to ignore subtle clues and messages is one of her better-honed survival techniques.

"Ever been to those caves down at that point?" Tom points past the crowd to the spot where the cliff juts out into the water.

"Of course," Zandra says. "I went there with you!"

"I was asking Ty."

"Never been there," Ty says.

"There's one cave down there that you can only go in during low tide. It's so cool."

"You surf?" Ty asks.

"No," Zandra says. She can hardly look at Ty without grinning. "Amy does."

"You should let Zandra show you the cave." Tom winks at Ty, then walks off.

"Well, can't hit the cave tonight," Ty says. "It's high tide."

"Yeah," Zandra looks up at Ty and sways toward him. She knows that if she touches any part of his body, a shoulder, or forearm, there will be the sensation of hot guppies swimming through her veins.

"Let's move away from the masses," Ty says, and he leads Zandra toward the cliff where they sit against a rock. Zandra's heart is racing and she feels vaguely nauseous. She wants to run with Ty to the backseat of her car, or to a nook behind a rock, and have sex. But she is not as drunk as she usually is when she has sex. She is usually just a swampy, receptive pillow who delights in the experience of having a boy lost inside her. At times it seems to Zandra that she lives for that moment when she controls the boy, for the few seconds when he shuts-up, when he goes silent, stunned with sensation. But now Zandra does not feel like a swampy pillow. She feels like herself and she is uncomfortable and unsure as to how she will get Ty to her car so he can lose himself in her.

"Beer's warm," Zandra says, finishing off what's in her cup.

"Sucks," Ty replies.

They both stare out at the sky, at the moon which looks like a melted white breath mint-the edges soft and fading away.

"It's so beautiful here," Ty says.

"Yeah," Zandra says.

"I never want to live anywhere else," Ty says.

"Me neither," Zandra says. Zandra and her mother live with her grandmother in what Zandra believes is the smallest house in town. Zandra would give just about anything to live somewhere else—to distance herself from that house with the hollow doors, aluminum windows and no dining room.

"My dad's from New Jersey," Ty says. "So he's always pointing out how beautiful California is. It's like he never wants any of us kids to take it for granted."

"My dad's from here," Zandra says. "But he doesn't live here anymore. He moved to Lompoc when I was three."

"New Jersey, man, that's a freaky state." Ty says.

"My dad never wants to see me," Zandra continues. "He's got another family in Lompoc. It's like he's trying again, hoping he'll get it right the second time since he messed up so bad with me and my mom." Zandra has never said this aloud to anyone. She feels as if she just removed her heart from within it's boned cage and handed it to Ty.

"Sucks," Ty says.

"Truly does," Zandra says.

"I'm parched," Ty says.

"Me, too," Zandra says.

They stand and slowly make their way to the keg. Ty talks, he tells Zandra a story about his famous British uncle who's gay. Zandra giggles in a way that reminds her of crying. She is in love.

At 2:00 a.m. Amy and Zandra drive away from the party. Amy is drunk and she has to pee. On the curvy dark road which leads to her house, Amy pulls down her pants, places her bare bottom out the open window and pees as Zandra drives. Zandra laughs so hard that tears roll down her cheeks and she almost loses control of the car. This is why she likes hanging around Amy. Amy will do anything. For a brief moment Zandra wishes she had more friends than Amy, only so she could call them on the phone and snicker into the receiver as she tells them the wacky thing Amy did on the drive home. She decides she will call Ty tomorrow, Saturday, and tell him what Amy did.

Zandra sleeps at Amy's house. There is a red, floral couch in Amy's room—it is covered with clothes, socks, a wetsuit. With one long sweep of her arm, Amy pushes everything onto the floor to clear the couch where she'll sleep. She doesn't mind the couch and Zandra prefers the bed. If Zandra weren't so large, they'd sleep in the bed together, but it is a waterbed and the rising and falling of the mattress when Zandra rolls over or adjusts herself makes Amy feel seasick, especially if she's been drinking. At eleven the next morning, the girls wake up. Zandra scoots, sloshing the bed, so she is sitting against the headboard. She picks up the receiver and phones Tom Richter so she can get Ty's phone number. Amy reads Surfer magazine.

"Hey." Zandra speaks into the phone.

"C.S.! How's it goin?" Tom asks.

"Great. Did you have fun last night?"

"Can't remember, but I think I did."

Then Tom pulls the phone away from his face and shouts into a room, "Hey guys, C.S. is on the phone!"

