11 I was running out of SpaghettiOs, so I knocked on Bill’s door before dawn this morning, pretending I just wanted to ask if he wanted me to get him anything at the twenty-four-hour supermarket, but hoping he would offer to come, because the truth is, even though I had my grabber and could have managed to carry my stuff back, I really wanted some company. Maybe Bill sensed this, because as soon as I said, “I’m going to get some groceries,” he pretended I hadn’t just woken him at five in the morning, and he turned to get his shoes.

“I’ll come. I’ll come,” he said. “I can carry your things. I’ll come and carry your things.”

Bill’s weird habit of repeating things isn’t annoying, by the way. It’s very sweet, actually, as if he thinks over and over of kind things he can do for people, and sometimes the things vary and other times they don’t. But he says them right away, to make sure he’s offered. And then, again, maybe to make sure you’ve heard. I mean, it’s a little Rain Man, sure, but who am I to cast stones? Who is anyone, for that matter?

It was barely daylight when we walked down East Michigan almost a mile to Kroger’s, a dwarf and her crazy, thoughtful friend. Cars whipped by at highway speeds, almost running us over until one car slowed and I thought for a panicked moment it might be someone who knew me, or reporters, or I don’t know what. But then some rude person shouted something out the window at us. Thankfully I wasn’t able to make out what it was, and if Bill heard, he didn’t show any sign of having thought it was about us. Or caring, anyway. I loved this about him. But then as soon as we arrived at Kroger and were pushing at the broken automatic doors, a kid pointed at me and jumped up and down trying to get his mother’s attention. “Don’t point,” his mother said.

Bill saw this happen and turned to me. “He likes you.”

“Right,” I said. “Kids and dogs always like me.” I tried not to say this in too mean or sarcastic a voice, not that Bill would have gotten it anyway. He’s too good-spirited to understand me or to imagine that dogs literally think I’m another dog, or a treat or something.

They come up and sniff me like—“What is this fabulous dog-size human I’ve found?” They can kiss me on the lips without having to jump up or even stand on their hind legs. More effortless slobbering and hump for your buck. Kids think I’m a kid at first, and then when they realize I’m not, the possibilities for what I might be instead are endless: hobbit, garden gnome, or adult small enough to be bossed around by them. In any case, it’s loads of fun, and who wouldn’t point? Some kids just want to gloat because even though I’m obviously older, they’re bigger. I’m over it. But if I ever get married and have average-size kids myself, I’m going to show them who’s in charge.

Bill got a cart and started pushing it, and I climbed up onto the bottom shelf of the dairy fridge and pulled out a small carton of milk. He reached down and took it from me gently so he could put it in the cart. I felt exhausted suddenly, like my bone marrow was giving up on me. Living alone was terrible. I mean, this was only the second time I’d ever been grocery shopping without one of my parents. And I hated it. I wanted desperately to go home, to hide in my house, even though maybe there were throngs of cameramen camped out on my lawn, wanting to make my life into more ugly videos. Just the thought of that made me want to sleep. But at the thought of sleep, an image of the bed at the Motel Manor popped into my mind, and fear climbed my spine like the rungs of a cold ladder. Up, up, up. I took a breath, gathered myself, considered asking Bill to lift me into the cart and push me through the store, but it seemed too humiliating. Not in front of Bill, I mean, he wouldn’t have cared, but just everyone else in the store, especially that kid who had pointed, who was right behind us now, screaming for candy.

I felt trapped, too scared to go back to the motel, too scared to go home, too scared to do anything. I felt myself hopping up onto the railing of the cart and holding on while Bill pushed our milk and me to the canned goods aisle. I heard myself ask Bill to get two cans of tuna. He put them in the cart carefully, and while he was doing that, he asked me, “So did he ever call?”

“What?”

“The man in the story,” he said. “The man. Did he call on the phone?”

“Kyle, you mean?”

“Oh. Yes. Maybe Kyle. Did he call?”

I didn’t know what this question meant—whether Bill wanted to know if Kyle had called me back in the day, like after we did it? Or wanted to know if he had called me lately, at the motel or something. His utter inability to understand time as a linear thing was comforting to me. It didn’t matter when Kyle had called, at least not in Bill’s and my universe. That he had called at all, ever, still counted for something here.

So I said, “Yeah. Sometimes he did call.”

