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He knew he'd hit paydirt the moment they'd gone through the double doors. One of the walls of Burgers & Cupcakes was filled entirely with faux animal heads, some from animals that didn't exist (there was a listless-looking jackalope right below an off-white unicorn) who sang a song with animatronic mouths if you put in a quarter. There were no kids around, though: it wasn't a Chuck E. Cheese, it was a tacky ironic haven with waiters and waitresses alike squeezed into kicky little shorts.

If they wore rollerskates, they probably had to put them on outside. Charys hadn't been able to pass one without complimenting their owner: Hi! Rad shorts. Or: your shorts are looking excellent. They'd been good sports about it. You had to be a good sport in shorts that short.

On the first three steps in she had taken on the bushwhacked look of somebody on their first E tab at a fireworks display, a boundless child's delight. Nothing could have thrilled her more. She looked more like herself as she pivoted around, a helium balloon bobbing belatedly from her wrist as the chatter completely ignored them. When the trays came out from the lines, they had on them two things: burgers, and cupcakes. Some had cardboard boxes of fries with a suspicious-looking aioli on the top, but otherwise Burgers & Cupcakes did what it did and did it well. Burgers. And cupcakes.

"Holy s**t, minigolf," she'd said. One minute ago Charys had said: holy s**t, animal heads! "This is Americana. This is the American Dream."

"Born down in a dead man's town," he agreed. "The first kick it took was when it hit the ground."

"Holy s**t," she just said delightedly, and he thumbed her a quarter. Better to get it over with then and there. She strode over in her hipster short-coveralls and cardigan to insert it into the animatronic wall, and they creaked into a slightly grating Orbison Anything You Want. When she got back to his side she looked as though she'd won the Queen's Award for Excellence, and she admired her handiwork.

"You've been holding out on me, Mr. Freeman," she said. "Eighteen long years I have dwelled in Middle-Earth and I never knew about Burgers & Cupcakes."

"They give you the address your first year at university, C.M."

"Nice try, R.G.," she said, but she was too busy taking off her slightly douchey fedora and dusting it off. He noticed what he'd been noticing in the past three weeks: there was a dark, mousy regrowth in her powder-blue hair, which was only bizarre if you knew that in the past five years there had never been any indication that Charys Murphy had brunette hair to regrow. She set the fedora on the balloon dog instead. "A brilliant riposte."

"I'm full of 'em. Want a cheeseburger?"

They both got cheeseburgers. She told the server that it was her thirteenth birthday and that Ray was her big brother from the Make A Wish Foundation, but he respected her birthday wishes by reinforcing that she had 'multiple brain tumours.' When they sat down with their burgers and their cupcakes (hers had a candle stuck in it) she looked almost the same way as she had the day she had brought back Catch-22: the look of a too-excited kid with no sleep, mouth sore, manic. It was actually something of a relief.

"All right, here's my birthday wish," she said. They had gotten a table to watch people play minigolf in the gloaming: there were a few stragglers about on that mild evening, most of whom seemed to be caught near the windmill hole. Charys extracted the candle from her chocolate cupcake and held it up, cupping her other hand over the tiny flame, miniature wax dribbles on her fingernails. She had painted them green. "Want to hear it?"

Ray was extracting the tomato from his cheeseburger. "Tradition dictates it won't come true. Are you pulling a reverse psychology on your wishing? I'm not sure about its safety, so I can't give you any guarantee."

"I wish for minigolf, Ray," she said, and she pursed her lips to blow it out.

"Overruled. You saw me buy a ticket."

"All my bets are safe bets. All my wishes are dope wishes." The candle was one of those re-lighters that kept at it: she blew at it again, and now she was shaking it to try to douse the flame. "All of my foibles are dread foibles."

Her cupcake was one of those quadruple-chocolate menaces that leaked brown from every cupcake pore. She held it up to her mouth and let its contents ooze in a little before answering, keeping her mouthful of brown tar clamped away as their eyes followed the mom dragging a bitching six-year-old back to a booth. She noticed him noticing. He noticed her noticing him noticing, and no more was addressed on the subject.

