“I guess I can see why,” I said. “Sort of how it looks.”

  We paused for a moment to consider the uncrossable, eternal river.

  “It’s funny running into you today,” Billy said.

  “Why?”

  “Last night, I actually had a dream about Kathy. First dream about her in years.”

  “You did? What about?”

  “All I really remember was that I was in a black room playing the piano.”

  “I didn’t know you played the piano.”

  “In my dreams, I do,” he said. “So I was playing the piano, and then I looked out a window and saw Kathy dancing at the sea. She was in some kind of a tutu and it was soaking wet.”

  “And then what?”

  “And that’s pretty much the end of it. I thought nothing of it when I woke up this morning. But then I ran into you today at the mall, and I thought it was really weird to see you today, of all days. Kind of spooked me, actually.”

  “I’ve been dreaming about her, too,” I said.

  “What are your dreams like?”

  “You really want to hear about my dreams? Dreams are boring.”

  That’s what Peter said one night. Dreams are boring because dreams are nonsense. Just neurons firing.

  “Dreams are absolutely not boring,” Billy said. “Dreams are crazy. The fact that we’re not constantly mystified by our own dreams is crazy to me.”

  “Okay, well, in this dream, I’m coming down the stairs,” I said. “And Kathy’s casket is in the middle of the kitchen. But it’s no big deal, because Kathy is at the table, eating breakfast before school. But then my mom comes in and she gets mad. She’s like, Kathy, why’d you leave your casket in the middle of the kitchen floor! But Kathy won’t do anything about it. She’s just like, Calm down, Mom. So I have to move it. I go to pick it up, but it’s too heavy, and then it slams back down on my foot.”

  “Shit,” he said.

  The smell was getting worse.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He squinted, as if he saw something up ahead in the dark. And then I saw something: A man. A shovel. He was digging something. “Look. Do you see that?”

  We walked toward the man until we could see he was hacking into something with his shovel. A body.

  “Billy,” I said, and it was weird to call your boyfriend by his name. Weird to call him anything at all. “I think we should turn back. This is kind of weird.”

  But it was too late. The man saw us. He looked unfriendly until he waved.

  “Hey!” he called out to us.

  “Come on,” your boyfriend said.

  Your boyfriend was never afraid. That’s what the newspapers always said about him. He’s a fearless captain—trusted his body to take the team where they ought to be going.

  “What are you kids doing out here so late?” the man asked.

  The man was wearing big brown boots that Dad used for shoveling the driveway after it snowed.

  “What are you doing?” Billy asked.

  We all stood over what looked like a massacred animal.

  “Hacking up this seal,” he said. “Or what was a seal.”

  “Why?” your boyfriend asked.

  “Had to,” he said. “Got to get this thing out of here by morning. It’s stinking up the whole neighborhood. And the owners got people coming to look at this house.”

  I looked up to see a giant house overlooking the water. It was one of those geometric ones that didn’t seem to belong to the beach. The kind you always liked. The kind you wanted to live in.

  “Is this your house?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. The man was a real estate agent. “I just work for the couple trying to sell it.”

  The couple wanted to move far, far away from here, he said. Beach life wasn’t what they expected. And who could blame them? Every week, they had a seal washing up on their shore, getting beached when the tide went out.

  “Then the poor things just starve to death and rot,” he said. “It’s awful. It’s got to go. Nothing says welcome to your new multimillion-dollar home like a big bloated seal carcass.”

  So we helped the man get rid of the seal. Your boyfriend picked up one of the big black bags as the man dumped seal parts in them. I watched and I looked at the body and I waited for it to look like a seal, waited to see if I could notice anything important inside it, any sealness, but it just looked like raw meat.

  After, we each carried a bag up the long staircase to the house. We stood in the driveway and the man threw the bags in the back of his truck.

  “Need a ride?” the man said.

  Before we got in his car, I got a glimpse of the house number: 38 Lindell Drive. He drove us back to the parking lot, where my car waited for us.

  “Thanks,” the man said, then shook our hands, like we just did something great together.