“Oh, good. That’s good. That’s good news,” Bill said. “It’s nice, to get calls. It’s nice.”

“You’re right. It is nice. Thanks.”

“Then what happened?”

“To me, you mean?”

“To the man?”

“Well, he did something kind of cruel.”

“Oh.”

“He and his friends took advantage of me. Or maybe his friends took advantage of him and me. I’m not sure. I don’t know if he meant to; I mean, I think it might have been their fault and not his, but I—”

It was the first time Bill had ever cut me off. “Are you all right?” he asked, as if that was more important than whether Kyle had done it on purpose, or by drunk accident, or force of peer pressure or something.

“Yes, I’m all right, thank you. Could you, um . . . ?” We had made our way back in a circle to the produce section, and I pointed at some apples.

Bill took a plastic bag from a spinning roll of them six feet above my head. He put some apples in the bag and then tossed the bag into the high cart so effortlessly he looked like an Olympic athlete.

“Apples,” he said as the apples settled between some tuna cans and relish, and then, “Thank you.”

We walked by the flower freezer, and I picked out a gardenia. I love gardenias, because they smell gorgeous, and even though it was nine dollars, I wanted something alive in my room. Maybe this was a good sign that I wanted to keep living too, at least as long as it takes to find out what will happen to me. Maybe because I don’t want to miss the end of my own story. Or maybe because I don’t want the idiotic pigs on Celebrity Apprentice to have the last laugh when I’m hanging off a terrace somewhere.

Bill put the groceries on the counter, and I dug into my bag for my wallet, which I found but then promptly dropped while I was fumbling for bills. My beloved picture of Peter Dinklage fell out. I looked at it there, on the floor, and knew suddenly, in a terrible and certain way, that I would have to leave it there, that I didn’t deserve to carry him around anymore; what would he think of me now, ruining the reputation of the very word dwarf ? I know it’s silly, because of course no one can represent everyone else, and I’m not every dwarf in the world any more than I’m every teenager or every girl. Not to mention I could have gotten another picture of him from a magazine or online, which is how I got that one, but I felt so ashamed of my life at that moment in the lonely Kroger that I couldn’t bring myself to put the picture back in my wallet. Of course I felt sick deserting my hero there too.

Bill didn’t seem to notice any of my paralysis, just waited patiently while I came back to life, collected everything but the picture, reassembled the contents of my wallet, and handed him forty dollars. He paid, and then carried the groceries all the way back to the motel, where the desk clerk was back and there were several people milling around but no one spoke to us and I kept my eyes pinned to the floor and ran up to my room, vowing never to leave it again. Bill set the bags down outside the door.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Judy.”

“Are you kidding? Thank you,” I said. “I mean, for putting everything in the cart and for being so helpful all the time and carrying all my stuff,” I said. “Why don’t you come in? We can have some juice or something.”

He came in and sat politely on the bed. I rinsed out the glass by my bed and the one I’d been using to hold my toothbrush so I’d have two, and poured Red Machine berry juice from one of the Naked bottles into both cups. I offered one to Bill, thinking how glad I was to have met him, even if he was a complete freak.

“Looks like blood!” he said, and took a big swig of the juice.

I was drinking when he said this, and suddenly had hiccups. So I bent over and tried drinking the juice backwards from the top of the cup. Usually that really works, but this time it didn’t, so I kept hiccupping. Bill didn’t say anything about it. Maybe he didn’t notice. We sat there quietly for a while, drinking our blood juice. I thought about how AP biology was happening now without me. I wondered if Mr. Abrahams had seen the video. Probably. My stomach went hurling through space at the thought, which led to the next one, one I’d had so many times it was like breathing: of Mr. Luther watching it, Ms. Doman, Ms. Vanderly. Of how sickening they must have found it, and yet how they went back to Darcy, kept teaching their classes. How everything went on anyway.

I was holding the gardenia I’d bought. “Remember how you asked what happened then?” I said to Bill, hopefully.

“What happened? What happened?” he asked. He sounded nervous.

“No,” I said, “it’s okay. I just meant the story I was telling you. About my high school and that guy, Kyle Malanack?”

“Oh yes. Oh yes. I remember. I know that story. That’s a good one. That’s a good story,” Bill said.

