None of them seemed to care much one way or the other about the estate or the lake or anything else—they’d come for the party, only that—but then one of the women asked, “You got a bathroom in this place?” and everybody was laughing again. And not just laughing, but hooting, replete with catcalls and back-slapping and wiseacre jokes, and of course they were all stoned, all of them, because that was their business in life. At that moment, with Dick trying to make peace and distract them and get them back out in the yard, a tall broad-shouldered girl at the rear of the group swung round and spotted Fitz there at the door. “Hi,” she murmured, smiling wide and raising the index and middle fingers of her right hand in a V-for-victory sign, her hair in pigtails and her eyes drinking up the light. She was dressed like the rest of them, more or less, in a pair of cutoffs, a buckskin vest and Indian moccasins decorated with colored beads, and that really didn’t do much for him. It was childish, that was all. Like their bus and their rock and roll and their blissed-out smiles. They were like a negative image of the inner circle—or no, a cartoon version. He stared right through her and then, without a word, pulled the door shut, stalked through the kitchen and out the back door.

Sometime later, after somebody had mercifully shut off the music and the whole mob of them had sauntered off in the direction of the lake with Dick, Alice and Fanchon leading the way, he slipped back in the house and went up the stairs and down the hall to his room, wondering if Lori was up and if so whether she knew about the cyclone that had touched down in their midst. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the bathroom or Corey’s room either. The bed still bore the impress of her and it was still warm, or maybe that was his imagination. He stepped out in the hall, called her name. Nobody seemed to be around. He thought then of the pool—she’d taken to swimming almost every day now, the activity imprinted on her after the night she’d almost drowned them both—and he went out to take a look, but she wasn’t there either. Three of the Pranksters were in the pool though, two men and a woman, naked and floating on the kids’ rubber rafts, their faces upturned to the sky. The woman—she was the same one he’d seen in the hall—held up a hand to shade her eyes and called out, “Hi, come join us!”