"I've outgrown Christmas and birthdays," she said. "Also Easter and Talk Like A Pirate Day. I didn't have any specific age-eighteen wishes in mind. Why don't we go sign me up for the military?" ("No," said Ray.) "Why don't I get tried as an adult?" ("No," said Ray.) "Let's get me a credit card. I can exercise my right to buy porno." (Her teacher declined, Cherry.)

She took a bite of cupcake, then took a bite of cheeseburger. Her face betrayed nothing about two great tastes that the jury was off tasting great together, but she swallowed. It was difficult to tell she was eighteen at all. Charys Murphy was going to get carded until she was thirty. The slightly tarry mascara on her eyelashes said sixteen: the overalls cut above her slightly bony knees were all fourteen: the bobby socks put her at a safe twelve years old. Maybe if she quit dressing like Dolores Haze at a Coldplay release party.

"Here is my birthday req," she said suddenly, scraping chocolate goo from a finger. "Talk Suthuhn at me for once, sensei. You know God will never let me past the Bible Belt. I'll melt into slag, 'oh, what a world, what a world'."

"Probably," she said. Ray Gordon's forks went two ways for her and always had. The first fork was painted cautiousness, renouncement of all douchebaggery, apologising for things that come out your mouth and lines you cross and buttons you push and she shuffled her feet going down it. The second fork was painted why do you go here when you know you have troubles enough, Charys Murphy. "I mean, if you're asking have I heard Red Staters talk around me, in. The air. The vicinity. I guess so. Hey, did you know I'm thinking of changing my name by deed poll?"

Or you could vault the gate inbetween the two forks, hoping it worked. Often what it did was garner you neither, none of the respect she desperately pretended was behind path number two nor the reassurance of path number one. She raised her foot and admired a sock instead, rolling her ankle in a circle as she brushed away cupcake crumbs. "I was Googling myself, as I do, and it turns out my name is a magical elf on World Of Warcraft. Last straw, Mr. Gordon. I know why the caged orc sings. Goodbye to Sandra Dee."

Ramona Murphy tapped her cupcake against his in the manner of champagne glasses. "To birthdays," she said, and if she were thrown off-balance by the setdown it only showed in her eyes. She was busy eating the rest of the cupcake in tiny piranha bites. "At Notre Dame, the sections are prepared!"

They ate the rest of their respective burgers in sync. The silence was companionable, at least, and she was ducking her head to suck her fingers clean of mayo-ketchup glop before delicately grabbing a napkin. "Eighteen," she said, in a bit of wonderment. "Jesus. Eighteen." As though nobody had ever made it to eighteen before, as though nobody could have expected her to make it to eighteen.

She'd expected eighteen. What she hadn't expected was the lack of happening: by eighteen she had expected her entire life to be different, hounded by pretending she hadn't wanted anything at all. Eighteen would have heralded a lot more in her life stretching out in front of her than the dirty piece of newspaper she was going to wipe her feet on. A dirty scrap of sports section, muddied by somebody else's feet. She'd expected, well, she'd expected a lot of things, none of the things that she currently had.

Callum had once said to her, you have the most unrealistic expectations of anybody I know. He was completely wrong. She had the stupidest expectations of anybody they'd known.

But she slipped from her seat and went to sit beside her English teacher. "I have eaten my burger," Charys said. "I have eaten my cupcake. Let me look at your minigolf arm." (She looked at his minigolf arm.) "Just as I thought, a classical minigolf arm with good elbow action. In this case, sensei, I say we raise the stakes."

Charys had watched Ray Gordon cram a lot of things between bread and into his maw over the years. It was a fascinating process. It was a little like watching a pelican down a newspaper wrapped full of french fries, and you expected to be able to see his gullet expand with the shape of a BLT on the way down. It occurred to her that she was going to miss that.

"Minigolf, I am talking about minigolf," she said. It was better to ignore the what ARE you talking about lest it p***k at her blackened cinder of a heart. Somehow she always expected him to know exactly what she was talking about. This was not the case. She had always spoken fluent in-joke, Internet meme, obscure literary reference, and she ended up only talking to herself. "Let me put it to you this way, Mr. G: if you win the match we are about to have, I'll do the entrance exam for Slobberin' Heights."

Her smile was beatific. "Clause one to the best of my ability, clause two with studying beforehand, clause three not after having taken crystal meth." Ray Gordon's hand was double the size hers was. "Clause four, I can show you the world, shining, shimmering, splendid."