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Next to Christopher, Roddy did look like a kid—scrawny and unformed. However, Christopher was getting heavier. Kip debated saying so out loud and decided against it.

  “This,” said Molly in a lazy drawl, “is my little Roddy. When I don’t have anything else to do, I go out with him. Remember? He was hanging around me at the Pou-Belle?”

  This was so clearly true, by the way Roddy flushed and hung his head, that Kip wanted to smack them both. Why did Roddy cringe like that? Why didn’t he stand up to Molly? He should laugh at her, or shrug, not dwindle into a puddle.

  Christopher laughed, loudly and drunkenly. “He’s really the bottom of the barrel, Molly. Thought you could do better. Look, there’s even a barrel over here. We could toss out all those stupid apples and stuff old Roddy in and see if he falls to the bottom.”

  “He will,” said Molly with conviction.

  Roddy wilted even more. It made Kip furious that she had to be the one who talked back to Molly. “You don’t exactly rise like cream to the top, yourself, you know, Molly,” said Kip sharply. “In fact, if I had to define where you stand, I’d say that—”

  “Let it go, Kip,” said Roddy, touching her arm. Not taking it, no—nothing so forceful.

  “You’re going to let her talk about you like that?” demanded Kip.

  “Just drop it, okay?” mumbled Roddy. “People are looking at us.”

  “At us, maybe,” said Christopher. “You they don’t even see, Roddy.”

  In a last desperate effort to remove himself, Roddy said, “Let’s dance, Kip.”

  The last thing she wanted to do was dance. She wanted to throw Molly and Christopher out. She glared at Roddy, and now he cringed from her. Kip turned her back on Roddy. Her skirt swirled noisily, adding a flourish of sound effects to her gesture. She stalked away from all of them.

  “Great dance, Kip,” said a voice.

  She managed a smile, and looked up, trying to keep her anger at Roddy, Molly, and Christopher off her face.

  It was Gary.

  Only the handsomest boy she’d ever had a crush on. A flush of delight came to Kip’s cheeks. Gary had an elusive style. Nobody quite knew where he stood, only that it would be nice to stand there with him. Kip’s heart raced. “Thank you,” she said, thinking, we could dance. Oh, Gary, ask me to dance!

  His arm circled another girl.

  It was—Kip stared in disbelief—it was Beth Rose Chapman.

  She almost said out loud, “I don’t believe it. You asked her?” She choked back the words. The flush on her face deepened, for fear Gary had understood.

  “I love your dress, Kip,” said Beth Rose softly.

  She had to look down to remember what her dress looked like. The top was very plain, but also very low cut. When she looked down it was like announcing that Gary should look there, too. She was doubly humiliated. But I do look good in it, she thought. She waited, hoping Gary would also tell her the dress was nice.

  He said, “Did you lose Roddy? He’s over by the band, probably looking for you.”

  He was smiling at her. He didn’t seem to intend irony.

  Kip was back at her original low. I get my first date and it’s with pathetic Roddy, because Molly had a better offer. I run into Gary Anthony and it’s his date who says I look nice. Beth Rose. She’s as pathetic as Roddy. If I had to bracket any two losers it would be them.

  Gary said to Beth, “Let’s dance again.” Beth Rose beamed at him. She really was very lovely, in an unreal sort of way. It was the dress: dated, unusual, a dress that somehow transformed Beth into somebody special. But I have a lovely dress, too! Kip wanted to scream.

  Gary escorted Beth Rose down Kip’s scarlet carpet, onto the dance floor Kip had set up, and it was Beth’s face he smiled down upon and Beth’s waist his hand touched.

  Why am I kidding myself? she thought. I’m no winner. I’m a loser. Even wretched nasty Molly is more a winner than I am. Christopher may be drunk, and college may have turned him nasty and insulting, but he’s one heck of a date and it isn’t me he flew back to Westerly for.

  She turned to dance with Roddy, because she had to do something with another person: She could stand alone not another moment. But Roddy was not where Gary had said. He was gone.

  The rock music she ordinarily loved gave her a matching rhythmic headache. I hurt Roddy because he was there, she thought.

