I got up and showered, ran my hands across my body under the stream of water. Since I'd grown taller I hated looking down at myself; at my skinny legs, the knees poking out; my big feet splayed flat against the floor like clown shoes, ten sizes too big. But now I drew myself up to full height, pulling in a breath that spread through me. I thought of giraffes and stilts, of my bones linked carefully together. Of height and power, and gliding over the heads of the Lakeview Mall shoppers to touch those fluttering banners. As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.

"Hey," Ashley called out as I pa.s.sed her open door on my way downstairs. "Haven. Come here a second."

I went in, immediately aware of how small her room looked with the dresser almost bare; the closet door open revealing empty shelves and racks; the bright spots of wallpaper where things had hung contrasting now to the faded rest of the wall. She was standing by her bed, folding a dress over one arm. She said, "I need to talk to you."

I stood there, tall, waiting.

She looked closer at me, as if she'd suddenly realized something she'd missed before. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said. "Why?"

"You look different." She put the dress down in a box at her feet, kicking it shut. "Do you feel okay?"

"I'm fine."

She was still watching me, as if I couldn't be trusted. Then she shrugged, letting it go, and said, "I want to talk to you about earlier."

"What about it?"

"Haven," she said in that voice that meant she was feeling much, much older than me, "I know it's been hard for you with the wedding and all, but I'm concerned about how you treated Mom. It's hard enough for her right now without you freaking out and turning on her."

"I'm not freaking out," I said curtly, moving back towards the door.

"Hey, I'm not through talking to you," she said, walking quickly to block my path. I looked down at her, realizing how short she really was. She was in shorts and a red T-shirt, with a gold chain and matching earrings. "See, that's just what I'm talking about. It's like all of a sudden you just don't care about anyone but yourself. You snap at Mom, and now this att.i.tude with me...."

"Ashley, please," I said in a tired voice, and noticed how much I sounded like my mother.

"I'm just asking you to keep whatever is bothering you to yourself, at least until after tomorrow." She had her hand on her hip now, cla.s.sic Ashley stance. "It's very selfish, you know, to pick these few days for whatever adolescent breakdown you're choosing to have. Very selfish."

"I'm selfish?" I said, and found myself actually throwing my head back to laugh, Ha! "G.o.d, Ashley, give me a break. As if everything in the last six months hasn't revolved around you and this stupid wedding. As if my whole life," I added, the light, airy feeling bubbling back up inside me, "hasn't revolved around you and your stupid life." It didn't even sound like me, the voice so casual and cutting. Like someone else. Someone bold.

She just looked at me, the gold engagement ring glinting on the hand she was shaking at me. "I'm not going to let you do this. I'm not going to let you get me started on this day, because I have too much to deal with and I'm not in the mood to fight with you. But I will say this. You better grow up and get your s.h.i.t together in the next five minutes or you will regret it, Haven. I have planned this day and done too much for too long for you to decide to ruin it purely out of spite." Her hand went back to her hip, her lip jutting out.

"Oh, shut up," I said in my bold voice, stepping around her and out the bedroom door, then going down the stairs before she even had a chance to react. I was floating, the air whooshing through my ears all the way to the kitchen, where I found my mother and Lydia drinking coffee. They both looked up at me as I came drifting in, with the same expression Ashley had when she'd first called me into the room: as if suddenly I was no longer recognizable.

"Haven?" my mother said, turning in her chair as I reached for the Pop-Tarts and broke open a pack. "Is everything okay?"

"Just fine," I said cheerfully, lining up my tarts on the rack of the toaster oven. Upstairs Ashley was banging around, boxes crashing to the floor.

My mother and Lydia exchanged looks over their coffee, then went back to watching me. I concentrated on the toaster oven. After a minute or so Lydia asked, "Why don't you sit down and eat with us?"

"Okay." I took my tarts out and then sat down across from them and started eating, aware that they were still staring at me. After a few seconds of self-conscious nibbling I said, "What? What is it?"

