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'It wasn't raining,' I pointed out. A weak excuse, I knew -- and she knew. I was hardly being unfaithful to Ronda -- there was no one to be unfaithful with -- but I dreamed of an imaginary someone else, about Franny's age, all the time. I had even asked Franny for a date with one of her friends, someone she would recommend -although Franny was in the habit of saying that her friends were too old for me, now; by which she meant that they were sixteen.

'No weight lifting this morning?' Franny asked me. 'Aren't you afraid you'll get out of shape?'

'I'm in training for the party,' I said.

For the party, we expected that three or four Dairy students (who were cutting their Christmas break short) would be spending the night in the hotel, among them Junior Jones, who was Franny's date, and a sister of Junior Jones, who was not a Dairy student. Junior was bringing her with him for me -- I was terrified that Junior Jones's sister was going to be as big as Junior Jones, and I was also eager to know if this was the sister who'd been raped, as Harold Swallow had told me; it seemed unjustly important to know. Was I to have a large, raped girl for a date or a large, unraped girl? -- for either way, I was sure, she would have to be huge.

'Don't be nervous,' Franny said to me.

We dismantled the Christmas tree, which brought tears to my father's eyes, because it had been Iowa Bob's tree; Mother had to leave the room. The funeral had seemed so subdued to us children -- it was the first funeral we had ever seen, being too young to remember what was done about Latin Emeritus and my mother's mother; the bear called State o' Maine had not been given a funeral. I think that considering the noise attached to the death of Iowa Bob, we expected the funeral to be louder, too -- 'at least the sound of barbells falling,' I said to Franny.

'Be serious,' she said. She seemed to think she was growing much older than me, and I was afraid she was right.

'Is this the sister who was raped?' I asked Franny suddenly. 'I mean, which sister is Junior bringing?' By Franny's look at me, I guessed that this question also put years between us.

'He only has one sister,' Franny said, looking straight at me. 'Does it matter to you that she was raped?'

Of course I didn't know what to say: that it did? That one would not discuss rape with someone who'd been raped, as opposed to launching into the subject right away with someone who hadn't? That one would look for the lasting scars in the personality, or not look for them? That one would assume lasting scars in the personality, and speak to the person as to an invalid? (And how did one speak to an invalid?) That it didn't matter? But it did. I knew why, too. I was fourteen. In my inexpert years (and I would always be inexpert on the subject of rape), I imagined that one would touch a person who'd been raped a little differently, or a little less; or that one would not touch her at all. I said that to Franny, finally, and she stared at me.

'You're wrong,' she said, but it was the way she said to Frank, 'You're an asshole,' and I felt that I would probably always be fourteen, too.

'Where is Egg?' Father bellowed. 'Egg!'

'Egg never does any work,' Frank complained, sweeping the dead needles from the Christmas tree aimlessly about the restaurant.

'Egg is a little boy, Frank,' Franny said.

'Egg could be more mature than he is,' Father said. And I (who was to be the maturing influence). . . I knew very well why Egg was out of earshot. He was in some empty room of the Hotel New Hampshire, contemplating the terrible mass of wet black Labrador retriever, which was Sorrow.

When the last of Christmas had been swept and dragged out of the Hotel New Hampshire, we considered what decorations would be appropriate for New Year's Eve.

'No one feels very much like New Year's Eve,' Franny said. 'Let's not decorate anything at all.'

'A party is a party,' said Father, gamely, although we suspected he felt the least like a party of us all. Everyone knew whose idea a New Year's Eve party had been: Iowa Bob's.

There won't be anybody coming, anyway,' Frank said.

'Well, speak for yourself, Frank,' Franny said. 'I have some friends coming.'

There could be a hundred people here and you'd still stay in your room, Frank,' I said.

'Go eat another banana,' Frank said. 'Go take a run -- to the moon.'

'Well, I like having a party,' Lilly said, and everyone looked at her -- because, of course, we had not seen her until she spoke; she was getting so small. Lilly was almost eleven, but she now seemed substantially smaller than Egg; she barely came up to my waist and she weighed less than forty pounds.

So we all rallied to the occasion: as long as Lilly was looking forward to a party, we would try to get in the mood.

'So how should we decorate the restaurant, Lilly?' Frank asked her; he had a way of bending over when he spoke to Lilly, as if he were addressing a baby in a carriage and what he had to say were pure gibberish.

'Let's not decorate anything at all,' Lilly said. 'Let's just have a good time.'

We all stood still, facing this prospect as we might face a death sentence, but Mother said, 'That's a wonderful idea! I'm going to call the Matsons!'

'The Matsons?' Father said.

'And the Foxes, and maybe the Calders,' Mother said.

'Not the Matsons!' Father said. 'And the Calders already asked us to a party -- they have a New Year's party every year.'