  People were staring at her. Poor Kip, she could hear them thinking. Alone at her own dance.

  “Please be-all right!” he was crying. “Oh, God! Oh, Emily! Please! Be all right. It wasn’t us that crashed. It was just a tree coming down. We aren’t even hit, we’re just blocked.” Matt’s hands circled her and pulled her back against him. “I should never have taken this car. No seatbelts. It’s all my fault. Emily, talk to me.”

  Emily thought dizzily, this is dialogue out of a sinking ocean liner movie. “I’m okay,” she said. “I didn’t actually pass out, I just sort of lost my breath.”

  His hands swept over her forehead and face, exploring in the dark, feeling for blood or broken bones. She could feel his panic when his chest lurched with breathing hard. “It’s okay,” she said to him, “we’re both okay.”

  For a moment they held each other limply. They were neither dead nor bleeding. Little else mattered.

  A horrid weird crackle startled them both.

  Emily swallowed in fright. Lying on the large flat hood of the old car was a live wire, sparkling like a firecracker on the Fourth of July.

  “Don’t move,” whispered Matt hoarsely.

  Whispering back, as if the wire was listening, Emily said, “Why not?”

  “Because whatever we’re touching right now isn’t conducting electricity. If we shift position, we might come into contact with the current.”

  “Now there’s a comforting thought,” said Emily, but actually she was comforted. There were worse things than lying in Matt’s arms. And Westerly had excellent volunteer response from both fire department and ambulance. They’d be here momentarily. Or the utility company, as soon as the houses around reported an electricity outage. She and Matt would be freed, and their date would be an adventure story to tell for years.

  Even the knowledge that there were virtually no houses on this back road, and there might be nobody to report the wires down didn’t bother Emily. She would be perfectly content to repose against Matt for hours. Although her feet were already getting cold.

  The Ford’s headlights gleamed through the branches of the downed pine tree. “At least your grandfather won’t kill you,” Emily said to Matt. “You slammed on the brakes when you heard the tree coming down and saved the car as well as us.”

  Matt’s fingers tightened on her wrist. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Emily, it wasn’t the tree coming down I heard. There was another car. Look through the branches. The car over there is totaled.”

  She sat up slightly.

  A large branch had stabbed through the driver’s window of the wrecked car. Glass glistened like smashed ice. If there were people in the car, they were not moving.

  When Matt spoke, Emily could feel his fear: His lips were numb and the words were stiff. “They could be bleeding to death in there,” he mumbled. “I have to help.”

  “We can’t move!” Emily said fiercely, grabbing him. “We can’t get out of the car. We’ll be electrocuted.”

  For another half minute they remained frozen. She watched the tiny white numbers flashing on her digital watch, flicking seconds in her face. Seconds in which people could die.

  “We can’t be cowards,” said Matt. He attempted a smile. “What’s a live wire between friends?”

  I am a coward, she thought. I admit it. I don’t want to touch a live wire, or a car with a live wire lying on it. I don’t want to crawl around in the dark over broken glass and—

  “There might not be another car for quite a while,” said Matt. “If we don’t help, nobody will.”

  Emily shuddered convulsively.

  Matt rea
ched for his own door.

  “No!” she cried. “You can’t get out that side. The wire is right there. You have to get out my side.” Which meant she would have to get out first.

  Lightning ripped through the sky, plunging them into savage light, and then vanished.

  Thunder came instantly, and the old Ford shivered with the boom. Emily sobbed, but Matt didn’t hear her over the thunder.

  Shifting slowly to her right, each microsecond waiting for the blast of electricity that would burn through her heart, Emily thought, Am I doing this because somebody needs our help? Or am I doing it to impress Matt? So he’ll like me still?

  What good will a date do if I’m going to be buried?

  With utter terror, Emily put her bare hand on the metal of the door handle.

  Nobody in the cafeteria saw the lightning or heard the thunder. The band was giving nature excellent competition.

  Anne didn’t even hear the band.

  She thought only of Con.

