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  Oh, I get it. "Again." He was about to say, "I don't think you want to be in a courtroom again," but he stopped himself.

  I say it for him. "You're right. I don't want to be in a courtroom again. Wasn't much fun the first time."

  Tap-tap-taptaptaptap. The pen goes crazy on the desk. "Mr. Kaltenbach doesn't want to press charges. Says he knows how things can get heated during a practice."

  Goddamn right he doesn't want to press charges. Because then I would tell everyone what he said.

  "Given your history, I think the best thing is for you to talk to Dr. Pierce."

  The school shrink? "Aw, Christ, no! Come on, Roland!"

  He spreads his hands in front of him as if to encompass the panoply of options in the world. "What would you prefer? What would you do in my situation?"

  What would I do, Roland? I'd ask the question you don't want to ask: not "Did Coach Kaltenbach say something to make you upset?" but " What did he say?" But no. Not you, Roland. You'd rather just avoid that and play "bad boy" with me, wouldn't you?

  "I sure as hell wouldn't send me to Pierce. She doesn't know what she's talking about. Let me call Dr. Kennedy instead."

  He considers that. Dr. Kennedy is my usual shrink, the guy I used to see twice a week. Now I'm down to once a month.

  The Spermling nods slowly, as if this whole idea were his, as if he somehow manipulated me into this. He doesn't realize I was going to see Kennedy this week anyway.

  "That's acceptable," he announces with all the import and gravity of Moses handing down the Ten Commandments. "Make the call here."

  I go ahead and call Dr. Kennedy's office. The receptionist recognizes my voice right off the bat and says, "Confirming tomorrow's four o'clock?"

  "Tomorrow at four o'clock." I make it sound like I'm requesting, not confirming.

  After she hangs up, I vamp a bit—"Tell Dr. Kennedy I appreciate him fitting me in"—before putting the phone down.

  The Spermling grunts. "It's almost last bell, so I want you to get ready and go home. I have to suspend you for a couple of days." Before I can protest, he holds up a hand to stop me. "I know, I know. And I really don't want to punish you, but I can't let you hit a teacher and get away with it. Don't worry—I'll make sure your teachers let you make up the work. Come back on Monday. Things should be smoothed over by then."

  "This sucks, Roland." I get up to leave. The Spermling is putting my file away, replacing it on his desk with one that's even bigger. I've never seen that before.

  "Well, suck or not, it is what it is," he says without sympathy. "You've got six weeks of school left, Josh. Try to get by. And try to respect me."

  "I'll work on it, Roland."

  Chapter 2

  Releasing Eve

  Zik Lorenz is my best friend in the world because he's never asked about it. He's never said, "What was it like?" or "Are you OK?" or "Do you ever think about her?" Zik's cool. Which is amazing, because the rest of his family is complete and utter shit. His big brother, Mike, is a real Cro-Magnon type. Played lacrosse and football for all four years before graduating and then flunked out of community college, where he now serves as some sort of coach's assistant, making sure the water bottles are stocked and getting towels for guys his own age. Loser.

  Zik's dad is like a grown-up version of Mike, and his mother is hardly ever around. She's always off at yard sales and garage sales and flea markets, buying crappy reproduction furniture that she swears she's going to refinish. She's also so insane that she named Zik "Isaac," with every intention of calling him "Ike" his whole life. Yes, that's right: the woman named her kids Mike and Ike, after the candy. It's a miracle Zik hasn't killed someone yet.

  I give him a ride home, as usual. He doesn't have a car yet, so he chips in for gas and I drive him to and from school so that he can avoid the indignity of being a senior on the school bus. It also means he can play baseball—he would have no way of getting home or to games otherwise.

  "Twelve times one-forty-four," Zik says.

  "One thousand seven hundred twenty-eight," I tell him, without even thinking about it. "Cut it out."

  "The square root of fifty-two," he says, warming up.

  I can't help myself: "Um, seven-point-two-one-one ... C'mon, Zik, I'm not your personal calculator."

  "Distance from Neptune to Venus. In inches."

