That day and for many days following, Elissa tortured herself with memories, writing in her diary the whole of the brief romance, with analysis, her hand cramped, the script tiny, wounded, not at all like her typical flowing style. That last night, he said he didn’t like to leave me, and he seemed almost like there was something more he wanted to say. Was he planning to tell me the whole, bitter truth? Of this girl waiting for him back home? Or p-haps he thought he was doing nothing wrong. I cannot believe that someone could so despicably lead a girl on the way he did—recalling, for example, the way he

pressed his shoulder against mine while we were at church in LaX. He arrived late, must have been debating whether he should come to see me in light of his f., but decided to play me for the fool I so clearly am. Was, I mean. As God is my witness, I shall never be foolish again.

Everyone in school knew of her folly, of course. It had been big news, Elissa and Muriel’s trip down to La Crosse, then the subsequent report of the boys they had met, and, most excitingly, the fact that a soldier was coming up to visit Elissa. Talk had been that she was practically engaged to him already. And then, to have everyone find out she’d been duped! To have the entire saga spread so gleefully by the likes of Judy Wasserman! “He already had a fiancée back home! And she thought she really had something! Isn’t it the limit?” It was mortifying, the whispers she had sensed behind her back that dreadful Monday following the Betrayal, as it came to be known between her and Muriel. She faked sick Tuesday through Thursday—giving her plenty of time to flesh out the saga in her diary—but her mother finally made her go back to school on Friday, and Muriel dragged her to Emory’s after school. “You’ve got to face everybody sooner or later, Liss,” Muriel reasoned. “Why let ’em see you’re down? You’ve got to hold your head high. It’s his loss, after all.”

Elissa would have liked to see what Muriel would have been acting like, if the same thing had happened to her. But she went along to Emory’s; what else could she do?

The minute they were seated in a booth, Mrs. Emory asked about him. “How’s that soldier boyfriend of yours, Lissa? I suppose he had to go back?”

Elissa’s eyes filled with tears. Fool, she told herself, but she couldn’t stop them.

Muriel spoke to Mrs. Emory in a confidential tone. “She’s quite sensitive about it, Mrs. Emory. Perhaps it would be best just not to mention him again.”