  Con’s family moved a great deal. His mother loved to restore houses. She was always finding a “treasure” (which Con referred to as “the newest dump”) and restoring it. When the new kitchen gleamed, the wallpaper was all up, the last electrician and mason had gone, she lost interest in the house, sold it for a profit, and moved on. Mr. Winter never cared. He was an athlete, whose life rotated around the games he coached, the games he played in, and the games he watched on television.

  Con was their only child.

  His mother made a point of finishing his bedroom first, so that in the midst of dust and turmoil he could shut the door and be reasonably civilized. But there were three high schools in the city and Con had attended two of them; eleven junior highs and Con had gone to three of those.

  She’d met Con during a transfer. He walked into Anne’s seventh grade social studies class on a bright March morning when the wind whipped hard enough to make even seventh graders dream of kites. He sat next to Anne. They never spoke. Once Con rode home with Anne during a snowstorm, when Con’s mother didn’t come to pick him up. It would not have crossed Mrs. Winter’s mind to worry over how Con would get home; he had been self-sufficient since he was ten.

  “How do you like school, Con?” said Mrs. Winters.

  “Fine,” said Con.

  In April they moved again, so Con was at another junior high. Anne saw him once at the shopping center, and another time she walked into the pet store and he was buying food for rats he kept for a biology class experiment. They talked briefly of white rats.

  In ninth grade, Con walked into Anne’s class again. Only this time it was French, and Con startled all of them by speaking it fluently. He’d spent the summer in France at an American camp. Anne fell in love with him in about ten minutes.

  Maybe it was eight minutes.

  He’d grown earlier than most boys. Still thin, with no muscles yet, he was five nine when most ninth grade boys were still five four. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle,” he said to Anne in a scratchy sexy voice. “Je t’aime.”

  The class laughed. They needed a clown. French was boring, boring, boring. But Con turned out not to be a clown. He had seen Anne, sat next to her, and said, and meant it, “Je t’aime.”

  Mrs. Stephens wouldn’t let them date. “You’re much too young,” she scolded. But she let Con come over all the time and soon he was a fixture in the Stephens household. Two or three times a week he’d have dinner with them, visit their cousins with them, go to the movies with them, mow the lawn for them. And Anne went with Con’s mother to look at wallpaper and watched Sunday afternoon sports programs with Con’s father.

  They talked continually. School, their plans, their friends, their hopes and dreams. Until they discovered sex. Then, somehow, there was much less talk. Even though it seemed to Anne there was so much more to talk about, Con talked less. The more they shared physically, the less she knew of Con himself.

  The deception involved sickened her.

  Always the pretending, always the lying, to one set of parents or the other, and often to themselves. Hiding from family. Getting up afterward and running home as if nothing had happened. Con would never talk about that, either. When it bothered her the most, Con was nothing but a shrug, a silent person waiting for her to get out of the car.

  And yet she loved him so much!

  What happens when I go home and tell them? thought Anne. After they stop screaming, after they stop weeping, the questions begin.

  But Anne, when did you. …

  You know how I said we were going to the movies? We went over to Con’s old house, and lay on the football blanket you keep in the trunk of our car, and used the upstairs bedroom.

  But Anne, you told us. …

  I lied.

  But Anne, we had faith in you.

  You were dumb.

  Con, who rarely read books, once showed her a book jacket. “Here,” he said. “Read this.”

  Anne read. The author was twenty-nine. Since leaving home (at a tender age, it said) he had been a logger in Alaska, a bartender in Santa Fe, a navy signalman in the Pacific, an instructor of motor repair in Africa, a freelance reporter in Afghanistan, and raced yachts off the coast of England. He’d had pet jaguars (animals, not cars) and his hobby was refinishing antique fire engines.

  “He made that all up,” said Anne. “Probably lives in Detroit and works in an automobile factory.”

  Con was furious at this remark. “That’s my life, Anne. I made a copy of this in the Xerox machine so I’d always have it around. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  Anne laughed. “Don’t be silly,” she said, hugging him. “You’d miss me too much.”

  Con just smiled.

