hey were on the floor of the living room and they were nearly naked. Josie could taste beer on Matt’s breath, but she must have tasted like that, too. They’d both drunk a few at Drew’s-not enough to get wasted, just buzzed, enough so that Matt’s hands seemed to be all over her at once, so that his skin set fire to hers.

She’d been floating along pleasantly in a haze of the familiar. Yes, Matt had kissed her-one short one, then a longer, hungry kiss, as his hand worked open the clasp on her bra. She lay lazy, spread beneath him like a feast, as he pulled off her jeans. But then, instead of doing what usually came next, Matt reared over her again. He kissed her so hard that it hurt. “Mmmph,” she said, pushing at him.

“Relax,” Matt murmured, and then he sank his teeth into her shoulder. He pinned her hands over her head and ground his hips against hers. She could feel his erection, hot against her stomach.

It wasn’t the way it normally was, but Josie had to admit that it was exciting. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so heavy, as if her heart were beating between her legs. She clawed at Matt’s back to bring him closer.

“Yeah,” he groaned, and he pushed her thighs apart. And then suddenly Matt was inside her, pumping so hard that she scooted backward on the carpet, burning the backs of her legs.

“Wait,” Josie said, trying to roll away beneath him, but he clamped his hand over her mouth and drove harder and harder until Josie felt him come.

Semen, sticky and hot, pooled on the carpet beneath her. Matt framed her face with his hands. “Jesus, Josie,” he whispered, and she realized that he was in tears. “I love you so goddamn much.”

Josie turned her face away. “I love you, too.”

She lay in his arms for ten minutes and then said she was tired and needed to go to sleep. After she kissed Matt good-bye at the front door, she went into the kitchen and took the rug cleaner out from underneath the sink. She scrubbed it into the wet spot on the carpet, prayed it would not leave a stain.

# include ‹stdio.h›

main ( )

{

int time;

for (time=0; time‹infinity (1); time ++)

{ printf (“I love you|n”); }

}

Peter highlighted the text on his computer screen and deleted it. Although he thought it would be pretty cool to open an email and automatically have an I LOVE YOU message written over and over on the screen, he could see where someone else-someone who didn’t give a crap about C++-would think it was just downright strange.

He’d decided on an email because that way if she blew him off, he could suffer the embarrassment in private. The problem was, his mother had said to show what was inside him and he wasn’t very good when it came to words.

He thought about how sometimes, when he saw her, it was just a part of her: her arm resting on the passenger window of the car, her hair blowing out its window. He thought about how many times he’d fantasized about being the one at the wheel.

My journey was pointless, he wrote. Until I took a YOU-turn.

Groaning, Peter deleted that, too. It made him sound like a Hallmark card writer, or even worse, one that Hallmark wouldn’t even hire.

He thought about what he wished he could say to her, if he had the guts, and poised his hands over the keyboard.

I know you don’t think of me.

And you certainly would never picture us together.

But probably peanut butter was just peanut butter for a long time, before someone ever thought of pairing it up with jelly. And there was salt, but it started to taste better when there was pepper. And what’s the point of butter without bread?

(Why are all these examples FOODS!?!?!??)

Anyway, by myself, I’m nothing special. But with you, I think I could be.

He agonized about the ending.

Your friend, Peter Houghton

Well, technically that wasn’t true.

Sincerely, Peter Houghton

That was true, but it was still sort of lame. Of course, there was the obvious:

Love, Peter Houghton

He typed it in, read it over once. And then, before he could stop himself, he pushed the Enter button and sent his heart across the Ethernet to Josie Cormier.

Courtney Ignatio was so freaking bored.

Josie was her friend and all, but there was, like, nothing to do. They’d already watched three Paul Walker movies on DVD, checked the Lost website for the bio on the hot guy who played Sawyer, and read all the Cosmos that hadn’t been recycled, but there was no HBO, nothing chocolate in the fridge, and no party at Sterling College to sneak into. This was Courtney’s second night at the Cormier household, thanks to her brainiac older brother, who had dragged her parents on a whirlwind tour of Ivy League colleges on the East Coast. Courtney plopped a stuffed hippo on her stomach and frowned into its button eyes. She’d already tried to get details out of Josie last night about Matt-important things, like how big a dick he had and if he had a clue how to use it-but Josie had gone all Hilary Duff on her and acted like she’d never heard the word sex before.

