"You sorry son of a bitch," Niles snarled. "Joking around at a time like this. I'm going to whip your ass when we get to the waiting room."

"Joking? Thank God he was joking," Starla said. "I needed a joke. I need to laugh." She took a breath and murmured, "I can do this."

"Then do it, mountain girl," I said. "I hear they don't make girls any tougher."

"Never mess with me, Toad," Starla said as she punched me on the shoulder and got out of the car. "Promise me if this operation doesn't work, you won't call me Cyclops, though."

"Promise," I said.

An hour passed in the waiting room, and Niles began to pace like a caged panther, his muscles taut and his eyes burning. A door opened, and Fraser Rutledge made a surprise entrance, going directly over to Niles, giving him a sisterly hug. The hospital was a block south of Ashley Hall, the private school Fraser attended; she had gotten permission to skip her study hall to visit a sick friend. She whispered a few words to Niles, and though I could not hear them, I could see his shoulder muscles relax as she got him to sit down. She walked over to me, gave me a rough hug, and said, "You've been the talk at our dinner table for the past couple of nights, Leo."

"Why on earth?" I asked.

"Chad admitted that he'd broken up with Molly. Man, it hit our house like an A-bomb. Molly's mother called my mother and said Chad had asked that slut Bettina Trask to the dance."

"Bettina's not that bad," I said. "She's up from crap, but she's smart as hell and tries hard. She's in my mother's advanced English course. Ask Niles."

"Bettina's been nice to me and Starla," Niles said. "Even after we got into a fight with her boyfriend on the first day of school."

"Well, I hear she puts out like a Pez dispenser," Fraser said. "And Toad, I hear you're playing sloppy seconds for Chad."

"Do your parents know you and I are dating yet, Fraser?" Niles asked.

"Not yet," she admitted nervously. "And the time certainly isn't now."

"The orphan and Bettina Trask," Niles said. "Too much shame for your parents to bear in one week."

"Don't go feeling sorry for yourself again, Niles Whitehead," Fraser said. "I won't rich-girl you to death if you don't beat me with the orphan stick, okay?"

At that moment, Dr. Gauldin Colwell entered the waiting room, wearing his scrubs and that maritime calmness that seemed to be his greatest asset as a physician. He was a handsome, aristocratic man who looked like he was bred to wear a stethoscope. His very presence calmed me, but more important, I saw a visible relaxation in Niles's ruffled demeanor.

Gathering us around him, Dr. Colwell spoke in a soft, authoritative voice. "I believe the operation was a success, but we won't know for sure for about forty-eight hours. Everything looked good. I'll be over each morning this weekend to check on the progress of her healing. We'll keep her groggy and sedated the whole time. I don't let my patients suffer pain. Before you go, you'll need to learn how to apply eye drops."

"I can do that, Doctor," Niles said. "I'm her brother."

"So I hear," Dr. Colwell said, turning to Niles. "You owe a debt of gratitude to Leo King here. He's the one who asked me to do this operation."

"He's got it, Doctor," Niles answered. "For as long as we live."

"You've got something too, Dr. Colwell," I said.

"What's that, Leo?" the doctor asked.

"Free newspapers the rest of your life."

"That's unnecessary," he said. "But very gracious."

His young assistant, Jane Parker, as pretty as a cornflower, came out into the waiting room and asked, "Who needs to learn how to apply eye drops?"

"Teach all of them," Dr. Colwell said. He began to leave, then stopped to say, "Mr. Whitehead, your sister is going to have something new come into her life, I expect."

"What's that, Doctor?" Niles asked.

"Gentleman callers," he said. "Lots of gentlemen callers."

"I don't get it," Niles said.

Jane Parker laughed. "Your sister's a pretty girl. A darling girl. This is going to change her life."

In the locker room that night, an undercurrent of discord was loose as the players laced up their shoulder pads and strapped hip pads to their waists. Something invisible had sucked the spirit out of our team, and we seemed lethargic as the crowd filled the aisles of Stoney Field, fired up by our undefeated season. The Hanahan team seemed like it was marching in step to some nihilistic death march that would bring our bright season to a demoralizing finish. The fiery love of competition that had carried us to a ninth-place ranking among the largest high schools of our state had either called in sick or decided to take a Friday night off. I could feel the first loss of the season adhering to our record before I had even finished dressing. Luckily, I was not the only one to notice it.

