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help?”
    “ Maybe.” She gave him a sheepish smile.
    “ Okay, I’ll get right on it.” Then he lifted a small digital camera off his desk and pointed it at her. “Hold it right there.”
    Amanda hammed it up by scrunching up her hair in a mock sultry pose. He snapped one photo as Brianna Simpson came walking in the room.
    “ This would be better out by your new Alfa,” Amanda quipped. She was referring to Gus’s “other girlfriend,” the Alfa Romeo Spider parked at the curb.
    “ Not getting near Spidee,” he said, stowing the camera.
    “ Amanda, phone’s ringing,” Brianna said, waving the handset at her. Amanda turned and looked at her. They had been best friends since elementary school. Brianna was her swimming partner in the Spartanburg Swimming Club since either could remember. She was an average swimmer whose mother had ambitions beyond her daughter’s true potential. Amanda easily bested her in their races, making the friendship a challenge at times. Moreover, Brianna had once lived near Amanda but had moved away, as her mother had fallen on hard times when Brianna’s father had left them. Somehow, though, she was able to keep the swimming lessons going.
    “ Phone,” Brianna said, shoving her hand at Amanda as they exited the study.
    Amanda’s look was either, how could you hear the phone over this noise? or, there’s a party going on, why do I care?
    Either way, she grabbed the phone and waved at Gus to remind him. “ Keg? ” she mouthed, then did a pirouette and shuffled toward the hallway.
    “ How’s acting class coming along?” Brianna asked. It was the one activity that they did not do together.
    Amanda stopped and placed the back of her wrist against her forehead, as if in distress. “Rhett, Rhett, what am I going to do? Where shall I go?”
    One of the anonymous boys passing by stuck his face in between the two girls, looking a bit like Chris Rock, and said in a squeaky Pee Wee Herman voice, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Then, as he walked away, he muttered, “She’s pretty good.” And she was.
    “ Another one down and another one . . .” Amanda continued to sing as she made her way down the hall, shook her hair, and then put the phone to her ear. “Dominos, how may we help you?” Another teenage boy wearing dungarees that defied gravity by not falling below his buttocks smiled at her as she danced a small jig toward the foyer and out onto the front porch. Two white columns framed the entry.
    “ Hey, babe, how’s the party going?” Amanda shifted from dancing to swaying slowly as she maneuvered down the steps toward the perfectly manicured Saint Augustine grass lawn. A few guys and girls came and went freely in either direction. If there was one thing in her life that could keep her focused, it was the quarterback of the football team—and longtime boyfriend—Jake Devereaux.
    “ Great. When you getting here?”
    “ I’m here, pulling up now.”
    Amanda walked down to the driveway, moved an orange cone she had placed behind her metallic silver Mercedes SLK-350 Roadster, and waved Jake’s Ford pickup truck into the circular drive. She ran up to the driver’s side, opened the door and threw her arms around his big neck.
    “ Three weeks to graduation, babe. Can you believe it!” Amanda had downed four beers and was a bit tipsy. Jake had secured a scholarship to the University of South Carolina, just down the road in Columbia, where Amanda planned to attend on a swimming scholarship.
    “ I know. Coach Rogers told me today that the Einstein who was going to be our graduation speaker cancelled.”
    Amanda was uninterested. “As long as we get our diplomas, who cares?”
    Jake cracked a grin. “Ever the deep one, aren’t we?”
    “ Nooo,” she said with a smile. “Take a poll. You know I’m right.”
    “ Probably, but you know I’ve always been a sucker for that kind of thing. Stuff has to have meaning, you know?”
    “ That’s why we’re the