Josie was in the bathroom taking a shower; Courtney could still hear the water running. She rolled to her side and scrutinized a framed photograph of Josie and Matt. It would have been easy to hate Josie, because Matt was the über-boyfriend-always glancing around at a party to make sure he hadn’t gotten too far away from Josie; calling her up to say good night, even when he’d just dropped her off a half hour before (yes, Courtney had been privy to a display of that very thing just last night). Unlike most of the guys on the hockey team-several of whom Courtney had dated-Matt honestly seemed to prefer Josie’s company to anyone else’s. But there was something about Josie that kept Courtney from being jealous. It was the way her expression slipped every now and then, like a colored contact lens, so you could see what was actually underneath. Josie might have been one-half of Sterling High School’s Most Faithful Couple, but it almost seemed like the biggest reason she clung to that label was because that was the only reason she knew who she was.

You’ve got mail.

The automaton on Josie’s computer spoke; until then, Courtney hadn’t realized that they’d left the computer running, much less online. She settled down at the desk, wiggling the mouse so that the screen came back into focus. Maybe Matt was writing some kind of cyberporn. It would be fun to screw around with him a little and pretend that she was Josie.

The return address, though, wasn’t one that Courtney recognized-she and Josie, after all, had nearly identical Buddy Lists. There was no subject. Courtney clicked on the link, assuming it was some kind of junk mail: enlarge your penis in thirty days; refinance your home; real deals on printer ribbon cartridges.

The email opened, and Courtney started to read.

“Oh my God,” she murmured. “This is too fucking good.”

She swiped the body of the email and forwarded it to RTWING90@ yahoo.com.

Drew, she typed. Spam this out to the whole wide world.

The door to the bathroom opened, and Josie came back into the bedroom wearing a bathrobe, a towel wrapped around her head. Courtney closed the server window. “Good-bye,” the automaton said.

“What’s up?” Josie asked.

Courtney turned around in the chair, smiling. “Just checking my mail,” she said.

Josie couldn’t sleep; her mind was tumbling like a spring stream. This was exactly the sort of problem she wished she could talk about with someone-but who? Her mother? Yeah, right. Matt was out of the question. And Courtney-or any other girlfriend she had-well, she was afraid that if she spoke her worst fears out loud, maybe that would be enough for them to come true.

Josie waited until she heard Courtney’s even breathing. She crept out of bed and into the bathroom. She closed the door and pulled down her pajama pants.

Nothing.

Her period was three days late.

On Tuesday afternoon, Josie sat on a couch in Matt’s basement, writing a social studies essay for him about the historical abuse of power in America while he and Drew lifted free weights.

“There are a million things you could talk about,” Josie said. “Watergate. Abu Ghraib. Kent State.”

Matt strained beneath the weight of a barbell as Drew spotted him. “Whatever’s easiest, Jo,” he said.

“Come on, you pussy,” Drew said. “At this rate they’re going to demote you to JV.”

Matt grinned and fully extended his arms. “Let’s see you bench this,” he grunted. Josie watched the play of his muscles, imagined them strong enough to do that and also tender enough to hold her. He sat up, wiping his forehead and the back of the weight bench, so that Drew could take his turn.

“I could do something on the Patriot Act,” Josie suggested, biting down on the end of the pencil.

“I’m just looking out for your own best interests, dude,” Drew said. “I mean, if you’re not going to bulk up for Coach, do it for Josie.”

She glanced up. “Drew, were you born an idiot, or did that evolve?”

“I intelligently designed,” he joked. “All I’m saying is that Matt better watch out, now that he’s got some competition.”

“What are you talking about?” Josie looked at him as if he were crazy, but secretly, she was panicking. It didn’t really matter whether or not Josie had shown attention to someone else; it only mattered whether Matt thought so.

“It was a joke, Josie,” Drew said, lying down on the bench and curling his fists around the metal bar.

Matt laughed. “Yeah, that’s a good description of Peter Houghton.”

“Are you going to fuck with him?”

“Hopefully,” Matt said. “I just haven’t decided how yet.”

“Maybe you need some poetic inspiration to come up with a suitable plan,” Drew said. “Hey, Jo, grab my binder. The email’s right in the pocket in the front.”

Josie reached across the couch for Drew’s backpack and rummaged through his books. She pulled out a folded piece of paper and opened it to find her own email address right at the top, the whole student body of Sterling High as the destination address.

Where had this come from? And why hadn’t she ever seen it?

“Read it,” Drew said, lifting the weights.

Josie hesitated. “‘I know you don’t think of me. And you certainly would never picture us together.’”

The words felt like stones in her throat. She stopped speaking, but that didn’t matter, because Drew and Matt were reciting the email word for word.