Ike looked around. "What's wrong, Toad?"

"We seem dead," I said. "We all need to be on an IV."

"Hey, Renegades!" Ike yelled as he got up, fully dressed and ready to go. He went down the line pounding shoulder pads and slapping boys on the ass, trying to light a fire in a room without kindling or oxygen. "Let me see some fight in your eyes!" he exhorted. "You're acting like scarecrows. Barnyard chickens. You guys forget who we are? We're the goddamn Renegades. We've beaten the Summerville Green Wave, the Beaufort Tidal Wave, the St. Andrews Rocks. And tonight we're playing a tough-as-shit Hanahan team that hasn't lost a game, either. Where's the fight in you guys? Tell me where it went to hide, and I'll get up a search party to go find it."

A voice answered Ike, rebellious and unappeasable. "Sit down and shut up, boy. You're beating a dead horse." The voice came from Wormy Ledbetter, who sat by his locker half-dressed.

His challenge to the cocaptain seemed cancerous to team unity, so I went to where Wormy sat and brought both my fists down hard on his shoulder pads. He jumped up with fists clenched, ready to fight me and Ike at the same time.

Niles intervened by pulling me back by my jersey. "Call a team meeting before the coaches get here," he told Ike.

Ike ordered, "Everybody dress on the double! One minute, then we meet in the conference room."

This decree caused some grumbling among both the white and the black players, but at least it was an audible sign that the team was no longer brain-dead. In less than sixty seconds, our entire team faced Ike and me as we stood in front of the blackboard, which was Coach Jefferson's personal realm of power.

"Let's finish this thing," Ike said, "whatever it is. I don't know who this team is."

"Guys," I said, "what's wrong with the Renegades? We've gone through so much together."

The silence was complete, unbreakable. I was about to say something else inane in the vocabulary-stunted limitations of sport when Niles spoke up. "Wormy's pissed off because Chad's dating his girlfriend after the game tonight."

Ike whistled. "Chad, are you a plain fool or what? From what I hear, Bettina and Wormy've been going together forever."

Chad, nervous and uncertain, said, "I think Bettina just wanted to try a little white meat from the other side of the tracks."

From knowing Chad, I understood his response was part bravado and part an unstrategic use of his sense of humor. As I was trying to think of a funnier response, I watched the rhinoceros-like charge of Wormy leaping over three of his teammates to get to Chad, who was sitting next to a cinder-block wall. Amid the flailing fists and bursts of creative profanity, we managed to separate the two combatants. Chad was lucky for the success of our intervention-I thought Wormy would have severed Chad's carotid artery with his crooked, yellowed teeth in the fury of that headlong charge. Ike and I got unsteady handholds on Wormy's uniform, and he was guided back to his seat with far less relief than Chad felt. When Ike and I gained control of the atmosphere, you could feel an agitation that had replaced the spiritual hollowness that had infected my teammates.

As Ike began to speak, Coach Jefferson and his assistant entered from the coaching office. I ran down the cement aisle to intercept them and said, "We need five minutes, Coach. Got to clear some things up. Team trouble, but we can handle it."

Though Coach Jefferson was surprised, he was immediately responsive. "Four minutes." He and his assistant retreated to his small, airless office. I ran back to the front of the blackboard.

"Wormy," Ike said, "we can't sacrifice this team for our love lives. We've all worked too hard. All of you know how I feel about Betty, but if my feelings for her ever got in the way of this team, I'd drop her, or at least during the season. All you guys got girlfriends. We're football players, and girls like us. All of us, except the Toad."

Even Wormy Ledbetter laughed along with the rest of my teammates. I roared too, admiring the brilliance of Ike's strategy.

Chad's voice rang in anger above the laughter. "Hell, that's why I asked Bettina to the dance-the Toad asked Molly out! Bettina's been calling me for weeks."

Ike said with pure sarcasm, "Chad, you don't mean to tell me you got snaked by a fucking amphibian?" Again, the team screamed with laughter, Wormy leading the way.

"Women can't keep their hands off me," I said. "It's been a problem since I was a kid. You guys call me the Toad, but women call me the Mink."

