Chapter 21

riggs’s fraternity brothers were the first to arrive, of course. Mel stood at the kitchen window watching them swarm around the keg like so many yellow jackets around a cider bowl. She said, “Lola, go out there and tell them not to drink all the beer before the party even gets started.”

“I’ll tell them,” Lola said. “But it won’t do any good.”

“Tell them to go buy their own damn keg.”

Lola was almost to the door when she turned and said, “Where’s Annie? Where’s my creepy twin?”

“Yeah, where is Annie?” Sara said, coming into the kitchen with an empty tray. Their guests had begun to arrive. They could hear loud shouts and whoops from the dining room.

“She went to the library,” Mel said.

“Why?” Sara said. She was wearing coveralls and a pageboy wig. The original idea was that she would ride a Big Wheels into the party just like Danny in The Shining. But the party was already getting crowded and Sara’s Big Wheels was parked on the front porch, so no one really got The Shining connection. Most people just seemed to think she was a farmer.

“Maybe she was meeting someone,” Lola said innocently, smoothing the front of her dress.

Mel turned around from the window. She cocked her head and stared at Lola. Sara came up on the other side of her so they stood shoulder to shoulder. “What do you mean?”

Lola colored slightly and chewed her lower lip. She raised one eyebrow and shrugged. “I don’t know what I mean,” she said.

“Do you know something we don’t?” Sara asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. “Has Annie told you something she hasn’t told us?”

“No,” Lola said.

Mel was quiet for a moment, considering her answer. “I think she had to pick up something for a class,” she said finally. “Something at the library.”

Sara nodded as if she found this reasonable. “She wouldn’t do that to Mitchell,” she added. “Cheat, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Mel turned again to the window. “Besides, who else besides Mitchell would put up with her?”

Lola hurried out the back door. Mel watched her cross the yard to the keg where Briggs and his rowdy fraternity brothers had taken up their stations. Briggs put one burly arm around Lola and pulled her close. One of the boys gave her a beer. “I hope they don’t drain the keg before everyone else gets here,” Mel said.

“I better check the table,” Sara said. She picked up a couple of bags of chips and went out.

Mel turned and followed her into the crowded dining room, nervously looking around for J.T. She hoped he wouldn’t come but there was a chance that he might. It would be just like him to show up and ruin the party.

The room was packed to the rafters, and most of the guests were in costume. She stepped around The Incredible Hulk, said hello to a Pet Rock and a couple of disco dancers, and pushed her way through a group of Symbionese Liberation Army soldiers who, along with Patty Hearst, were laying waste to the dining table.

“Yo,” someone said behind her.

It was Bart, the guy Sara had dated, briefly, their junior year. He’d let his hair grow out, and Mel hardly recognized him. She hadn’t seen him since that night at the drive-in when he’d made a pass at her outside the concession building and J.T., as if sensing this, had threatened to kick his ass.

“Bangin’ party,” he said, smiling down at her. He was better-looking than she remembered, tanned and blond.

“It’s just getting started,” Mel said, glancing around the room.

“So where’s the keg?” Someone had put the Allman Brothers on the stereo and “Statesboro Blues” reverberated off the walls.

“It’s out back,” she shouted. “Hopefully your fraternity brothers haven’t sucked it dry.”

He laughed, leaning in close. “No guarantees there,” he said. “Do you want a beer?” He was dressed like a Sandman from Logan’s Run. All of Briggs’s fraternity brothers had dressed like Sandmen.

Mel lifted her glass and smiled. She liked him better with his hair grown out. “No thanks,” she said, wishing now that she’d worn something a little sexier than her Wendy Torrance costume.

“What’s that you’re drinking?”

“Zombie. There’s a pitcher in the kitchen if you want one.”

“Thanks, but I’ll start with beer.” He leaned over and said, “Don’t go anywhere,” and, grinning, pushed his way through the crowd toward the back door.

Mel watched him go and thought, Why not? She wasn’t going steady anymore. She wasn’t wearing anyone’s brand. She was free to do whatever she wanted, even if it meant sleeping with the entire ATO house (not that she would, of course). After all, the more experience she got, the better writer she’d be. That’s what she told herself these days, anyway. She held her drink above her head and pushed her way through the crowd toward Sara, who was standing beside Bette Midler, looking nervously down at the table.