“‘By myself, I’m nothing special,’” Matt said.

“‘But with you…I think…’” Drew convulsed, laughing, the weights falling hard back into their cradle. “Fuck, I can’t do this when I’m cracking up.”

Matt sank down on the couch beside Josie and slipped his arm around her, his thumb grazing her breast. She shifted, because she didn’t want Drew to see, but Matt did, and shifted with her. “You inspire poetry,” he said, smiling. “Bad poetry, but even Helen of Troy probably started with, like, a limerick, right?”

Josie’s face reddened. She could not believe that Peter had written these things to her, that he’d ever think she might be receptive to them. She couldn’t believe that the whole school knew that Peter Houghton liked her. She couldn’t afford for them to think that she felt anything for him.

Even sorry.

More devastating was the fact someone had decided to make her the fool. It was not a surprise that someone had gotten into her email account-they all knew each other’s passwords; it could have been any of the girls, or even Matt himself. But what would make her friends do something like this, something so totally humiliating?

Josie already knew the answer. This group of kids-they weren’t her friends. Popular kids didn’t really have friends; they had alliances. You were safe only as long as you hid your trust-at any moment someone might make you the laughingstock, because then they knew no one was laughing at them.

Josie was smarting, but she also knew part of the prank was a test to see how she reacted. If she turned around and accused her friends of hacking into her email and invading her privacy, she was doomed. Above all else, she wasn’t supposed to show emotion. She was so socially above Peter Houghton that an email like this wasn’t mortifying, but hilarious.

In other words: Laugh, don’t cry.

“What a total loser,” Josie said, as if it didn’t bother her at all; as if she found this just as funny as Drew and Matt did. She balled up the email and tossed it behind the couch. Her hands were shaking.

Matt lay his head down in her lap, still sweaty. “What did I officially decide to write about?”

“Native Americans,” Josie replied absently. “How the government broke treaties and took away their land.”

It was, she realized, something she could sympathize with: that rootlessness, the understanding that you were never going to feel at home.

Drew sat up, straddling the weight bench. “Hey, how do I get myself a girl who can boost my GPA?”

“Ask Peter Houghton,” Matt answered, grinning. “He’s the lovemeister.”

As Drew snickered, Matt reached for Josie’s hand, the one holding the pencil. He kissed the knuckles. “You’re too good to me,” he said.

The lockers in Sterling High were staggered, one row on top and one row on the bottom, which meant that if you happened to be a lower locker you had to suffer getting your books and coat and stuff while someone else was practically standing on your head. Peter’s locker was not only on the bottom row, it was also in a corner-which meant that he could never quite make himself small enough to get what he needed.

Peter had five minutes to get from class to class, but he was the first one into the halls when the bell rang. It was a carefully calculated plan: if he left as soon as possible, he’d be in the hallways during the biggest crush of traffic, and therefore was less likely to be singled out by one of the cool kids. He walked with his head ducked, his eyes on the floor, until he reached his locker.

He was kneeling in front of it, trading his math book for his social studies text, when a pair of black wedge heels stopped beside him. He glanced up the patterned stockings to the tweed miniskirt and asymmetrical sweater and long waterfall of blond hair. Courtney Ignatio was standing with her arms crossed, as if Peter had already taken up too much of her time, when he wasn’t even the one who’d stopped her in the first place.

“Get up,” she said. “I’m not going to be late for class.”

Peter stood and closed his locker. He didn’t want Courtney to see that inside, he had taped a picture of himself and Josie from when they were little. He’d had to climb up into the attic where his mother kept her old photo albums, since she’d gone digital two years ago, and now all they had were CDs. In the photo, he and Josie were sitting on the edge of a sandbox at nursery school. Josie’s hand was on Peter’s shoulder. That was the part he liked the best.

“Look, the last thing I want to do is stand here and be seen talking to you, but Josie’s my friend, which is why I volunteered to do this in the first place.” Courtney looked down the hall, to make sure no one was coming. “She likes you.”

Peter just stared at her.

“I mean she likes you, you retard. She’s totally over Matt; she just doesn’t want to ditch him until she knows for sure that you’re serious about her.” Courtney glanced at Peter. “I told her it’s social suicide, but I guess that’s what people do for love.”

Peter felt all the blood rush to his head, an ocean in his ears. “Why should I believe you?”

Courtney tossed her hair. “I don’t give a damn if you do or you don’t. I’m just telling you what she said. What you do with it is up to you.”

