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me.
    I looked over at him. “Hey,” he mouthed soundlessly, smiling that wicked smile again. “Come on.”
    Mike was still holding the jacket out to me, and now he started to come closer. This was a Big Deal. It meant we were together, that I was his girl, and would lead to Homecoming Dances and proms and a hundred Saturday nights, a big class ring on a chain around my neck. I knew this. I’d seen Cass do it all before.
    â€œHere,” he said, holding the jacket up so that I could slide right in. He shook it a little bit, encouraging me, and then said, “Go ahead.”
    I glanced back at Rogerson. He lifted his chin at me, smiling. It was a gesture I would associate with him for the rest of my life. And I saw myself, then, setting out across uncharted territory, places Cass had never been or seen or even heard of. My world was suddenly wide and limitless, as vast as the sky and stars I’d been dazzled by earlier, and it all started there with the door he was holding open for me.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said to Mike Evans and his jacket as I walked down the hallway to where Rogerson was standing, ready to help me along as I stepped past him and into the night.
    As I walked down the front walk with Rogerson, across the yard to his car, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew that back inside the house Rina was probably mad at me for thwarting her plans, and Mike Evans had most likely already put his jacket back on and reported to everyone that in my fall I’d whacked my head and was now, clearly, insane.
    â€œSo,” Rogerson said to me. He seemed to be laughing at me, or so I thought, and suddenly I felt completely idiotic. He leaned against his car and said, “What now?”
    I stood there in the cold, in my little skirt, my hair pulled back in matching school-color barrettes. And I thought of Rina, the only woman I knew who always told men exactly what she wanted.
    So I tossed my head the way she did and said, “Give me a ride home?”
    â€œOkay,” he said. And he got in the car and unlocked my door. He didn’t know who I was. He didn’t know about Cass or anything about my entire life up to that very second. I could have been anybody, and it made everything possible.
    â€œWhere we going?” he asked me as he started the car. As he reached to shift into reverse, his hand brushed against my knee and, instead of pulling away, I moved closer.
    â€œLakeview,” I said, and he nodded, reaching forward to turn up the stereo. We didn’t talk the whole way there.
    He parked a ways down from my house and cut the engine, then turned and looked at me.
    â€œSo,” he said evenly. “You regret that yet?”
    â€œRegret what?” I said.
    â€œLeaving back there,” he said. “Looked like somebody had plans for you.”
    I thought of Mike Evans, holding out his jacket, and the blandness of his face, plain plain plain.
    â€œHe had plans,” I said. “But they weren’t really about me.”
    He nodded, looking down to run his finger along the bottom arc of the steering wheel. “I knew you were trouble,” he said in a low voice. “Could tell just by looking at you.”
    â€œMe?” I said. “Look who’s talking.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œOh, you know,” I said. “You’ve got that whole thing going ... the car, the hair.”
    â€œThe hair?” he said, reaching up to touch one dreadlock. “What about it?”
    â€œOh, come on,” I said. “You know.”
    He shook his head, smiling. “Whatever,” he said. “Whatever you say.”
    I got the feeling he was waiting for me to leave: Of course he was. I was just some dinky cheerleader, entertaining for a minute or two, but now he was ready to move on to other things. But I didn’t want to leave, just yet. It was like being in a long, dark