SAMMPark is the Susan Ann Marchetti Memorial Park, but no one in their right mind calls it that. Everyone just calls it SAMMPark. The town built it about five years ago, and it's pretty much one of the only places worth going to in Brook-dale.

When they first opened the place, it was a big deal. It was like Fourth of July and Memorial Day rolled into one. People took off work to come with their families, to listen to bands play, to barbecue, play Frisbee, all that stuff.

I was ten or eleven. My little brother, Jesse, was five or six. We were still a family back then. Dad and Mom and Jesse and me.

I couldn't believe how big the park was. There had once been an office park here, right on the edge of town, but after the economy went bad, the place just sat abandoned for years. Then the town suddenly had a wad of cash and the next thing you know-ta-da! SAMMPark.

Before Dad would let us run off to play with the other kids, though, he dragged us over to a spot near the entrance to the park. There was a statue there-a lifesize replica of a woman dressed like a nurse.

"See this?" Dad asked.

Jesse was all fidgety. Mom put her hands on his shoulders to keep him still.

"Yeah, Dad," I said.

"All of these people are just here to have a good time, and that's OK, but..." And then he started rambling and I couldn't understand half of it.

"What your father is trying to say..." That was a big phrase for Mom. She said it all the time. When I was younger, I thought she had telepathy or something, seeing as how she could figure out what Dad meant to say. Especially when it seemed like he had no idea.

"What he's trying to say, is that people should know why the park is here. That's important."

Dad took a deep breath and nodded. "Right. Right. See, it was built for ... It was built by..." He blew out his breath. "Look. Here. See it?"

I read the inscription on the pedestal: Susan Ann Marchetti Memorial Park. Under that: Dedicated and built in her name by the man who gave her life and the man who gave her death. There were also two dates, just like on a gravestone.

"What does it mean?" I asked Dad.

"She was killed back before you were born," Dad said, "by a drunk driver." Dad had found a rhythm now and was comfortable. "Ran her off the road while she was on her way home from nursing school. The guy who did it wasn't much older than you-he had just turned eighteen. And he killed someone. He got off pretty light, too. His family was from Breed's Grove."

Breed's Grove was on the west side of Brookdale. Rich people lived there. Like super rich, you know? I suddenly felt guilty, even though I hadn't done anything.

"A few years ago, he came back to Brookdale. He was a big success, made a lot of money. But he came back here and the next thing you know, he was working with her father to build this park in her memory."

Dad stared at the statue for a long time. Jesse started fidgeting again. I kept waiting for Dad to say something else, but he just stared. Finally, Mom cleared her throat and told me and Jesse to go play. We ran off, but I looked over my shoulder. Dad was still just staring at the statue. Mom took one of his hands and stood there with him.

I went over to the playground area. It's like every kid in Brookdale was there-the place was all chaotic fun. Except for Jesse, who sat on a swing, not moving at all, staring down at his feet.

"What's wrong, Jess?" I thought maybe he wanted me to push him. He knew how to swing on his own, but he still liked being pushed.

I crouched down next to him and that's when I realized he was crying. I got angry and confused at the same time. "What happened? Did someone hit you?"

He shook his head ferociously. He never let Mom cut his hair, so it flopped all around his face. "No."

"Then what's wrong?"

"Why did she die?" And he started bawling. Other kids looked over.

"Calm down, Jesse." I knew who he meant-the dead girl. The one they'd named the park after. I should have known this would happen. Jesse cried at cartoons, for G.o.d's sake.

I pulled him off the swing and took him over near some bushes where I could calm him down and get him settled. "Remember how Pandazilla created Aquahorse?" I asked. It was this totally silly memory. We'd been playing together in the backyard and this gigantic stuffed panda-we named it Pandazilla because it was the bad guy for our army toys and superheroes-picked up a horse to throw it at something and instead Jesse tripped and the horse went flying into the wading pool. Jesse was four and this was, like, the height of comedy for him. The horse was taking a bath, we decided, and then we decided that the horse loved the water and we named it Aquahorse. I could always count on that stupid memory to make him laugh.

