staring out across the pink cornfield. I tried to tell myself that there was nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, that it was just school. Why did I feel as if everything I had ever known, everything I had ever counted on, was about to disappear? High school was just school, and I wasn’t a bad student. I’d go to classes and take tests, just like always—even if there were things like lockers, and required intramural sports, and kids from the public schools I’d never met. Not to mention no girls—and girls had been pretty much my only friends up until this point. How was I going to survive in a world of only boys?
“Danny.”
Nana had come up behind me. She startled me slightly. I turned around and looked up at her. She was holding a small wrapped gift in her hands.
“I had something else I wanted to give you.”
I stood, accepting the present.
“Thanks, Nana.”
I tore open the blue tissue paper. Inside was a framed black-and-white photograph of several people from the old days.
“Who are they?” I asked.
Nana pointed with her crooked finger, its knuckles enlarged from arthritis. “Those are my grandparents there,” she said, indicating a couple of small, white-haired people in dark clothes. “David and Honora Horgan. They came from County Cork, Ireland.” She laughed. “They weren’t too happy that I ended up marrying an Eye-talian. Next to them are my parents, Daniel and Emily Horgan. That’s who your father named you after. His grandfather.”
I nodded. I’d been told that, but I’d never seen a picture of my namesake. Daniel Horgan was a tall man in a dark suit and a vest buttoned nearly up to his chin. He was looking directly into the camera without smiling. He wore a short white beard.
“And finally,” Nana said, continuing to point with her finger, “that’s your grandfather and me, holding the baby.”
Nana looked very young in the photograph, slim, dark haired, wearing a polka-dotted dress. She was holding a baby wrapped in a long white christening robe.
“Who’s the baby?” I asked.
“Can’t you guess?”
“My Dad?”
Nana smiled. “We took it the day of his christening, to get four generations in the picture. I’m giving it to you so that someday, when you have a baby, we can do the same pose, you and your wife and baby and your parents and me.”
I was staring at the photo. I could barely make out Dad’s face, so bundled was he in the white robe. It seemed strange that Dad was ever so small. I imagined having a baby like that myself someday. It made me happy to picture it, me and my baby and Mom and Dad and Nana—though the part about a wife just felt too weird. But the baby—a son—that I liked.
“Thanks, Nana.” I kissed her on the cheek. She pulled me in to her plump bosom for a quick hug. Her perfume was heavy and sweet.
“Now where’s Patsy?” she asked.
“She took my friends home,” I reminded her.
“Oh, that’s right. And did Becky go with her?”
I sighed. “No, Nana. That’s what my mom and dad are having a bird about. Becky hasn’t shown up.”
“Oh, right.”
We headed back into the kitchen. With some difficulty Nana sat at the table, the same place where Katie had been sitting a short time ago. The kids’ plates, some with half-eaten slices of cake, were still arranged around the table. I began cleaning up, scraping the cake into the trash and setting the plates in the sink. I knew my mother would want to reuse the plastic plates. In the living room she was still on the phone, talking to someone, her voice alternating between a whisper and a shout.
“Who are they looking for?” Nana asked.
“Becky,” I said.
“Oh, that’s right.”
Mom slammed down the phone. “Carol Fleisher hasn’t seen her, either.”
“Look, Peggy,” came Dad’s voice from the other room, “just calm down. There’s going to be a rational explanation. Let’s not panic—”
“Panic! I’m not panicking! I’m furious!” Mom shouted. “The rational explanation is that girl has gotten high and mighty since she turned sixteen and has been acting all Miss Independent, and I’m going to throttle her! Throttle her!”
“Who’s she going to throttle?” Nana whispered.
“Becky,” I told her.
I dried my hands on the dish towel hanging from the refrigerator door.
“Nana, I’m going to go across the street for a minute,” I said as my mother began dialing another phone number. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Okay, Danny.”
Of course, she’d probably forget, and if Mom or Dad asked where I was, she’d say she didn’t know, and then they’d go even more ballistic. But I didn’t want to interrupt them, and besides, I would only be gone a moment. I was just going across the street.
To talk to Chipper.
I found him in the garage, working on his car.
The Mach 1’s hood was open, and Chipper was leaning inside it, his hands covered in oil. He didn’t see or hear me approach. I was able to watch him for a few moments, the way he leaned over the engine, his parachute pants riding low, exposing the dimples at the base of his spine and just the slightest hint of a crack. He wasn’t, of course, wearing any underwear.
Did he know I’d been at the pond? Had he and Becky seen me?
“Chipper.”
My voice sounded thick and unfamiliar.
Chipper looked up, dark eyes reflecting the red glow of the setting sun.
“Did Becky come home yet?” he asked.
“No. I was just going to ask you if you’d seen her.”
Chipper made a face and returned his gaze to the engine of his car. “Like I told your parents—three times now—I have not seen Becky. So they can stop calling, and you can stop bugging me.”
“You haven’t seen her all day?”
“No!”
Chipper pulled his body back away from the car and, with one sweeping move, lifted his T-shirt over his head and threw it to the side of the garage. The gesture made me step back in surprise, and I found I couldn’t speak. Chipper stood there in front of me, naked from the waist up, his broad shoulders, sharply defined pectorals and abdominals, sweaty and oil stained, not more than ten inches from my face.
“What is it?” Chipper asked, glowering at me, moving even closer. “You don’t believe me?”
He knew. Suddenly I felt certain that Chipper knew I’d been spying on them at the pond. He knew I had stolen his underwear.
“I haven’t seen her since yesterday,” Chipper insisted, looming over me now. The musky, mingled aromas of boy sweat and engine grease threatened to overpower me. I felt as if I might pass out right there at Chipper’s feet. I tried to say something but couldn’t.
“What are you looking at?” Chipper asked, pulling back just a bit now.
I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him I wasn’t looking at anything, but the words that came out startled me. “Will you be my friend at St. Francis Xavier?” I blurted.
Chipper made a face. “Your friend?”
I stood there dumbstruck, like an idiot dweeb.
Chipper laughed. “You’re gonna be a freshman. Juniors aren’t friends with freshmen.”
“But