Craig felt awful for her.

And it was so kind of her to feel awful for him, which made him even sadder that he couldn't even pretend to be surprised at what she had to tell him. She seemed to think these were pretty big secrets. She told him that she felt pretty sure the Omega Theta Tau sisters had all kinds of plans to scare him, and torment him, and drive him out of here. Did he have any idea how vengeful girls could be? Sorority girls especially?

Briefly he considered telling her that, yes, he did know all about how much Nicole's sorority sisters hated him, but that, no, it wasn't Omega Theta Tau today. It was something else. Someone. It was Alice Meyers. She'd visited him, too. She was somewhere, and she knew Nicole. She and Nicole, it seemed, were together somewhere-sending postcards, making house calls, making phone calls. But he said nothing.

And then Deb Richards was tearing up, taking his hand, telling him everything would be all right, but he really should go to school somewhere else, that it was the only thing that had helped her, that it had saved her life to get away (although, to Craig, she looked as if she had that place with her, right there in the room and all around her, in her posture, in her face) and he had to at least consider it, because- And then she said, "I know Lucas, too."

"Lucas?" Craig asked.

"I met Lucas last year. He used to sell me weed once in a while. They've got it out for him, too, you know. I don't know why. They think he sold you bad dope or something. Or, just that he let you borrow his car, and you were stoned, so-"

"I wasn't," Craig said, but he said it without force, having said it so many times he no longer thought anyone cared or believed him.

"They've got some bad thing going with Lucas, like you. My ex-roommate, she had this story she thought was hilarious about how he'd called the suicide hotline, and one of the Omega sisters who happened to be a volunteer on the hotline that night took the call and recognized the caller ID, and was really trying to talk him into killing himself. He was going on and on about how he'd been seeing ghosts and s.h.i.t, and some girl who died like twenty years ago was haunting him, and this sorority b.i.t.c.h was just like, 'Oh that's so scary. I would just want to be dead if I were being haunted by a ghost. I mean, ghosts just choose people at random, but after that it's like your whole life they follow you around. Do you have, like, access to a gun or anything, because that would help a lot . . .'

"And they were all just cracking up, waiting to read in the Police Beat in the newspaper that some college senior had shot himself."

"Lucas?" Craig asked again.

He hadn't thought about Lucas for a little while, and it suddenly dawned on him what all of this must have done to Lucas, too-and then he put the mug down on the table next to the couch and started to feel really bad, looking around (for help? For an excuse?) like Jesus, Craig, how many people's lives do you think you can ruin in the course of your own? All he'd done for Lucas was one stupid phone call in the summer, from New Hampshire, when some of the pieces had fallen into place again. On the phone, Lucas had said nothing, really. He'd muttered, "Oh, man. Craig, Jesus," a few times, and then, "I have no hard feelings toward you. But I gotta go. I really can't talk about this, man. I hope everything works out, and I have to say, if I were you, I'd stay back there, you know. Go to school in Connecticut or something. Here, you know, it's not cool right now. But maybe someday we'll meet again. Peace, man," and he'd hung up.

Lucas, s.h.i.t. He'd ruined Lucas's life, too.

Deb seemed moved to tears again, looking at the expression on Craig's face, and she got out of her seat and put her arms around his neck, pulled the pink blanket more tightly around his neck, and hugged him, and Craig felt himself sag into the hug just the way he remembered sagging against his mother as a little kid, even when he knew she was p.i.s.sed at him, because at least she was pretending she wasn't.

And then he was back there, eyes closed, sobbing into his mother's shoulder, soaking it, and saying things in a language he wasn't even sure he spoke, and she was patting and patting him-Deb, not his mother, and crying, too. "Look," Deb said, "just get in my bed and go to sleep. The sheets are clean. If the slumlord ever shows up to unlock your door, I'll wake you up. In the meantime, just rest."

When Craig woke again, the Martian green hands of the clock beside the Deb's bed read 4:10 (a.m.?). The room was dark except for the glow of her iPod in its charging dock, and there wasn't a sound through the whole apartment. He wanted to pee, but not badly enough, he decided, to wake up an apartment full of girls and scare the h.e.l.l out of them. He lay on his side between the Deb's crisp sheets, which smelled of Nicole and the starch his mother used to spray on his khaki pants, and watched the hands of the alarm clock move in little twitches around the dial until Deb came in and sat down beside him in a T-shirt and gym shorts and laid a cool hand on his forehead.

And then he fell asleep again.

57.

Josie seemed to soften after it became clear that, although Sh.e.l.ly had uncovered a truth, she wasn't going to make threats, or a scene.

Maybe Josie even seemed excited.