"Nothing," Lydia said quickly, shrinking back in her chair. I thought about my dream where she'd been tiny tiny tiny.

"You just seem upset," my mother said gently, scooting her chair a little closer to me to suggest allegiance. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," I said in the same gentle voice. "I don't." And I went back to my Pop-Tart, envisioning that tether stretched to the limit, fraying from the strain, and then suddenly snapping into pieces, no longer able to hold against the force of my pulling away from it. I looked at my mother, with the same hair and same outfit and same expression as Lydia Catrell's, and thought, You go to Europe. You sell this house. I don't care anymore. I just don't care.

"Haven," my mother said in a pleading voice, placing her hand over mine. "It might make you feel better."

I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I was thinking, stuffing pieces of Pop-Tart into my mouth one by one by one. Her hand was hot and snug over mine as I pulled it away and pushed my chair out from the table. "I don't want to talk about it," I snapped as Lydia Catrell pulled further back in her chair. "I don't care, okay? I just don't care."

"Honey," my mother said, and I could tell by the strain in her voice she was really worried now.

"I'm sorry," I said to her, unable to meet her eyes. I ran to the back door and out into the garden, slipping across the pathway past the blazing colors and smells, the tendrils reaching out to touch my skin, the mix of everything so sweet and humid, thick and stifling. I hit the edge and kept going, down the street past the Melvins' and out of our neighborhood altogether, past the Lakeview Mall with all the cars lined up in its parking lot in nice, even rows. I was someone else, someone bold, my feet finding the ground beneath me as I thought only of putting distance between me and what I'd left behind.

I didn't know where to go, or what to do. I had no job and only three dollars in my pocket, so I spent an hour walking around downtown. I bought an orangeade and spent a half hour on a bench sipping it, wondering if there was ever going to be any way for me to go home. I imagined the house itself in pieces, brought to the ground by my bad att.i.tude. I imagined a crisis meeting convening as I sat there in the park, with Ashley and Lewis and my mother and Lydia and my ex-boss Burt Isker and my father and Lorna, all of them debating the question What on Earth Has Happened to Haven? Only Sumner would be on my side. Over the s.p.a.ce of just one summer he'd managed to breathe life into me again, just as he had all those years ago. And now I was playing hooky from my life there on that bench, on the day before the biggest day of my sister's life, and I didn't even care. I imagined their faces as they sat around that table, voices clucking with concern. I was causing a Crisis.

I called Casey. She was off phone restriction and back in her mother's good graces after tap-dancing lessons and family therapy. When she heard my voice she said, "Hey, hold on. I'm switching phones."

I was at a pay phone, watching a crazy man talk to himself on the bench I'd just left. I held on.

"Haven."

"Yeah."

"What the h.e.l.l is going on with you?" She sounded incredulous, even as she whispered. "Your mom called here three times already, looking for you. They're freaking out over there."

"She called you?" I said.

"She thought you'd come here. She told Mom everything, and I overheard. My mom talks so d.a.m.n loud."

"What'd they say?" I was the center of serious mother talks.

"Well, your mom asked if you'd been around and my mom said no, so then your mom goes into this whole thing about you freaking out at work this morning and then fighting with Ashley and running out of the house, and she's just frantic because she thinks you must be on drugs or something, she's not sure...."

"Drugs?" I repeated. "Did she really say that?"

"Haven," Casey said matter-of-factly, as if she knew so much about these things. "They think everything is drugs. They do."

"I'm not on drugs," I said, offended.

"Well, that's not the point. So apparently your sister is going ballistic and your mom and Lydia are combing the neighborhood looking for you and the rehearsal is at six-thirty and they think you might ditch that too, so it's just imperative that they find you before then."

"The rehearsal dinner," I said. Of course. I was a bridesmaid. If I hadn't been, I doubted an all-points bulletin would ever have been issued.

"So what is going on?" Casey demanded. "Where are you? Tell me and I'll come meet you."

"Nothing's going on," I said. "I'm on my way home." I didn't know if that was true, but I didn't want Casey meeting me. I liked this freedom and I wasn't ready to share it.

