On Friday night, Charley drives all the way out to my house to pick me up, comes inside and introduces herself to my parents. Her hair is pulled back into a neat ponytail and she’s wearing a ring that hides her tattoo.

She tells my mom she’s had her license for a year, a lie that comes out so smooth, it fools even me. I see my parents exchanging glances, how Mom wrings her hands, but I know they don’t want to tell me I can’t go. At least I’m making friends, starting to fit in.

Once Charley and I are walking up the driveway, out of earshot, she says, “Christ, you really live out in the fuckin’ boonies.”

“I know, I hate it.”

“I would, too. You know, last year I dated a guy who lived out here.” She says his name, but I don’t recognize it. “He was a little older,” she explains.

Her car squeals as she pulls out of the driveway, and I picture Mom wincing at the sound. “Yeah, sorry,” Charley says, “muffler’s bad.” She drives with one hand on the wheel, the other holding a cigarette, her window cracked to let out the smoke. She wears gloves with the fingertips cut off, her coat covered in cat hair. She asks me questions about myself, about what I think of different people at school, about having gone to Browick. She says she’s obsessed with the idea of boarding school.

“Was it crazy?” she asks. “It must’ve been. Full of rich kids, right?”

“Not everyone was rich.”

“Were there drugs everywhere?”

“No,” I say. “It wasn’t like that. It was . . .” I think of the white clapboard campus, the autumn oak trees, the snow banks higher than our heads, the teachers in jeans and flannel shirts—Strane, draped in shadow, as he watched me from behind his desk. I shake my head. “It’s hard to describe.”

Charley sticks the tip of her cigarette out the window. “Well, you’re lucky. Even if you were only there a couple years. My mom would never be able to swing that.”

“I had a scholarship,” I say quickly.

“Yeah, but even then, my mom wouldn’t have let me go. She loves me too much. I mean, letting your kid move away as a freshman? At fourteen? That’s crazy.” She takes a drag, exhales, and adds, “Sorry. I’m sure your mom loves you. It’s just different, I guess, with mine. We’re close. It’s just her and me.”

I wave her off, say that it’s fine, but what she said stings. Maybe it hurts because it might be true. Maybe I wasn’t loved enough. Maybe that lack of love shaped the loneliness he saw in me.

“Will’s supposed to be there tonight,” she says, such a sudden subject change I start to ask Will who, but then remember what she said in chemistry. Will Coviello is so hot, I’ll give him a blow job. Watch me, I’ll do it. I’ve known Will Coviello since I was in kindergarten. He’s a year older, a senior, lives in a big house with a tennis court out front. Girls used to call him Prince William in middle school.

When we get to the bowling alley, Jade is already there, wearing a satiny camisole without a bra. The bowling alley is dimly lit, with long tables set back from the lanes where a bunch of kids from school sit, their faces recognizable but most of their names out of reach. There’s a sports bar attached to the bowling alley, an open doorway separating the two so jukebox music drifts in, the smell of beer.

Charley sits next to Jade. “Have you seen Will?” When Jade nods and points toward the doors, Charley takes off so fast she almost knocks over a chair.

Without Charley around, Jade won’t speak to me. She stares pointedly over my shoulders, refuses to look at me. Her eyeliner cuts across her eyelids into sharp points. I haven’t seen her wear it like that before.

Men with drinks in their hands wander out of the bar and into the bowling alley, their eyes skimming the dim room. A man in a camo jacket sees our table and gestures to his friend. The other man just shakes his head and holds up his hands, as if to say, I don’t want anything to do with that.

I watch the man in the jacket come over, notice how he zeroes in on Jade and her slutty top. He pulls up a chair beside her, sets his drink on the table. “Hope you don’t mind if I sit here,” he says. His accent turns here into two syllables. He-yah. “It’s so crowded, there’s nowhere else for me to go.”

It’s a joke; there are plenty of seats. Jade is supposed to laugh, but she won’t even look over at him. She sits with her back stick straight and arms crossed over her chest. In a tiny voice, she says, “It’s fine.”

The man isn’t bad looking, despite his grubby hands. He’s who the boys at school will grow up into—thick Maine accent and a pickup truck. “How old are you?” I ask. The question comes out more forceful than I intend, makes me sound accusing, but he doesn’t seem put off. He turns toward me, his attention immediately shifting away from Jade.

He says to me, “I feel like I should be asking you the same question.”

“I asked first.”

He smirks. “I’ll tell you, but I’ll make you work for it. I graduated high school in nineteen eighty-three.”

I think for a moment; Strane graduated high school in 1976. “You’re thirty-six.”

The man raises his eyebrows, sips his drink. “You disgusted?”

“Why would I be disgusted?”

“Because thirty-six is old.” He laughs. “How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?”

He looks me over. “Eighteen.”

“Sixteen.”

He laughs again, shakes his head. “Christ.”

“Is that bad?” It’s a stupid question and I know it. Of course it’s bad. The badness of it is written all over his face. I flick my eyes over to Jade and she stares at me as though she’s never seen me before, like she has no idea who I am.

A senior girl at the other end of the table leans toward us. “Hey, can I have a sip of your drink?” she asks. The man grimaces a little, a small show of acknowledgment that it’s wrong, but slides the glass down the table. The girl takes one sip and then shrieks out a giggle, as though instantly drunk.