She was sitting at the edge of her seat now, leaning toward Sh.e.l.ly, moving her hands lightly through the air between them, explaining the finer points of hazing in sorority life. She was bouncing her knee a little, and although she didn't look directly into Sh.e.l.ly's eyes, she grazed Sh.e.l.ly's face as she talked, letting her eyes linger on Sh.e.l.ly's shoulder or earring for a split second before scouting the room around them again.

"We never do anything physically dangerous," Josie said. "But you really can't feel like a group, you know, without some rituals and traditions. And secrets. If it's not at least a little dangerous, there's no point in keeping it a secret, so-"

Could Josie simply be relieved that the truth had come out, and that Sh.e.l.ly seemed to have accepted it?

Josie was thrilled, Sh.e.l.ly realized, to be able to spill the secrets, to have a captive audience in Sh.e.l.ly. Because what could Sh.e.l.ly possibly do with any information she received from Josie now?

"I mean, it's not hazing like they used to haze. We've heard all about that. The sisters used to cut their palms-I mean really slice them open until they were gushing blood-and stand naked in a circle around a candle and have these, like, mystical things happen or something that made them sisters. In the attic there are these black-and-white photos from the sixties or something, and there's blood all over the place, and some naked guy with long hair playing the flute. Freaky."

It seemed like the kind of thing that would have gone on in the sixties, Sh.e.l.ly thought. Josie was laughing.

"I wonder what happened if someone bled too much?" Sh.e.l.ly said, more to herself than to Josie. She was thinking of a story her ex-husband had told her about a girl he'd had to treat after something like that: some blood ritual between volleyball teammates. They'd sliced their inner arms, and the girl had managed to hit an artery. Sh.e.l.ly's ex-husband had described it in such a way that she could still, twenty years later, see the imagined girl (red, white, and blue, wearing nothing but her Wildcats Varsity jacket), who died in the ER waiting room.

"I suppose they'd get help," Josie said, seeming disinterested. What did she care? What were the sixties to her? "We've always got someone standing by, in case something goes wrong."

Josie checked behind her shoulder, but there was nothing there except the wall. Still, it was clear she knew she was now headed toward forbidden territory, about to tell Sh.e.l.ly something she wasn't supposed to tell.

"We've got this EMT. This paramedic guy. He belongs to us. He's like everybody's boyfriend or a mascot or something. We love him. We make him wear his uniform because it's so cute! He sleeps in a room at the back of the house, and the sorority pays him to be there for the events, and to be on call so . . ." Josie drifted off, eyes seeming to go unfocused, moving down to some place between her own knees and the floor.

"What 'events'?" Sh.e.l.ly asked.

"Well, there's this thing. There's a Spring Event and a Winter Event. You do it your second year-so, for me it's coming up." She giggled a little. "I'm scared s.h.i.tless. Promise not to tell anyone?"

The absurdity of this seemed to occur to Josie even as she said it, and she continued before Sh.e.l.ly could have answered.

"We're reborn. As sisters. You won't believe this."

Sh.e.l.ly raised her eyebrows, as if to say, Try me, but the thing she was having a hard time, at the moment, believing was that she'd ruined her career, tossed off her entire life, to go to bed with this chatty, ba.n.a.l, empty person, who was sitting across from her at Starbucks talking about her sorority as if she were the only person who'd ever been in one, as if the things that took place in it were of some kind of import in the wider world. Only a week ago, Sh.e.l.ly marveled as she looked at Josie Reilly's pale, excited face, she had felt she would be willing to chop off a few digits if it meant another lazy afternoon in bed with this girl. She'd actually believed herself to be in love.

"It's called the Raising. We keep a coffin in the bas.e.m.e.nt," Josie said, leaning forward, whispering so energetically that if anyone in Starbucks had the slightest interest, they could have heard her from four tables away. "And every second-year pledge gets put into it. They do this thing where-well, first everybody's drunk off their a.s.s, and then the girl who's being raised sits on the floor, and you breathe in and out really fast for two minutes exactly, and another girl presses on your neck, your artery, and you're out.

"They put you in the coffin, and when you come to-there you are, reborn. And your sisters are all holding candles.

"The pledges all wait upstairs because they won't let you see the ceremony until you're either being reborn or have already been reborn.

"It's my turn in three weeks."

"Jesus Christ," Sh.e.l.ly said, but she was reacting not to the upcoming ordeal but to the wideness of Josie's pupils. Her eyeb.a.l.l.s-had Sh.e.l.ly ever noticed before how large they were? Certain cartoon characters came to mind: Minnie Mouse. Betty Boop.

"Can you believe it?" Josie asked.

