Rob put down the wrench, folded his arms across his chest, leaned his butt against the work-table, and said, "Then why, when you called to tell them you got here, did you say you were at somebody Joanne's?"

Damn! I hadn't realized he'd been in the room when I'd made that call.

"Look, Mastriani," he said. "You know I've had my doubts from the start about this—you and me, I mean. And not just because I've graduated and you're still in the eleventh grade—not to mention the whole jailbait factor. But let's be real. You and I come from different worlds."

"That," I said, "is so not—"

"Well, different sides of the tracks, then."

"Just because I'm a Townie," I said, "and you're a—"

He held up a single hand. "Look, Mastriani. Let's face it. This isn't going to work."

I've been working really hard on my anger management issues lately. Except for that whole thing with the football players—and Karen Sue Hankey—I hadn't beat up a single person or served a day of detention the whole semester. Mr. Goodhart, my guidance counselor, said he was really proud of my progress, and was thinking about canceling my mandatory weekly meetings with him.

But when Rob held up his hand like that, and said that this, meaning us, wasn't going to work, it was about all I could do to keep from grabbing that hand and twisting Rob's arm behind his back until he said uncle. All that kept me from doing it, really, was that I have found that boys don't really like it when you do things like this to them, and I wanted Rob to like me. To more than like me.

So instead of twisting his arm behind his back, I put my hands on my hips, cocked my head, and went, "Does this have something to do with that Gary dude?"

Rob unfolded his arms and turned back to his bike. "No," he said. "This is between you and me, Mastriani."

"Because I noticed you don't seem to like him very much."

"You're sixteen years old," Rob said, to the bike. "Sixteen!"

"I mean, I guess I could understand why you don't like him. It must be weird to see your mom with some guy other than your dad. But that doesn't mean it's okay to take it out on me."

"Jess." It always meant trouble when Rob called me by my first name. "You've got to see that this can't go anywhere. I'm on probation, okay? I can't get caught hanging out with some kid—"

The kid part stung, but I graciously chose to ignore it, observing that Rob, in the words of Great-aunt Rose's hero, Oprah, was in some psychic pain.

"What I hear you saying," I said, talking the way Mr. Goodhart had advised me to talk when I was in a situation that might turn adversarial, "is that you don't want to see me anymore because you feel that our age and socioeconomic differences are too great—"

"Don't even tell me that you don't agree," Rob interrupted, in a warning tone. "Otherwise, why haven't you told your parents about me? Huh? Why am I this dark secret in your life? If you were so sure that we have something that could work, you'd have introduced me to them by now."

"What I am saying to you in response," I went on, as if he hadn't spoken, "is that I believe you are pushing me away because your father pushed you away, and you can't stand to be hurt that way again."

Rob looked at me over his shoulder. His smokey gray eyes, in the light from the single bulb hanging from the wooden beam overhead, were shadowed.

"You're nuts," was all he said. But he really seemed to mean it sincerely.

"Rob," I said, taking a step toward him. "I just want you to know, I am not like your dad. I will never leave you."

"Because you're a freaking psycho," Rob said.

"No," I said. "That's not why. It's because I lo—"

"Don't!" he said, thrusting the rag out at me like it was a weapon. There was a look of naked panic on his face. "Don't say it! Mastriani, I am warning you—"

"—ve you."

"I told you"—He wadded the rag up and threw it viciously into a far corner of the barn—"not to say it."

"I'm sorry," I said, gravely. "But I am afraid my unbridled passion was simply too great to hold in check a moment longer."

A second later it appeared that in actuality Rob was the one suffering from the unbridled passion, not me. At least if the way he grabbed me by the shoulders, dragged me toward him, and started kissing me was any indication.

While it was, of course, highly gratifying to be kissed by a young man who was clearly so incapable of controlling his tremendous ardor for me, it has to be remembered that we were kissing in a barn, which at the end of November is not the warmest place to be at night. Furthermore, it wasn't like there were any comfy couches or beds nearby for him to throw me down on or anything. I suppose we could have done it in the hay, but

a) eew, and

b) my passion for Rob is not that unbridled.

I mean, sex is a big enough step in any relationship without doing it in an old barn. Um, no thank you. I am willing to wait until the moment is right—such as prom night. In the unlikely event I am ever invited to prom. Which, considering that my boyfriend is already a high school graduate, seems unlikely. Unless of course I invite him.

But again, eew.

"I think I should go home now," I said, the next time we both came up for air.

"That," Rob said, resting his forehead against mine and breathing hard, "would probably be a good idea."

So I went in and said thank you to Rob's mom, who was sitting on the couch with Just-Call-Me-Gary watching TV in a snuggly sort of position that, had Rob seen it, might just have sent him over the edge. Fortunately, however, he did not see it. And I did not tell him about it, either.

"Well," I said to him, as I climbed behind the wheel of my mom's car. "Seeing as how we aren't broken up anymore, do you want to do something Saturday? Like go see a movie or whatever?"

"Gosh, I don't know," Rob said. "I thought you might be busy with your good friend Joanne."

"Look," I said. It was so cold out that my breath was coming out in little white puffs, but I didn't care. "My parents have a lot to deal with right now. I mean, there's the restaurant, and Mike dropping out of Harvard. . . ."

