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Mars pilot had required bodysuits, for god’s sake. I have a nice figure, but no woman in her forties should wear a unitard. Period. Not to mention that it would be impossible to disguise a pregnancy. If I decided to get pregnant.
    “What?” Justine yelped, and for a minute I thought I’d said “pregnant” out loud. “Sorry!” The curling iron yanked my hair in her excitement. She released the wave, then spun my stool to face her. “Julian Wales, for real? I can’t believe you’ve been holding out. Everyone’s buzzing about his next project. Is it a big part? In a movie movie?”
    “It’s the lead.” I felt that dizzying near-the-precipice anxiety again. I took a deep breath. “It’s good,” I admitted. I’d been distracting myself all day from thinking about how good it was. Very, very good.
    Justine embraced me, stool and all. “That’s a-MA-zing! I’m so excited!”
    “I just read the script!” I protested.
    Justine gave a little hop. “Julian Wales. God, he’s dreamy. Promise me I get to come visit you on set.”
    “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For all I know he sent the script to every actress in Hollywood.” If you got your hopes up, you ended up disappointed.
    “ He sent the script to you ?” she squealed. “That’s tantamount to offering you the part! I’ve read about him. He’s very intense, and only considers one or two actors for big roles. He spends all this time auditioning his picks in different situations, testing how they react. It goes on for months!” Justine was making me nervous.
    “Freya didn’t mention that . . .”
    “Then, when you’re in his fold, you’re, like, his go-to gal. He’ll use you in all his films. Like Woody Allen and Mia Farrow.” Justine was oblivious to the flaw in her analogy. I spared a sympathetic thought for Diane Keaton. “Just think of it. You can tell Pulse to take their alcoholism and shove it.”
    That caused anxiety. “I wouldn’t quit . Pulse has been very good to me. . . .”
    “Dimple?” A head poked into the trailer. “They’re looking for First Team.”
    “Two secs,” Justine said. She twirled me to face the mirror, using the curling iron to finish the last of my waves. “There you go. Fresh as a newborn opening your eyes for the first time. Promise me you’ll give me details after you see Julian Wales.”
    I promised, and headed for the set.

Wyatt Waits
    T he back of Wyatt’s neck prickled. It was a sensory reaction, like cricket hairs. An ESP that specially qualified you to be a high school teacher. A youth was Up To No Good. Wyatt couldn’t tell how he knew, whether it was a hushed conversation, an imperceptible contraction of student clusters, a hasty look away, but his career had selected him because of this intuition.
    Wyatt’s destination would be one of four places—the boys’ locker room, the girls’ locker room, behind the field house, or under the bleachers. From his window, he surveyed the grassy quad that was the heart of campus. Couples ate lunch on the grass. Boys were throwing Frisbees, playing hacky sack, or kicking a soccer ball. Girls were clumped in large knots rather than sprawled in twos and threes with T-shirts rolled up for midday sun on their stomachs. Girls, then.
    Wyatt’s district was affluent and the students generally well behaved, but no high school was free of bullying. In his student days, it was always boys. A fist to the nose and it was done. Today, the girls were worse than the boys, and they did it insidiously, e-mailed words sliding a stiletto between the ribs of a classmate. Girls were the masters of cyberbullying. But on National Leave Your Car At Home Day, someone was bringing it to campus.
    Wyatt left his office. The school was small enough that any prey would do. The perfect mark was scurrying down the hall.
    “Hello, Lizzie.” Wyatt pounced on the eleventh-grader.
    “Oh! Hi, Mr. Ozols.” She looked anxious.
    “In a hurry?”
    “No!” she answered too