  "Zik! Goddamn it!" Sometimes I hate him. "That depends on each planet's position at the time. Right now, for example, Venus is on the other side of the sun from—"

  "In inches," he says again.

  "Christ. OK. Right now, it's, like, a hundred and ... eighty-five trillion inches. Jesus."

  "How long to get from home to Uranus?"

  "You're not going to my anus anytime soon, so stop it."

  Having tested my math/astro skillz to his satisfaction (as if he would know if I just pulled the answers out of my ass ... which I didn't), Zik chortles and kicks back to enjoy the ride. I gun the engine on Route 54, heading to south Brookdale. Zik waits until we're about five minutes from his house before asking, "What happened, man?"

  "I hit Coach."

  "No shit. I saw that, dumb-ass. What did the Spermling do to you?"

  "Oh. That." I watch for the turn into Zik's development. "Three-day suspension."

  "That sucks."

  "I do 'em on my head. Don't worry."

  "Why'd you hit him, J?"

  I've been dreading this question. From Zik in particular. Because if I tell Zik what Kaltenbach said, then that means I bring the whole mess from five years ago back into the light. And Zik has never once made me tell him about it. So do I drag that rotting carcass into the bright, sunny clearing of our friendship, or do I just piss off my best friend?

  Just then—it's really embarrassing—I flicker

  —slide my hand up her skirt—

  and come back to the present. Weird. That was Rachel, in the flicker. From the closet, five years ago. I don't get any sort of erotic charge out of it, but then again, I barely felt anything erotic at the time I was doing it, either.

  Zik doesn't know about the flickers. "If you don't want to talk about it, fine. I just want to stay off your shit list. I don't want to piss you off like that."

  Not a chance. Zik would never in a million years say to me what Kaltenbach said.

  Pick it up, Mendel! You never—

  Not quite a flicker. But enough of a pause that Zik just grunts and opens the door. "See you tom—Oh, wait. Never mind. I'll ride the bus."

  "No way. I'll still drive you."

  "Come on, J. I can't ask you to—"

  "You're not asking, dickweed. I'm telling. I'll pick you up same time."

  He hovers in the doorway for a moment. "What about practice?" he asks, with the air of a poor kid pushing for one more present from Santa Claus.

  "I'll get you. Don't worry."

  He hesitates again; he wants to accept the offer, but some polite part of him (welling up from a DNA source long recessive in the Lorenz genotype, but active in Zik) feels like he should decline. I don't give him a chance to act on his better instincts—I inch the car forward enough to knock him out of it, then lean over and close the door. He hops in the rain for a second, keeps his balance, then flips me off with a grin as he dashes toward the house.

  All's right in the world.

  I was hoping for some peace and quiet at home so that I could gather my thoughts and assemble choice phrases for my diatribe on the injustice of my latest suspension, but strangely enough Mom and Dad's cars are both in the driveway when I pull up.

  Inside, I hear voices—Mom is upset, Dad is calm. Can't quite make out what they're talking about. The usual scenario.

  My mother seems like those moms you see on the commercials—the ones who are cool and collected, who launch flotillas of children from battleship-size SUVs and have a ready jug of sweetened fruit punch on deck at all times. She works as a research assistant to one of the professors at Lake Eliot College. She lives for facts.

>   Dad, though, is one of those guys you see on the really bad sitcoms where you think, How did he end up married to the hottie? He works in marketing, and his slogan is "Convincing the world it's wrong, one product at a time." He deals in fantasy. And he wallows in it.

  So it's not particularly out of the ordinary to hear Mom arguing and Dad grunting occasionally as the near-silent partner. What is weird is having them both home so early in the day.

  They're in the kitchen as I come in. Mom standing by the counter, leaning on it for support, Dad at the table, the newspaper spread out before him.

  "Who are you people and what have you done with my parents?" I demand, trying to break the ice. It hits me almost as the words leave my mouth: the school called them. Good old Roland decided to bend me over and screw me in advance.

  Mom gives Dad a look that says, "Well?" but Dad just shrugs. Mom sighs. "We have to talk to you."

  "I'm sure." Before I can launch into my defense, though, she goes on:

  "This is very serious, Josh. This is difficult for us."