"Yes," Sh.e.l.ly said. "I mean, no."

But of course she could believe it. It seemed almost laughably believable. Par for the course. Sh.e.l.ly would have thought that by now sororities might have come up with some truly new, shocking, and innovative ritual. This one hardly merited the term hazing. She had herself, in fact, partic.i.p.ated in such pa.s.sing-out rituals in junior high, in Valerie Kolorik's rec room while her parents were at their country club. There'd been no coffin, of course, but only because they could never have located or afforded one. They'd have loved a coffin. Sh.e.l.ly could still remember the feeling of Valerie's clammy hands on her neck after the two minutes of hyperventilation. Those small clammy hands were the last physical sensation she'd had before slipping into oblivion. When she awoke, the other girls were all sitting around her, laughing.

"Yeah," Josie said, nodding at Sh.e.l.ly with such anxious energy that it occurred to her that the girl might actually be scared. "I mean," she said, "it's really just a game, but there have been times when sisters got hurt. So the EMT's there, in case."

She sincerely whispered this last part-no longer the stage whisper-and Sh.e.l.ly knew it was her own cue either to ask about the sisters who'd gotten hurt, or to express concern for Josie, but she couldn't bring herself to do either. This, she thought, was its own kind of falling into oblivion-but, this time, the little hands around her neck were Josie's, and Sh.e.l.ly knew she'd be feeling them there for the rest of her life.

"You're not going to tell anyone, are you?" Josie said, her eyes narrowed to slits. A statement, not a question. "About the Events. I mean, it's not really hazing, but if the Pan-h.e.l.lenic Council-"

"No," Sh.e.l.ly said. "Of course not."

"Thank you," Josie said, but it was pure formality. "Especially after Nicole got killed, and all this bulls.h.i.t with f.u.c.king Denise disappearing . . ."

"Denise?"

Josie waved her had and smirked. "Ran away or something. She was creepy. But people keep snooping around like we buried her in the back yard or something."

It came back to Sh.e.l.ly from her research of the accident: the music school student who'd disappeared. "What happened to her?" Sh.e.l.ly asked.

"How would I know? But we can't be blamed for psycho sisters running off. She should never have gotten in to OTT in the first place. She was the kind of trash that belongs in-" She stopped herself before naming Sh.e.l.ly's sorority, and a ridiculous flush spread across Sh.e.l.ly's chest. She blinked, and swallowed, and stood (chair legs sc.r.a.ping loudly and obscenely against the bare Starbucks floor), and said, trying to sound composed, "I should go now."

Josie looked annoyed, and disappointed, as if she'd had more surprises in store, as if she were considering whether or not to let Sh.e.l.ly go-and they both knew that if Josie commanded her to sit back down, Sh.e.l.ly would have to, so she stayed where she was, standing before Josie Reilly, waiting to see if she would be dismissed, and Josie seemed to be considering this as she looked around the coffee shop, and then to the front door, where, it seemed, someone more interesting had just stepped in.

When Josie rose, Sh.e.l.ly saw her opportunity to say good-bye, and even found herself bowing a little, but Josie brushed past her, and said, "Sit down, would you? I have to say h.e.l.lo to someone, but I'll be right back."

What could Sh.e.l.ly do?

Slowly, but inexorably, she felt her weight, and the weight of Josie's words, pull her into the chair as she sat back down.

58.

Jeff Blackhawk drove with one hand on the steering wheel. He ate his Baconator with the other hand, kept his gigantic c.o.ke between his knees, and Mira held his carton of large fries within reach for him. As he ate and drove, Jeff also kept up both sides of the conversation for them. It seemed that the difficulty Mira was having holding up her end had become apparent to him after he'd asked her about her childhood (the simple stuff: where had she grown up, what had her parents done) and she'd spluttered something about her mother being a housewife before she'd had to stop talking in order to stifle the sob she knew would be coming if she allowed herself to utter even one more word.

"I f.u.c.king hate this state," Jeff said. "I grew up in West Texas, which everyone makes fun of, but I'll tell you what-" He chewed on that and his Baconator for quite a while before he continued. "People know how to live in West Texas. You get yourself some land, no trees, for one thing. A trailer. Flat. Flat! And there's the sky. It's everywhere."

It occurred to Mira that Jeff Blackhawk's poetry might be of the super-minimalist variety. He seemed to need a long time to find the words for what he wanted to convey, but when he did, they were the right words.

She could see his West Texas, although she'd never been to it. The trailer. The flat land. A bush far out in the distance. Blue. Blue.

"Here," Jeff said, waving his Baconator at the windshield as if to erase the landscape. "Clutter. Junk. Nothing."