"Shit, bet you never kissed a girl," Chad sneered.

"That'll change tonight after he takes out Molly." Niles grinned, earning a big laugh from everyone but Chad, till Ike raised his hand to silence the room.

"That's enough. We got enough juice here to kick the living hell out of Hanahan. Wormy, use your anger about Bettina and Chad to have your best game of the year. The offensive line will make holes that you could drag a dead mule through. But we got to find a way to stay angry and hostile against our opponents. This thing called team is a holy word to me. I'll beat the shit out of anyone who brings their poison to this locker room again. You hear me, Wormy? You hear me, Chad? Now, let's take all this bad feeling-all of it-and make Hanahan High feel bad, real bad."

A cheer went up as Coach Jefferson and his assistant entered from the rear, sensing a team incorrigible in its will to win. What Ike had let loose among us was the dream-stuff of worthy coaches.

Hanahan was the game that provided my team with the limitless momentum that would carry us to the state semifinal in Columbia. As we lined up that night, I could feel the first cool tinctures of autumn in the Low Country air. When we kicked off, I had a footrace with Ike down the field, and we both avoided two of their blockers. We both hit the ball carrier at the same time and drove him out of bounds on his own 25 and into the midst of his team. Ike and I rose screaming before being overrun by our jubilant teammates. Whatever incubus or disease had invaded our locker room had received its banishment on that first play and would not return that season. A fierce tenacity remained our trademark.

Wormy Ledbetter ran the ball more than thirty times, many times coming right up the middle, where I had my best night of blocking that year. The offensive line moved like a pride of lions as we fired off that line with aggression and certitude. I pancake-blocked four of their linemen, putting them flat on their backs as I watched Wormy crashing into defensive backs with his head lowered and his legs churning like an eggbeater. When Niles faked to Wormy going off-tackle, it opened the field for Chad and Ike, who both scored long touchdowns after Niles laid it in their hands as though he were tossing loaves of bread high into the night air.

That night, Wormy set a school record by scoring five rushing touchdowns and gaining more than two hundred yards on the ground. Niles completed ten of twelve passes. Our defense played as though there were a forest fire in the end zone behind us. Hanahan didn't score until the final minutes of the game, when our second string gave up a harmless field goal. When the final whistle blew, we had defeated the fifth-ranked team in the state by an amazing score of 56-3. Our fans flooded the field after the game, but this time there was no pulling down the goalposts. A most miraculous thing had occurred-our long-suffering football fans were becoming accustomed to winning.

Drifting through that boisterous crowd was an entrance into wonderland for me. I had longed for a normal life for so long that it seemed like an unobtainable ideal. But here is what it was at last-my taking leave of a football field, shaking hands with my Hanahan opponents, receiving the congratulations of fans and teammates, being hugged by girls whose names I didn't even know, by cheerleaders whose uniforms were as sweaty as mine-yes, this was now my new normality, not being handcuffed to a bed at a mental hospital, paralyzed by drugs. I liked being part of a team with a game plan and a way of deliverance for a boy who knew how much he needed it. I drifted toward the locker room, believing I was savoring the ecstasy of the moment, until I realized I was postponing the inevitable. The real reason for my hesitation to join in the jubilation of my teammates was my fear of taking Molly Huger to the sock hop after the game.

When I entered the dimly lit gymnasium, the awful reminder hit me like a well-aimed meteorite that I had never been to a high school dance before and had no idea how to conduct myself. Nor was I sure how to set my face-a confident smile, an easy nonchalance, a cocky watchfulness. I found myself simply defenseless as I felt my face congeal into a dewy lostness.

I saw Molly approach from across the gym. She had changed out of her cheerleading uniform and was dressed in a simple skirt and blouse and the white socks that the basketball coach required for even the most soft-footed dancer. She rushed forward to meet me, and surprised me by hugging me and kissing me playfully on the cheek. "What a great game, Leo. This team has a chance to go the distance."

"It already has, for me," I told her.