She walked down the hallway and disappeared around a corner just as the bell rang. Peter was going to be late now; he hated being late, because then you could feel everyone’s eyes on you when you walked into class, like a thousand crows pecking at your skin.

But that hardly mattered, not in the grand scheme of things.

The best item the cafeteria served was Tater Tots, soaked in grease. You could practically feel the waist of your jeans getting snugger and your face breaking out-and yet, when the cafeteria lady held out her massive spoonful, Josie couldn’t resist. She sometimes wondered: If they were as nutritious as broccoli, would she want them so much? Would they taste this good if they weren’t so bad for you?

Most of Josie’s friends only drank diet soda for their meals; getting anything substantial and carbohydrate-based practically labeled you as either a whale or a bulimic. Usually, Josie limited herself to three Tater Tots, and then gave the rest to the guys to devour. But today, she’d practically been salivating for the past two classes just thinking about Tater Tots, and she couldn’t stop taking just one more. If it wasn’t pickles and ice cream, did it still qualify as a craving?

Courtney leaned across the table and swept her finger through the grease that lined the Tater Tot tray. “Gross,” she said. “How come gas is so expensive, when there’s enough oil on these babies to fill Drew’s pickup truck?”

“Different kind of oil, Einstein,” Drew said. “Did you really think you were pumping out Crisco at the Mobil station?”

Josie bent down to unzip her backpack. She had packed herself an apple; it had to be in here somewhere. She rummaged through loose papers and makeup, so focused on her search that she didn’t realize the banter between Drew and Courtney-or anyone else, for that matter-had fallen silent.

Peter Houghton was standing next to their table, holding a brown bag in one hand and an open milk carton in the other. “Hi, Josie,” he said, as if she might be listening, as if she weren’t dying a thousand kinds of death in that one second. “I thought you might like to join me for lunch.”

The word mortified sounded like you’d gone to granite, like you couldn’t move to save your soul. Josie imagined how years from now, students would point to the frozen gargoyle that used to be her, still rooted to the plastic cafeteria chair, and say, Oh, right, I heard about what happened to her.

Josie heard a rustling behind her, but she couldn’t have moved at that moment if her life depended on it. She looked up at Peter, wishing there were some kind of secret language where what you said was not what you meant, and the listener would automatically know you were speaking that tongue. “Um,” Josie began. “I…”

“She’d love to,” Courtney said. “When hell freezes over.”

The entire table dissolved into a fizz of laughter, an inside joke that Peter didn’t understand. “What’s in the bag?” Drew asked. “Peanut butter and jelly?”

“Salt and pepper?” Courtney chimed in.

“Bread and butter?”

The smile on Peter’s face wilted as he realized how deep a pit he’d fallen into, and how many people had dug it. He glanced from Drew to Courtney to Emma and then back at Josie-and when he did, she had to look away, so that nobody-including Peter-would see how much it hurt her to hurt him; to realize that-in spite of what Peter had believed about her-she was no different from anyone else.

“I think Josie should at least get to sample the merchandise,” Matt said, and when he spoke she realized that he was no longer sitting beside her. He was standing, in fact, behind Peter; and in one smooth stroke he hooked his thumbs into the loops of Peter’s pants and yanked them down to his ankles.

Peter’s skin was moon-white under the harsh fluorescent lamps of the cafeteria, his penis a tiny spiral shell on a sparse nest of pubic hair. He immediately covered his genitals with his lunch bag, and as he did, he dropped his milk carton. It spilled on the floor between his feet.

“Hey, look at that,” Drew said. “Premature ejaculation.”

The entire cafeteria began to spin like a carousel-bright lights and harlequin colors. Josie could hear laughter, and she tried to match her own to it. Mr. Isles, a Spanish teacher who had no neck, hurried over to Peter as he was pulling up his pants. He grabbed Matt with one arm and Peter with the other. “Are you two done,” he barked, “or do we need to go see the principal?”

Peter fled, but by that time, everyone in the cafeteria was reliving the glorious moment of his pantsing. Drew high-fived Matt. “Dude, that was the best fucking lunch entertainment I’ve ever seen.”

Josie reached into her backpack, pretending to search for that apple, but she wasn’t hungry anymore. She just didn’t want to see them all right now; to let them see her.

Peter Houghton’s lunch bag was beside her foot, where he’d dropped it when he ran away. She glanced inside. A sandwich, maybe turkey. A bag of pretzels. Carrots, which had been peeled and cut into even strips by someone who cared about him.