"Crew's over here," Tom says. His parents are importers. They travel half the year, leaving Tom and his older brother home alone. His house is what is known as a party house, although Zandra has never been to a party there. They are not the kind of parties where anyone can show up—they're the kind that show the divisions among people—those who have swum in Tom Richter's massive swimming pool, and those who have not. Someone picks up another line.

"Hey C.S.!"

"Hey. Who's this."

"Frankie."

"You guys having fun?"

"Yeah, why don't you come over and make a few guys happy?"

"No way!" Zandra giggles as if the idea is absurd. A third boy comes onto a third line.

"C.S., my baby!" All three boys laugh.

"Where do you live?" the third boy asks, "I'm coming over to pick you up, 'cause we're about to have a naked swim party and you are the guest of honor."

More laughter abounds.

"Do any of you guys have Ty's phone number?"

The question throws the boys into hysterics.

"Lucky Ty," Tom says, "Why him and not us?"

"C'mon," Zandra says, "do you have his number? I have to tell him something."

"Come over here and give me a little something and I'll give you Ty's number," Tom says.

There is a chaos of noise: phones being passed around, people shouting in the background, someone does a bong hit into one phone, broadcasting the phlegmy gurgle.

And then the chanting starts: C.S.! C.S.! C.S.!

Zandra holds the phone away from her ear and out so Amy can hear.

"What the hell are they saying?" Amy asks.

"They're chanting my name," Zandra says.

"See us?"

"C.S. It stands for Cute Stuff."

Amy furrows her brow but says nothing. She puts down the magazine, walks to the phone and takes it from Zandra.

"You guys are a bunch of insipid assholes!" She hangs up before Zandra can grab the receiver.

"But I never got Ty's number!"

"Call 411."

Back at her own house, at four that afternoon, after having hung up on the answering machine approximately thirty times, Zandra gets Ty on the phone.

"Hey Ty!" Zandra tries to sound cheery and casual—but her voice is much to woodsy for that. (When she becomes thin, people will tell her she has a sexy voice. As a fat girl, they tell her she sounds masculine.)

"Hey. Who's this?"

"C.S.!"

"Zandra, how's it goin'?"

Zandra launches into the story of Amy peeing out the side of the car. Then she tells Ty about the day Amy's surf board popped up and bashed Amy in the face so that when she emerged from the sea, she looked like a bloody sea animal. She tells him that her uncle, who is also a surfer, felt her up once when she was twelve. She tells him that she wanted to smoke cigarettes but one boy, she won't name the boy, told her that if she smoked her voice would be so much deeper than it already is that everyone would think she was a transvestite. Finally, she tells him that she read the tide chart in the paper, and if he wants, she could show him that low-tide cave—but they'd have to meet at the beach right now. Before he can answer, she confesses that the boy who said she'd sound like a transvestite if she smoked was Randy Freeport, who, by the way, has the smallest dick she's ever seen. She asks Ty to promise not to tell anyone about Randy Freeport's dick because she doesn't want to spread rumors, and then she asks again, "Do you want to go see the cave?"

"Cave sounds cool," Ty says. "Let's go."

Zandra did not read the tide chart in the paper as there was no newspaper in her house (there never is) and she didn't have the energy to go out and buy one. So it is simple, dumb luck that it is indeed low tide when she and Ty meet up at the beach. As they walk to the cave Ty tells Zandra more stories about his family: his grandfather who plays a miniature harmonica with his nose, his cousin who was born without an ear and so has a wax prosthetic ear which once melted and slid down his face during spring break in Florida, his mother whom, he claims, should be an interior decorator because she did such a fantastic job decorating their new house—reupholstering every piece of furniture with the exact peach color of the pre-existing carpet. Zandra thinks she has never before met anyone so happy. She hopes that this happiness, this good life that surrounds Ty, will catch onto her somehow-that her life will become like his if she is attached to him. The cave is dark and narrow. Zandra reaches out and grabs Ty's hand as if she's scared. He slides his hand back so they are not palm to palm, but fingers to fingers.

"We should have brought a flashlight," Ty says.

"There's a big rock at the back," Zandra says, "it's like a bench."

"What do you think, two hours before the tide comes in?" Ty asks.

They reach the rock bench and sit side by side looking out toward the sea. It is as if the ocean is a stage framed by the arc of the cave mouth and they are in the darkened theater.

Zandra leans into Ty, her head tilted back as if to ask for a kiss. Ty doesn't respond.

"Why don't you call me C.S.?" Zandra asks, "everyone else does."

