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league.
    â€œAnother time,” Dean said. As he watched Garrett leave, he felt jealous, not only of Garrett’s night ahead, but for the entire phase of life that Garrett was in—the beginning phase,when everything was still unknown, but your goals were clear. If someone had told Dean last fall that he would be envious of his excitable assistant coach, Dean wouldn’t have believed it. But here he stood, in his own yard, wishing he were the one driving away in that spotless little white car.
    S TEPHANIE STARED UP at Robert Smith, tacked to Mitchell’s ceiling. His pale face seemed to glow in the dim light of the room. Mitchell’s room was always dark and gloomy, the windows draped with layers of gauzy scarves from Goodwill and the lights turned down low. When Mitchell’s parents were gone, he burned incense and played music that his father did not approve of, bands like Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana and, if Stephanie was visiting, Tori Amos. The incense was purely theatrical; Mitchell wasn’t trying to cover the smell of anything. He didn’t smoke pot or drink, although everyone assumed he did, with his laid-back persona and baggy, patchouli-drenched clothes. It used to be that only Stephanie knew how smart and driven he truly was, but getting into MIT had changed that. Now everyone called him Doogie Howser.
    â€œYou going to take all your posters with you to school?” Stephanie was trying, for what seemed like the tenth time, to get a conversation going. They usually talked easily, but they were having trouble tonight.
    â€œNah, I’m starting fresh,” Mitchell said. “Maybe I’ll be a minimalist.”
    â€œYeah, right.” Stephanie nodded to his dresser, crowded with a zoo of Tetley tea animals he’d inherited from his grandmother. Hung above them was his collection of black velvetpaintings, scrounged from yard sales. “You’re like the king of kitsch in here.”
    â€œAnd you’re the queen in that dress.”
    â€œIt was my mother’s,” Stephanie said, with an awkward laugh. Her dress was kind of Holly Hobbie–ish, but she liked the simple print of yellow sunflowers on a black background.
    â€œSorry,” Mitchell said. He looked at her dolefully but without pity. He was the only person in her life who hadn’t treated her like a fragile flower after her mother’s death.
    â€œYou think it’s strange that I’m wearing her dress?”
    â€œA little,” Mitchell said. “So what? You should do more strange things.”
    Stephanie took this as a jab at her conventionality—one she would have welcomed before her mother’s death, but which now felt like a criticism. Lately she felt overly sensitive. She couldn’t handle Mitchell’s or anyone’s wisecracks; it was as if they put real cracks in her.
    â€œIt’s a little bit long,” Mitchell said. “Maybe you should shorten it.”
    â€œYou think so?” She and Mitchell often altered items they bought at thrift stores, usually with help from Mitchell’s mother. But this wasn’t the same thing, exactly.
    â€œDefinitely. I’ll go get my mom’s scissors.”
    He left the room before Stephanie could protest. She had the sense he’d been looking for an excuse to leave.
    Lying back down on his bed, she returned her attention to his collaged ceiling. Next to Robert Smith was Tuesday Weld, peering out from beneath a fur-collared coat, which was draped over her head, as if she needed to hide from something just outof frame. The photo was from the cover of Matthew Sweet’s album Girlfriend— Stephanie’s favorite album, at one time. Mitchell just liked the cover—the romance of it, the lavender light, the borrowed glamour. He’d told Stephanie that her mother reminded him of Tuesday Weld. Stephanie couldn’t see the resemblance, but one day when Mitchell was over, they got out her