"Are you sure?" she asked, sounding disappointed.

"I'll call you later," I said.

"Wait. At least tell me what happened at work. Your mom said she thought you'd a.s.saulted a customer or something-"

"Later," I said to her. "Okay?"

"Okay," she said sullenly. "But are you all right? At least tell me that."

"I am," I said. "I just have some stuff to work out."

"Oh. Okay. Well, call me if you need me. I'm just here practicing my tap dancing."

"I will. 'Bye, Case." I hung up and glanced around the small park I'd been hiding in. There were families out with their kids, college students throwing a Frisbee while a big, dumb-looking dog chased after it. I wondered if the Town Car was cruising the streets downtown, Lydia hoping to catch a glimpse of me so that I could be rustled up and dragged to the rehearsal dinner. I was throwing everything out of whack, and I knew it. I was like a fugitive, running from some indefinable force made up of my mother's worried eyes and Ashley's whining and Lydia's Town Car, sucking up my steps even as I took them. It was late afternoon now, and hotter than ever. My shirt was sticking to me and I needed somewhere better to hide.

I was standing at the crosswalk, squinting, when I heard it. That humming of a car, coming around the corner behind me and then down the street, with Sumner behind the wheel. He stopped at the light, too far away to hear me even if I'd had time to yell his name. The light changed and he pulled away, one hand balanced on the steering wheel, the other arm hanging down the side of the car, drumming his fingers. He took off, I watched him go, blending with the other traffic until he turned onto a side street just a little way down. I started walking.

I found him at the senior center, a small building at the end of a long street of minimalls and office complexes. Everything looked very new and very clean, as if it had been hastily a.s.sembled the day before. Sumner's car was parked right next to the door, in a s.p.a.ce marked FRIENDS.

I pushed the door open and went inside, looking around. I was still in my fugitive mode, suspicious, as I pa.s.sed a group of tiny old women, all of them hunched over and white haired. They wore shiny Nike walking shoes with their skirts and sweaters. As I pa.s.sed by them, my eyes averted, I heard one say in a quiet, musical voice, "What a beautiful, beautiful girl."

I turned, trying to catch another glimpse, but they had vanished around a corner. I could hear the soles of their shoes brushing the floor and the sound of music just down the hallway. I kept walking, past rooms with walls of bright, happy colors like Easter eggs. In one a group of people were busy painting, each behind an easel. One man glanced over his shoulder at me as I pa.s.sed, holding his paintbrush in midstroke. In front of him was a half-finished canvas showing a beach scene, the water a mix of a million different blues, the sky a blaze of oranges and reds. I pa.s.sed a sunroom where a woman in a wheelchair was reading a book, the light slanting through a window just enough to make her almost transparent, and came to a large room with a high ceiling and a shiny floor. In one corner was a record player, and a man shuffling through alb.u.ms, while in front of him about ten couples danced in slow, even time. A woman in a long blue dress had her eyes closed, her chin resting on the shoulder of her partner as he carefully twirled her. A man with a flower in his b.u.t.tonhole was bowing to his partner as she smiled and took his hand for another dance. And in the far corner, by a table lined with cups and a punch bowl, I saw Sumner, his head thrown back in a laugh as he led a small, wiry woman with a crocheted shawl around their part of the dance floor. The woman was talking, her cheeks red, and Sumner listened, all the while spinning her slowly around, his feet moving smoothly across the shiny floor. He was in a red dress shirt with a blue tie and old black oxfords. His jeans were rolled into uneven cuffs, and his shirttail hung loose over the waist. When the music stopped, the couples broke up and applauded while the record guy picked out another song. Sumner bowed to his partner and she smiled, pulling her shawl closer around her.