“At this rate we’ll run out of food by nine!” Sara shouted.

Mel shrugged. “Oh well,” she said. “Hey, do you remember that guy you dated a few times—Bart?”

“The douche bag? Yeah, I remember. What about him?”

“He’s here.”

“Great.”

“So I take it you never really liked him?”

Sara stared at her for several beats. “Doi,” she said.

“Okay,” Mel said, moving on. “Just making sure.”

•  •  •

By ten o’clock the party was in full swing. The food was dwindling but the keg was still flowing. Sara made her way through the crowded house and into the backyard, where Briggs and his fraternity brothers were busy doing keg stands and whooping it up. A group of giggling Delta Gammas stood around watching them. Their parties always wound up like this, with the Greek crowd clustered around the keg in the back and the dopers and Goths swarming the front porch. The two groups touched, sporadically, but they never actually mixed. It was one of the most annoying things about Lola dating Briggs Furman, the fact that he and his ATO storm troopers were always crashing their parties. Briggs was a great-looking guy, smart and well connected, but he was a complete asshole and he always treated Lola like she was nine years old. No, Lola, I don’t want you to go out drinking with the girls or No, Lola you can’t go to that U2 concert or Go in the house and change, Lola, I don’t like what you’re wearing. Lola was so sweet and kindhearted she’d put up with just about anything, but sometimes Sara wished Lola wasn’t so quick to let herself be treated like a doormat. Then again, who was she to talk?

She pushed herself through the giggling Delta Gammas toward Briggs. “Ex-cuse me!,” one of the girls said. “The line starts back here.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, this is my party so I don’t have to stand in line.”

“Bogus,” the girl said.

The Japanese lanterns shed a festive light, illuminating the bare trees and tall shrubs that ringed the yard. A pale sliver of moon hung from the winter sky. A series of high temperatures the week before had melted most of the snow, which was good because they’d been able to set the keg up in the yard. Usually this time of year, they were forced to set it up on the side porch, a narrow enclosed space running along the side of the house that they used as a laundry room.

Sara tapped Briggs on the shoulder. He and another frat brother were holding one of the Sandmen up by the ankles while he did a handstand on the keg. Another brother stuck the beer nozzle into the Sandman’s mouth. Briggs grinned when he saw her and said, “Yo, Sara, you want to get vertical?”

“I am vertical, Briggs.”

“Suit yourself.” The Sandmen chanted to ten in unison and now the guy on the keg shook his leg and Briggs and the holder dropped him. He spit out the nozzle, stood upright for a moment, then moved sidewise through the crowd before his knees buckled, and he went down. The crowd roared and Briggs motioned for the next contestant to step up.

“Feel free to go buy another keg,” Sara said.

“I bought this one,” Briggs said.

“No, you didn’t. Lola did.”

“Same thing.” He grinned and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Hey, don’t spaz out. I already sent a couple of the guys on a beer run.”

“Well, I hope you told them to buy plenty. You and your friends aren’t the only guests, you know.”

“We’re the only guests who count.”

“I know it’s hard, Briggs, but try not to be an asshole.”

“Hey, I’m just being myself.”

“Exactly.”

On her way back to the house, she met Lola crossing the yard with a plate of food in her hands. “Please tell me that’s not for your boyfriend,” Sara said sharply. “Please tell me you’re not waiting on him hand and foot like a servant. Or a perfect little wife.”

Lola giggled and glanced at Briggs, who was busy loading another victim onto the keg. “He’s busy right now,” she said. “I really don’t mind. I really don’t mind at all.” She backed across the lawn as she was talking, holding the plate up in front of her like an offering.

Sara sadly watched her cross the yard. It was obvious that in Lola’s little world feminism didn’t exist. Despite her expensive liberal education, Lola would always be what she had been born and bred to be; a good Southern Girl. Sara sighed and went into the house to look for Mel (a not-so-good Southern Girl), stopping in the dining room to replenish a big wooden bowl with potato chips. Most of the special food was gone now and they were down to chips and dips. She pushed through the crowd, stopping to talk to a girl dressed like Linda Blair from The Exorcist, who was in her Russian Poets class. It took her a while but she finally reached the front door. She peered through the screen and stepped through, the door slamming loudly on her heels.