“Thank you. So—what happened was that our play opened. The play we were doing was called Runaways. And my friend Meghan—you know, the one who’s also a dwarf ? From California? Well, she was in town for opening night, because even though it was a high school play, for us it was kind of a big deal.”

Bill nodded. His juice was finished and I opened the second bottle I’d bought, poured the blue goo into his glass, thought of Dr. Seuss, the Goo-Goose chewing. Bill smiled, took a sip. I thought he might be hungry, too, so I stood up, left the gardenia on the bed, and got the cheap can opener I’d bought at Kroger, used it to pry the top off some tuna, which I stirred into a bowl. I added an individual package of mayonnaise he had retrieved from the skyscraper of a deli counter. I took out four pieces of bread and two slices of American cheese, twisted open a jar of pickle relish until I felt the pop under the palm of my hand. I was glad my mother wasn’t seeing this; she’s a believer in nutritious food. Of course, she’s never had to live at the Motel Manor or walk down East Michigan to hunt for a meal. I slapped the cheese on the bread, scooped some tuna onto each sandwich, put a spoonful of relish on top of the tuna, and covered it with the second piece of bread. I don’t like the relish stirred in; I like the surprise of a huge clump of it, like pickles on a hamburger. I put the sandwiches on paper plates I’d bought my first day there and had started reusing since I only had six.

I set one in front of Bill. “Your tuna platter, sir,” I joked.

“Thank you. Thank you, tuna and juice,” he said.

I sat back down on the edge of the bed and took a bite of my sandwich. It was pretty good. But then as soon as I started telling Bill the story again, something about eating the tuna sandwich seemed disrespectful. But when I thought about that, I realized it was only insulting to me, since I was the tragic character in the story. And maybe it was a sign that I’m callous and unfeeling about my own history, because I was hungry. So I disrespected myself by eating a tuna sandwich while I told Bill the worst part.

Meghan had talked her parents into buying her a plane ticket to come for the opening of Runaways, and to letting her skip three days of school to hang out and visit D’Arts. She was scheduled to arrive the day after Kyle told me about his sister and we got drunk at his house.

I woke up that Saturday morning naked, on Kyle’s basement couch, which had been folded out into a bed. To say I had no idea where I was is an understatement. It took me three full minutes of the kind of panic I thought was reserved for near-death experiences, just to regain actual consciousness. Five minutes into being awake, I felt pretty certain that I was human, that it hadn’t been an alien abduction, that I was in a body that belonged to me. After ten minutes, I looked down at myself, found I was still there, alive, familiar.

“Oh my god, I’m a dwarf,” I said to myself, and almost laughed. I mean, you can’t deny that that’s pretty hilarious. I wish someone other than me had been there to hear it. But even before I could enjoy my ability to make myself laugh during what would turn out to be the worst memory of my life, I had to put my head in my hands. Because it was pounding, screaming. My eyes hurt, shards of amazing pain jabbed at them from inside my brain.

“Where are my clothes?” I wondered. I sat up, and the room spun so horribly that I had to lean over. That made me think I might throw up, so I rested my weight on my arm at the edge of the sofa bed for a moment, and that’s when I saw Alan.

He was asleep on the floor next to the bed, wearing a pair of boxers with prints of dogs on them. He didn’t even have a sleeping bag or anything, just one of the huge couch pillows under his head. It was at that moment that I knew for certain I was going to throw up. I heaved myself off the side of the bed into a standing position, and staggered into the bathroom, where I sat down on the floor again, rested my throbbing head against the side of the bathtub. There were tan bathmats on a tile floor, and matching tan towels hanging so high above me that they looked miles away. The room was wobbling like a canoe, so I sat for a while before crawling over to the toilet and barfing. I felt slightly better. I wished desperately that I had my own car, could not see calling my parents and admitting that I hadn’t slept at Sarah’s, or waking Kyle. I was too dizzy to walk, so I crawled back out into the room where Alan’s nightmare triangular body was still lying on the floor. I dug around like an animal under the sofa bed and finally found some of my clothes. I threw them on, backwards, inside out, not caring, focusing on the pain in my head, trying to ignore everything else I felt and saw. I barely looked at Alan, stood up, shaking a little bit, and climbed as fast as I could up a short flight that led me to Kyle’s palatial foyer. I had to brace myself against the banister twice. My purse was on the bench right at the front door, so I opened it and looked at my cell phone. No missed calls. I put it in my pocket and headed for the front door. I had no plan, but wanted to get out of that house as fast as I could and never see it again. In the reflection of the enormous foyer windows, I could see the living room behind me, and a body asleep on the black leather sofa with silver feet, and felt my stomach turn over again. I tried not to, but couldn’t help myself and turned and looked. It was Chris Arpent. I couldn’t tell whether he had clothes on or not, since he was covered with a throw that had been resting on the back of the couch. One of his hairy legs was sticking out of the blanket, and he looked like a giant, muscley insect. I had some kind of physical memory when I saw that leg, knew that I had seen it before, or touched it even, but that thought too I pushed back into my bones.

