"Shhh. He's gonna be fine," Pete said, and pried her off Moose. Allen and the other brawlers had slunk ineffably away, back into the crowd at the bar, or outside. Teeter, his eye socket already going gray, carried ice packed in a towel and held a few cubes to the back of Moose's neck until he stirred. Then Teeter and Pete together hoisted Moose off the floor and propped him in a chair, where he drooped semi-conscious, blood running from his nose, one eye swollen almost shut. Teeter stuck the towel full of ice in Moose's hand, bent Moose's arm and pressed the ice pack to his swollen eye. He gathered the stray pieces of ice and held them to his own.

Charlotte knelt at her uncle's side. Already she was calmer; he wasn't dead, and he wasn't going to die. "If you give me Aunt Priscilla's number," she said softly, "I'll call her at work."

"No," he said sharply. "Don't."

"But you're-"

"No."

They sat for a very long time, Moose draped in the chair, Charlotte kneeling helplessly beside him while the bar lapsed into willful amnesia, erasing the fight until Charlotte herself could hardly believe it had happened. Pete had gone and Teeter was behind the bar again, black eye and all, pulling the tap. The White Sox scored and everyone clapped. Charlotte felt exiled, heart chattering in her chest, wrist throbbing in her lap.

When Moose was strong enough, they left the bar and walked back through the Water Power District to his station wagon, still parked on Main Street beside the bridge over Kent Creek. The sky was beginning to clear, pink fingers of sunset nudging the dark clouds. "Should I drive?" Charlotte said, amazed at the sound of her calm. She felt scared, strange.

"No," he said. "I'm fine."

She crawled inside his station wagon, pushing aside the old coffee cups and pizza containers that seemed to reclaim the seat each time she left it. Moose started the car and they sat, engine running. A thick, guilty silence packed the car, as if they'd gotten in some awful trouble together, as if it were Charlotte's fault, too. I did something wrong I did something wrong, she kept thinking, and felt a queasy shame. Her wrist ached.

"Charlotte, if you wouldn't mind," Moose said at last, stiffly, "I'd prefer you not mention any of this to your mother."

"My mother," she said, stung. "I don't tell her anything."

Chapter Fifteen.

When the ushers arrived with their brooms and trash bags and rousted Michael West from his seat, he repaired to the crowded lobby and idled there, gazing at the synthetic red carpet, inhaling salty lungfuls of artificial b.u.t.ter smell while around him moviegoers coursed from other theaters and dispersed. Watching movies left him weak, porous to the world in a way that felt hazardous, as if his skin had been removed. Usually he waited for the feeling to pa.s.s before venturing outdoors. It was almost dark, a groggy smudge of pink beyond the shaded windows, puddles of rain suspended on the asphalt. arrived with their brooms and trash bags and rousted Michael West from his seat, he repaired to the crowded lobby and idled there, gazing at the synthetic red carpet, inhaling salty lungfuls of artificial b.u.t.ter smell while around him moviegoers coursed from other theaters and dispersed. Watching movies left him weak, porous to the world in a way that felt hazardous, as if his skin had been removed. Usually he waited for the feeling to pa.s.s before venturing outdoors. It was almost dark, a groggy smudge of pink beyond the shaded windows, puddles of rain suspended on the asphalt.

"Michael?"

A tumble-haired woman in a raincoat: Abby Reece. Michael wondered how long she'd been standing there. "Are you waiting for someone?" she asked.

He smiled, adjusting. "No, I'm just-hanging around. Killing time, I guess."

They had avoided each other at school for many months-or rather, she had avoided him. Michael looked at her sad gray eyes and tried to remember what exactly had happened between them.

"Which movie did you see?" she asked, a bit nervously, and he told her the name. "Any good?"

"I had a mixed response," he said. "I liked the basic premise of a man who plunders deep-sea wreckage for treasure, but I thought Tom Cruise seemed too kind to seize gems from the skeletal necks of the drowned. I did enjoy his conflict with the salvage operation, and I thought Jennifer Aniston was an unlikely but interesting choice for his adversary and eventual lover. Of course their discovery of a fully furnished bedroom two hundred meters below the sea was preposterous."

Abby nodded, studying him, and Michael wondered if he'd gone on too long. He'd had little practice discussing movies with other people, though nowadays he consumed them heedlessly, rapturously-the moment school ended, after a faculty dinner; all day, sometimes, on weekends. Even the poorly made ones kicked him open effortlessly, invading him with their light and motion and noise, their burning planes and sinking ships and couples destined to find one another and marry after a designated number of hilarious mishaps. He'd become a connoisseur, a seasoned arbiter of car chases and court-martials and crises aboard 747s, a discerning appraiser of talking animals, of drug busts and fistfights and tearful reconciliations, s.e.x scenes, death throes, and simulated high-speed travel in outer s.p.a.ce.

"I was going to grab a bite to eat," he told Abby. "Will you join me?"