He was nothing like Clark, Mira was realizing. Clark would never have used the word f.u.c.king in casual conversation, only in anger-and if he'd found himself having to go to Wendy's for some reason, he would have ordered a chicken breast with lettuce and tomato. If he'd had to eat in his car, he would have eaten in the parking lot before driving off. He would never, ever, Mira felt entirely certain, have offered to drive a woman he knew distantly from work two hundred miles away to retrieve her children from her mother-in-law.

"How's your research going?" Jeff asked Mira, but he didn't wait for her to answer. "I've gotten even more interested in your subject, you know. So, sorry, but you might have some compet.i.tion from me. Not that I can write prose, so you don't have any compet.i.tion there. But this whole thing, with the girl. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but a couple of years ago I dated a girl. She wasn't my student"-he turned to look at Mira seriously here, and didn't look away until she'd looked him in the eyes-"but she was a student, and she was in that sorority, the one Nicole Werner was in. Hoo. Did she have some stories! She got out when they wanted to put her in a coffin and raise her from the dead, and then they ostracized her so badly she transferred to Penn State. Now, there's something for your s.e.x and death book: sorority girls in coffins.

"She was an incredible girl, really. Hair like"-he swallowed the last bite of his Baconator, but it seemed to be going down with difficulty, as if crossing paths with the simile he was considering-"gla.s.s, sheet metal. I don't date students usually, Mira. I'm well aware of my reputation, but it's just a lonely man's reputation, not a Casanova. I have a bad feeling, anyway, these days, that if I decided to cut a swathe through the female student population of G.o.dwin Honors College, it would be more like a square inch than a swathe. But!" He held both hands above the steering wheel and said to the windshield, "There was a time! Yes, indeed, there was a day in the life of a lonely man named Jeff Blackhawk. Indeed."

Mira looked down at his knees. There was a grease stain on his jeans where he'd rested the burger between bites. She realized, then, that the scent that wafted around him in the hallways, the one she'd taken for some kind of masculine emission of heat, was the smell of this car, and Baconators. She resisted an urge to put her hand on the knee and pat it. It was not a s.e.xual urge, and Mira felt certain that he would not have misconstrued it as a s.e.xual gesture-but at that moment he did not have his hands on the steering wheel, and he seemed so excitable that Mira was a little worried they'd end up in the median if she made even the gentlest of sudden movements.

59.

"Hi, Perry."

"Josie."

"Haven't seen you around for a while."

Perry couldn't walk around her. She was standing directly in front of him and in front of Karess, who was standing beside him. The only place to go without knocking over one of the two of them was to crawl over a table at which two guys who looked like graduate students sat, pa.s.sing a page full of calculations angrily back and forth between them, and he couldn't do that.

"Yeah," he said to Josie, and looked around her showily in the direction of the Starbucks counter, trying to make it clear that he was on his way past her, that he didn't plan to linger here with her. But Josie had never been one to take her cues from other people. "Are you living with Craig?" she asked him. "Because that's the rumor." She glanced at Karess, head to toe, and seemed to dismiss her before turning back to Craig again.

"Why do you want to know?" Perry asked.

"Because I want to know," Josie said.

"Look. Josie, I've-"

"Excuse me," Karess said, sounding meekly polite as she squeezed between Perry and Josie. When she reached the counter she turned and gestured for Perry to follow, but he couldn't, because Josie was still standing in front of him.

"Who's that?" Josie asked, jerking her head in Karess's direction. "You're dating a hippie chick?"

"Josie-"

"Look," Josie said. "I want you to tell Craig something for me."

Perry looked at the ceiling. He waited.

"I want you to tell Craig 'f.u.c.k you' for me."

Perry continued to stare at the ceiling-although, out of the corner of his eye he could see that Karess was still waving her pale hand at him, a bit more frantically now. Her bracelets seemed to catch the light, which danced around on the ceiling. He tried to concentrate on that even as he saw (as if, suddenly, he had panoramic vision and could take in all of Starbucks without taking his eyes off the ceiling) Josie's equally pale hand rise up and rush toward him, colliding with his face.

The smacking sound was oddly m.u.f.fled to him because, along with his cheek, Josie had struck him in the ear, but it was clear to him, even in his shocked state, that everyone else in Starbucks had heard it, because they all turned to stare at him at once as Josie's little black shoes snapped away, back to the corner she'd come from, sounding like claws or talons tapping across the linoleum as she went.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Karess cried out, and rushed toward him as if she thought he'd been shot. She grabbed his arm and body-slammed him toward the door, pushed him out into the street. "Oh, my G.o.d!" she screamed again. "That girl slapped you!"

60.