I tried to think, but could not. My mind separated from my body in a kind of revolt I’d never experienced, and propelled me to the front door, which I reached up and opened. I scrambled out onto the porch, leaving the door open behind me, hoping an intruder would come in and steal everything in the house, maybe even kill Chris and Alan. I couldn’t quite hope for Kyle’s death. I stood there for a minute, trying to orient myself, the world coming at me the way I guess it does when you don’t know what you did the night before or how long it’s going to take you to recover from whatever it was. The morning light was soft over the trees in the front yard, sprinkling shadows of leaves over the wooden porch and the side of the house. But it felt offensively, impossibly bright. It was very cold. I hobbled down the stairs into the cul-de-sac, wondering where his preppy mom and dad were, whether on vacation or a work trip, why they were both out of town so much, what it felt like to be Kyle, popular and tragic and abandoned.

I walked out of the circle and onto the main road, looked at a street sign: Beckinsdale Court. With no other choice I could think of, I called Chad. But it was 5:26 a.m., and he didn’t pick up. So I called Sarah. I knew she slept with the cell phone next to her bed, in case Eliot called, and sure enough, she answered. Her voice sounded horrible on the phone, all craggy and scratchy and asleep.

“Helllllllooo?”

“Sarah!” I whispered, “It’s Judy. I need your help. Can you come get me, please?”

She was instantly awake, the way you are when someone calls you with an emergency. I could hear her sitting up, scrambling around.

“Judy? Where are you?”

“Kyle Malanack’s.”

“Oh my god,” she said. “Okay. Um. Where is that?”

“Right off Huron Parkway—on Beckinsdale Court. Across from Huron High,” I said. I blinked at the light again, looked at the street sign and then down the road to the nearest intersection. I couldn’t see far enough to read that sign. “Turn left when you get to Bridge-way College.”

I could hear her opening her front door. “I know where that is. Don’t move. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said.

I sat down on the curb. “Stay on the phone with me, please,” I said.

“Oh, okay. Jesus, Judy. Are you okay? What the hell happened? What are you doing at Kyle Malanack’s house at five in the morning?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think I might still be drunk.”

“Okay,” Sarah said. “Okay. Um. Where’s Kyle?”

“I don’t know. Sleeping, I guess.”

“Um, okay, Judy. I have to hang up now so I can drive. Just wait for me there.” She hung up.

The light began to shift over the street, getting brighter. I started worrying that Alan or Chris or Kyle would wake up and come outside and find me, and whatever had happened would actually have happened. What if they drove out onto this main road, and saw me sitting here like an orphan? If I could just escape entirely before they got up, I thought, no one would ever know and then whatever it was might as well not have even taken place. I was grateful for the cold, even though it was hurting my eyes and nose. It froze the headache and nausea a little bit.

Years passed before Sarah pulled up. She did a dangerous, screeching U-turn and I opened the passenger door before the car had even stopped moving. I appreciated the turn because she was usually such a goody-goody about her safe driving. Her car radio said 5:48 a.m., and we tore down the street and took a right turn immediately. As soon as we weren’t on his street anymore, I felt a little bit of relief. We drove by Gallup Park; the Huron River was still lit with the kind of light that had just woken up, and all the houses and buildings we passed were still asleep. The world was in place. My head was beating so intensely I thought someone might climb out of my forehead, and I leaned forward in the car, took my seat belt off so I could rest against the dashboard.

“You okay, Judy?” Sarah asked again.

“I think so,” I said.

“What the hell happened?”

“I’m not sure, honestly.”

“Do you mean you’re not sure at all? Or you don’t want to tell me. Because either thing is okay, just tell me the truth.”