It worked again this time. "The horse took a bath," he said, sniffling a little bit.

"Yeah, that's right." And pretty soon he was doing all right and I helped him wipe up his tears with the edge of his shirt and we went off to play.

Later that night, when we were home and tucked in bed, I asked Mom why Dad had told us the story about the dead girl.

"Dad just likes for you to know these things. It's important to him."

"Why?"

A troubled look flitted over Mom's face for just a second. Looking back, that was probably my first clue that she was going to leave him. Us. "It's just important to him," she said, in a tone of voice that added, Beats the h.e.l.l out of me, too.

That story-that day-always pops into my brain whenever I come to SAMMPark, which is actually a lot these days because the park is the Council's official outside-of-school meeting place. It's big enough that we can always find someplace to sneak off to when we need to discuss whatever mayhem we're going to concoct next.

Flip picks me up in his beat-up old orange coupe. We're the last to arrive; everyone else is already at the park. He keeps up a running stream of commentary about the ceremony at the school and all of the great ideas he'd had to disrupt it.

"But out of respect for a fellow Fool, I held back," he admits, then waits for me to fall all over myself thanking him. I'm not in the mood, though, so I just sit there.

"We should do something with the key," he says after a moment, pretending that the silence never happened. "I mean, there's got to be something we can do with it, right?"

I think about the key. It's actually on my key chain now, because ... Well, because it's a key, right? Not much else to do with it. And besides...

"If we do something with the key, they'll know it was me."

Flip's eyebrows shoot up. "Very true, Fool Kross! Very true. Nicely done. Good show."

Just then, we pa.s.s the big sign that reads, KEEP BROOKDALE BEAUTIFUL! I bite my lip because Flip is about to say...

"You know the problem with that sign, Kross? It pre-"

"'It presupposes that Brookdale was beautiful to begin with.'"

"Guess I say that a lot, huh?"

Only, like, every freakin' time we drive past it.

"The truth must be spoken." He steers into the parking lot at SAMMPark. "Let us disembark!"

Just inside the entrance is the statue of Susan Ann Marchetti. As he does every time he comes to the park, Flip saunters over to it and slaps it on the a.s.s. "Hey, there, Susie baby!" he calls out. "Lookin' good, sweet thang!"

I hate it when he does that.

"So hot for someone made out of cold stone," he says on his way back to me. "I would have hit that, Kross. I really would have."

I almost tell him that he wishes he could have hit that. That Fam only hangs out with him because she's a freshman and she likes having a boyfriend who can drive. But there's no point to it. I mean, Flip once told me that he knows Fam is only his girlfriend because it's convenient. He doesn't care. He just likes having someone who hangs on his every word.

But I don't say anything because Flip'll just come back with something I have no answer for. So instead, we head further into the park for the party.

When I say the Council's having a party, you have to realize that a Council party is just the six of us hanging out at SAMMPark until it's too late at night, eating buckets of takeout wings from Cincinnati Joe's and drinking beer in the bushes so that no one busts us and smoking and listening to Flip, who blathers on about whatever wild thoughts have invaded his brain lately-radiation from quasars, prime numbers, college student plagiarism, last night's TV, s.e.x. Whatever.

By the time the sun's gone down and the park has emptied out of the families, we're all pretty smashed, except for Flip, the designated driver. ("Dying in a car wreck isn't Foolish-it's just stupid.") Then again, Flip's permanently high on his own adrenaline and brainwaves, so he doesn't need booze or drugs.

Speedo had the foresight to bring a little baggie of pot, so we roll up and light up and sort of blunder around the park, losing more and more touch with reality. It's a great way to access Fooldom. You think and say stuff while drunk or stoned that you'd never think or say otherwise.

I end up lying in the gra.s.s near the baseball diamond with t.i.t, the two of us just staring up at the stars, which suddenly look like giant, winking eyes. I've known t.i.t the longest of the whole Council. We grew up together in my old neighborhood, back when Mom and Dad were still together. We always end up doing this-splintering off-when the Council gets together. Flip calls us the Subcommittee.