She couldn’t see Mel anywhere. The porch was hazy with marijuana smoke. An overhead light glowed feebly, casting shadows around the edges, where people clustered in groups of twos and threes, sitting on the balustrades or cross-legged on the floor. Someone had pushed a speaker up to the window screen, and the Eagles were singing “Hotel California.” The mood here was mellower, less frantic than the keg stands going on out back.

“This bud’s for you,” a curly-haired boy said, handing her a joint. She took a couple of hits and passed it on. Out in front of the house a guy dressed as Mad Max was pedaling her Big Wheels up and down the sidewalk shouting, I’ll get you, Toecutter! She turned to go back in, but as she did, something in the shadows at the other end of the porch caught her eye. She stopped suddenly and stood very still, staring. Mel and Bart were sprawled in the porch swing, making out.

She stood there watching them with a kind of sick fascination. The crowd swirled around her like smoke, parting from time to time to reveal Mel, obviously drunk, sprawled across Bart’s lap. The whole scene was sickening and false, and made Sara feel mildly dirty, like a voyeur at a peep show. She thought of J.T Radford drinking himself into a stupor down at the Bulldog. Despite all that had happened between them (or hadn’t happened between them), she hoped J.T. wouldn’t show up to see this.

Annie appeared suddenly on the porch steps, materializing out of the darkness like a ghost. “Where’ve you been?” Sara asked, as she came up on the porch.

“At the library.” Annie pushed past her. Her cheeks were red with the cold and it looked as if she’d been crying; her eyes were pink and swollen.

“Are you okay?”

Annie swung the door open and stepped inside, letting the screen door slam against her heels. “I don’t feel well,” she said, avoiding Sara’s eyes. “I think I’ll go lie down.”

Sara watched her disappear up the stairs. Everyone’s life seemed to be unraveling. If Sara could have fixed everything, if she could have made everyone happy, she would have. But standing there watching Mel make out with Bart, she realized how destructive it had all become. Unfixable. It was a fight to the death now between Mel and J.T, and there would be no survivors. People would get hurt. People would have to take sides. Sara imagined herself pitching between the two of them like a battered shuttlecock.

She put her hand on the door to go in. And then, as if to remind her just how bad things could get, J.T. showed up.

Lola waited until she was sure Briggs was drunk before taking him the plate of food. She had fixed it earlier in the evening and then hidden it in the back of the refrigerator until later. Around ten o’clock she took out the plate, ground up one of her sleeping tablets, and sprinkled it all over the Spicy Bat Wings, Brain Pâté, and Corpse Salsa.

It was a beautiful evening, one of those evenings that made Lola happy, as if the moon, dangling like a jewel above the horizon, and the stars, glimmering in the dark velvet sky, had been made just for her. Coming down the steps to the backyard, carrying Briggs’s plate in her hands like an offering to Hypnos, the god of sleep, Lola could feel her heart fluttering in her throat. In another twenty minutes she would be free. In another twenty minutes she would be wrapped in the arms of her beloved.

She passed Sara, who stopped to hassle her about carrying the plate to Briggs. Lola wanted to giggle, to laugh out loud. She wanted to say, Don’t worry, it’s not what you think. She wanted to tell Sara everything, because Lola was bad with secrets, but she couldn’t tell her, not yet anyway, not until everything was settled. Not until she was sure her mother and Briggs wouldn’t be able to sabotage her plans.

“Where’ve you been?” Briggs asked irritably when he saw her. He was sitting on a chair next to the keg, watching as the Delta Gammas did their keg stands. He reached for the plate hungrily, sucking on a chicken leg and scooping large portions of the dip and pâté into his cavernous mouth. Lola looked away. She couldn’t bear to watch him eat. She couldn’t bear the way his eyes glazed, the way his jaw popped and creaked and his blubbery lips glistened wetly “Answer me,” he said. “Where have you been?”

