“You know there’s a TV up there.”

“It didn’t sound like a TV. It sounded like a man. I didn’t see your car.”

“My car’s in the garage,” he said.

She kept her distance. Chase would never hurt her, but neither would he forget being confronted in his boxers by three armed cops. She had once liked his anger and the intensity of his moods; it had seemed important that he felt things strongly. She closed the curtains on the field where the boy had run away. “I’m not going to live my whole life here,” she said. “That’s just not what I’m going to do.”

It was a statement she had never made, never seriously, but she found she believed it, as much as she believed Chase would never come with her. Maybe not this year, maybe not till Amy was out of school, but she would go. She was grateful Amy was in town at the dance, not a witness to this scene. Amy might still believe that her parents presented a united front to the world, and Gina felt children should believe in the strength of that front.

“That man’s out there,” she said.

“A boy,” Chase said. “He’s just a boy.”

At the dance, Amy and Marisol feigned casual conversation, eyeing the crowd in the darkened gym. They had danced, some in jumping circles with other girls, some slow with boys’ arms around their waists. Marisol had been asked the most, being so glossily brunette and so tall. She had the legs and the sullen expression of girls in magazines, and the boys dared each other to ask her. She didn’t always say yes, and it was hard to predict who would be refused. Her caprice was part of her appeal.

Amy knew she didn’t have what Marisol had. She was freckled and pale, almost as tall as Marisol but ganglier. Her braces weren’t off yet, and she had the walking cast. If she had known she would break her ankle jumping out of that tree, she might not have jumped, but at the time she had wanted to see the green grass coming up at her, fast. She wore a short skirt borrowed from Marisol, a skirt her mother would be afraid to forbid her to wear. But the boys didn’t ask her to dance because of the skirt. They asked because she was a nice girl in a cast, and it made them good guys, and there was no harm in it. It was a funny joke to steer her, burdened with fiberglass plaster, in lopsided circles. She was a good sport, and was being one now. But she could feel their awe of Marisol, the heat of attraction coming off her friend.