People were milling around now, pairing off into new couples, and Sumner hung back by the punch bowl, waiting until the new song had begun. Then he crossed the room to a woman in a yellow pantsuit who was standing by the record player, arms crossed and watching the dancers with a half smile on her face. He came up to her grinning, extended his hand, and asked her to dance. She ran a hand through her short white hair, then nodded once before taking his hand and following him onto the floor. He slipped an arm around her waist, old-time style, and they began a neat box step, one-two-three-four. The music was cheerful and happy and everyone was smiling in this shiny room, where time could stop and you could forget about aching joints and old worries and let a young, handsome boy ask you to dance. I stood in the doorway and watched Sumner charm this woman as he had charmed me, and my sister, so many years ago. And I saw him through several more songs, each time waiting until everyone else was paired off and picking a woman who was standing alone watching the others. A wallflower wanting to join in but with something stopping her.

After a half hour the record man leaned into a microphone and said in a deep voice, "Last song, everyone. Last song."

I waited for Sumner to repeat his ritual for this last dance on this summer afternoon. He skirted the edge of the dancers, flitting in and out of my sight, a red blur among the shifting shapes. Then he cut right through the crowd, past women with their eyes closed, lost in the music, and walked a slow, steady pace right to me. He held out his hand, palm up like expecting a high five, and said, "Come on, Haven. It's the last dance."

"I don't dance," I said, my face flushing when I noticed all the couples on the floor were looking at us with that proud, attentive look of grandparents and spinster aunts.

"I'll show you," he said, still grinning. "Come on, twinkletoes."

I put my hand into his and felt his fingers fold over mine, gently leading me to the edge of the floor. I was about to make some joke about how I dwarfed him but he put his arm around my waist and pulled me closer and suddenly I didn't feel like joking about anything. He held my hand and concentrated on the music before saying, "Okay. Just do what I do."

So I did. I've never been a dancer, always too clumsy and flailing. Dancing was for tiny girls and ballerinas, girls the size to be hoisted and dipped, easily enclosed in an arm. But as Sumner led me around the floor, my feet slowly getting used to the curve and glide of the steps, I didn't think about how tall I was, or how gawky, or how I stood so far over him, his head at my neck. I closed my eyes and listened to the music, feeling his arm around me. I was tired, after this long day and it suddenly seemed like I wouldn't even be able to stand up without Sumner there supporting me, holding my hand. The music was soaring, all soprano and harps and sadness, mourning some lost boy away at war, but still I kept my eyes shut and tried to remember every detail of this dance, because even then I knew that it wouldn't last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place. I let him lead me around the floor of the senior center and forgot everything but the feel of his shoulder beneath my hand and his voice, saying softly, "There you go, Haven. That's great. Can you believe it? You're dancing."

When the music stopped and I opened my eyes, all those elderly couples were grouped around us, applauding and smiling and nodding at each other, a silent consensus that what I'd felt wasn't just imagined. There was something special about Sumner, something that spread across rooms and years and memories, and for the length of a song I'd been part of it once again.

"So," he said once we were in his car and pulling out of the parking lot, "tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing," I said, holding my hand out and letting the warm air push through it as we went down the street, back to the boulevard.

"Come on, Haven." We were at a stoplight now, and he turned to look at me. His eyes were so blue behind his gla.s.ses, which were lopsided. "I know what happened at the mall."

I kept my eyes on the light, waiting for the green. "That was no big thing," I said, trying to conjure up my bold self, to hear that whooshing again that made me rise above it all, immune. "I quit anyway."

He was still looking at me. "Haven. Don't bulls.h.i.t me now. I know when something's wrong."

And still we sat, at what had to be the longest light in the world, with him staring at me until I finally said, "I'm just p.i.s.sed off at Ashley, okay? And my mother and all this wedding c.r.a.p." I sat back in my seat, balancing my feet on the dashboard the way I'd seen Ashley do all those years ago. "I really don't want to talk about it."

The light changed and we turned right, heading towards the mall and my neighborhood. "Well," he said slowly, shifting gears, "don't be so hard on Ashley. Getting married must be kind of stressful. She probably doesn't mean to take it out on you."

