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for a
moment. He called down to his buddies, “She’s breathing.
Barely.”
    My knees buckled in relief. Until that moment
I hadn’t been sure the peach-colored lump actually was Kelsey.
    What else would it be?
    Glyn started crying. Cree asked, “Do you
think Ben would want to know?”
    “Later,” I said. “I just hope he got it off
the Internet.”
    When we’d left, he was still working on it. I
had no idea how he felt about Kelsey these days. He never talked
about her.
    They were hoisting up some kind of wire
basket. I’d seen pictures of those in helicopter rescues of injured
people. If she was barely breathing, she must have been
unconscious. They lifted it by ropes. A second fireman climbed the
ladder to help.
    He carried a bag of first aid supplies. They
spent a long time getting her stabilized, whatever that consisted
of. It seemed to take forever. Everything took forever.
    When Rick came near me, I asked, “Can’t they
pick the lock and take her out through the house? Wouldn’t that be
easier?”
    He regarded me with intense green eyes. They
were greener than mine. “We don’t know what the situation is
inside,” he said.
    “Are we even sure it’s Kelsey?”
    “I personally am not sure of anything. If
someone needs help, does it matter who it is?”
    I guessed it wouldn’t, but who else could it
be up there? Not Kelsey’s mother, who I’d met a few times. She
didn’t seem the emotional type. Kelsey’s sister Velda was too
well-adjusted to go up and collapse. Besides, she had her own home
farther down on Fremont.
    Rick gave my hand a squeeze and disappeared
into the crowd. By then it really was a crowd, neighbors from far
and near, people driving by, and Velda herself, pushing through the
mob. The police reinforcements tried to keep people back, but
allowed Velda in.
    “What is going on?” she asked. The
police wouldn’t or couldn’t answer. She spotted Cree and me, whom
she knew, and Glyn.
    “It’s Kelsey,” I said.
    “Up there?” Velda must have thought I was
kidding.
    They had Kelsey secured in the wire basket
and were getting ready to lower her. I could see her curly platinum
hair. I couldn’t see her face.
    “It’s, uh—” I didn’t know how much Velda
knew. “Did you hear anything about last night?”
    “I knew she was going to a party. Did she get
stood up?” Velda still couldn’t connect that with the turret.
    “She went solo,” I said. “Was she supposed to
go with somebody?”
    “She said she was going alone. I thought that
was very brave.”
    “Glynis can tell you more.” I pulled Glyn
over.
    “She, um—” Glyn could barely look at Velda. I
poked her, trying to remind her it was not her fault, even though
it sort of was.
    “She, um, took a drink,” Glyn said.
    That was way too much for Velda. “Kelsey?
Took a drink?”
    Glyn explained, “I think she wanted
fortification. She took another. And another. And then Evan
Steffers got hold of her. The football guy.”
    “Oh, no.”
    Evan’s reputation must have preceded him. Or
else it was an old, old story about football jocks and drunken
girls.
    “They went upstairs. And a couple of other
guys.”
    “Oh, no. My little sister.”
    Glyn stared at the driveway’s white pebbles
and nodded sadly. “I’m afraid it’s as bad as you think.”
    “Oh, no, no, no. ” Velda didn’t need to
hear more.
    I made my own contribution. “You know how
some of those jocks can be. So full of themselves.”
    Glyn added the final blow. “They took
pictures. They posted them. But Maddie’s brother is taking them
off. The Net, I mean. I don’t know if Kelsey knows about that.”
    Nobody said it, but we all knew the damage
had been done.
    Kelsey was down now, at ground level. Velda
rushed over to her. The paramedics gave her a minute before they
transferred their patient to a gurney and into the ambulance. Velda
tried to talk to her, but Kelsey was, as medical people say,
unresponsive.
    One of the firemen was still up