“In the house,” she said. “Helping with the party.”

He grunted and kept chewing. She wondered how long until he was out completely. She usually felt sleepy within ten minutes of taking the Halcion but Briggs was built like a bull, and she had counted on it taking at least twenty minutes. She had told Lonnie to pick her up at ten-thirty.

“Whoa, Barnett, watch where you put your hands!” Briggs shouted at the keg spotter, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to keep one of the Delta Gamma’s skirts from falling over her head. Lola figured Briggs would get sleepy and pass out in her bed (in which case she’d arrive home early Sunday morning and climb in beside him before he woke up) or he’d pass out and one of his Sandmen would haul him back to the fraternity house. Either way, Lola figured she’d have eight hours of uninterrupted time alone with Lonnie. And given her school schedule, his full-time job and weekend music gigs, and Briggs’s constant vigilance, eight hours was an eternity.

Somewhere deep in the house, the Eagles were playing. Briggs held the plate up to Lola. “Any more of those chicken legs?” he asked.

“No, sorry, they went pretty fast.”

“Goddamn it, I knew those potheads would scarf down the food before we could get to it,” Briggs said, scowling. “I don’t know why you invite those losers to your parties anyway.”

“They’re not losers,” Lola said. “They’re nice.”

“I’ll have some more of the chips and dip then,” he said, holding the plate out to her. She hesitated and then took it. He slapped her fondly on the ass as she walked off.

“And Lo,” he called after her. “For Christ’s sake get some clothes on. You’ll catch pneumonia out here.”

And then she was running, flitting through the night like a bird, her black Mary Janes flying through the frosty grass. She had never felt like this before. She was in love and her heart spun in her chest, true and weightless as an arrow loosed from a bow. It wasn’t the deep habitual love she’d felt for Savannah, which was warm and comfortable as an old coat, or the dutiful love she’d felt for her mother and father. It wasn’t the slight affection she felt for Briggs, more like an obligation than love, really. It was something new and entirely different, something that opened Lola’s heart to a world made suddenly large and generous.

Behind her the noise of the party gradually grew faint. Ahead the cozy streetlamps glowed, haloed by the cold night air. She could see Lonnie waiting for her at the end of the street, parked in his old Chevrolet truck beneath the glow of a lamp. His old Chevrolet truck with the camper in the bed, the place where they made hurried love most of the time, their own little honeymoon suite that smelled of dog and paint thinner and fishing tackle.

He saw her coming and flashed his headlights in greeting. She was laughing when she opened the door and threw herself into his arms.

“Hey, Sunshine,” he said, grinning and kissing her. It was the first time she’d ever had a nickname and she loved it, even though he’d named her after one of the squaws in Little Big Man. “Damn, your cheeks are cold,” he said, rubbing his freshly shaved face against hers.

She giggled. “Which ones?” she said.

“Let me see,” he said, slipping his hands down the back of her tights.

He was wearing a pair of jeans and an army jacket, and he looked adorable with his gray eyes flashing fire in the dim lights of the radio dial. He had cut his hair, and it fell now in shaggy curls around his ears. He leaned over and started the truck and she snuggled up next to him on the seat. He threw his arm across her shoulders.

The old truck clattered and whined and pulled away slowly from the curb. “How was the party?” Lonnie asked as they passed the house, lit up now like a Christmas tree with the Clash blasting from the windows. There was some kind of ruckus occurring on the front porch. Lola could see the crowd milling around and several dark figures moving back and forth but she couldn’t make out any faces.

“The party was boring,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you weren’t there.”

He was quiet for a few minutes, and then he said, “What did you tell your boyfriend?”

“He was busy drinking with his friends. I didn’t tell him anything. Besides, he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Does he know that?”

“Not yet. But he will.”

Lonnie made a soft derisive sound. “I’m not holding my breath.”

