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his chair. Stephen followed. On the ride back to Stephen’s house, they hardly spoke. They rounded the corner and discovered Monica with one hand poised on the hood of the new Jeep.
    “I can’t drive,” Stephen mumbled, as he climbed out of David’s car.
    After his new drama teacher pulled off down the street, Stephen hesitantly fingered the enamel. Monica stood firm on the sidewalk with her hands on her hips. “I’m going to teach you. In this.” She gestured to the Jeep.
    Stephen looked back at her, startled.
    “You deserve a car. How’s that, Stephen? Can you allow yourself to be excited now?” she barked. “Oh shit . . .” she whispered, as Stephen bowed his head with the first sign of tears. Monica curved one arm around her son’s waist and set her chin into the nape of his neck. She held him.
    “All right, all right,” she whispered. “I didn’t raise you Catholic. You don’t have to atone for everything.”
    Stephen’s laughter punched through his tears. “It’s a beautiful car, Mother,” he said with forced determination as he slipped out of her grip. He studied the Jeep again, walking in a slow circle around the The Falling Impossible
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    sparkling vehicle until his mother smiled with triumph. Stephen knew she thought she had brought on his tears.
    Kate Duchamp decided to have a party. Her mother and father were in the Mediterranean on a cruise, and Kate had free rein of the four bedroom Victorian, complete with swimming pool and wet bar.
    Meredith Ducote would help Kate set up. In Kate’s words, Meredith
    “knew stuff about drinking”.
    It was an August evening. The air was thick and heavy. By eight o’clock, the street outside Kate’s house was clogged with sport utility vehicles and luxury sedans borrowed from parents. Jeff Haugh arrived driving his Honda Civic. Cameron Stern—the closest Jeff had to a pal on the team—had pressured Jeff into going. As Cameron explained it, they were both obligated to go because they were football players. But Jeff knew that Cameron not only needed a ride but was participating in a pool of senior football players who had placed bets on who could sleep with the youngest Cannon girl. Jeff had bowed out of entering the pool, but he had been pressured into attending the party nonethe-less.
    More people showed up than Kate expected. Jeff found a corner in the kitchen, sipped his beer, and watched with mild amusement as Kate had the requisite panic attack before downing three shots of Southern Comfort that Cameron poured for her, before the two of them disappeared upstairs into Kate’s parents’ bedroom.
    Jeff wandered the house, pretending to ignore the admiring glances of underclassmen, some of them beaming at being in the presence of next year’s first-string quarterback. Most of the guests were outside around the pool and he found a spot in the relatively empty living room, where he struggled to concentrate on the ten o’clock news.
    Then he heard Brandon Charbonnet’s voice tear through the backyard.
    “That fuckin’ faggot gets a brand-new Jeep and I’ve gotta drive my dad’s shitty Cadillac!”
    “Got a big pink bow on it, too!” Greg Darby chimed in.
    “That’s what you get if you fuck your own mother!” Brandon yelled.
    “How can he luck his mother if he’s a fag?” Greg asked.
    “Maybe she straps on a dildo and gives it to him doggie-style!”
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    Jeff rose from the living room sofa amid the chorus of squeals and the obligatory shouts of “That’s disgusting, dude!”
    If Cameron Stern could get Kate Duehamp into the bedroom after only three shots, he could find his own ride home. Jeff left.
    Brandon’s pantomime of Monica Conlin sodomizing her own son provoked drunken laughter and high-pitched cries that lifted Meredith out of her drunken haze, as she lay in a dark corner of Kate’s lawn flat on her back. She sat up on her elbows. The pool area was a halo of light a few yards away. The Brandon and Greg