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If this was a movie, it only occurred to her now (as she pulled herself ever further upwards through the mucky treeline, her boots sopping-slippery with mud), then Jenny and her gang would later turn out to have cut the first girl to menstruate from the school herd every year. There’d be some conspiracy. These girls would disappear, never to be seen again—bleached bones under a swatch of weeds somewhere in the Ravine, after a terrifying midnight hunt . . .

But it wasn’t a movie: Just life, nothing more or less. Considerably less interesting. Considerably more hurtful.

Further up the hill, the house’s porch-light had come on. A car was pulling up outside—driver’s side door painted with a coal-bright tiger, crouched and ready to pounce. The other was hidden from this angle; a voluptuous woman, censored by flowers.

God, you bastard.

The tiger opened. So did the front door.

She straightened, suddenly composed.

Tell you what, she thought. Make you a deal. You don’t really have to make anything happen, okay? Just make me not care, when it does.

That’s all.

A heartfelt prayer. Yet God, as usual, stayed silent.

And oh but she knew, so very very well, that her whole stupid life was an Afterschool Special cliché from top to bottom—her problems clichés too, each and every one of them. Plot twists so stale they all but gave off dust. Ludicrous. Laughable. Lame.

None of which made the pain any easier to take, if and—

(no, just when. When.)

—it came.

The rats, sated, had long since gone their ways. Janice was heading down the yard, already almost to the Ravine’s lip. Beside her was a shadow in embroidered jeans, sizeable hand on equally sizeable hip. No visible means of escape.

Before her parents could start to call, therefore, she stood up. And waved.

* * *

“You decent?” Doug asked, pushing the door open; luckily, she was. This time.

She stood in front of the mirror, flossing carefully. One side, then the other, each tooth in turn. Wrap and pull. Up, down and all around, like a see-saw.

The dentist was a luxury. If she’d left it up to them, she wouldn’t have a tooth left in her head.

Go away.

“Missed you at dinner, pie.”

Right hand on her shoulder, heavy as a full vacuum-cleaner bag. The warped mirror bent his fingers back, blurring them together: One strange flipper.

“Ah elt ick,” she said, mid-wrap.

“Put that down, babe. Let me look at you a while.”

/> That’s an order, she thought, bracing herself. Floss to the garbage, with a flick. She turned, eyes shaded, as if to some erratic light-source more apt to blind than to illuminate. He grinned back, eyes glued to her chest, watching it bounce with the movement.

“Jan told me you did some more growing up while I was gone this time,” he said. “And I thought she was joking. My oh my.”

A whiff of dope from down the hall; Van Morrison on the stereo. She could almost hear him now, soft and infinitely plausible, at least to a woman kite-high on Doug’s own no-name brand of weed: Just leave us two alone to get reacquainted a while, Jan—play Daddy, y’know. All that good crap.

“’Course, I already saw you when I got back.”

The cap was off the toothpaste. “Driving up, you mean.”

Big grin. “Naaah, I mean last night. I was just off shopping, that’s why I wasn’t there at breakfast. But I saw you, all right. Was about three, so you were fast asleep, cute as a button, lyin’ there in that big t-shirt . . . you sure you don’t remember?”