1 Chapter 1

At 21, you’ve already lost touch with all your friends. Most of them you never really liked all that much anyway, and when they wrote to you at college, you threw away their letters without even reading them. Soon they stopped writing.

Your roommate couldn’t understand this—she had more friends than God. But you never were a social butterfly, were you?

You did have one or two close friends, though, ones you actually wanted, but since you went to a college so far away, letters couldn’t keep you all together. Things happen you don’t know about, things that won’t fit into words on a page and wedge in between you, and when you come home, it’s easier not to call than to catch up on everything. After awhile you don’t even know if you want to get caught up, not any more. You don’t think there’s anything you could possibly be missing.

When you make it home to Colonial Heights for the holidays or summer break, you don’t run into anyone you graduated with. It seems as if, even though you go to a college over two hundred miles away, you’re the only one who keeps coming back, and when you’re home, everyone else is at sunny places with exotic names, places you dream about going to but can’t see yourself at. Though you don’t like D.C. all that much, with its bitter weather and terrible drivers, you don’t want to be stuck in Colonial Heights forever. Any town whose night life centers on a shopping mall isn’t a place you want to live.

Yet you’ve lived here so long, you don’t think you can ever go anywhere else. That’s partly why you went to Mason, to prove to yourself you could get out, could be on your own in a place that was only yours, and still every May you take the interstate south without even thinking about where else you could be going.

Your summers are spent working, and no one you work with ever strikes a deep enough resonance to be remembered past fall midterms. The more you come home, the more you realize you don’t know the town anymore, you don’t know the people, and you really don’t want to. After you graduate, you don’t know where you’re going but you’re pretty sure it won’t be here.

Last summer you worked at a record store in the mall—this year you aren’t so lucky. Of course the one job you apply for and don’t want is the only job you can get. But you guess there are worse things to be than a night-cook at a deli, though when you’re cleaning the grill and the charcoal brick flips up, scraping open your wrist, you can’t really remember what they might be. Still, at least it’s money, and at five dollars an hour, it’s 75? more than what you made at that record store. Also, the deli’s in Ettrick, just a mile from your parents’ house in Colonial Heights, and no one you know ever goes there. No one but your dad, and he was the one who told you about the job.

Mostly you work three to close, which means nine but you never seem to leave before quarter after. There’s only one other person you work with and that’s Sherry, the “night manager.” The title’s a joke, since you really can’t take her seriously. She’s twenty-eight and barely made it out of high school. Her boyfriend’s your age and works at a restaurant in Colonial Heights owned by Kevin’s father, Kevin being your boss.

By the end of your first night at the deli, you’re already thinking it’ll be a breeze—no one ever comes in until about five minutes to nine and then you have to rush around trying to close while at the same time cook all the hot subs or pizzas or whatever, but that’s the only rush you ever get. The deli caters to a local college, so during the summer when the students go home, business is dead.

Sherry passes the time doing the dishes and slicing the lunch meats. You sit down every chance you get, and make sure the radio’s always turned up loud.

Even though there’s a “No Smoking” sign hanging by the counter, Sherry chain-smokes Marlboro Lights as if she owned stock in the company. Whenever she opens the back door to light up a cigarette, the night breeze wafts in through the screen, bringing with it a mingled stench of honeysuckle and garbage from the dumpster behind the deli, and you notice how close you are to the train station.

You never knew quite where it was people got on the train, although the tracks cut through Colonial Heights. Lying awake at night sometimes you’d hear a train whistle blow, its lonely sound tearing open your heart as you imagine where its rhythmic passing could take you. You never imagined it would stop at Ettrick. What a place to get off.

* * * *

There is no such thing as a social life in Colonial Heights. Once the mall shuts down at nine, everyone goes home. When you get off from the deli, there’s nothing to do—the mall’s already closed. So when you have a night off, you decide to hang out there. Since you don’t come every night, you think that makes you different from those who do.

It’s at the mall where you see Miranda Dublin.

For as long as you can remember, you’ve known of her. She stands in the choir at your parents’ church every Sunday, and though you’ve always meant to talk to her, you never have. You don’t even know why you want to talk to her—she’s younger than you, one of those quiet types who goes to school and seems to get good grades just by thinking about it. You, however…in high school you were lucky if you didn’t fall asleep during class, and in your senior year, you became infamous for skipping more days than any other student. You didn’t study, and didn’t want to, and you think college is easier because Mason has no attendance policy. Come the first day of spring, you’re as far from campus as can be, wondering why your grades aren’t better.

Miranda’s nothing like that, and you’ve always wondered if someone like her could be interesting. If there was anything mischievous behind those large brown eyes? Would she ever let you find out?

Now there she is, outside a bookstore, leafing through a magazine and licking down an ice cream cone. There’s no one with her, and since there’s no one with you, either, you decide to say something to her. It’s harder than you thought—you pass by her three times before you get the courage to just say hi.

She looks up and smiles. Bolder, you sit next to her on the bench. You don’t really expect her to know who you are, but when you’re about to introduce yourself, she asks, “You’re Josey, right?”

All right! It always feels good when someone else knows who you are.