“Christ. I don’t know. You’re smart. What if you told them it was Steven’s fault? That he started it and Julia said no, and he went on anyway. That they were confused. Or that it didn’t actually happen.” There’s that It again. “That they didn’t actually have sex. Can you do that?”

“That would be a lie,” Steven says before Patrick can answer.

“I don’t care,” I say. “Do you realize what’s going to happen to Julia? Do you?”

She comes into my vision, as in an old family movie, skating or biking down the street with her halter top and her music, talking over the fence while I pruned Mrs. Ray’s roses, holding Steven’s hand. Now I see her on the television, dressed in a gray smock, flinching at the flash of a hundred cameras, standing silent while Reverend Carl reads out lines from his Pure manifesto. Fast-forward some years, and Julia is tired and bent, thin as a rail, pulling weeds or gutting fish.

And no one in this room can do anything about it.

Like I said: the follies of men.

Chapter Thirty-six

THIRTY-SIX

Friday, according to my contract, is my day off, but too much adrenaline is coursing through me to sleep, so I get up, leaving Patrick to snooze, and go to the kitchen. It’s where I do my best thinking.

I want to fight, and I don’t know how.

If Jackie were here, she’d have a few words for me. Mostly, I think of one of her last lectures, that late April afternoon in our Georgetown apartment with its Ikea rugs and Ikea dishes and maybe a few pots and pans from a yard sale.

“You can start small, Jeanie,” she said. “Attend some rallies, hand out flyers, talk to a few people about issues. You don’t have to change the world all by yourself, you know.”

And the usual catchphrases ensued: grassroots, one step at a time, it’s the little things, hope-change-yes-we-can! All those words Patrick sneered at, and I sneered along with him.

At six, Steven drags himself into the kitchen and pours a glass of milk, which he takes back to his room.

Good. I can barely look at him.

I fix myself some dry toast and tea. My brain wants coffee, but the rest of my body rebelled as soon as I opened the bag of beans and poured them into the grinder. Even the toast smells off, as if the entire contents of my pantry went rotten overnight. Everything tastes like old fish.

Sonia’s up next, full of questions about last night. “What happened at the Kings’ house?” “Will I be going to play with Mrs. King today?” “Is Julia sick?” Her speech is like music, but the lyrics are all wrong.