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idea. Maybe that was it.
    The room was knotty pine from floor to ceiling. Wide planks for the walls, medium for the floor, skinny for the ceiling. It was filling up slowly with coaches, trainers, administrators, and blah blah blah. The campers wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow. Every stranger looked like someone she knew. Her intensity made her invisible; she was seeing so hard she forgot about being seen.
    “Bee?”
    Diana’s voice was behind her, but she didn’t turn. Diana was a real friend, but she wasn’t telling Bee what she needed to know. So Bee would find it out for herself.
    There was a long table to one side. On it were sodas and an industrial-sized coffeemaker and a few plates of store-bought cookies. Oatmeal with bits of raisin.
    Was it dread or hope that made her chest pound? Her toes clutched so hard inside her clogs they were falling asleep.
    She sensed the presence of a significant body just off her left shoulder. She wasn’t sure with which sense she sensed it. He was too far away to touch him or to feel his body heat. He was too far behind her for her to see him. Until she turned, that is.
    Her eyes seemed to go in and out of focus. Was it him? Of course it was him! Was it him?
    “Bridget?”
    It was unquestionably him. His eyes were dark under dark, arching eyebrows. He was older and taller and different and also the same. Was he surprised? Was he happy? Was he sorry?
    Her hand went protectively to her face.
    He made a gesture as if to hug her, but he couldn’t seem to bridge the strange air between them.
    The time came for her to say something, and then it passed. She stared at him in silence. Socially, she never cared much about covering her tracks.
    “How are you?” he asked her. She remembered that he was earnest. It was something she’d liked about him.
    “I’m—I’m surprised,” she said honestly. “I didn’t realize you would be here.”
    “I knew you would be.” He cleared his throat. “Here, I mean.”
    “You did?”
    “They mailed out the staff list a couple weeks ago.”
    “Oh.” Bridget cursed herself for not reading her mail more thoroughly. She hated forms ( Mother’s maiden name…Mother’s profession… ), and between this camp and Brown, she’d had far too many of them.
    So he’d known. She hadn’t. What if she had known? Would she have willingly tossed herself into a summer full of Eric Richman, breaker of hearts and minds?
    It was amazing, in a way, that he occupied space like a regular human being. He was so monumental to her. For these two years he’d represented not only himself but all the complicated things she’d felt about herself.
    He was looking at her carefully. He smiled when her eyes caught his. “So, from what I hear, you haven’t gotten any worse.”
    She looked at his mouth moving, but she had no idea what he was talking about. She did not disguise this.
    “At soccer,” he clarified.
    She’d forgotten they were at soccer camp. She’d forgotten she played soccer.
    “I’m all right,” she said. She wasn’t even sure what she was talking about. But she said it again, because she liked the ring of it. “I’m all right.”

 
    Your chances of getting hit by lightning go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say “Storms suck!”

—Johnny carson

 
    T he only adult person in Carmen’s life who hadn’t smilingly congratulated her about her upcoming baby sibling was Valia Kaligaris, Lena’s grandmother. Now, as Carmen sat at the counter in Lena’s family’s glossy kitchen and Valia sat at the breakfast table, Carmen felt grateful for that.
    Granted, Valia wasn’t up for chatting these days. As Carmen waited for Lena to come back from the restaurant, Valia glowered at the Cheerios box and then trudged, still in her purple bathrobe, to the darkened den, where she turned on the TV so loud Carmen could hear every word even though it was two rooms away. It was a soap opera. Apparently Dirk had abandoned Raven