"I don't know," Ty says.

"Don't you think I'm cute?" Zandra giggles louder than she intended.

"Yeah, you're cute."

"So call me C.S. Cute Stuff!"

Again, Zandra places her head in kiss-position. Ty obliges, but there is a hesitancy in his body, a resistance, which Zandra senses but chooses to ignore as she ploughs her hand into Ty's shorts and pulls out his penis. (Later, Ty will confess to Zandra that no one has ever handled his penis within thirty seconds of lip-lock.) Ty's penis seems to have a mind of its own, as there is no hesitancy here; it is responding to Zandra as if she were Christie Brinkley herself. Within minutes Zandra is naked on the wet, muddy sand. Ty is on top of her, he, too, is naked. Zandra's eyes have adjusted to the light. She studies Ty's face as he stares at her breasts flowing out below her armpits. Zandra imagines her breasts as exotic sea-flowers melting into the sand. Ty shuts his eyes now—the moment has come—he pushes into Zandra with one final, silent, thump.

"I'm on the pill," Zandra says, when Ty opens his eyes.

"Uh...uh, okay." Ty looks startled. He extracts himself from Zandra and dresses immediately.

"We better get going," Ty says.

Zandra lolls on the mucky floor. She arches her back and wiggles her bottom as if to make an engraving in the sand with her ass. She feels like a mermaid, although Ty is not responding to her as if she were a mermaid. He looks at her as if she is less human than a mermaid—as if she is fishy. Zandra wedges her hands against the sides of her flowery breasts, a pose she's seen in Playboy. Still, Ty does not respond. What does he see if not flowers? Hairless sea anemones? Squid without legs? Two blobs of opaque jelly fish?

Zandra sighs and extends a limp, limpet-like hand. Ty takes the hand and pulls her to her feet while turning away as if to check the incoming tide.

"Tide's coming in," he says, and he walks to the edge of the cave, where he is ankle-deep in water, while waiting for Zandra to dress.

In the parking lot, they stand at their cars and chat. Ty looks as if he feels like an empty, used sock. A sock that smells like testicles and has shiny dirt patches on the heel and toe. But Zandra remains hopeful. It is normal post-coital deflation, she tells herself. He will perk up again within minutes.

It is days before Zandra admits that Ty will never return her calls. It is days before she realizes that he will not eat lunch with her or walk down the halls with her at school. Amy is the only one who sees Zandra cry. She is the only one who knows what happened between Ty and Zandra. Ty tells no one, and Zandra has no one, besides Amy, to tell. The fact that their encounter goes unrecognized (no signals and hoots sidled with Ty's name in the hallways at school) makes it seem as if perhaps it didn't happen. The public denial feeds a personal insistence. Zandra replays the short story of herself and Ty entwined on the ocean floor (like a heap of blanched seaweed) every night in her head. This is her story, she is the only one who wants the rights to it, and so she changes it—adding things here and there, taking away other things—until it is the greatest tragic story of her life.

The woman in Front of Alexandra is returning three pairs of shoes and purchasing five pairs. It is a complicated transaction that has prompted the cashier to leave her station and fetch a manager.

Number Seven's items have been rung through. He is leaning over a credit card slip that he signs quickly, decisively. When he finishes signing, he looks up at Alexandra and pauses, cocks his head—the gesture of a question mark. As he's walking toward the open glass doors, he turns around and approaches Alexandra.

"You look so familiar," Number Seven says, same voice as in high school.

I am C.S., Alexandra thinks.

It was a game the boys played: How many versions of Zandra could you come up with using only the letters C.S.? Amy told her about it after a party while helping her, drunk and panty-less (Scott Thurber was wearing them on his head like a turban) into the backseat of Amy's car where Zandra eventually vomited a clear stream of vodka. Instead of reeling from the litany (Cock Sucker, Chunky Slut, Craggy Slit, Crusty Scag, Cunty Slop, Cankerous Slit, Canine Slash, Can O' Suckme, Cunt Sauce, Clit Scrap...) which she insisted Amy recite, Zandra threw her heft against the list. She would be in on the joke, she decided; she would come up with new C.S. names; she would be with as many boys as there were words to describe her.

"Do we know each other?" Seven continues.

"No. Sorry." Alexandra gives a quick, polite smile, then turns her head away.

This is what's so great about being grown-up, Alexandra thinks, you don't have to re-fuck that guy you knew way back when. You don't have to find out what he thinks of you now. You don't even have to say hi.