“I told you, Lonnie, we’ll work it out.” She didn’t want an argument tonight. They had eight hours together, his mother was out of town visiting her sister, and they had the house to themselves. She didn’t want anything to spoil their time together. “I love you,” she said earnestly and he looked at her and smiled. It was one of the things she liked best about him, his easygoing nature. Nothing ever bothered him for long. Briggs would stew about some imagined slight for days, planning his revenge, but Lonnie just let it all roll off his back. He was bighearted and gentle and patient. The ducks at the Duck Pond had sensed this about him, and Lola sensed it, too. He would make a good husband and father. Lola liked to imagine their life together: a big house bursting with children, her in the kitchen, and Lonnie coming in from work in the evening in his flannel shirt, carrying his paint bucket like a briefcase. Lonnie playing baseball with the children in the yard while she cooked dinner. It would be a happy life. A good life.

They drove slowly through the center of town, darkened storefronts reflecting the blinking traffic lights. The traffic was sparse; there were few cars on the streets this time of night. They drove past the Episcopal Church, with its lovely stone tower, and the public library, the bakery where Lonnie’s mother worked, and the hardware store. They drove past the feed store and across the humpbacked railroad tracks, and now the houses became smaller, more shabby and run-down than the Victorian cottages near the campus. Here and there they passed a lonely house still lit up with Christmas lights. The area was called Tucker Town, and it was the kind of place where Bedford students were warned not to go at night. Lonnie and his mother lived in a peeling two-bedroom house on the outskirts of Tucker Town. She worked as a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly and as a late-shift worker at the bakery. There was just the two of them; Lonnie’s father had disappeared soon after Lonnie’s birth.

The first time he brought Lola home, his mother had been there, sitting in the front room with her feet up. She was shy, and she seemed embarrassed by Lola’s sudden appearance in her crowded front room. “Oh my, I wasn’t expecting company,” she said, standing up and looking helplessly around the shabby room strewn with magazines and newspapers. She was a small round woman with a careworn appearance and graying hair. She was younger than Lola’s own mother, but she looked older, with her stooped shoulders and tired expression.

“It’s not company,” Lonnie said, laughing. “It’s only Lola.” Mrs. Lumpkin, who’d obviously heard about Lola, smiled and stuck her hand out shyly. “How do you do?” she said. “I’m Lonnie’s mama.” She was wearing bedroom slippers and an apron that read KLEGHORN’S BAKERY—PUT A LITTLE SOUTH IN YOUR MOUTH.

“Hello,” Lola said warmly, taking the small woman’s hand in both her own. “I’m Lola.” The house was only a little larger than Lola’s childhood playhouse, except that the playhouse had been decorated by an interior designer and had sported French wallpaper, and the Lumpkin front room had pine-paneled walls and an ironing board in one corner covered in stacks of threadbare towels. The only attempt at decoration was a series of small plates printed with scenes of the English countryside that hung above the cluttered sofa. Lola found the plates oddly touching. She had a sudden desire to bundle up Lonnie and his mother and carry them home with her, not to Birmingham, of course, not to Maureen’s cold palatial mansion, but to something a little nicer and more stylish than what they had now, perhaps a brick ranch house on a large tree-filled lot where they could all live happily ever after.

“See, I told you she wouldn’t bite,” Lonnie said, and Mrs. Lumpkin blushed and said, “Now, hush.” She moved some magazines aside on the sofa and indicated that Lola should sit down. “Are you hungry?” she said. “I’ve got some pecan pie in the kitchen.”

“No, mama, we just ate,” Lonnie said.

“Pie would be lovely,” Lola said.

Lonnie pulled slowly into the graveled drive and stopped. The little house was dark but for the porch light that glowed feebly above the front door. He leaned and pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Honey, we’re home,” he said softly.

Lola felt a deep trembling joy. He made it all so easy. Loving him was as easy as stepping off a ledge. It was as easy as swallowing a bottle of Halcion and going to sleep forever. “When does your mother get back?” she asked.

“The day after tomorrow.” He put his arm around her and pulled her close. “You can stay all weekend if you like,” he said, his mouth against her hair. “You can stay forever.”

She sighed and played with a button on his jacket. “I wish I could,” she said.

“It’s up to you.”

Lola put her hand up and tugged at his curls. “We have to be careful,” she said. She frowned and stroked his cheek lightly. “We can’t make any mistakes or my mother and Briggs will figure out a way to stop us.”