Josie slipped the brown bag into her knapsack, telling herself that she’d find Peter and give it back to him, or leave it near his locker, when she knew she would do neither. Instead, she would carry it around until it started to reek, until she had to throw it out and could pretend it was that easy to get rid of.

Peter burst out of the cafeteria and careened down the narrow hallways like a pinball until he finally reached his locker. He fell to his knees and rested his head against the cold metal. How could he have been so stupid, trusting Courtney, thinking Josie might give a rat’s ass about him, thinking he was someone she could fall for?

He banged his head until it hurt, then blindly dialed the numbers on his locker. It swung open, and he reached inside for the photo of himself and Josie. He crushed it into his palm and walked down the hall again.

On the way, he was stopped by a teacher. Mr. McCabe was frowning at him, putting a hand on his shoulder, when surely he could see that Peter couldn’t bear to be touched, that it felt like a hundred needles were going through his skin. “Peter,” Mr. McCabe said, “are you all right?”

“Bathroom,” Peter ground out, and he pushed away, hurrying down the hallway.

He locked himself inside a stall and threw the picture of himself and Josie into the toilet bowl. Then he unzipped his fly and urinated on top of it. “Fuck you,” he whispered, and then he said it loud enough to rattle the walls of the stall. “Fuck you all.”

The minute Josie’s mother left the room, Josie plucked the thermometer out of her mouth and held it up against the lightbulb of her nightstand lamp. She squinted to read the tiny numbers, and then stuck it back into her mouth as she heard her mother’s footsteps. “Hunh,” her mother said, holding the thermometer up to the window to better read it. “I guess you are sick.”

Josie gave what she hoped was a convincing moan and rolled over.

“You sure you’re going to be all right here, alone?”

“Yeah.”

“You can call me if you need me. I can recess court and come back home.”

“Okay.”

She sat down on the bed and kissed her forehead. “You want juice? Soup?”

Josie shook her head. “I think I just need to go back to sleep.” She closed her eyes so that her mother would get the message.

She waited until she heard the car drive away, and even then she stayed in bed for an extra ten minutes to make sure she was alone. Then Josie got out of bed and booted up her computer. She Googled abortifacient-the word she’d looked up yesterday, the one that meant something that terminates a pregnancy.

Josie had been thinking about this. It wasn’t that she didn’t want a baby; it wasn’t even that she didn’t want Matt’s baby. All she knew for certain was that she didn’t want to have to make that decision yet.

If she told her mother, her mom would curse and scream and then find a way to take her to Planned Parenthood or the doctor’s office. To be honest, it wasn’t even the cursing and screaming that worried Josie. It was realizing that-had her own mother done this, seventeen years ago-Josie wouldn’t even be alive to be having this problem.

Josie had toyed with contacting her father again, which would have taken an enormous helping of humility. He hadn’t wanted Josie born, so theoretically, he’d probably go out of his way to help her have an abortion.

But.

There was something about going to a doctor, or a clinic, or even to a parent, that she couldn’t quite swallow. It seemed so…deliberate.

So before she reached that point, Josie had chosen to do a bit of research. She couldn’t risk being caught on a computer at school looking these things up, so she’d decided to play hooky. She sank into the desk chair, one leg folded beneath her, and marveled as she received nearly 99,000 hits.

Some she already knew: the old wives’ tales about sticking a knitting needle up inside her, or drinking laxatives or castor oil. Some she’d never imagined: douching with potassium, swallowing gingerroot, eating unripe pineapple. And then there were the herbs: oil infusions of calamus, mugwort, sage, and wintergreen; cocktails made out of black cohosh and pennyroyal. Josie wondered where you even got these things-it wasn’t like they were in the aisle next to the aspirin at CVS.

Herbal remedies, the website said, worked 40-45 percent of the time. Which, she supposed, was at least a start.

She leaned closer, reading.

Don’t start herbal treatment after the sixth week of pregnancy.

Keep in mind these are not reliable ways to end pregnancy.

Drink the teas day and night, so you don’t ruin the progress you made during the day.

Catch the blood and add water to dilute it, and look at the clots and tissue to make sure the placenta has passed.

Josie grimaced.

Use 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of the dried herb per cup of water, 3-4 times a day. Don’t confuse tansy with tansy ragwort, which has been fatal to cows that have eaten it growing nearby.

Then she found something that looked less, well, medieval: vitamin C. Surely that couldn’t be too bad for her? Josie clicked on the link. Ascorbic acid, eight grams, for five days. Menstruation should begin on the sixth or seventh day.

Josie got up from her computer and went into her mother’s medicine cabinet. There was a big white bottle of vitamin C, along with smaller ones of acidophilus, vitamin B12, and calcium supplements.