  This can't be about my suspension. I've been suspended before.

  Letters came from the Holy Trinity? That could be it. I didn't check the mail, so maybe one of them did and this is it. My future's been decided.

  She starts to talk, then bites her lip. She's been crying. Her arms shake, bearing her weight as she leans into the counter. Mom's slim and ageless, but she looks a hundred right now.

  "I can't believe this. I can't believe it."

  "What, Mom? Tell me."

  She nods and stands up straight, then takes my hand the way she used to when I was a kid. "We wanted you to hear it from us. That's why we came home. They're letting her out, Joshua. They're letting that woman out of prison." Mom's voice goes from reedy to boiling over by the time she hits the word "prison."

  She doesn't have to tell me who she is

  —tongue tracing a line of cool heat up—

  and I blink, actually jerking my head at the power of it. Mom thinks I'm upset—she pulls at me, and I'm disoriented enough to let her do it. Suddenly I'm being hugged by my mom for the first time in years. It's a weird feeling; these days, I'm five inches taller than she is. I go to put my arms around her in return, but I end up crushing her to me, flattening her breasts against my chest, too aware of them, letting go—

  Mom won't let go. I let her hug me, my arms lamely akimbo. She's sobbing.

  "Mom, it's ... It's OK..." I look to Dad for help again. He's strumming his fingers on the table.

  "She's a sick woman." He says it very calmly, and at first I think he means Mom.

  She breaks away from me and screams, "Then they should leave her where she is!"

  "She has to see a shrink twice a week," he says, again very calmly. I think of my sessions with Dr. Kennedy. I started out at twice a week, too. I wonder who Eve will be seeing. Wouldn't it be bizarre if it ended up being Dr. Kennedy? Could that even happen? Are there laws about that?

  "She didn't even serve half her sentence!" Mom rants.

  "Hell, these days we're lucky she was in that long." Dad taps his pen against his upper teeth for a second, turning into the Spermling for that brief moment. "You OK with this, Josh? You want to talk about it?"

  Mom fixes Dad with a glare like something from an abstract comic book: hate vision, instead of heat vision.

  "I'm seeing Dr. Kennedy tomorrow."

  He nods. Mom seems mollified. A bit.

  I assure them I'm all right and I do my best to keep my legs from shaking as I head to my room. Eve. Eve is getting

  —do you like—

  out of prison. When? I forgot to ask. I should have

  —move over like that and—

  asked them when, but I didn't even think to

  —guuuhhh! Ohhhhhh!—

  ask and the flickers are strobing as I make it to my room and collapse on the bed, as I flip back and forth between the present and multiple pasts, and I realize I never even told them I was suspended.

  Session Transcript: #214

  Dr. Kennedy: Still worried about college?

  J. Mendel: Yeah. Still haven't heard from the Holy Trinity.

  Kennedy: You've already been accepted to Georgia Tech and College Park and Clemson, right?

  Mendel: Yeah, but those were my safety schools. MIT, Yale, and Stanford are the ones I'm really waiting on. It's like, every day I run to the mailbox, but ... nothing. It's tough because the money at those schools is, you know, a lot. My parents don't have a lot of money. I don't know how it's going to work out.

  Kennedy: It's natural that you're going to be anxious about this. I'm not going to tell you to relax about it, but I do want you to try to remember that three good schools have already accepted you and you can afford to attend each of them. Just remember that, OK?

  Mendel: Yeah.

  Kennedy: Now. Why did you hit your coach?

  Mendel: You ever do any sports, doc?

  Kennedy: I rowed crew in college.

  Mendel: Then you know—sometimes coaches just need to be hit.

  Kennedy: Be that as it may—

  Mendel: I love that expression.

  Kennedy: Glad to brighten your day. Be that as it may, was it worth a three-day suspension? Was it worth the possible legal ramifications?

  Mendel: There won't be any legal ramifications.

  Kennedy: For hitting a teacher? That seems pretty serious. They usually don't let things like that slide. Not these days.

  Mendel: If they make a big deal out of it, they'll have to take it to court, right? And if they take it to court, then I'll testify as to what he said. Believe me, he doesn't want that to get out.