Lonnie put his head back and stared at the roof. He sighed and shook his head. “How?” he asked. “You’re twenty-two. You’re legal.”

“You don’t know them,” Lola said. “You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

“Yeah, I keep hearing that,” Lonnie said morosely.

Lola pulled his face to her and kissed him. “It won’t be long,” she said. “It won’t be long. I promise.”

They had begun making their plans weeks ago. On a cold snowy day in November, two weeks after they first climbed into the back of Lonnie’s truck, they had begun talking marriage. Lonnie had called her that night to tell her he loved her. She was huddled in the upstairs hallway with the phone clamped to her ear while just a few feet away Briggs lay stretched out on her bed watching TV.

“I love you,” Lonnie said. “I’ve never felt this way before.”

“Hush,” Lola said, trying to keep her voice low. It was all she could do not to jump up and go dancing down the hallway. Tenderness swelled her chest, catching in her throat. “I know,” she said to him, and all the longing of her sad childhood was tied up in those two words.

She lay in bed beside Briggs that night and plotted her future.

Now that she’d fallen in love with Lonnie, she knew she’d been fooling herself about Briggs. She would never learn to love him. And he would never learn to love her, either, not in the way she needed to be loved. Briggs’s love would always be conditional, there would always be strings attached. It would always contain an element of possession. My car, my house, my wife. Briggs knew nothing of sacrifice.

Lola would graduate from college in June, and she would tell no one about Lonnie until then. It would be their little secret until after she received her degree and her teaching certificate. Her marriage to Briggs was planned for September, but she and Lonnie would be married soon after graduation and it would be too late for Briggs and her mother to do anything about it then. Lola would need to work initially while Lonnie finished his GED and started his own painting business. There would be many years of hard work, scrimping, and saving before they had enough to start a family.

Lola had no illusions about what her mother, deprived of her dreams of a family dynasty, would do. There would be no money coming from Maureen, no down payment for a small house, no expensive wedding or baby shower gifts, no educational trust fund for her Lumpkin grandchildren. When she died, Maureen’s money would go to her favorite charities. She would remain spiteful and bitter until the very end.

But it didn’t matter. Lola and Lonnie would be happy. They would work hard and they would struggle but they would love each other and each new baby, born to an already-crowded house, would be a blessing. They would sit together in the cool of the evenings and watch their children play, and Lola would know she’d made the right decision choosing Lonnie.

Her only guilt came from not telling Mel, Sara, and Annie about her plans. She wanted to tell them but she knew she shouldn’t. At least, not yet.

Some secrets were best kept.

J.T. was wearing a plaid shirt, a pair of faded jeans, and carrying an ax, and for a brief moment, Sara thought he was here to kill Mel. But then he grinned, and, lifting the ax, said to Sara, “Honey, I’m home,” and she realized he was doing his Jack Torrance impression and the ax was plastic. The feeling of relief that washed over her was fleeting but intense. She rushed forward to greet him, trying to insert herself between him and the swing, trying to drag him into the house before he noticed Mel and Bart.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Sara said, tugging on his arm.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he said. He watched her with an amused expression, letting her drag him up the steps by the arm. Even in costume, he was the best-looking man in the place, which only reinforced Sara’s belief that Mel was crazy, or at least suffering from some sort of delusional post-Junior breakdown.

“The beer’s in the back,” she said over her shoulder.

He pulled his arm away and took her hand instead, and she pushed her way through the dope smokers, dragging him behind her. His hand fit neatly around her own, and it occurred to her that, other than that time at the drive-in when his fingers had brushed her knee, this was the first time they’d ever touched. A little flutter of excitement, like a pinpoint of light growing brighter, pierced her chest. She’d had ample time since that night to reflect on what had happened between them in the car, to wonder if it had been simply a trick of her imagination. The attraction, that moment of trembling possibility, might have been in her mind only. Surely J.T had given no sign since then that anything remarkable had happened between them.

