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had the exact same names as our president and first lady!).
    I lifted the kettle from the stove. “They died.”
    “Both of them?”
    “Yes.”
    Sadness flickered across Valerie’s face. Her lips fluttered; her careful y tended eyebrows drew together. It was the same expression she probably used to convey her sorrow when tel ing the people of the Chicago metro area that there were thunderstorms on the way, and just in time to spoil the holiday weekend. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I’d heard something, but my mom moved away. When was this?”
    “A while back.” I pul ed two mugs off the shelf, found spoons and tea bags and sugar.
    “Would you like some tea, or are we sticking with the hard stuff tonight?” Val shook her head.
    I put one of the mugs back and fil ed the other for myself as she rubbed her hands against her thighs, then wrapped her arms around herself.
    “And Jon?” She hopped off the counter and circled the room, stopping to check out a painting of a Granny Smith apple in a copper bowl. “Did you do this?”
    I nodded. “Pretty, Val said, and wandered over to the refrigerator, where she read the note I’d taped there. “Military funeral?” she asked. “Did you join the army?”
    “Valerie,” I said. “We haven’t spoken in years, and now you show up in the middle of the night, looking like you’ve seen a ghost, with blood on your coat…”
    She cringed inside her red dress. “I can explain,” she said. Instead of throaty, her voice sounded hoarse. “I’l tel you everything, but you have to promise to help m e . ” I’m not promising you anything, I started to say. I’d gotten as far as opening my mouth when Val said, “It’s about Dan Swansea.”
    My skin prickled with goose bumps. My mouth felt dry as salt. “What about him?”
    “He was at the reunion.”
    I shrugged. No surprise there. Dan Swansea had been a star footbal player and the best-looking boy in our class. He’d also been a troublemaker, a snapper of bra straps, an instigator of food fights and Senior Skip Day, a creative and habitual cheater, the kind of guy who’d stuff the occasional nerd in a locker just to break up the boredom of the school week. For most of high school, he’d also been the object of my extremely secret crush. By senior year, he’d turned into something else altogether.
    “He was there,” she said, and shook her head. “I didn’t think…”
    “Why not?” My voice was flat. Dan Swansea and his friends had been barred from graduation, but I assumed that nobody back then had thought to keep them away from future reunions. As it was, they’d turned their ostensible punishment into a joke. Half the class, in solidarity with the boys, had also skipped the ceremony, and afterward I’d heard that Dan and his pals had made the rounds of al the choicest post-graduation bashes, the ones on the west side of town, where the parents had brought in kegs and paid for disc jockeys. They’d gone to the parties, wearing board shorts and PRHS T-shirts, playing water polo in backyard swimming pools, hoisting bikinied girls onto their shoulders for chicken fights. I’d col ected my dip-loma to scattered boos from the audience and spent the afternoon helping my dad scrub the spray-painted words FAT WHORE off our driveway, while Dan and his friends were out drinking and dancing and probably fucking Val’s fel ow cheerleaders in the backseats of cars their fathers had bought for them.
    “You know what? No.” I pushed back my chair and got to my feet. “I think you should leave.”
    As if on cue, the big blue eyes that were more vivid than I’d remembered (colored contacts?) wel ed up. Valerie blinked, and tears coursed down her cheeks, cutting grooves in her makeup. And there were her freckles, underneath the foundation and the powder. Evidence of a simpler time.
    “Please.” She stretched one fine-boned hand toward me. “Please help me.”
    “What if I don’t want to?” I’d