“I mean I literally don’t remember.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Do you think you and Kyle, you know, hooked up for real, like—?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you before? I mean, other than the hand holding or whatever?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

She was quiet, hurt, but I had bigger things to worry about.

“There’s something worse, though,” I said, figuring I’d make up for some of my silence with increased disclosure.

“What?”

“Some of his friends were there this morning.”

“Who?”

“Chris and Alan.”

“Were Kyle’s parents there?”

“Of course not.”

“So, so what about Chris and Alan being there?”

“So I think maybe something . . .” I trailed off.

“Something what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel well.” I leaned my head against the window, and when I looked through the cold glass, I saw my parents’ house with my dad’s car in the driveway, and realized it would make no sense if I arrived home at six in the morning.

“Wait, Sarah? Can we go to your house?” I asked. “I told my parents I was sleeping there.”

“Oh,” she said, “okay.” She put the car in reverse and drove out of my driveway, and I felt relieved again for some reason. Maybe because I knew that Kyle’s house and my house were two places I could never be again without having to admit that whatever had just happened—had actually happened.

“I have to be home by ten,” I said, thinking out loud. “Meghan’s coming today—remember? I have to go to the airport to get her with my mom.”

“Oh, right, cool. When am I going to get to meet her?”

“Tonight, if you want. Hey, Sarah?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks a lot for coming to get me. You really saved my ass.”

“No problem. Um—”

“I’ll tell you everything as soon as my head stops exploding.”

“So you do remember what happened?”

“Not last night, but I’ll tell you the stuff before. I wish—”

What I meant was, if I had just told you, then maybe you would have warned me and I would have listened. Maybe none of whatever happened last night, whatever horror it was, would have happened. But even as I said it, I was thinking, I still haven’t told Sarah or Molly or Meghan anything, so maybe if I keep on that path, and continue to say nothing, we can all just pretend nothing happened. Hell, since I didn’t even know what had happened, it would almost be true.

Sarah’s parents were still asleep, so we went to her room and pulled out the trundle bed. I collapsed onto it and slept until 9:30. When I woke up, light was coming in sideways through the row of horizontal windows along Sarah’s ceiling, blinding me and then lodging deep in my forehead.

“Sarah?” I heard her come down the stairs. She peeked her head around the corner into her room, looking oddly unlike herself. She had a headband pulling her hair back, and no makeup on. Maybe she had been washing her face or something. She looked very pretty and clean, like a young picture of her mom.

“You feeling any better?” she asked. I shielded my eyes from the light.

“I think I’m going to die,” I said.

“Let me get you some Excedrin—those really work,” she said, and she turned back into the hallway. I heard her in the bathroom next to Josh’s room, opening drawers and turning on the sink, thought what a good friend she was. She came back in carrying two Excedrin in the palm of one hand, and an orange plastic cup in the other. I propped myself up on some pillows, feeling like I might throw up again, and swallowed the pills down with the water.

“Lie down for ten more minutes,” she said, “and that will kick in. Then I’ll take you home so you can meet your mom in time to get Meghan.”

I wished I were Sarah, without wishing she were me. How nice would it have been not to have been me that morning, or any of the mornings that followed it? Someday I want to be the one taking care of my friend, rather than the basket case getting cared for. That said, I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on the evilest villain in the universe, so maybe I’ll never have a chance like Sarah had.

When she dropped me at my house, with the rest of her Excedrin bottle in my jacket pocket, I gave her an impulsive hug before staggering out into the driveway.

“We’ll get through this,” she said, and I knew right away that I would always remember that she said “we’ll” instead of “you’ll.”

I managed to say thank you as I walked up toward the house. When I got inside, I was relieved to find it empty, and a note from my mom saying they were at the Grill and that she’d come get me at eleven so we could pick up Meghan.

I took four more Excedrin, not realizing you’re not supposed to take more than eight in twenty-four hours, and put my head back down on the pillow. When the pills finally hid my headache under a numb bag of sand, I struggled up, took another shower, put on clean corduroy jeans and a sweater, and picked up my phone to call my mom. I had nine missed calls from Sarah and seven from Molly. So Sarah had told Molly. I couldn’t blame her. But I couldn’t bring myself to call them back, even after listening to their messages. Sarah’s were like, “Let us take you out tonight and cheer you up,” and Molly’s were all, “Dying to see you guys this weekend—call me!” because she didn’t want me to know for sure yet that Sarah had told her.

