Some relatives of ours were Catholic, and others had once been Jewish, but my parents were just bohemian pessimists, so I never had any religious training. Once when I was eight or nine I got a book from the library that compared the different concepts of heaven and hell espoused by various religions. After studying them all, I couldn't decide which one I might believe in, so I tried praying to a different god every night for a week. There was something in the book about how the Islamic hell had especially bad punishments for people who believed in the wrong gods, so for a brief period I decided I'd better worship Allah just in case. It never occurred to me to seek out a religion which didn't involve any threat of damnation--I guess a belief in hell, unlike a belief in God, came naturally to me.

Later on I considered becoming a witch; I made up sixth-grade pagan schemes with Jenny Meyer, who had a recurring dream that Satan was coming to steal the magic urn that contained her soul and throw it off a mountaintop, down into the fires of hell. She was my bunkmate at school camp and woke up screaming every night about the devil. Soon afterward Jenny decided to hate me, and then I moved away, and didn't know another girl who cared about hell until I met Paula.

Paula Jean Miller lived down the street from me in Santa Barbara. When my family first arrived, Paula's mother sent her over to welcome us, and to find out if these new people were OK. I doubt that Paula's first reports were favorable, but soon we were close friends anyway, because nobody else from the neighborhood showed any interest in me at all, and Paula must have sensed I was the type who would do whatever she wanted.

I think Paula felt she had things to teach me; and I admit I was fascinated with her. Though we were both barely twelve when we met, Paula had experienced things I could hardly imagine. I was the only child of poor, antisocial, intellectual parents, and had lived most of my life in rural towns; Paula had a suburban churchgoing family with two little sisters and two cars in the garage. And physically she was Southern California's idea of perfection, a natural blonde with a miraculous tan. I was pale and quiet, obviously well suited to a life spent indoors taking dictation of Paula's love letters in my well-trained handwriting.

Paula was generous about allowing me into her world. She let me come along on her dates and watch various pimply teens try to impress her by picking out Black Sabbath tunes on their guitars; I loitered in the driveway while they kissed her goodnight, looking out to make sure her parents didn't see. Then I would sleep over on the floor of her room, so I could help her get dressed for church the next morning.

Paula belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I'd never even heard of the Mormons before I met her; there was nothing about them in my book of hells. My parents were a little alarmed when they found out I was spending time with Christians, but I suppose they were grateful I had friends of any kind, so they let me hang around with Paula anyway.

I remember accompanying the Miller family to a Sunday service, where we heard a sermon about the necessity of tithing, then ate fluffy shards of sanctified Wonder bread and sipped grape juice from individual dixie cups passed around on an aluminum tray. Afterward Paula snuck me into the deep tiled room where people were baptised. Peering down into the empty tub, I felt a little dizzy, dazzled by the whiteness of it all. "Don't fall in," Paula cautioned me, "you could hurt yourself that way."

Other times Paula took me along for special early-morning scripture classes, conveniently timed so that we could go straight from church to the morning detention we were always assigned for cutting school. I remember in particular one session when the teacher asked the class to interpret a passage from the Book of Mormon: as I recall, it predicted that "the coming of the Lord will be great and terrible." A boy in the back instantly raised his hand and called out, "I think it means... it will be great for us and terrible for everyone else!" "Very good," the teacher beamed, looking eagerly at me to make sure I had understood.

Even though I clearly fell into the category of "everyone else," I somehow was allowed to live in the margins of Paula's family life, like a mascot, a servant or a spy. The Miller family consisted at this time of the usual drably frustrated parents and three daughters, of whom Paula was the oldest. One of the things I loved about Paula's home life was the fact that, unlike my own self-employed parents, and despite their commitment to the concept of family, Paula's parents were almost never around. Her father was a traveling salesman of medical supplies; her mother seemed to be constantly busy attending to church matters or shopping for the endless supplies of food that filled refrigerators, freezers, and shelves in the crawl space under the house. (I remember fondly the many meals Paula and I made of the macaroni and cheese her mother had set aside for the coming apocalypse.)

So Paula was often left in charge of her sisters. Molly, the middle sister, was the ugliest of the three girls and therefore presumed to be least vulnerable to moral corruption. She was a docile, stolid girl, requiring little attention other than the occasional derisive remark. Miranda, the youngest by several years, was more active and demanded closer supervision and guidance. Paula rarely complained under the burden of this responsibility. She approached the task of monitoring her sisters with impressive zeal, even if some of her methods and requirements might not have been those condoned by her parents or her church.

Paula was not above using deceit to prove a point or accomplish a goal, or even just to add drama to an otherwise ordinary situation. In fact, she was an extravagant liar. She lied to her parents constantly. She lied to me, when I was her best friend. She lied to the neighborhood boys who came around on weekend nights to profess their admiration by throwing pebbles at her bedroom window and brandishing their little penises when she lifted the curtain-- "I've seen one ten times bigger," she would say. Or alternately, "Oh my God, I'm in love!"