"You're never going to tell them about me, are you?" Rob's gray eyes bore into me.

"Just let me give them a chance to adjust to the idea," I said. "I mean, there's the whole thing with Douglas and his job, and Great-aunt Rose, and—"

"And you and the psychic thing," he reminded me, with just the faintest trace of bitterness. "Don't forget you and the psychic thing."

"Right," I said. "Me and the psychic thing." The one thing I could never forget, no matter how much I tried.

"Look, you better get going," Rob said, straightening up. "I'll follow behind, and make sure you get home okay."

"You don't have to—"

"Mastriani," he said. "Just shut up and drive."

And so I did.

Only it turned out we didn't get very far.

C H A P T E R

4

Not, may I point here and now, because of my poor driving skills. As I think I've stated before, I am an extremely good driver.

But I didn't know that at first. That I wasn't being pulled over on account of my driving ability, or lack thereof. All I knew was one minute I was cruising along the dark, empty country road that ran from Rob's house back into town, with Rob purring along behind me on his Indian. And the next, I rounded a curve to find the entire road blocked off by emergency vehicles—county sheriff's SUVs, police cruisers, highway patrol … even an ambulance. My face was bathed in flashing red and white. All I could think was, Whoa! I was only going eighty, I swear!

Of course it was a forty-mile-an-hour zone. But come on. It was Thanksgiving, for crying out loud. There hadn't been another soul on the road for the past ten miles. . . .

A skinny sheriff's deputy waved me to the shoulder. I obeyed, my palms sweaty. My God, was all I could think. All this because I was driving without a license? Who knew they were so strict?

The officer who strolled up to the car after I pulled over was one I recognized from the night Mastriani's burned down. I didn't remember his name, but I knew he was a nice guy—the kind of guy who maybe wouldn't bust my chops too badly for driving illegally. He shined a flashlight first on me, then into the backseat of my mom's car. I hoped he didn't think the stuff my mom had in the backseat—boxes of cassette tapes by Carly Simon and Billy Joel, and some videos of romantic comedies she kept forgetting to return to Blockbuster—were mine. I am so not the Carly Simon, Sleepless in Seattle type.

"Jessica, isn't it?" the cop said, when I put the window down. "Aren't you Joe Mastriani's daughter?"

"Yes, sir," I said. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Rob pull up right behind me on his Indian. His long legs were stretched out so that his feet rested on the ground, keeping him and the bike upright while he waited for me to get waved through the roadblock. Rob was gazing out at the cornfield to the right of us. The brown, withered stalks were bathed in the flashing red-and-white lights from the dozen squad cars and ambulance parked alongside the road. A few yards deeper into the field, a giant floodlight had been set up on a metal pole, and was shining down on something that we couldn't see, with the tall corn in the way.

"Too bad you have to work on Thanksgiving," I said to the cop. I was trying to be way nice to him, on account of my not having a driver's license, and all. Meanwhile, my palms were now so sweaty, I could barely grip the wheel. I had no idea what happens to people caught driving without a license, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be very nice.

"Yeah," the cop said. "Well, you know. Listen, we kinda got a situation over here. Where you coming from, anyway?"

"Oh, I was just having dinner over at my friend's house," I said, and told him the address of Rob's house. "That's him," I added, helpfully, pointing behind me.

Rob had, by this time, switched off his engine and gotten down from his bike. He strolled up to the police officer with his hands at his sides instead of in the pockets of his leather jacket, I guess to show he wasn't holding a weapon or anything. Rob is pretty leery of cops, on account of having been arrested before.

"What's going on, Officer?" Rob wanted to know, all casual-like. You could tell he, like me, was worried about the whole driving without a license thing. But what kind of police force would set up a roadblock to catch license-less drivers on Thanksgiving? I mean, that was going way above and beyond the call of duty, if you asked me.

"Oh, we got a tip a little while ago," the cop said to Rob. "Regarding some suspicious activity out here. Came out to have a look around." I noticed he hadn't taken out his little ticket book to write me up. Maybe, I thought. Maybe this isn't about me.

Especially considering the floodlight. I could see people traipsing out from and then back into the cornfield. They appeared to be carrying things, toolboxes and stuff.

"You see anything strange?" the police officer asked me. "When you were driving out here from town?"

"No," I said. "No, I didn't see anything."

It was a clear night. . . . Cold, but cloudless. Overhead was a moon, full, or nearly so. You could see pretty far, even though it was only about an hour shy of midnight, by the light of that moon.

Except that there wasn't much to see. Just the big cornfield, stretching out from the side of the road like a dark, rustling sea. Rising above it, off in the distance, was a hill covered thickly in trees. The backwoods. Where my dad used to take us camping, before Douglas got sick, and Mikey decided he liked computers better than baiting fishhooks, and I developed a pretty severe allergy to going to the bathroom out of doors.

People lived in the backwoods … if you wanted to call the conditions they endured there living. If you ask me, anything involving an outhouse is on the same par with camping.

But not everyone who got laid off when the plastics factory closed was as lucky as Rob's mom, who found another job—thanks to me—pretty quickly. Some of them, too proud to accept welfare from the state, had retreated into those woods, and were living in shacks, or worse.

And some of them, my dad once told me, weren't even living there because they didn't have the money to move somewhere with an actual toilet. Some of them lived there because they liked it there.