  Kennedy: See, now we're getting somewhere. You hit him because he said something to you. You didn't mention that before.

  Mendel: You didn't ask.

  Kennedy: We've been doing this too long for games. You know damn well I asked why you hit him. So what did he say, Josh? What ticked you off?

  Mendel: We were running laps and the little prick was goading us on and when I ran past him, he dropped his voice so that I was the only one who could hear him, and he said, "Pick it up, Mendel! You never slept with me, so I ain't about to take it easy on you!"

  Kennedy: He said that? He actually said that to you? Well, you were right: He needed to be hit. What a piece of shit.

  Mendel: My sentiments exactly.

  Kennedy: You can't let this stand. You should report what he said.

  Mendel: Why bother? It'll just open up the whole thing again. And at least now I know what everyone's thinking. I have confirmation.

  Kennedy: Confirmation of what you've always expected?

  Mendel: Yeah.

  Kennedy: Do you think everyone at your school thinks like Coach Kaltenbach?

  Mendel: I don't know. I see the looks I get sometimes. Especially from the female teachers. It's like they're afraid of me. Like they have to avoid touching me or they'll catch the molester virus.

  Kennedy: You haven't molested anyone. You are the victim... the target of molestation.

  Mendel: Once you've been touched—

  Kennedy: You said the female teachers in particular. Why them?

  Mendel: I don't know.

  Kennedy: Until you punched out your coach, you've never harmed a teacher, right? So why would they be afraid of you?

  Mendel: Maybe they don't want to spend five years in jail like, y'know. Like...

  Kennedy: Like Mrs. Sherman. Hmm?

  Mendel: I guess.

  Kennedy: What do you have to do with that? She chose you, Josh. Not the other way around.

  Mendel: I guess.

  Kennedy: Do you think there's a teacher at the school who's interested in you? Sexually?

  Mendel: No! No.

  Kennedy: It's not uncommon for a sexual predator to latch on to a previous—

  Mendel: No. No one. It's me. They're afraid of me.

  Kennedy: That just doesn't make sense. I think you're projecting somethin
g onto them.

  Mendel: Oh, God. Psychobabble bullshit. You're not supposed to—

  Kennedy: I know, I broke the rule. Here's a dollar. But look, clearly there's still some residual worry about Mrs. Sherman and about what she did. It's perfectly natural for you to fear the same reaction from women in similar positions. Are any of these teachers young? Attractive?

  Mendel: Every school's got at least one like that. You're not listening to me. But I appreciate the buck.

  Kennedy: Josh, don't be obtuse. I know how bright you are. Think about it: What are the odds you're so concerned about this just as Mrs. Sherman is being released from prison? How do you feel about that? Scared? It's OK to be scared.

  Mendel: I'm not scared.

  Kennedy: There's already a protective order in place. She's not allowed within a hundred yards of you.

  Mendel: Why? What's she going to do to me? I'm not twelve anymore. I'm six-one. I outweigh her by a hundred pounds. I could—

  Kennedy: What? What could you do? Hurt her? Is that it? Did you want to hit her? Is that why you hit your coach? He was there and she wasn't.

  Mendel: No. I don't want to hurt her. I hit Kaltenbach because he was a fucking douchebag, OK?

  Kennedy: There's no doubt in my mind that Kaltenbach is a fucking douchebag. But you have every right to be angry at Evelyn Sherman. Every right to want to hurt her. I don't want you to act on that anger, but I want you to know that it's OK, that it's understandable.

  Mendel: [unintelligible]

  Kennedy: What's that?

  Mendel: I said—I said, she liked to be called "Eve." Not Evelyn. Eve.

  Chapter 3

  Tell Me

  After my session with Dr. Kennedy, I head over to South Brook High and wait in the parking lot for Zik, who comes running up from behind the building—the rain ended last night, so practice was outside. He spots me, waves.

  "Watch the mud," I tell him when he opens the passenger-side door. I drive a crappy little Escort from before the Pre-cambrian era, but I like to keep it clean. Zik's cleats are caked with mud and grass. Kaltenbach's an idiot for having outdoor practice without waiting for the field to dry.