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"Listen to me, Alice," he said, slowing down and pulling to the side of the road so he could turn to me to speak. "I'm telling you that if the choice is between you and my parents, my mother especially, I'm choosing you."

"I appreciate that, Craig. I just hate being the cause of anyone else's unhappiness," I said.

"You're not the cause!" he cried, the frustration building in his face, his eyes. "She's the cause of her own unhappiness. And my father's. And mine!"

He looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel in his temple.

"Okay, okay."

"If you back out of our prom date because of this, I'll be far more miserable, Alice."

I nodded.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But we're going to have a good time anyway, the best time, and if she wants to eat her own heart out over it, let her."

I took a deep breath. Was life always going to be this way for me, dramatic ups and dramatic downs? My grandmother and I were so happy while I was going for my gown. Everyone in my family was happy. When or if they learned about this, it would be devastating to them, too. They would be angry and miserable for me. Maybe, somehow, we could keep it from them.

I'll he like my mother I thought. pretend. I'll

imagine. I'll make up stories. 1'll do anything to keep the darkness out of our fortress.-

"Okay," I said, nodding. "We'll ignore them. Whatever you work out will be fine with me."

He smiled. "Great. I knew you'd rise to the occasion. That's why I wasn't afraid to tell you the truth."

"Just do that always, Craig, tell me the truth from now on, no matter what it is. If anyone can handle it, I can," I said.

He laughed and leaned over to kiss me. "If I didn't have the first game of the baseball play-offs today, I'd ask you to cut school with me and we'd go off for a long ride, maybe even into New York City."

"And get us both into more trouble? Let's not do anything to throw any more wood on the fire," I said.

"Yeah, you're right. Besides, I can't risk doing anything that would get me suspended and thrown off the team now."

"So, finally, we know what's most important to you," I teased, and he laughed.

He started away again. "You know what I did after she and I had this argument yesterday?"

"I can't imagine," I said.

"I pinned the picture you drew of me at bat on my wall. She nearly had a heart attack."

That's all I need, I thought to myself, to cause another death in that house.

Craig was true to his word. After we parked in the school lot, he made me promise that I would never ask about the problem or bring it up. He swore that he wouldn't either. The chatter in the school was all about the baseball game anyway. We were playing against a school nearly twice our size, a school that had won the championship four times. We had yet to win it once. Almost all our teachers ended their classes with good luck wishes for the team.

Craig wasn't able to take me to the game. His coach insisted he ride on the team bus, but he gave his car to one of his closer friends, Gerry Martin, specifically to drive me to the game. I was sure I was as nervous as any of the ballplayers. Most of our senior high was in attendance.

It was a hard-fought pitching match. According to Gerry, Bobby Robinson was pitching as well as, if not better than, he ever had, but the opponent had a pitcher of equal talent, and both teams were held to two hits by the time the ninth inning began. Mickey Lesman made an error that put one of their players on base to start the inning, and then a deep fly ball advanced him to second. They got their third hit after that and scored a run. Bobby struck out the next two players, but we were down to three outs. One of the opportunities for us was Craig. He had grounded out, popped out and been called out on strikes. When he got up this time, we already had one out. Everyone from our school was holding his and her breath. I saw some of the girls look my way.

Craig took his time, measured each pitch, and worked it to a full count. Unfortunately, he went for a bad pitch then and struck out. I could feel the hope go out of our side. It was like a punctured tire. When our last player popped out, the game ended and we were out of the play-off.

There was a funeral atmosphere immediately. As Gerry and I walked to the car, I felt as if some of the other students, especially the girls, were looking at me as if I were somehow to blame for Craig's failure at bat. In a way I thought I might have been, because I knew that although he was acting indifferent to his troubles at home, it had to be eating away at him.

He refused to talk about it. He blamed himself and his eagerness. I didn't dare suggest it had anything to do with

our problem with his parents or, more specifically, his problem. I knew what he wanted: It was to be like it didn't exist, and although I couldn't stop thinking about it, we didn't discuss it directly. The only thing he did say over the weekend was there wasn't exactly a truce at his house, just a quiet lull. His father had laid down the threats, and he and his mother were simply doing a minimum of talking to each other. It was one of those situations where each side was waiting for the other side to blink.

The week of the prom, however, Craig's father lowered the boom on his privileges because of his continued defiance. He took away Craig's car so he couldn't pick me up for school or take me home. He didn't have to ride the bus himself. He could have gone with one of his teammates to school and even had him pick me up, but instead, as an act of further defiance, he got onto the same bus I got on and we sat together. It amplified the chatter about us and, because I was no longer being picked up, brought the news home to my grandparents.