Five more minutes, ladies,? announced Ms. Crumb to her Constance Billard ninth-grade creative writing class. She pulled her curly black hair out of the way and prodded the wax in her right ear with the eraser of a yellow number two pencil. ?Remember, it?s notwhat you?re writing about buthow you describe it.? None of the girls looked up. They were too busy writing, and besides, they really didn?t want to see what Ms. Crumb was doing when she thought they weren?t looking. They?d already been grossed out enough times. According to the girls,all the female teachers at Constance Billard were lesbians, but Ms. Crumb was the only teacher at Constance who was officially out. She wore a rainbow pin to school every day, shared a country house in New Paltz with five other women, and often referred to her ?partner??as in, ?The other night my partner was drinking Amstel Lite and watching Barbara Walters, who she has a total crush on,while I sat in the kitchen and graded your papers.? Every year the ninth graders looked forward to having Ms. Crumb?s creative writing class, assuming she?d be cool and down-to-earth since she was so forthright about her sexuality. But after a day in her classroom her students realized they weren?t just going to sit around for forty-five minutes talking about girl stuff with a woman who liked girls?they were going to have to write things every day in class, read them out loud,and then listen to Ms. Crumb and their classmates criticize what they had written in a sometimes not very nice way. Ms. Crumb was a major hardass, but as far as subjects went, creative writing was still a hell of a lot better than geometry. Today Ms. Crumb had asked the girls to pick a partner? in the platonic sense?and write a paragraph describing a part of their partner?s body. Of course Elise and Jenny had picked each other. They were beginning to do almost everything together. It?s odd that we decorate our ears with earrings and don?t try to cover them,Jenny wrote.They?re just as indecent as the parts we do cover, like bare holes that go straight into our heads. My friend Elise?s ears are small, with a little blond fuzz on them. She has good hearing, too, because she never says, ?What?? and asks me to repeat myself. I guess she keeps them pretty clean. Jenny looked up and decided to erase the last line and replace it with something else. Ms. Crumb might get offended, since she obviously had some kind of ear-cleaning fetish. But instead of writing something else to replace the ear-cleaning line, Jenny?s mind wandered back to her e-mail. She?d been checking it regularly, just like Blair had told her to; however, the only messages she?d gotten had been jokey ones from Elise and her brother, telling her to stop checking her e-mail and get back to her homework. She glanced at Elise, who was scribbling away, already on her second page. Jenny wished she had Dan?s knack for the written word. She was better at detailed drawings and painting and calligraphy. At the top of the page she drew an elaborate drawing of Elise?s ear and the side of her face, hoping she?d score points for being artistic, even if her essay sucked. Her mind wandered again, to the blond boy she?d spotted in Bendel?s. Was he artistic, too? The bell rang to mark the end of last period and Ms. Crumb stood up and brushed chalk dust from her dark gray wool pinafore dress that looked like it had been made by nuns somewhere cold and fashionless, like Greenland. ?Time?s up, ladies. Pencils down. You can hand in your papers as you leave.? She tucked her maroon-stockinged feet into a pair of black felt L.L. Bean clogs. ?Happy Thursday afternoon!? ?So what?d you write about?? Jenny asked Elise after they had packed up their book bags and were on their way out the school doors. ?None of your business,? Elise answered, blushing. ?Don?t think I?m never going to find out. You?ll probably have to read it out loud on Monday,? Jenny reminded her. ?I wrote about your ears, but it kind of sucked.? The two girls bowed their heads against the fierce February wind and headed over to Lexington to take the bus down to Bloomingdale?s on East Fifty-ninth Street. Elise had enlisted Jenny to help her to find the perfect pair of jeans for less than eighty dollars, and, as usual, Jenny needed some new bras, since she was always wearing out the elastic or breaking the underwires in the ones she had. Bloomingdale?s was a tacky war zone of tourists sporting the new tracksuits and sneakers they?d just bought at Nike Town, along with gaggles of blue-haired bargain hunters, but it was the only place to go for oversized bras and moderately priced jeans other than Macy?s, which was simply gross. Those with better taste and bigger credit limits went to Bergdorf?s, Bendel?s, or Barneys, but for people like Jenny and Elise, Bloomingdale?s would just have to do. ?I can?t believe you can just put those on and they?re the perfect length,? Jenny said enviously as she watched Elise try on her first pair of Paris Blues jeans in the dressing room. Jenny was barely five feet tall and had to shorten everything. Elise was five foot seven, but she had other problems, like her completely flat chest and the podge that padded her hip bones and lower back like a second butt. Elise scrunched up her freckled face and stared down at the bulges riding above the waistband of the low-rise jeans. ?See why I can?t eat in public?? she grunted, sucking in her stomach and tugging on the waistband. The jeans were 9 percent Lycra, but that didn?t seem to make much difference. She exhaled and let her stomach out, giving up. ?Okay, forget it. Next pair.? As Elise inched herself out of the reject ones, Jenny held up a beautiful pair of dark rinse flared Seven jeans that were on sale and would be a major score if they fit. She noticed Elise was wearing light blue lacy underwear and quickly averted her eyes so Elise wouldn?t accuse her of staring. Elise took the jeans, slipped her feet into them and slid them up around her hips. ?Oh my God. I can?t believe I forgot to tell you this,? she said, tugging on the button-fly waist. ?Before creative writing I heard Kati Farkas and Isabel Coates talking about Nate Archibald in the bathroom at school. The............