“Saints preserve us,” she says lazily. “If it ain’t the teenage runaway.” She lies back down and closes her eyes. “Serena, Robyn. Robyn, Serena.”

“Hi, Robyn.”

“Hi, Serena. Nice jacket.”

“Tea?” asks Allegra, holding up the mayonnaise jar.

“No, thanks. I had a big lunch with Mom.”

“Have you been sucking up to the principal again?” Allegra asks.

“You know I’ve always been a suck-up. That’s what explains my success in life.” I take off Bo’s jacket, shirt, and pants. I ball his coat up into a pillow and put it under my head. Trading dirty clothes for sun is good.

“There are actually two jugs of tea,” Robyn explains. “Virgin, and experienced.”

“What’s it experienced with?”

“Bourbon,” says Allegra.

“I’m from Kentucky,” Robyn explains.

“Where is everybody?” I take a sip from the mayo jar of experience. “Damn. This is really good.”

“Aaron’s playing ultimate Frisbee somewhere,” Robyn says. “Spending the night with a friend. Zack’s at extended day care.”

“Which reminds me.” Allegra puts a hand on Robyn’s arm. “We better not get too drunk. We have to pick him up at six o’clock.”

“I’m not that drunk,” Robyn says. “I’ll get him.”

I eye Robyn and frown. For a newcomer, she seems awfully breezy, somehow, with family information.

Allegra sits up. “I’ll stop drinking, too,” she announces. “I’ll cook.” She pulls on her T-shirt.

“I’ll stop, too.” I take another sip.

“Since we’ve been here, Mom and Scot don’t have to come home much,” Allegra explains. “Robyn and I act as the collective soccer mom.”

“When do you go back to school?” I ask her.

“I don’t. I quit.”

“You quit college?”

“Mom didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“The whole thing reminded me way too much of what I went through last summer in Maine,” Allegra says. “I was out of my league with those summer people. They weren’t real friends, not like I have here.”

They exit through the bedroom window.

After they go, I keep sipping the tea. The sun goes down and the tree frogs start trilling and a warm breeze wafts off Mizerak’s fields, bringing the smell of turned earth. The moon is a few days bigger than it was over the parking lot at Boomtown, Nevada, and it seems like a different moon. I never even found out Bo’s last name. Bo from Texas. That’s all I knew about him. Now that’s all he’ll ever be. I get up to go inside and I jump when I see someone standing over me, waiting for me, silhouetted in the window. It’s Allegra.

“You scared me,” I tell her. “How long were you standing there?”

“I was thinking about college,” she says. “I didn’t know who I was there.”

I look down at my notebook. “I don’t know who I am here.”