The window for approach was closing fast, and Dan was about to veer off when McQuivers was accosted by Samantha Schimmel. Dan almost broke into a skip. The DJ was slip-cueing to the synth whining of Tears for Fears. Dan started across the brazen threshold. Act cool, don’t make a beeline. Three steps away, he caught her dark eyes, and she smiled bright. He moved under the heavenly banners with her now. Two steps away.

“Cady, oh my Gawd, come, come, come!”

The piano for “Head over Heels” crashed in, and Julie Houlihan practically tackled Cady from behind, turning her away from Dan, who found himself on a barren tundra as everyone else paired off.

Goddamn it.

Dan circled the outskirts of the dance floor, pretending to have purpose but really orbiting like a sad, lost satellite. After a couple of forlorn passes, he headed out to the balcony off the dining hall. The balcony was crowded with upper-class assholes, and Dan wandered down the steps to the back lawn of the school, which rolled to a break of cedars.

Dan lit his cigarette and watched the smoke silver in the moonlight. He paced around the lawn and then parked himself below the balcony—just in case a chaperone or one of the Ursuline sisters was doing their rounds. The other kids’ shadows bobbed like crows on the lawn. Standing where he was, Dan could eavesdrop on all the adolescent back-and-forth bullshit. Like the swineherd listening in on the suitors in the hall. Then he heard:

“Oh my Gawd, he was totally coming over.”

“Totally . . .”

It was Cady and Julie. They had ducked Dan on purpose. And now he knew. Dan put out his cigarette and hugged the wall. Lord, if they see me now—complete social suicide.

“He’s been in love with you since like seventh grade.”

Julie Houlihan had no business but your business, and she had had it in for Dan since he beat her in the St. Rita’s spelling bee.

“Okay, so now I’m starting to feel bad. I should have danced with him.”

“You dance with him and then you can rule out Charlie Corlett, who I’m telling you told Janie, who told me, that he thought he might like you . . .”

“He’s like shy, right? It’s like so late in the dance, what was he waiting for?”

There was no way he could be seen overhearing all this. Dan looked up at the Big Dipper, trying to muster a plan. Okay, asshole, run away. Dan stayed tight to the wall, crab-walking until he was clear of the balcony. Cady Bloom feels kind of sorry for me. That’s something I can work with, right? He rambled his way through bushes, a drainage ditch, and the side lawns of Ursuline Academy to burst forth into the parking lot. The kids hanging out there just assumed he was smoking pot and asked if he was Holden Caulfield.