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apocalypse.
    Steven might have been a different person five years after flunking out of school and moving back into his parents’ house, but Gretchen hadn’t known any previous version of him to use for comparison. My parents knew his name and story, mostly because Susan Mitchell was the high school band director. Steven’s all-American looks still held up after everything he put his body through; the only major difference was the twelve-inch scar running from the top of his head to the base of his skull.
    My mom and dad weren’t the kind of parents who kept track of their kids’ every movement. Maybe they didn’t notice when my sister and Steven started flirting every day. Maybe they truly believed she was out until midnight or later most nights with Abby,at the movies or the mall. She lied to them all the time, and she usually got away with it. They didn’t ask too many questions.
    Steven and the rest of Lenny’s crew worked in my yard the summer Remy and I turned seven. It was 1985. I remember going to the movies to see
Back to the Future
the weekend it was released, and hearing “We Are the World” every time someone turned on a radio. It was also the summer my family and I gathered in our living room to watch the press conference at which Vice President George H. W. Bush introduced America to Christa McAuliffe, the social studies teacher from New Hampshire who had been selected from among thousands of applicants to be on board the
Challenger
space shuttle when it launched the following year.
    â€œWhat do you think, Sam? Would you ever want to be an astronaut and go up to space?” My mom was beside me on the couch, putting her hair in foam curlers while we watched TV.
    I used to love looking at the stars, but I felt no desire to see them up close. “No. I’d be too afraid.”
    As she looked at me, she reached up to remove a bobby pin she’d been holding between her teeth. “Good girl,” she said, patting my head. “Sometimes it’s smart to be afraid.”

Chapter Four
    New Year’s Day, 1986
    From the moment I came unfrozen after Turtle was carried off into the cold night, I cried without stopping. Even when I was silent and otherwise seemed calm, the tears continued, and there didn’t seem to be any point in trying to hold them back—not that I wanted to. None of it felt real. It was like we all had been actors in a pleasant but uneventful long-running play—
Childhood: Not a Musical
—but tonight we’d somehow wandered onto the wrong stage and picked up the wrong scripts.
Tonight, the part of Terrified Mother Who Cannot Stop Screaming will be played by Sharon Myers. This is a big change for Ms. Myers, whose previous role as Pretty Suburban Housewife did not require much screaming
.
    While our fathers searched, Susan Mitchell walked down the street to retrieve Gretchen from Abby Tickle’s house. My mother stayed by the front door and prayed the Rosary, which I’d neverseen her do until that night. Remy and I sat at the kitchen table with a friendly cop—he told us to call him Officer Bert—who took notes on a small yellow legal pad as we talked.
    â€œThe man you saw tonight—can you tell me what he looked like?”
    â€œHe looked like Santa Claus, except he was skinny. I already told you.” Beside me, Remy nodded in silent agreement. I thought he’d been asleep while it happened, but now he insisted he’d been faking.
    â€œOkay, we know that. But other than his costume, did you see what he looked like?”
    â€œOh. Well, yeah.” My voice was soft and hesitant. All I wanted was for my sister to come home. I didn’t want to get anybody in trouble. You have to understand that my world was so small and safe back then; the idea that someone whom Turtle knew and trusted would hurt my sister seemed impossible. “He looked like Steven.”
    Officer Bert stopped taking