A song ended. The disc jockey for the evening and the rest of the year was the unflappable Trevor Poe. I heard him say, "One of our all-stars, Leo King, has just entered the room. I'd like to call on him and his beautiful date, Molly Huger, to lead off the next dance. I'd also like to call on his cocaptain, Ike Jefferson, and his pretty date, Betty Roberts, to join them in the first slow dance of the evening. Slow dance! Doesn't it just make your toes curl to think about? Now, let's hear some well-deserved applause for our cocaptains. Ah, that's it. Last year, Peninsula High was ranked last in the league and here we stand undefeated beneath the eyes of man and God. I call this the Cocaptain Dance. The floor is theirs until I give the signal with my tambourine. Now, let the deejay work his showmanship."

Trevor set the needle down and Bert Kaempfert's "Wonderland by Night" flooded the gym with notes so sensuous and romantic that each one seemed honey-flecked. Taking Molly into my arms was one of the defining moments of my life. Her cheek touched mine and her hand pulled me close. Her breath was minty and fresh when she whispered, "I love this song." I wished I could force her to spend all eternity whispering in my ear. As we danced, the hushed crowd watched us in breathless silence. I caught Ike's eye and he winked at me. Feeling one-tenth sexy for the first time, I winked back with the palmy confidence of a world-famous womanizer or a Left Bank boulevardier on the prowl in Paris, instead of a loser on his first date. Molly smelled like the climbing jasmine that overwhelmed the trellises in my mother's summer garden. I could breathe in sunshine and balsam in her hair, and her breasts felt soft and yielding, yet untouchable.

Trevor tapped his tambourine, and the rest of the school joined us. "Wonderland by Night" would be my favorite song for the rest of my life because of Molly Huger's bright eyes, shapely lips, pretty face, lovely body-because I felt my soul leave my own fortressed country of hurt and surrender in the time it took for a ninety-second song to begin and end. I was dizzy with my love of Molly when I spotted Niles and Fraser motioning to us from the front door. Taking Molly's hand, I led her through the frenzied dancers who were dancing to the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Though it shouldn't have surprised me, Fraser and Molly threw their arms around each other and began silently weeping. They excused themselves and rushed to the ladies' room on the other side of the gym, leaving me and Niles alone.

"We just visited Starla in the hospital," Niles said. "She's still groggy as hell, but we told her all about the game. She laughed when she heard that Chad was dating Bettina and that Molly sought revenge by asking you to the dance."

"Why'd she laugh?"

"Starla's always had a thing about mischief," Niles said. "She loves to see things stirred up, everything simmering, right to the boiling point."

"Why aren't Chad and Bettina at the dance?" I asked.

"Fraser's positive that Chad has taken her to the beach house on Sullivan's Island, trying to get laid."

"Ike handled the crisis well tonight," I said.

"The cat's a leader," Niles said. "It comes natural to him."

"Why did Fraser and Molly start crying when they saw each other?"

"They've been best friends for a long time," Niles said. "Fraser started crying as soon as she saw you dancing with Molly. She can't remember a time when Chad and Molly weren't sweethearts."

"I think Molly really likes me," I said. "I really do."

Niles studied me for a moment, and I could study him in return as he tried to form the correct words in his mind, truthful words but not ones that would injure an already wounded spirit.

"Toad," he said, "we're not in these girls' league. We're playthings to them. We're not the boys they're going to turn to when they get serious about life. Chad's convinced Fraser that she's the homeliest girl in the world. She needs me now because I think she's the nicest girl I've ever met, and she's a doll too. I've always had to pick out girls who thought they were ugly as homemade sin, and they're always grateful for my attention. Then Starla gets a wild hair up her ass and tells me we're running away from another orphanage."

"Why do you always go with her?" I asked.

"She couldn't survive without me."

"Why don't you talk her out of it?"

"You checked out my sister's listening skills?"

"No, I guess I haven't."

"That's because she ain't got any," Niles said.

"Why do you put up with it?"

"She's all I've got," Niles answered. "Maybe all I'll ever have."

"Nah," I said, "you're the star quarterback. Star quarterbacks get anything they want."

"This year's going too good," he said. "It's scaring the shit out of me."

"Then enjoy it."

"Can't. Here's the one given of my and my sister's life: we're not allowed to have a good time." Niles brightened. "Look there, Toad: two pretty girls looking for us. It doesn't get much better than that, does it?"

"It's at the top of my list."