She opened the bottle and hesitated. The other warning that the websites all gave was to make sure you had reason to subject your body to these herbs before you started.

Josie padded back into her room and opened her backpack. Inside, still in its plastic bag from the pharmacy, was the pregnancy test she’d bought yesterday before she came home from school.

She read the directions twice. How could anyone pee on a stick for that long? With a frown, she sat down and went to the bathroom, holding the small wand between her legs. Then she set it into its little holder and washed her hands.

Josie sat on the lip of the bathtub and watched the control line turn blue. And then, slowly, she watched the second, perpendicular line appear: a plus sign, a positive, a cross to bear.

When the snow blower ran out of gas in the middle of the driveway, Peter went to the spare can they kept in the garage, only to discover it was empty. He tipped it over, watched a single drop strike the ground between his sneakers.

He usually had to be asked, like, six times to go out and clear the paths that led to the front and back doors, but today he’d turned to the chore without any badgering from his parents. He wanted-no, scratch that-he needed to get out there so that his feet could move at the same pace as his mind. But when he squinted against the lowering sun, he could still see a scroll of images on the backs of his eyelids: the cold air striking his ass as Matt Royston pulled his pants down, the milk splattering on his sneakers, Josie’s gaze sliding away.

Peter trudged down the driveway toward the home of his neighbor across the street. Mr. Weatherhall was a retired cop, and his house looked it. There was a big flagpole in the middle of the front yard; in the summertime the grass was trimmed like a crew cut; there were never any leaves on the lawn in the fall. Peter used to wonder if Weatherhall came out in the middle of the night to rake them.

As far as Peter knew, Mr. Weatherhall now passed his time watching the Game Show Network and doing his militaristic gardening in sandals with black socks. Because he didn’t let his grass grow longer than a half inch, he usually had a spare gallon of gas lying around; Peter had borrowed it on his dad’s behalf other times for the lawn mower or the snow blower.

Peter rang the doorbell-which played “Hail to the Chief”-and Mr. Weatherhall answered. “Son,” he said, although he knew Peter’s name and had for years. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, Mr. Weatherhall. But I was wondering if you had any gas I could borrow for the snow blower. Well, gas I could use. I mean, I can’t really give it back.”

“Come on in, come on in.” He held the door open for Peter, who walked into the house. It smelled of cigars and cat food. A bowl of Fritos was set next to his La-Z-Boy; on the television, Vanna White flipped a vowel. “Great Expectations,” Mr. Weatherhall shouted at the contestants as he passed. “What are you, morons?”

He led Peter into the kitchen. “You wait here. The basement’s not fit for company.” Which, Peter realized, probably meant there was a dust mote on a shelf.

He leaned against the counter, his hands splayed on the Formica. Peter liked Mr. Weatherhall, because even when he was trying to be gruff, you could tell that he just really missed being a policeman and had no one else to practice on. When Peter was younger, Joey and his friends had always tried to screw around with Weatherhall, by piling snow at the end of his plowed driveway or letting their dogs take a dump on the manicured lawn. He could remember when Joey was around eleven and had egged Weatherhall’s house on Halloween. He and his friends had been caught in the act. Weatherhall dragged them into the house for a “scared straight” chat. The guy’s a fruitcake, Joey had told him. He keeps a gun in his flour canister.

Peter cocked an ear toward the stairwell that led down to the basement. He could still hear Mr. Weatherhall puttering around down there, getting the gas can.

He sidled closer to the sink, where there were four stainless steel canisters. SODA, read the tiny one, and then in increasing size: BROWN SUGAR. SUGAR. FLOUR. Peter gingerly opened up the flour canister.

A puff of white powder flew into his face.

He coughed and shook his head. It figured; Joey had been lying.

Idly, Peter opened up the sugar canister beside it and found himself staring down at a 9-millimeter semiautomatic.

It was a Glock 17-probably the same one Mr. Weatherhall had carried as a policeman. Peter knew this because he knew about guns-he’d grown up with them. But there was a difference between a hunting rifle or a shotgun and this neat and compact weapon. His father said that anyone who wasn’t in active law enforcement and kept a handgun was an idiot; it was more likely to do damage than protect you. The problem with a handgun was that the muzzle was so short that you forgot about holding it away from you for safety’s sake; aiming was as simple and nonchalant as pointing your finger.

Peter touched it. Cold; smooth. Mesmerizing. He brushed the trigger, cupping his hand around the gun; that slight, sleek weight.