She could feel him behind her, could feel the solid bulk of his body as she stopped to open the screen door. He leaned forward and grasped the top of the door with his other hand, holding it open for her. She looked up to thank him, and in that moment his eyes shifted to the right just, as if on cue from some unseen director, the crowd parted. Mel and Bart were suddenly visible, sprawled on the porch swing beneath the softly glowing light.

It all happened in slow motion like a movie, like a bad dream. The Clash sang in the background, “London Calling.” J.T.’s face took on an expression of stunned outrage, followed swiftly by a fleeting look of sorrow. The smile faded from his lips and his eyes grew sharp and steady. Mel, feeling their weight upon her, sat up slowly and looked around.

“J.T, don’t,” Sara said, trying to take his arm again, but he was already striding deliberately toward them. Mel saw him coming and began to shout. The crowd parted like actors in a chorus, and now there were only the three of them on center stage, illuminated by the softly glowing porch light. Bart sat very still, like a man who sees disaster coming but is helpless to stop it. His face was covered in lipstick kisses, and he wore a dazed, bemused expression. He seemed uncertain, for a moment, who J.T. actually was, and by the time he realized and began to stand, it was too late. J.T. swung, and in one smooth, well-timed movement, smashed his fist into Bart’s face. Bart sagged at the knees, and went down.

Sara pushed herself through the ring of spectators. Bart lay on his back, groaning. His hand covered his bleeding nose, and he held his fingers up toward the glowing porch light as if surprised by the sight of his own blood.

“Get out, get out,” Mel shouted at J.T.

Out in the street, a broken-down truck passed slowly, its muffler rattling.

J.T. leaned above Bart, breathing heavily. “You had that coming,” he said, and then, rising, allowed Sara to take his arm and lead him away.

They stopped by J.T.’s house to pick up a bottle of tequila and then they drove to Edwards Point. Sara clutched the passenger door of the 1974 Mercury Marquis and tried not to give way to hysteria as the big car roared and bumped its way steadily up the rutted dirt road to the top of the point. J.T. had been drinking steadily, and as they reached the top, he laid on the horn and howled like a madman. Sara, embarrassed, turned her head and tried to ignore him. She had never been to the top of the point. A long, narrow valley lay below them, sprinkled with the lights of Decaturville and Lebanon Cove. A thin sliver of moon, draped in silvery clouds, hung from the sooty sky.

J.T. turned off the engine but left the radio on. “Are you cold?” he asked.

“No,” Sara lied. She had left the house without a jacket, wearing only her overalls and a turtleneck sweater.

“Here.” J.T. shrugged out of his coat and gave it to her.

“How will you keep warm?” she asked, taking it from him.

He lifted the bottle. “Tequila,” he said, taking a long pull.

It was a bad idea, of course. All of it, drinking and driving, being in a car alone with him on a moonlit ridge. It all spelled disaster; but from the moment J.T. walked into the Howl at the Moon party, Sara hadn’t been able to think clearly. She had led him away from the party and then she had followed docilely as he drove her recklessly to the top of Edwards Point.

He held the bottle out to her.

She took the tequila and tilted her head, grimacing at the taste. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and gave it back to him.

“There’s something different about you,” he said.

“Me?”

“Your hair.”

Oh god, the pageboy wig. She’d forgotten to take it off. She pulled it off now and shook her hair free.

“That’s better,” he said.

She ran her fingers through her long dark curls, her scalp prickling with the cold. He continued to stare at her, and to hide her embarrassment, she leaned to fiddle with the radio. “Waiting for a Girl Like You” came on. She changed the station quickly.

“That’s a good song,” he said, lifting the bottle. “Foreigner.”

They sat for a while, neither one speaking, drinking and watching the lights of the valley.

He sighed and leaned his head against the window, looking up at the stars. “Sorry about breaking up your party,” he said. The apology struck him as funny and he chuckled and took a long pull from the bottle.

“You don’t sound sorry,” Sara said.

“I am,” he said. He offered her the bottle but she shook her head. He slumped against the seat, staring despondently up at the stars and the sliver of pale moon. The bottle of tequila rested in his lap. He hadn’t shaved in several days and his lower face was covered in shadow. With his half-beard, his plaid shirt, and his wildly glittering eyes he looked a little like madman Jack Torrance. “Sorry I didn’t pop him in the mouth last year at the drive-in when he was being such an asshole,” he said, his voice trailing off.

