While I knew Walker to speak to, our relationship was otherwise nonexistent. During my senior year Walker McNally and I had been in the same American history class. At the time, I was in my rebellious phase (which lasted all through high school), so I’d been more interested in cutting classes than attending. As a result, I hadn’t done well. Then again, I didn’t do that well when I wasn’t truant, so no harm accrued as a result of my bad behavior. The only history class I remembered was the day we discussed the differences between the English and the American social structures. The teacher wanted us to appreciate the reasons the colonists had established this brave new land of ours and why they’d eventually broken away from the tyranny of the Crown. By his account, the Brits were rigidly class-conscious, while in America we were not. You can imagine my surprise. There followed a lively exchange of opinions, most of them voiced by the kids from Horton Ravine, whose families were well-off and therefore deeply committed to the notion that life was equitable. Of course, everyone in America was afforded equal opportunities! It was just that the Horton Ravine kids got more of them than the rest of us.

I remembered Walker as elegant, with a certain preppy nonchalance that I admired and feared from afar. He was a good-looking guy, aloof and self-aware. He and his entire social set took privilege for granted, and why would they not? Trips to Europe, Ivy League schools? Ho-hum for them. What piqued my interest was his wild side. He was into excess—fast cars and fast girls. The fast girls had money—nothing cheap about them—but they were reckless. I remembered two in particular—Cassie Weiss and Rebecca Ragsdale, with their perfect skin, perfect teeth, and trim athletic bodies. Both were friendly in the way of girls who know they’re better than you. Walker had dated Rebecca and then he’d broken up with her when Cassie made a play for him.

In those days the hot spot for making out was a hilltop pocket park dubbed Passion Peak. On Friday and Saturday nights the parking lot midway up the hill would be packed with cars, windows fogged over and much thrashing about in the front and rear seats. Those seeking greater comfort and privacy would climb to the top, where the city had installed picnic tables and benches and an oversized gazebo that served as a bandstand for summer concerts. The park had been closed to the public for the past two years because a group of teenagers had taken to building bonfires up there, one of which had set the autumn-dry grass ablaze and burned the gazebo to a charred shell.