Footsteps.

Peter jammed the cover back on the canister and whipped around, folding his arms in front of himself. Mr. Weatherhall appeared at the top of the stairs, cradling a red gas can. “All set,” he said. “Bring it back full.”

“I will,” Peter replied. He left the kitchen and did not look in the general direction of the canister, although it was what he wanted to do, more than anything.

After school, Matt arrived with chicken soup from a local restaurant and comic books. “What are you doing out of bed?” he asked.

“You rang the doorbell,” Josie said. “I had to answer it, didn’t I?”

He fussed over her as if she had mono or cancer, not just a virus, which is what she’d told him when he called her on his cell from school that morning. Tucking her back into bed, he settled her with the soup in her lap. “This is supposed to cure, like, anything, right?”

“What about the comics?”

Matt shrugged. “My mom used to get those for me when I was little and stayed home sick. I don’t know. They always sort of made me feel better.”

As he sat down beside her on the bed, Josie picked up one of the comics. Why was Wonder Woman always so bodacious? If you were a 38DD, would you honestly go leaping off buildings and fighting crime without a good jogging bra?

Thinking of that reminded Josie that she could barely put on her own bra these days, her breasts were so tender. And that made her recall the pregnancy test that she’d wrapped up in paper towels and thrown away outside in the garbage can so her mother wouldn’t find it.

“Drew’s planning a shindig this Friday night,” Matt said. “His parents are going to Foxwoods for the weekend.” Matt frowned. “I hope you’re feeling better by then, so you can go. What do you think you’ve got, anyway?”

She turned to him and took a deep breath. “It’s what I don’t have. My period. I’m two weeks late. I took a pregnancy test today.”

“He’s already talked to some guy at Sterling College about buying a couple of kegs from a frat. I’m telling you, this party will be off the hook.”

“Did you hear me?”

Matt smiled at her the way you’d indulge a child who just told you the sky is falling. “I think you’re overreacting.”

“It was positive.”

“Stress can do that.”

Josie’s jaw dropped. “And what if it’s not stress? What if it’s, you know, real?”

“Then we’re in it together.” Matt leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Baby,” he said, “you could never get rid of me.”

A few days later, when it snowed, Peter deliberately drained the snow blower of its gas, and then walked across the street to Mr. Weatherhall’s house.

“Don’t tell me you ran out again,” he said as he opened the door.

“I guess my dad didn’t get around to filling up our spare tank yet,” Peter replied.

“Gotta make time,” Mr. Weatherhall said, but he was already moving into his house, leaving the door wide so Peter could follow. “Gotta stick to a schedule, that’s how it’s done.”

As they passed the television, Peter glanced at the cast of the Match Game. “Big Bertha is so big,” Gene Rayburn was saying, “that instead of skydiving with a parachute, she uses a blank.”

The moment Mr. Weatherhall disappeared downstairs, Peter opened the sugar canister on the kitchen counter. The gun was still inside. Peter reached for it and reminded himself to breathe.

He covered the canister and put it back exactly where it had been. Then he took the gun and jammed it, nose first, into the waistband of his jeans. His down jacket billowed over the front, so you couldn’t see a bulge at all.

He gingerly slid open the silverware drawer, peeked in the cabinets. It was when he ran his hand along the dusty top of the refrigerator that he felt the smooth body of a second handgun.

“You know, it’s wise to keep a spare tank…” Mr. Weatherhall’s voice floated from the bottom of the basement stairs, accompanied by the percussion of his footsteps. Peter let go of the gun, snapped his hands back to his sides.

He was sweating by the time Mr. Weatherhall walked into the kitchen. “You all right?” he asked, peering at Peter. “You look a little white around the gills.”

“I stayed up late doing homework. Thanks for the gas. Again.”

“You tell your dad I’m not bailing him out next time,” Mr. Weatherhall said, and he waved Peter off from the porch.

Peter waited until Mr. Weatherhall had closed the door, and then he started to run, kicking up snow in his wake. He left the gas can next to the snow blower and burst into his house. He locked his bedroom door, took the gun from his pants, and sat down.

It was black and heavy crafted out of alloyed steel. What was really surprising was how fake the Glock looked-like a kid’s toy gun-although Peter supposed he ought to be marveling instead at how realistic the toy guns actually were. He racked the slide and released it. He ejected the magazine.

He closed his eyes and held the gun up to his head. “Bang,” he whispered.

Then he set the gun on his bed and pulled off one of his pillowcases. He wrapped the Glock inside it, rolling it up like a bandage. He slipped the gun between his mattress and his box spring and lay down.

