“We’re really different, aren’t we, that way?” she muses. “Anyway, we’re going to go downtown to get some food.” After they’re gone, the streetlights blink on over the empty house lots, and I start writing in my upward mobility notebook. Even if everything that happened was a dream, it’s still a dream I don’t want to forget. One week in my life when I really lived, when what I did, for better or worse, actually had consequences.

Many pages later, Robyn and Allegra have long since come back, and Nora and Zack are bouncing on Mom and Scot’s bed and screaming a shrill song about underwear. I shut the notebook and go inside to take a shower.

After the kids go to bed, I sit down in front of some cold pizza and start telling Allegra and Robyn about my trip, starting with the postcard. By eleven o’clock, I’ve just gotten to the part in Grimshaw’s kitchen where I shut the door in Mike Lyle’s face. When Mom comes home, the three of us race upstairs and dive on my bed.

“Serena!” Allegra hisses. “You seduced Mike Lyle?”

“I didn’t seduce him exactly,” I explain. “I just took advantage of his reptilian brain.”

“Who is he?” asks Robyn. “Is he famous?”

“Only within about twenty yards of the football field. He was big stuff back in the day.”

“One of those,” says Robyn. “The savior of the high school, Jesus for a year.”

“I wish I hadn’t done it, though,” I tell them.

“Except your friend would never have left him if you hadn’t provoked him,” points out Robyn.

“Except my friend didn’t want to leave him.”

“Then why did she?”

“He sort of broke up with her, and she left. She’s very proud.”

“Then he’s a prick and you did her a favor.”

“Except now she hates my guts.”

“She’ll get over it.”

“You don’t know Grimshaw.”

It occurs to me that the sharpest image from that whole event is the one I haven’t told anyone about, the black body stocking stretched like a rope in between Mike Lyle’s hands. It still has the power to scare me, even safe in my own home, even with him all the way across the country.

“He actually sort of threatened me,” I blurt out. “For real.”

“Well, you’re very provocative, Serena,” says Allegra. “You know you have a big mouth.”

“Still, threatening is not cool,” says Robyn. “Did he literally threaten you, with words?”

“Well, not exactly with words, per se.”

Allegra turns to Robyn. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve wanted to kill my sister with my bare hands?”

“Not the same,” she argues back.

At one a.m., Scot comes home, and I’ve just described our night at the Lone Pine Indian Reservation. He knocks on Allegra’s bedroom door, kisses my forehead, tousles my hair, and leaves without saying a word. We go into the bathroom to brush our teeth.