So it was my idea, I guess. He was like, why don't you call up Sarah and Ginger or Molly or whatever, but I didn't. I just drank more throatfuls of whiskey while he called his friends. This is going to sound like I'm lying, but I barely remember anything else about that night. I kept drinking the smoky whiskey, that much I know. And apparently Alan and Chris showed up, and we watched some of one of the Saw movies, and drank more whiskey, and then we were playing cards or something-I don't know what, but something happened at a table. And then the rest is not only history-it's the history of my whole life. I'm like that girl who gave the president a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b once. I mean, she had an entire life, but then it was defined forever by that one thing. Just like mine will be by this-the one night of my entire life I can't remember. Even if that wasn't true, it would still seem unfair that the first time I ever got really, really, like black-out, forget-what's-happening drunk, I was in such bad hands. I mean, other kids do that all the time and they get to wake up the next day and go on. Am I cursed?

I asked my mom, before I ran away to the Motel Manor forever, if she thought I might be under some horrible jinx, and she said absolutely not, that she thought I was lucky and would have a wonderful life and remember this as a painful but character-building moment. And when she said it, I couldn't be sure whether she actually believed what she was saying herself, but I had this terrible sensation that the floor was disappearing from under me, that I was spinning, falling slowly into s.p.a.ce, where gravity didn't work the way it's supposed to. I knew what this feeling meant: that your parents can be wrong about things. I knew my mom was wrong about this, in an engulfing, bad-dream kind of way. I'd had that sense before, over something way stupider and less deep-when my dwarf friend Meghan and I were talking about shaving our legs. Meghan has dark, curly hair and is always talking about how hairy her body is and how she has to get waxed constantly, and I told her what my mom had said, that men "like a little hair," which I'll admit is really disgusting if you think about it. And Meghan was like, "No, they don't." And I was like, "My mom said they do." Meghan rolled her eyes, and I knew right away that she had a point, that maybe my mom was wrong, or at least that she had a very strange idea about the way men think of hair. Or something. Because this wasn't something my mom said to make me feel better; it was something she actually thought-that men "like a little hair." Which of course means my dad-ew. Anyway, I told Meghan the rest of everything my mom said because I couldn't shut up, even once I realized I was on the wrong track: that you should shave your legs only halfway up, because it's better to have hairy thighs than to have p.r.i.c.kly thighs. And Meghan was like, "Someone needs to send your mom a memo telling her the seventies are over."

And I knew, the way you can about truth, that Meghan was definitely right and my mom was wrong. And even though it was about the dumbest thing ever, the floor was gone and I floated away without that great feeling you have when you're a little kid-that your parents know everything and can protect you. I'm glad I lost that safe feeling, of my mom always being right, over a ridiculous revelation about how far up my thigh to take a razor. Unlike my virginity, which I lost to Kyle in a horror movie, and then, in an even more dreadful sequel, my actual innocence. Which is not the same as virginity, by the way. But which I also lost to him.

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 s...o...b..ring 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 d.i.n.klage 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, rea.s.sembled 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cla.s.ses. 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 gla.s.s, 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 skysc.r.a.per 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 Sat.u.r.day morning naked, on Kyle's bas.e.m.e.nt 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 G.o.d, 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.

"h.e.l.llllllooo?"

"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 G.o.d," 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed before Sarah pulled up. She did a dangerous, screeching U-turn and I opened the pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.sed 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 h.e.l.l 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 gla.s.s, 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."