It would be like that fairy tale, the one with the princess who could feel a bean or a pea or whatever. Except Peter wasn’t a prince, and the lump wouldn’t keep him up at night.

In fact, it might make him sleep better.

In Josie’s dream, she was standing in the most beautiful tepee. The walls were made of buttery deerskin, sewed tight with golden thread. Stories had been painted all around her in shades of red, ochre, violet, and blue-tales of hunts and loves and losses. Rich buffalo skins were piled high for cushions; coals glowed like rubies in the firepit. When she looked up, she could see stars falling through the smoke hole.

Suddenly Josie realized that her feet were sliding; worse, that there was no way to stop this. She glanced down and saw only sky; wondered whether she’d been silly enough to believe she could walk among the clouds, or if the ground beneath her feet had disappeared when she looked away.

She started to fall. She could feel herself tumbling head over heels; felt the skirt she was wearing balloon and the wind rush between her legs. She didn’t want to open her eyes, but she couldn’t help peeking: the ground was rushing up at an alarming pace, postage-stamp squares of green and brown and blue that grew larger, more detailed, more realistic.

There was her school. Her house. The roof over her bedroom. Josie felt herself hurtle toward it and she steeled herself for the inevitable crash. But you never hit the ground in your dreams; you never get to see yourself die. Instead, Josie felt herself splash, her clothes billowing like the sails of a jellyfish as she treaded warm water.

She woke up, breathless, and realized that she still felt wet. She sat up, lifted up the covers, and saw the pool of blood beneath her.

After three positive pregnancy tests, after her period was three weeks late-she was miscarrying.

Thankgod thankgod thankgod. Josie buried her face in the sheets and started to cry.

Lewis was sitting at the kitchen table on Saturday morning, reading the latest issue of The Economist and methodically working his way through a whole-wheat waffle, when the phone rang. He glanced at Lacy, who-beside the sink-was technically closer to it, but she held up her hands, dripping with water and soap. “Could you…?”

He stood up and answered it. “Hello?”

“Mr. Houghton?”

“Speaking,” Lewis said.

“This is Tony, from Burnside’s. Your hollow-point bullets are in.”

Burnside’s was a gun shop; Lewis went there in the fall for his Hoppe’s solvent and his ammunition; once or twice he’d been lucky enough to bring a deer in to be weighed. But it was February; deer season was over now. “I didn’t order those,” Lewis said. “There must be some mistake.”

He hung up the phone and sat down again in front of his waffle. Lacy lifted a large frying pan out of the sink and set it on the drainer to dry. “Who was that?”

Lewis turned the page in his magazine. “Wrong number,” he said.

Matt had a hockey game in Exeter. Josie went to his home games, but rarely the ones where the team traveled. Today, though, she had asked her mother to borrow the car and drove to the seacoast, leaving early enough to be able to catch him in the locker room beforehand. She poked her head inside the visiting team’s locker room and was immediately hit with the reek of all the equipment. Matt stood with his back to her, wearing his chest protector and his padded pants and his skates. He hadn’t yet pulled on his jersey.

Some of the other guys noticed her first. “Hey, Royston,” a senior said. “I think your fan club president’s arrived.”

Matt didn’t like it when she showed up before a game. Afterward: well, that was mandatory-he needed someone to celebrate his win. But he’d made it very clear that he didn’t have time for Josie when he was getting ready; that he’d only get shit from the guys if she clung that closely; that Coach wanted the team to be alone to focus on their game. Still, she thought that this might be an exception.

A shadow passed over his face as his team started catcalls.

Matt, you need help putting on your jock?

Hey, quick, get the guy a bigger stick…

“Yeah,” Matt shot back as he walked across the rubber mats toward Josie. “You just wish you had someone who could suck the chrome off a hood ornament.”

Josie felt her cheeks flame as the entire locker room burst into laughter at her expense, and the rude comments shifted focus from Matt to her. Grasping her by the arm, Matt pulled Josie outside.

“I told you not to interrupt me before a game,” he said.

“I know. But it was important…”

“This is important,” Matt corrected, gesturing around the rink.

“I’m fine,” Josie blurted out.

“Good.”

She stared at him. “No, Matt. I mean…I’m fine. You were right.”

As he realized what Josie was really trying to tell him, he put his arms around her waist and lifted her off the ground. His gear caught like armor between them as he kissed her. It made Josie think of knights heading off to battle; of the girls they left behind. “Don’t you forget it,” Matt said, and he grinned.