<DIV><DIV><B>Part One</B><BR> <BR>Whenever Maize snuck away to
see Hal Jamesley, there was always a blissful moment when she
hardly recognized herself. It happened at the desk in the
guidance suite where a smoked glass partition separated the
secretary’s cubicle from the counselors’ offices. Maize would
stop to check herself out in the partition before taking the
extra five steps to loiter outside Hal’s door, not knocking,
just standing there until he noticed her shifting her feet on
the carpet and summoned her forward for their next
conference.<BR>There were several mirrors Maize could gaze into
during the school day—in the girls’ bathroom or the girls’
locker room, in the rearview mirror of her friend Lyla’s car or
the compact in her own pocket—but the smoked glass partition was
her favorite. In its charcoaled and wavering reflection she was
miraculously improved—slightly older and more cultivated, like
Hal, with an urbane and faintly Gallic mystique she knew she
didn’t have in her real life at seventeen. H