“Ok, ok.” The man reaches for his drink. “I don’t wanna get kicked out.”

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Craig.” He nudges the glass toward me. “You want a taste?”

“What is it?”

“Whiskey and Coke.”

I reach for it. “I love whiskey.”

“And what’s your name, sixteen-year-old-who-loves-whiskey?”

I shake my hair back from my face. “Vanessa.” I say it with a sigh, as though I’m bored to tears, as though a fire isn’t burning in me. I wonder if this counts as cheating, how angry Strane would be if he walked in and saw this scene.

Charley comes back over, her face flushed, hair messed up. She takes a long swallow from Jade’s can of soda.

“What happened?” Jade asks.

Charley waves her hand; she doesn’t want to talk about it. “Let’s get out of here. I want to go home and pass out.” She looks at me, suddenly remembering. “Shit, I need to drive you home.”

Craig watches intently. “You need a ride?” he asks me.

I balk, my limbs tingling.

“Who are you?” Charley asks.

“I’m Craig.” He holds his hand out for her to shake. Charley just stares him down.

“Right.” She looks to me. “You’re not leaving with him. I’ll drive you home.”

I give Craig a sheepish smile and try not to look too relieved.

“Does she always tell you what to do?” he asks. I shake my head and he leans in toward me. “So what if I wanted to talk to you sometime? How would I do that?”

He wants a phone number, but I know my parents would probably call the police at the sound of his voice. “Do you have Instant Messenger?”

“Like AOL? Sure, I’ve got that.”

Charley watches as I fish a pen from the bottom of my bag and write my screen name on the palm of his hand. “You really like old guys, don’t you?” she asks as we walk out the door. “Sorry if I cock-blocked you. I didn’t think you really wanted to let him drive you home.”

“I didn’t. I just like the attention. He’s obviously a loser.”

She laughs, opens her car door and gets inside, leans across and unlocks the passenger door. “You know, you’re surprisingly screwed up.”

On the drive to my house, Charley plays the same Missy Elliott song over and over, the dashboard glowing her face blue as she raps along: “Ain’t no shame, ladies, do your thing / just make sure you’re ahead of the game.”

By Monday everyone knows Charley gave Will a blow job, but he won’t speak to her now and Jade hears from Ben Sargent that Will called Charley white trash.

“Men are shit,” Charley says as we smoke cigarettes behind the grocery store, huddled between the dumpsters. Jade nods in agreement and I do, too, but only for show. I stayed up late Saturday and Sunday chatting with Craig, and my head still rings from all the compliments he gave me. I’m so pretty, so hot, unbelievably sexy. Since he met me Friday night, I’m the only thing he’s thought about. He’ll do anything to see me again.

Charley says that men are shit, but really she means boys. She wipes away tears before they have a chance to fall, and I know she’s mad and that it must hurt like hell, but a part of me can’t help but think: what did she expect?

* * *

Craig is nothing like Strane. He’s a veteran, was in Desert Storm, and now works construction. He doesn’t read, didn’t go to college, and doesn’t have anything to say when I try to talk about the things I care about. The worst thing about him is how much he likes guns—not just hunting rifles but handguns. When I say I think guns are idiotic, he writes, You won’t think that when someone breaks into your bedroom in the middle of the night. Being armed will probably seem pretty smart then.

Who’s going to break into my bedroom? I shoot back. You?

Maybe.

With Craig, it’s only chatting online, which makes it ok even when he acts like a creep. I haven’t seen him since that night at the bowling alley, and I’m not in any rush to, but he says he wants to see me. He talks all the time about how he wants to take me out.

Where would we even go? I ask, like I’m stupid. Whenever the conversation veers off in a direction I don’t like, I play dumb, which means I play dumb so often, he thinks I actually am.

What do you mean, where? Craig writes. To the movies, dinner. Haven’t you ever been on a date before?

Ok, but I’m sixteen.

You could pass for eighteen.

He doesn’t understand how this works, doesn’t get that I don’t want to pass for eighteen and that I have zero interest in going to the movies as though he were a boy my own age.

The weather cools to a raw gray. The leaves change and fall, the woods turn sparse with skeletal trees. I learn things about myself: that if I limit myself to five hours of sleep, I’m too tired to care what happens around me; if I wait until dinnertime to eat anything, hunger pains drown out any other feelings. Christmas comes and goes, another new year; the TV news still screams about anthrax and war. At school, the rumors about me have long died down. My parents stop locking the cordless phone in their bedroom every night.

I keep chatting with Craig, but his compliments turn stale and the feeling he gave me when I first met him dries up. Now when we chat, all I can think about is what Strane would think of him and what Strane would think of me for spending my time talking to him.

I block his screen name, delete all our chats and emails, and fake sick the next day, grateful that at least I never told him exactly where I live so there’s no chance he’ll find me at home. When I return to school, I carry my house key so it sticks out between my fingers as I walk from the school doors to the bus. I imagine him grabbing me from behind, forcing me into his truck, and then who knows what. Rape and murder me, probably. Carry my corpse to the movies so we can finally have that stupid date he always went on about. After a week passes and nothing happens, I stop holding my key like a weapon and unblock his screen name to see if he’ll message me. He doesn’t. He’s gone. I tell myself I’m relieved.