At the sound of the horn, Charlotte ran from her house and plunged into the melty backseat of Roz's father's Park Avenue, a vaporous tank of hair-spray, sour candy, body heat-the smell of her friends-a lost, familiar smell that enfolded her like bathwater the precise temperature of her body. Roselyn twisted around and blew her a kiss. In the backseat, Laurel hugged her tightly. Only Sheila, twitching the radio dial, failed to acknowledge her entrance.

"Whawhawha," Roz said, slapping Sheila's hand away. "I like Oasis."

"Hi, Sheila," Charlotte said, eyeing her friend's slumped shoulders and pale blond hair. She was eating Rollos.

"What happened to your arm?" Laurel asked Charlotte.

"I fell off my bike."

Her wrist had been so sore by the time her uncle dropped her at home late that afternoon that she'd actually shown it to her mother, who examined it carefully. Just a bruise, she thought, but if it was worse tomorrow they would drive to Rockford Memorial for an X-ray. She swaddled Charlotte's forearm in an Ace bandage, whose pressure relieved the pain. Ricky was having dinner at the home of his new-his first-girlfriend, Allison Jones. Charlotte had planned on going to Michael West's tonight; she nearly always did, after seeing Moose. But doing her homework she felt restless, anxious. Strange. Her uncle kept raiding her thoughts, flinging ecstatic punches, then buckling to the floor, spent. She found herself calling her friends for the first time in weeks. They were at Roselyn's, all three, getting ready for a party. "Please," Charlotte told them. "I have an urgent need to be kidnapped."

Now she said again, "Hi, Sheila."

Laurel began hissing into Charlotte's ear, "... was supposed to visit her dad in New York but he canceled at the very last minute pluswhich now her mom's selling the-"

Sheila swooped around, her lovely face grimed with fury. "Don't tell my s.h.i.t to her!"

"Her," Charlotte retorted, indignant. "Who's her?" Charlotte retorted, indignant. "Who's her?"

Sheila turned back around and ate another Rollo.

"You're so dark," Roselyn scolded Sheila. "It's like, callous."

"Sorry," Sheila said, with hostility. "Just because she has five minutes to spend, we're supposed to like fall on the ground with happiness?"

Michael and Abby drove in separate cars to Chili's, where they faced each other across a slab of varnished table and ordered frozen margaritas. The food arrived sizzling on black cast-iron trays, and Michael set upon his ravenously. He'd grown fond of Chili's; the enormity of the portions, the sense that there would always be more regardless of how much one ate-even the predictability of the food instilled in him a deep comfort. He'd developed a monstrous new appet.i.te; it had driven him back to McDonald's many times, where the cheap food stuccoed his insides, plugging the holes of his hunger. He'd eaten at Burger King and Wendy's and Arby's and Taco Bell, had drunk nondairy shakes that were said to contain flour, gobbled onion rings, chicken nuggets, fish sandwiches, synthetic ice cream, until all that remained of his old revulsion was a slight frisson of wickedness as he gorged himself. A new layer of softness had begun to float above his bones where once the skin had stretched tight. Not fat, but a harbinger of fat. He would stand before the mirror and study this new stratum of himself, a widening and settling in his face that amounted to natural disguise. Soon he would begin to exercise, jogging along manicured sidewalks, huffing among rows of tulips, running in circles and then straining to lift hundreds of pounds of weights, cultivating muscles that would adhere to him like expensive clothing. And then his infiltration would be complete.

Abby was studying him over the broad saucer of her margarita. "You seem different, Michael," she said. "I can't figure out how."

"Really?" he said. "I feel the same."

But she was right; at last there was movement within him, a plan taking shape. He experienced it as a burrowing, the tunneling of a small industrious creature wakened after long sleep. He would survive without his anger, after all. More than survive-would thrive, for the absence of anger had left him, in moments, with an almost delirious sense of freedom. And when he glimpsed the part of the world he had come from (occasionally, on the evening news), soaked in rage, locked in anguished and protracted wars, it all looked forced, overwrought. He studied the faces mashed by suffering, the skirmishes and tear-gas clouds and people stunned by rubber bullets and wondered, seriously, whether all of them were pretending. How could anything matter so deeply?

"Wait," Charlotte said, "so now you're all p.i.s.sed at me?"

No one said anything. The delicious bathwater of her friends' proximity had turned coolly gelatinous.

"I heard you were at school? Like two weeks ago?" Roz said.

"I was, but-" It was the time she'd seen Michael West, or the person who resembled Michael West. "I was."

"You just, like, disappeared at a certain point," Laurel said, with apology.

Charlotte said nothing. After the violence of her afternoon with Moose, her friends' anger felt unbearable, toxic. She knew they were right. She pictured getting out of the car right there, in the middle of traffic, just walking away.

There was a long silence.

"So ... why tonight?" Sheila said acidly. "You had nothing else to do, so you thought, I'll like spend time with the little people?"

Charlotte flung open the door. They were stopped at a red light on State Street, in a middle lane, almost at Aunt Mary's, where they'd been headed for dessert. She heard the little thump of their surprise as she got out, then ambled calmly among panting Ford Explorers toward the curb.

Roz began honking her horn. She maneuvered into the outer lane and drove next to Charlotte, slowly. She kept honking, and soon the cars behind her were honking, too.