  Now she remembered that smile. An I-know-more-than-you-do smile. He’s always loved me, she thought. He’ll go right on loving me. But he won’t stay. A baby? Be real! Con has no ties. He’s used to moving. He won’t think a minute before picking up and going on to the next adventure. He’ll be off for the Far East and I’ll be at home with a wailing baby in wet diapers.

  Gary was busy talking to Beth Rose.

  Con was looking around for somebody—anybody—so he wouldn’t have to talk to Anne.

  She said, “Con. Con, please. We’ve got to—”

  “Don’t start anything,” he said. His voice was almost inaudible, but ferocious, as if he could kill her. When she looked into his eyes she saw nothing there but rage. For one terrible moment she was physically afraid of Con. Con, whom she loved.

  Con turned to Gary and Beth Rose, because they were there. “Don’t you have a nickname, Beth Rose? I don’t remember calling you by such a long pretty name.”

  Beth Rose could not remember Con calling her anything, ever. “Well, sometimes people call me Brose. It’s shorter.”

  “But do you like it?” said Con. “It sounds masculine, and you are the most fragile, feminine thing at this dance.”

  Anne heard that. He is talking to me, she thought. He’s talking to me through Beth. He’s saying, Annie, old girl, this is your problem. I can flirt with anybody I please, and you can’t stop me.

  Gary looked faintly puzzled, and his eyes rested on Anne, trying to figure this one out. He couldn’t, so he did what boys always did: He moved on. “Let’s dance again,” he said to Beth, and didn’t wait for an answer, but spun her out into the dancing couples and vanished into the press of long gowns.

  Con never looked at her. He turned and yelled, “Christopher Vann! So how’s the Ivy League, buddy? Hey, Molly! Looking good, lady. You tried this punch yet? It’s weird. Green sherbet floating around in it like frogs hatching.”

  Molly laughed hysterically. Christopher whapped Con on the shoulder. Anne said, “I’m going to fix my hair. I’ll be right back.”

  She could not seem to cross the cafeteria. Everybody she had ever known blocked her passage. How lovely you are, Anne, they said to her. How nice the dance is, Anne, they said to her. How’s Con, Anne? Time for him to move on again, isn’t it? They lau
ghed.

  It seemed to her generations had passed, and eons scraped by, in the time it took to get out, to reach the girls’ room, to be safely alone.

  It was very clean. Much cleaner than usual. No doubt Kip had arranged that, too. Kip was remarkable.

  If I cry, my eyes will be red and my makeup will run. I’ll look so awful I won’t ever be able to leave the bathroom.

  But I have to cry. It’s like a volcano in me, bursting through my faults. I’m going to cry buckets and there’s nothing I can do.

  She walked into the last stall, carefully shot the bolt behind herself, and leaned against the gray graffiti-scratched metal.

  Chapter 9

  “THE WIND JUST BLEW the wire off my car,” said Matt. “We’re all right. Come on, hurry up, open the door.”

  A gust of vicious wind flicked sharp cold rain into Emily’s face. She had never seen Nature so wild. There had been no forecast for this sort of storm. Rain, high winds, a little bit of lightning—that’s what the television said. A lot they knew.

  And now that the wire was blown off the car, where was it? Emily wanted to know. Lying beneath her feet?

  Matt climbed over her to get out. She didn’t even care that his muddy shoes left tracks on her formal dress. “Get the flashlight out of the backseat,” he said to her. Glad to stay in the car, Emily flipped over the seat, found the flashlight, and handed it to him.

  Matt vanished.

  There was no lightning to illuminate him. He did not stand in the light from the Ford headlights. The other car’s front end had been completely bashed in and had no lights. He had been swallowed by the night. She shrieked his name. “Matt! Are you all right!”

  But the wind was louder than her cries.

  Emily could feel the lightning hitting her. She could feel what it would be like to be cooked from the inside: having that electricity course through her body, ripping through her limbs, cooking her brain. What would be left of me after lightning got me? thought Emily. Would I still have a soul after my mind was literally fried?

  Above her the huge trees tossed wildly, their branches rubbing together with a scream like wolves after prey.