So she hadn’t imagined it. There had been something there, something to do with her. (Or at least she hoped it had something to do with her.) She smiled secretly, turning her head and gazing down at the glittering lights of the valley. “Yeah, well, if anyone needed a curb-stomping it was Bart. The guy’s a total douche bag.”

He offered her the bottle. Now that she was over the first taste, the tequila wasn’t so bad. And it left a warm glow in the pit of her stomach, something to be appreciated on a night like this.

“I always liked you,” he said.

“Really?” It was the tequila talking, she knew, but it pleased her anyway.

“You were always so quiet. So self-contained. But I could see you had a good heart. Anyone could see that.”

“I’m not as quiet as you think.”

“Well, you were always quiet when I was around,” he said, and she waited for him to catch the significance of this, but he didn’t. He tugged on the tequila. She looked out the window at the row of dark trees standing like a palisade against the moonlit sky. “You have a tender heart,” he said, as if realizing he might have offended her. “You’re self-contained, but in a good way. Still waters run deep and all that.”

“Oh, thank you very much.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“But her.” He raised the bottle and motioned vaguely toward the valley below. “She has a mean streak a mile wide running through her. Look at how she acted after her brother’s death. Look how she broke up with me without a flicker of emotion, as if the last three years never even happened.”

He couldn’t understand Mel’s self-containment and yet the reality was, Mel wasn’t self-contained at all. She was only giving him what she thought he wanted. She was as readable as an open book. A postmodern novel, not a classical one. He said he loved her and yet the truth was, he’d never been able to read her at all.

“She has no heart,” he said, handing her the bottle.

“She has a heart,” she said. “She just doesn’t wear it on her sleeve.” She took a long, slow drink, then wiped her mouth and handed him the bottle. “To understand Mel, you have to understand her childhood.”

“Bullshit! We all had dysfunctional childhoods! That’s just an excuse. You shouldn’t make excuses for her.”

She wrote her initials on the frosty glass. “That’s what friends do,” she said.

They sat for a long time on the moonlit ridge, until the cold began to seep up through the soles of Sara’s feet into her bones. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she stirred and said, “Do you want me to drive?” She looked behind her at the dark, rutted road. With any luck, she’d drunk just enough to take the edge off her fear and not enough to plunge them over the steep embankment to their deaths.

He gazed at her over the rim of the bottle. “Are we leaving?” He sat slumped against the door where he’d sat for the last fifteen minutes, lost in a profound silence.

“I’m cold.”

He sat up suddenly and said, “I’m sorry, baby.” He leaned over and started the car so the heater would run. Sara stared frozenly through the windshield, still caught up by the fact that he’d called her baby. After a few minutes, he switched off the engine. “Why don’t you move over here next to me?” he said, patting the seat beside him.

She didn’t know what to say to this, so she said nothing, sitting stiffly in the passenger’s seat and staring down at the twinkling lights of the valley. He didn’t ask again. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were singing “Don’t Do Me Like That,” and he leaned over and turned the volume up.

She stared at the scattered houselights below, twinkling like diamonds against the valley floor. She pulled the collar of his jacket up around her face and his smell enveloped her, a mix of musk and wood smoke and Old Spice aftershave.

After a while he began to talk about Mel. She sat quietly, looking out at the slumbering landscape while he tried to unburden himself of his love, as if by talking about it he could shed it forever. He droned on and on and she let him talk but gradually a feeling of despair and self-loathing came over her, creeping in like the cold. She was nothing more than a witness to their tragedy and guilt. She could have been anything, a stone, a flower, a blade of grass.

He fell asleep with his head in her lap, and as the moon faded and the first faint glimmerings of morning lit the eastern sky, Sara knew she would hang on until June. She would avoid Mel as much as possible and she would not see J.T. at all. She would hang on until graduation, when she would finally be free to go out into the world and begin a life of her own, far away from this one.

After that, she didn’t care if she ever saw J.T. Radford or Mel Barclay again.