“I’m serious, Tim. Find some drugs and some liquor and we’ll go up in the mountains and get stinko.”

I adjusted my hat and looked at her funny. “Stinko?” “I know that doesn’t sound like me but I’m not me any more,” she said. “I’ve changed. I want to start having fun now.”

She moved close and put her peeling, pink fingers around my gloves. Her face was bloated and pale, and she wasn’t wearing makeup. “Please, Tim, I want to go up in the mountains with everybody.”

“Okay,” I said. “I can’t go anywhere right now but I’d love to do something this weekend. We’ll go to lunch or something.”

“No! I don’t want to go to lunch. I’m sick of lunch. I’m sick of eating; I don’t eat any more. Come on, let’s go somewhere.”

She began pulling me away. At this point the other hour-boys stopped working and just stared. I walked her around the side of a building and said, “Listen, S.D., I’d love to do something with you but I can’t right now. Fundy’ll be back any minute.”

“What about later?” she said. “At 5 o’clock.”

S.D. looked like hell, and I was slightly afraid for her.

“Meet me behind the chapel at 5 and we’ll go play,” she said.

“You’ll miss the last bus up to the Girls School.”

“So?”

“You don’t want to have to walk all the way up the hill tonight.”

“I don’t care, Tim, it doesn’t affect me. I’m like the toughest person in the world now. Nothing affects me anymore. So you’ll come out? Please say you will. Please.”

“Sure,” I said.

S.D. hugged and thanked me and said she’d always love me. For the rest of the afternoon I was in a daze. Waltham came by, and I told him about it. He advised me to be careful, figuring Funderburk and Mort were behind it. That would’ve made sense but somehow I knew they weren’t.

“Is it possible she’s pulling an Ebenezer Scrooge and has seen the Ghost of Christmas Past?”

“Perhaps,” Waltham said, “but I doubt it.”