Tonight, it's like the sky is watching us from every angle, and even though I'm stoned, this doesn't worry me or make me paranoid. It sort of makes me feel safe and secure. Like someone has my back.

It makes me think of my favorite verse from the Bible. Not that I know much about the Bible, tell the truth. I mean, I'm no scholar or anything. But I paid attention back when I used to go to Ma.s.s, and this one verse really hooked me one time when Father McKane was giving his sermon, so I looked it up later.

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

That's from Matthew. And what it basically means is that G.o.d's watching and he doesn't miss anything, which is a good thing.

And it makes me think like maybe tonight G.o.d punched holes in that big black vault overhead so that he could keep tabs on me and keep me from doing anything else really, unbelievably dumb or evil.

It's too late for the dumb, evil things in my past, but maybe there's still time to rescue me from my future idiocy.

t.i.t starts blabbing about girls.

We Fools, we tell each other everything.

Almost.

We keep no secrets from each other.

Almost.

So t.i.t's babbling about girls and that makes me think about Leah, and I wonder how the universe can be so screwy that I've ended up in this position-called a hero when I know I'm nothing of the sort.

Flip says that chaos dominates the world. That everything is made up of these things called fractals, which I don't understand, but Flip's brilliant, so I just believe him and he says that with fractals, the ending of something is completely dependent on how it starts. So what if ... What if I'd never bought the video camera? What if I'd never worked at the Burger Joint two summers ago? Would I still have ended up in that alley? And would the world still believe the great lie, maybe the ultimate Fool prank, that Kevin Ross is a hero?

I don't know. I'm not smart enough to know. But I think Leah would probably be dead, if that was the case. So do I have to bear the burden of my guilt to save her? Is that the price I pay?

My head starts to hurt from all of the thinking. Fortunately, t.i.t interrupts me.

"Who would you do?" he asks. He blows out some smoke and pa.s.ses his cigarette over to me. The pot and beer are gone, and the two of us are down to two cigarettes, which we're sharing to try to make them last longer. Neither of us feels like getting up to look for the others to b.u.m more smokes.

"What do you mean?"

"C'mon. Of the girls at South Brook. Who's in your top ten?"

I don't want to talk about this. I was enjoying just lying on my back in the cool gra.s.s, toked out of my mind on some other cool gra.s.s, watching G.o.d's billion eyes above.

Flip comes over. He's stone cold sober, which seems funny to me, so I start giggling and t.i.t joins in. "I'm driving Jedi and Speedo home," he tells us. "I'll be back for you guys in like twenty minutes."

t.i.t goes right back to the question as soon as Flip leaves: "Who would you do? C'mon, man."

"I don't know."

He laughs, spilling out smoke. "Sure you do."

"Doesn't matter what I think," I tell him. "I'm so d.a.m.n ugly no chick is gonna look at me twice. Much less do me."

He turns to look at me. "You are an ugly son of a b.i.t.c.h. I'll give you that. You gotta do something about the zits. You wouldn't be so bad then."

"Whatever." Like it matters. My buzz is slipping away now. d.a.m.n.

"But let's pretend that some girl has lost her mind and wants to straddle the Kross-Town Express. Who do you want it to be?"

I shrug, which really doesn't communicate much when you're flat on your back.

"Come on, Kross. Tell me."

"Get off my back. You tell me."

"OK," he says, as if he doesn't care. "Number one is Mich.e.l.le Jurgens."

"Oh, please! You can't say Mich.e.l.le Jurgens."

"Why not?"

"Because everyone says Mich.e.l.le Jurgens." It's true. Mich.e.l.le Jurgens is sort of the Official w.a.n.k-Bait of South Brook High, a promotion from her previous role as Official w.a.n.k-Bait of South Brook Middle.

"So?"

"So, the whole point of making a list like this is to make it, like, individual, you know?"

"OK. Dina Jurgens." He grins.

"She graduated last year, you moron. She doesn't count."

"Fine. Kayla Meyer."

"Not bad."

"Now you."

"No. Keep going."

"I'll give you my top three. Kayla and then, uh, Lisa Carter."

"Lisa Carter? Really? I don't see it."

"Awesome a.s.s."

"If you say so."