I went into my mom’s bathroom and used all her makeup. By the time she got home at eleven, I looked like I was wearing stage makeup, and felt slightly better.

“Wow,” she said, “you got dressed up for Meghan!”

I nodded. We drove out to the Detroit airport, small-talking. I used my best professional acting talent to hide everything until I left her in the car and went into the baggage claim to collect Meghan.

But my mom was suspicious. She kept casting glances at me sideways and asking if everything was all right. And my phone vibrated so nonstop in my purse that it was as if the bag were a living animal throbbing on my lap. I glanced each time to make sure it wasn’t Meghan, but it was just Molly and Sarah, over and over. I thought they were probably together, calling on a rotation.

“Why aren’t you picking up your phone?”

“Because you and I are in the car together, talking.” Even I could hear how unconvincing this was.

“Did something happen with you and Sarah?”

“No, Mom, everything’s fine.”

“What did you guys do last night?”

“We just hung out, okay?”

“Okay. Was Molly there?”

“No, she had to babysit her sister.”

“Are you sure you’re okay, Judy? You look—I don’t know, tired, maybe.”

“I was up late.”

As soon as we pulled up outside the baggage claim, I bolted from the car. Inside the airport, I had a rush of the thought that I could leave. I could just board a plane and fly to some other land far away and never return. Or at least not return until a hundred years from now, when no one would care about whatever had happened last night. I’d be like Rip Van Winkle. Or Sleeping Beauty. Except the mere thought of Sleeping Beauty getting kissed reminded me of Kyle and the floor started melting under me. I was like this, in chaos, when Meghan shouted my name from across the room.

I looked up and she was clomping toward me in huge, illicit heels, waving. She threw her arms around my neck and kissed all over my face, definitely leaving lipstick marks everywhere. She looked fantastic, all tan and wearing a tight yellow sweater and jeans with her high-heeled boots. Under any circumstances other than the ones I was now under, I would have asked right away how she had talked her mother into them; they were definitely not orthopedic.

“Oh my god! Judy! I’m so happy to see you!”

“Me, too,” I said.

She backed up and took a look at me. “Oh my god. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m really glad you’re here,” I said. “I’m fine, just super hung-over.”

“Wow, hungover, really? I guess your life has gotten exciting, huh? You’ll have to tell me.” She grabbed a black roller bag with a pink ribbon tied to its handle and heaved it off the conveyer belt. “That’s it,” she said. “Your folks outside?”

“My mom,” I said.

She looked at me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I gave up on my keeping-it-secret-forever plan instantly. I wished I had told her about Kyle from the very beginning, so she would have background, could help more.

“I think something bad might have happened last night,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t actually know.”

“Well,” she said, sounding concerned but happy, “we have five whole days to talk about it. And your play! I can’t believe I finally get to see you act.” She started moving toward the door, yanking the bag along.

“I know. Thank you so much for coming.”

Something in my voice made her turn and stop. “Was it something really bad last night?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Did you do it?”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what? You lost it last night ?”

“No, before. A few weeks ago, with the guy whose house I was at, though.”

“No way! You lost it!? Was it the guy you told me about? The peeing-at-the-party guy? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me—I thought we had a pact! You bitch!”

She slapped me on the arm, delightedly, but when I didn’t respond she sobered up. “So if you’d already lost it to him, what was so bad about last night?”

“His friends were there, and they’re not cool at all.”

“Are you guys, like, dating? Hanging out with his friends and everything?”

“Not really, that’s the thing.”

She waited.

“I think something crazy might have happened.”

“Like what?”

“I woke up naked, not with Kyle.”

“Oh. With—?”

“Meghan?”

“Yeah?”

“What if I—?”

“What if you what?”

“You know—fooled around with this other guy?”

“Did you wake up with one of his friends?”

“Only sort of, I mean, I was alone, but he was kind of right there—he was—”

“Was he naked, too?”

“He had on boxers.”

“Where was Kyle?”

“I don’t know. I ran.”

“You ran?”

“I mean, I didn’t literally run, but I left quickly.”

“How’d you get home?”

“I called that girl I was telling you about—Goth Sarah? And she came to get me. I didn’t look for Kyle.”