"It's not about the wedding," I said, realizing how tired I was of repeating these words and this sentiment. "G.o.d, Ashley did exist before this wedding, you know, and she was my sister a long time before she became the bride, and we have problems going way back that have nothing to do with this G.o.dd.a.m.n wedding anyway."

"I know she existed before this," he said gently. "I knew her once too, remember?"

"Yeah, but when you knew her she was different," I said. "G.o.d, Sumner, you made her different. You changed her."

"I don't know about that," he said. "It was high school, Haven. It was a long time ago."

"You made her happy," I told him. "With you she was nice to me and she laughed; G.o.d, she laughed all the time. We all did."

"It was a long time ago," he said again. This wasn't what I wanted from him; I'd expected sympathy, shared anger, something. Understanding and encouragement. I wanted him to rage with me against everything and everyone, but instead he just drove, saying nothing now.

We were getting closer to my neighborhood, and I said, "If you're planning to take me home you can just drop me off here. I'm not going."

"Haven, come on." He turned to look at me. Over his shoulder I suddenly noticed storm clouds, which seemed to have popped up from nowhere. They were long and flat, full of grays and blacks, and hadn't yet reached the sun blazing above us. "Your mom is probably worried about you and it's getting late. Just let me take you home."

"I don't want to go home," I said again, louder. "And it's only five-fifteen, Sumner. If you're going to take me home to my mother like I'm still eight years old, just stop the car and I'll get out here."

He pulled over to the side of the road, right next to the mall. "Okay, Haven. I won't take you home. But I'm not dumping you on the side of the road, either. So it's up to you what we do now."

We sat there, with cars pa.s.sing and the sun beating down, while he watched me and I stared at my reflection in the side mirror. My face looked dirty and hot. "You don't understand." I wondered if I was going to start crying.

He cut off the engine and sat back in his seat, jiggling the keys in the ignition. "Understand what?" He sounded tired, fed up. This wasn't going the way I'd thought it would. I wanted to be back on that dance floor with his arm around me, surrounded by all those old, crinkly, smiling faces, safe and perfect.

"Any of this," I said. "You don't understand what's happened since you left."

"Since I left?"

"Since Ashley sent you away," I said, still focusing on my own face in the mirror, my own mouth talking. "That Halloween. A lot has changed."

"Haven ... ," he said, drawing in a breath as if preparing to say something a parent would say, something sensible that cuts you off with the wave of one hand.

"My father ran off with the weathergirl, Sumner," I said, and suddenly the words were rushing out crazylike, jumbled and fast, "and Ashley didn't like me and my mother was so sad, it just broke her heart. And then Lydia moved in with her Town Car and Ashley found Lewis at the Yogurt Paradise and n.o.body was who they'd been before, not even me. When you left-when she sent you away-it was like that started it all. When you were there, remember, everything was still good. We were all happy, and then Ashley was such a b.i.t.c.h and she sent you away and everything fell apart, just like that. G.o.d," I said, realizing how loud my voice was, and how jagged I sounded, "it was just like that."

All this time he was staring ahead, Ashley's first love in a wrinkled red shirt and Buddy Holly gla.s.ses. He shook his head, gently, and said to the road ahead, "There's a lot you don't understand, Haven. Ashley-"

"I don't want to hear about Ashley," I snapped, tired of her name and her face and the way she took over everything, even this moment, controlling it all. "I hate Ashley."

"Don't say that," he said. "You don't know." Now he sounded like everyone else, pa.s.sing judgment, making a.s.sumptions. Not listening to me at this moment when it suddenly mattered so much.

"I know plenty," I said, because this sounded final. I wanted him to agree with me. To believe me. But he only sat there and shook his head, his fingers on his keys, as if the very words I'd said disappointed him.

The storm clouds were moving fast, piling into a dark heap that was spreading across the sky. The wind picked up, a hot breeze blowing across us, and I could smell the dirt and the road and my own sweat.

"It was her fault," I said quietly, seeing him again on the front lawn that Halloween, watching her window, "it was her fault you left. She sent you away."