A window slid down. "Get in."

It was Sheila. Charlotte didn't even glance at her.

"Get in, or I'll take s.h.i.t for it all night."

"That's a reason not to get in."

"Chari?" Sheila said. "Will you please?"

"If I get in, will you get out?"

Charlotte turned to the car. Sheila was grinning.

A universal truth: people loved to speak of their children. "Tell me about your kids, Abby," Michael said. "How're they doing?"

"In Los Angeles, right now. Visiting their father." She rolled her eyes, only partly offsetting their sudden, l.u.s.trous cargo of tears. Yes, he remembered now: The husband who had run away to Los Angeles. The little girl whose toes had suctioned to him like a lizard's to a wall.

"Then he hasn't come back."

"Come back?" Abby said, and shook her head. "He has no intention of coming back. He's gotten into the movie business."

Michael received this information with the whole of his body, as if he'd been shoved. "Really," he said, and set down his drink.

"Producing, whatever that means. Some kind of movie-Internet-multimedia-blahbiddyblah."

"What does does it mean?" it mean?"

"Who knows? He's optioned a book, he's got someone writing a script. Keeps saying all you need to know is how to tell a story. Which sounds a little pat, but on the other hand, if Darden can do it, or convince people he's doing it, then frankly it can't be all that hard."

Michael smiled, holding very still. "He's making movies?"

"So he tells me."

"He went there without training?"

"He's a litigator! I put the guy through law school!" She smiled, baring anger and white, imperfect teeth.

Michael's whole body tingled, a forest full of breathing animals. "How does he describe it?" he asked carefully.

"Tediously," she said. "He goes on and on about how there's a revolution happening. Keeps talking about cross-pollination and globalization and channels of communication and new media. And 'Renaissance,' that's my favorite. This is the new Renaissance This is the new Renaissance, he'll say, like he has the remotest idea what the 'old' Renaissance consisted of."

"What else?"

"Everything is about to change," she intoned. "In she intoned. "In ten years you won't recognize the world we live in. People's lives will be totally different ten years you won't recognize the world we live in. People's lives will be totally different ... yeah, right. Like having some life-sized computer screen in your living room showing interactive horror films is going to bring you closer to G.o.d. I mean, how about feeding some hungry people? How about paying some attention to the Third World, or even just dirt-poor Americans trying to survive without welfare? For them, life ... yeah, right. Like having some life-sized computer screen in your living room showing interactive horror films is going to bring you closer to G.o.d. I mean, how about feeding some hungry people? How about paying some attention to the Third World, or even just dirt-poor Americans trying to survive without welfare? For them, life is is an interactive horror film!" an interactive horror film!"

She looked beseechingly at Michael, and he nodded gently, sympathetically. But he hardly heard her. He was memorizing Darden's phrases.

"I don't have friends there," Charlotte said. "I don't."

They were sitting in a booth at Aunt Mary's, a spectral wariness still flickering among them as they forked their desserts-all but Laurel, who was dancing in "The Corsair" and had ordered a fruit cup. She cut open each black grape and removed the seeds before eating it.

"Bulls.h.i.t," Sheila said.

"I mean it."

"Then it's a boy," Roselyn declared, with carnivorous approval.

When Charlotte didn't deny it, Roz shrieked until Laurel clapped her mouth shut with the flat of her hand.

"The screamers," Sheila explained to Charlotte, rolling her eyes. "They got bigger, and now she has to have an operation."

"Might," Roselyn corrected her. "Might have to have." She was speaking very softly now. "At East?" Roselyn corrected her. "Might have to have." She was speaking very softly now. "At East?"

Charlotte hesitated. How to explain her secrecy, her failure to produce the boy for their collective inspection? "No," she said. "He's older."

"College?"

"... No."

The implications of this disclosure sifted over them gradually. "Wow," Roz breathed. "So he's like, a man."

They stared at Charlotte, and she felt herself suspended, afloat in their collective amazement. And guilty as it made her to smuggle forth these bits of contraband, the pleasure of release-of bragging aloud, of telling someone, finally, what the h.e.l.l was going on what the h.e.l.l was going on-more than compensated.

"Is he like ... married?" Laurel asked.

"No."

"Divorced?"

"Don't know."

"Would we know his name? If you said it?"

Charlotte paused again. She should lie, of course, but she didn't want to lie; she wanted to say the name aloud-finally, to someone. To say it and hear it said. "Probably."

The girls looked baffled. There was a long, circuitous silence.

"Is he ... famous or something?" Laurel asked, in a small voice.

Charlotte laughed, but the others regarded her with wistful awe. Anything had become possible. "That's completely screwy," she said. But watching her friends, she felt the tiny strands of their conviction affix to her like silk. For an instant she saw herself differently-someone glamorous, whose life was crammed with remarkable event. A person she herself would envy. And Charlotte grasped something then, for the very first time: people would believe almost anything.

"Look at me," she said, serious now. "You guys? Yoo-hoo. Look."

They did, all three. In thoughtful silence.

"She's blushing," Sheila said.