“Maybe that’s all good, though, right? Maybe you were just too drunk, so Kyle put you to bed somewhere else because he didn’t want to, you know, when you were too drunk to be into it. I mean, this other guy wasn’t, like, with you when you woke up, right? Maybe—”

“I don’t think it was all good,” I said.

I stopped there, because I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud to anyone, even Meghan, why: that I felt unlike myself, that I hadn’t been able to find my underpants, that I remembered something, a kind of hazy picture of Alan near me. I didn’t say Chris had been there too, and that I’d known exactly the way his body moved, in the instant I saw it upstairs on the living room couch, even though I couldn’t remember why or how that was true. None of this was possible to say, even to Meghan. I knew I had seen a puzzle of Alan parts too, and I knew it because they were different from Chris’s and Kyle’s; Alan stomach, hips, legs. I didn’t think I was imagining any of it—how could I have seen that stuff so clearly in my mind? And Kyle had been there. The worst part was that I thought I remembered laughing. Had Kyle been laughing? And if so, at what? Had I been laughing too? Maybe we had all just been joking around, having a good time. Or maybe I was just going crazy now, and none of it was real. I hoped so. Meghan and I walked outside the terminal, where my mom was circling. As soon as she came back around, she waved from the front seat of her car. Meghan waved back before lowering her voice and saying to me, “Why don’t you call Kyle and ask what happened?” We walked toward my mom.

“I can’t bring myself,” I said.

“Ask him at school on Monday, then. We’ll find a way.” She opened the door to my mom’s car. “Hi, Peggy!”

The whole way home, Meghan and my mom chatted cheerfully about her older brother’s baseball playing and her older sister’s college, and Meghan’s art class or something, while I put my phone on airplane mode, and then leaned my head against the cool window and talked myself out of throwing up.

That night we had dinner at the Grill with Sam, and even though I felt terrible about it, I didn’t call Sarah or Molly. Seeing Meghan, who had nothing to do with D’Arts, and didn’t even know the people involved, was too big a relief to be sacrificed by getting back into the real conversation about it, whatever that was going to be. I couldn’t imagine going back to school, and Sarah and Molly were evidence that that would have to happen. Plus, Molly was so—I don’t know, good, I guess. I just felt like she might be judgmental. So I avoided them both, thinking they’d assume it was because Meghan was a better friend and now that she was in town, I wasn’t interested in hanging out. I didn’t sleep at all that first night. I felt bad about Sarah and Molly, and brink-of-death panicked about Kyle. Meghan slept in my bed and I paced the room for like ten hours, checking my computer and phone every five minutes, opening books only to close them again, watching the silent, still street glitter under the lamps out the window. Time is a heavy, thick thing at night, and it moves like glue. That was the first Kyle Malanack all-nighter I’d pull. I took six more Excedrin, exceeding the limit again, which is part of what kept me up, since those things are like 80 percent caffeine. I also chewed two entire packs of gum.

On Sunday, I turned my phone on, and had sixteen messages from Sarah and nine from Molly, who wasn’t pretending anymore. “Call me right when you get this,” she said. “Did something happen? Are you okay?” I didn’t call back.

Meghan and I spent the day downtown, shopped at Urban Outfitters and Barnes & Noble, had lunch and dinner at the Grill with dozens of old people and a couple of Michigan students who sat on the same side of their booth and alternately sipped from their drinks and made out. As soon as they started kissing, I felt my stomach twist, wondered whether whatever had happened at Kyle’s would make me horrified by love for the rest of my life. When an old woman clucked disapprovingly at them, loudly enough for everyone to hear, Meghan threw me a knowing grin, not realizing she and I weren’t on the same side anymore. I was like the old lady now, disturbed that I had to watch their disgusting session. Of course, her reason for thinking it was inappropriate probably wasn’t that she had woken up less than forty-eight hours ago with a gaggle of naked teenage guys, unable to remember what she’d done. I wished I were the old lady, and then saw Meghan looking curiously at me. I wondered if I’d ever be able to explain how I felt—to anyone. The mere thought of trying made me feel exhausted and lonely.

I didn’t see anyone from D’Arts, and I worked on convincing myself that even if something had happened, as long as I never mentioned it again, and no one else did either, I could just pretend it hadn’t, and go on. I would just pretend. Pretend. Stay quiet.

The idea that that might work gave me a little comfort for a day.