Molly took my hand and led me back out onto the dance floor where we danced every dance, slow or fast or in between, for the rest of that magical evening. Dancing with Molly Huger became the standard by which I measured all the rare incursions of magic into my life. She was a high-spirited dancer with a natural gracefulness that came wrapped in sexy undertones. That night as I listened to Trevor announce every song with a brief, witty, and sometimes bawdy introduction, I learned that I loved to dance, and could feel myself grow better at it as the night wore on. Looseness was the bright essence of the dance, the prominent ingredient necessary to let the bloodstream join the rhythm of the music and the girl whose hand you held: two bloodstreams, two bodies conjoined until looseness took command and swirled you into a zone of comfort where you'd never been before.

There was a commotion at the front door. Sheba Poe made one of the cinematic entrances that would become her trademark, and her brother announced the noteworthiness of the moment. In his beret and sunglasses, Trevor beat time on the palm of his hand with his tambourine as Sheba danced into the middle of the floor. Of course, she could not just date the president of the National Honor Society or the captain of the basketball team. No, Sheba Poe had brought the regimental commander of The Citadel as her inaugural date of the year.

"At center court, ladies and gentlemen, is the undiscovered starlet of stage and silver screen-that sultry siren of the forbidden night, that unforgettable vixen known to all of you as the delectable Sheba Poe. Her date is the redoubtable regimental commander of The Citadel, Cadet Colonel Franklin Lymington, from Ninety Six, South Carolina. You know Ninety Six? It's right next to Ninety Seven and just down the road from One Hundred, South Carolina."

The audience booed Trevor with good-natured relish and marveled that he had been a South Carolina resident for such a short period yet had already milked the comedy from one of the state's most oddly named towns. Trevor then put on Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock." He pulled Sheba up on the stage with him, and the twins performed the sexiest, most orgasmic dance I had ever seen. It drove the black kids at the dance wild, and the twins' gyrations freed them from the inhibitions they had carried to a formerly all-white high school. The poor regimental commander from Ninety Six stood watching his date perform a sinuous, leopardlike dance that looked part Zulu and part nervous breakdown.

As Trevor put on the next record, he said, "There are people who are not dancing in this gym. Bashfulness is banned. Get bold. Everyone here is going to dance to the next song. So get ready. Sheba and I will show you how it's supposed to be done. Then you follow our lead."

"The Stroll" blasted through the speakers, and Trevor leaped in a graceful, featherlike jump from the stage. I remembered my brother, Steve, trying to teach me that dance when we were both small boys, and how we would strut and show off in front of my parents as they applauded every exaggerated move. Molly took my hand, and we began our own version of the stroll down the center of the gymnasium. We added jerks and shakes and spontaneous throes that were brand-new to both of our bodies, and people began to clap in appreciation of our unpracticed duet. In front of us, I watched as Sheba and Trevor separated and went trolling along the front line of the crowd to pull out the shiest, most unnoticed students and make them join the dance.

Being a failed teenager is not a crime, but a predicament and a secret crucible. It is a fun-house mirror where distortion and mystification lead to the bitter reflections that sometimes ripen into self-knowledge. Time is the only ally of the humiliated teenager, who eventually discovers that the golden boy of the senior class is the bald, bloated drunk at the twentieth reunion, and that the homecoming queen married a wife beater and philanderer and died in a drug rehabilitation center before she was thirty. The prince of acne rallies in college and is now head of neurology, and the homeliest girl blossoms in her twenties, marries the chief financial officer of a national bank, and attends her reunion as the president of the Junior League. But since a teenager is denied a crystal ball that will predict the future, there is a forced-march quality to this unspeakable rite of passage. When a girl feels the first drops of menstrual blood, how is she to know that this is the sacred stream of life, the stir of her blooming fertility, the world's thunderous answer to decay and death? And what is a boy to think when he studies the great surprise of semen in his hand, except that his body has become a firestorm and undiscovered volcano where lava is made in the furnace of his loins? It is an unforgivable crime for teenagers not to be able to absolve themselves for being ridiculous creatures at the most hazardous time of their lives.

As the dance broke up, Molly stood on her tiptoes and whispered to me, "I'm starved. Let's go get a barbecue sandwich at the Piggy Park."