We head down into the Valley, stopping to buy beer and pick up three of Ruby’s friends, who all cram in front of the pickup with him. I stretch out in back with the Rottweilers and watch the stars go by over my head. I think about what Scot said about my father. He died when I was so young that I don’t have any memory of him at all. If I ever ask anything about him, it’s like it’s none of my business and I should stop being so nosy and be grateful for what I have.

By the time we arrive, the party is raging. It’s in a deep, ferny gorge above Colchis where tiny feathery waterfalls spill down steps of black shale into the same stream that winds in back of Grimshaw’s house. A huge bonfire licks at the sky. A bunch of guys with their shirts tied around their heads are watching the fire. Some guys from the football team throw a car seat on the fire, and a column of sparks rises about thirty feet in the air, twisting around itself. Ruby puts a can of beer in my hands and then dissolves into the shadows. I crack it, take the first sip, and wander off in search of Grimshaw. The firelight makes people’s faces strange and their shadows lurch against the trees. Cars keep pulling in, and their headlights illuminate more clumps of people leaning against cars and drinking. I thread through them. The gorge is the melting pot of Colchis. All the discrete, mildly antagonistic lifestyles—rednecks, jocks, stoners, even Christians—are like one-celled organisms whose membranes become permeable at parties to beer and drugs and sexually transmitted diseases. Nobody talks to me, though.

This year’s valedictorian is standing on the roof of a pickup truck parked next to the fire. Allegra was salutatorian. He holds a bottle up and watches the fire through the glass. He tips it back, and as he starts to guzzle, a bunch of guys jump into the bed of the pickup and start rocking it. The crowd starts to clap in unison. “Chug, chug, chug,” they chant as the guys in the bed keep rocking the truck. He empties the bottle, throws it into the flames, and holds both arms up in victory. I turn away to keep looking for my friend. If I don’t find her, there is no point in my being here.

Headlights snap on, illuminating Claudette Mizerak and Angel Ciaramitaro, sitting right in front of me on the hood of a pickup truck. They’re passing a bottle of wine back and forth. We freeze when we see each other, like we know we don’t like each other but we can’t really remember why. Then the headlights snap off and leave us in darkness again.

“Slut,” one of them says.

“Bitch,” I say back, and keep going.