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held in the Blocken backyard. All of Mrs. Blocken’s friends were there, including the mayor and his wife and the president of Martin College and her husband.
    Just when the party was at its height, Mark stumbled through the Blockens’ opened gate. Olivia sat on her boyfriend-of-the-moment’s lap, a baseball player from a rival high school. I stood with some classmates, only half listening to their chatter about summer jobs. Because I wasn’t paying attention to the group, I was the first one to notice my brother. I started to make my way to him, but there were too many partygoers between us for me to reach him before he called out.
    “Olivia!”
    Olivia, who was whispering something to her jock boyfriend, either didn’t hear him or pretended not to, but Mrs. Blocken certainly did. She had her gaze trained on Mark with a glare that could have melted iron. She started toward him. Mark saw her coming and backed up into the buffet table. Somehow he managed to kick out one of the legs from under it and the table fell. Cucumber sandwiches, olives, and cake toppled to the ground. The well-groomed guests gawked at Mark, who had potato salad in his hair and punch down the front of his shirt. He struggled to get up and hurried toward Olivia. His tumble had gained her full attention. She’d left her jock and stood a few feet from him.
    “Olivia, I love you.” He smiled at her as if he believed that she would return his affection. “Please stay, or if you really want to go to Virginia, I’ll transfer down there.”
    Olivia looked at him for a long minute as if she realized for the first time that he wasn’t joking. Up to that point, she always accepted Mark’s attentions as if it were a game that they played. I had to admit to myself that I thought the same way, but seeing Mark there covered in punch in front of all those guests, there was no question that he was earnest.
    “I don’t love you,” she said. “I’m going to Virginia alone.”
    Mark sucked in a breath as if he couldn’t get enough air. I was frozen with embarrassment. If the earth would have opened up at that moment, I would have willingly dove in.
    Snickers and giggles coursed through the group.
    “Your brother is such a freak,” one of my classmates whispered into my ear.
    Mrs. Blocken shook with rage. “Get out, and stay away from my daughter.”
    Mark kept his gaze fixed on Olivia.
    “Leave,” Mrs. Blocken said.
    A group of varsity jocks were quickly closing in on my brother. They would like nothing better than to throw a nerd like Mark over the Blockens’ fence.
    Luckily, they didn’t get that chance because Olivia spoke first. “I don’t want you at my party, Mark. Go home.”
    Tears welled up in his eyes, and he staggered away, back through the open gate.
    Later, I found him curled in a ball in his apartment. I called my sister, and she took over with her usual efficiency, and, in the fall, I ran away to art school.
    The phone at the check-out desk rang.
    A moment later, Lasha Lint, the director of the library, bellowed, “Botswana, phone.”
    Startled, I jumped. Lasha shook the receiver at me. Black, solid, relatively young, and loud, Lasha is nothing like the withering-violet type that many think of when they conjure up the image of a librarian. With a brutal penchant for nicknames, she hadn’t called me India since my first day at Martin.
    “Botswana,” I said as I hopped off my chair, sending it skidding on its polished wheels into the reference counter. “That’s a new one.”
    “I’ve been studying the atlas, honey.”
    I chuckled and took the phone from her.
    “India, do you know where Mark is?” my mother asked in the tense, low voice she used to console divorcées.
    I prickled. “No, I’m not his babysitter.”
    “I’m not asking you where he is, I’m asking if you know where he is. I know where he is,” she rambled.
    “Then, why are you calling me if you already know where he is?”
    Lasha shamelessly