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finished drying her hair and stretched. With the light coming from behind her and with her frizzy hair and her big, wide eyes, Jolene was beautiful. Beth felt ugly, sitting there on the bench beside her. Pale and little and ugly. And she was scared to go to bed tonight without pills. She had been sleeping only two or three hours a night for the past two nights. Her eyes felt gritty and the back of her neck, even right after showering, was sweaty. She kept thinking about that big glass jar behind Fergussen, filled with green pills a third of the way up—enough to fill her toothbrush holder a hundred times.
    ***
    Going to the high school was her first ride in a car since she came to Methuen. That was fourteen months ago. Nearly fifteen. Mother had died in a car, a black one like this, with a sharp piece of the steering wheel in her eye. The woman with the clipboard had told her, while Beth stared at the mole on the woman’s cheek and said nothing. Had felt nothing, either. Mother had passed on, the woman said. The funeral would be in three days. The coffin would be closed. Beth knew what a coffin was; Dracula slept in one. Daddy had passed on the year before, because of a “carefree life,” as Mother put it.
    Beth sat in the back of the car with a big, embarrassed girl named Shirley. Shirley was in the chess club. Mr. Ganz drove. There was a knot as tight as wire in Beth’s stomach. She kept her knees pressed together and looked straight ahead at the back of Mr. Ganz’s neck in its striped collar and at the cars and buses ahead of their car, moving back and forth outside the windshield.
    Shirley tried to make conversation. “Do you play the King’s Gambit?”
    Beth nodded, but was afraid to speak. She hadn’t slept at all the night before, and very little for nights before that. Last night she had heard Fergussen talking and laughing with the lady at Reception; his heavy laughter had rolled down the corridor and under the doorway into the ward where she lay, stiff as steel, on her cot.
    But one thing had happened—something unexpected. As she was about to leave with Mr. Ganz, Jolene came running up, gave Mr. Ganz one of her sly looks and said, “Can we talk for just a second?” Mr. Ganz said it was okay, and Jolene took Beth hastily aside and handed her three green pills. “Here, honey,” she said, “I can tell you need these.” Then Jolene thanked Mr. Ganz and skipped off to class, her geography book under one thin arm.
    But there was no chance to take the pills. Beth had them in her pocket right now, but she was afraid. Her mouth was dry. She knew she could pop them down and probably no one would notice. But she was frightened. They would be there soon. Her head was spinning.
    The car stopped at a light. Across the intersection was a Pure Oil station with a big blue sign. Beth cleared her throat, “I need to go to the bathroom.”
    “We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Mr. Ganz said.
    Beth shook her head firmly. “I can’t wait.”
    Mr. Ganz shrugged. When the light changed, he drove across the intersection and into the gas station. Beth went in the room marked LADIES and locked the door behind her. It was a filthy place, with smear marks on the white tiles and a chipped basin. She ran the cold-water tap for a moment and put the pills in her mouth. Cupping her hand, she filled it with water and washed them down. Already she felt better.
    ***
    It was a big classroom with three blackboards across the far wall. Printed in large capitals on the center board was WELCOME BETH HARMON! in white chalk, and on the wall above this were color photographs of President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon. Most of the regular desks had been taken out of the room and were lined along the hallway wall outside; the rest had been-pushed together at the far end. Three folding tables had been set up to make a U in the center of the room, and on each of these were four green-and-beige paper chessboards with plastic pieces. Metal