  “No problem,” your boyfriend said.

  Your boyfriend’s cheeks were flushed, like a boy on Christmas morning. Like this was exactly what we had been called to the sea to do. Like maybe his dream did mean something after all.

  “That was weird,” Billy said, back in the car. “Very weird.”

  “Do you think that was Jan’s house?” I asked. I was joking. But Billy shrugged.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  My purse started to shake.

  “What the fuck is happening to your purse?” Billy asked.

  “It’s my cell phone,” I said. “It vibrates.”

  It spooked me, too, for a second—it was the first time my cell phone had ever rung.

  “Look at you,” he said. “You and your cell phone.”

  “A graduation gift,” I said. “So they can track me.”

  Dad presented the phone to me as an early graduation gift that might be useful for prom night. To be used as a lifesaving tool only. A thing to pull out in case I should ever find myself being chased down a long alleyway by a murderer. But the only thing that happened on it yet was that Mom called. Mom was the only person who knew the number.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  “Where are you?” she said. “Don’t you have prom tonight?”

  “Tell Peter I’ll call him when I get back. Tell Peter to calm down. Tell him it’s only prom.”

  After I hung up, we were quiet for a bit, until Billy spoke.

  “Your prom was tonight?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I didn’t think it was tonight. Weren’t you just trying to buy a dress today?”

  “I was,” I said. “But I couldn’t find one. So it worked out.”

  “I’m sorry. Sorry I made you miss your prom.”

  I shrugged. “A wise man once said that prom is just…”

  “A wise man indeed,” he said.

  “Someone give that guy a PhD.”

  “Will your date be mad?”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  I was less interested in Peter at the moment, and more interested in the dead seal.

  “What do you think he’s going to do with the body?” I asked.

  “Probably bring it to the dump,” your boyfriend said.

  “You can do that? Just drop off a seal at the dump?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” your boyfriend said. “I mean, it’s a dump. You can put anything there. We throw out animals all the time. Have you ever thrown out a cheeseburger? I mean, same thing really.”

  Your boyfriend rolled down the window. He started to smoke.

  “Since when do you smoke?” I asked.

  “It’s been a few years now,” he said. “Like I said. The whole self-destruction thing.”

  He lit up his stick and took in a deep breath. He didn’t cough once on our way back to the mall. A pro.

  “So this Peter guy,” Billy said. “A good guy?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Peter’s a good guy.”

  “What’s Peter like?”

  “Hard to explain,” I said. “He’s very Peter-like.”

  “Ah. Peter-like. Yes. Say no more…”

  “I don’t know what to say. He’s very normal. He wants to be president. He wears stripes a lot.”

  “That tells me nothing. All boys want to be the president. All boys wear stripes.”

  “You’re not wearing stripes.”

  “Men don’t wear stripes,” he said. “But I used to wear stripes. All kinds of stripes.”

  “When you wanted to look like a boy.”

  “Exactly.”

  I laughed.

  The heat was on high.

  I suddenly felt bad for Peter and his stripes. I liked his stripes. So I added, “He’s smart.”

  “You’re smart,” Billy said.

  “I know. But he’s actually smarter than me.”

  “You were smarter than me when you were twelve. I’d argue that nobody is smarter than you, Sally.”

  “I appreciate the compliment. But we have to take into consideration the fact that Bill Gates exists. Not to mention all those guys who got us to the moon.”

  “Yeah, pretty fucking incredible, huh?”

  “Can you imagine what it’s like to be an astronaut?”

  “I can’t imagine a less desirable job,” he said.

  Billy couldn’t imagine surviving in a spaceship for that long. Such close quarters. I mean, how do they even have sex up there? Do they even have sex up there? And we decided that no, they couldn’t have sex up there. Because what if you had sex and someone got pregnant? What would happen then?

  “They have to masturbate,” I said.

  It was something Peter told me.

  “But how?” Billy asked.

  “What do you mean, how?” I asked.

  How do they do it? Where does it go? Wasn’t that awkward? These were our questions all the way back to the mall.

  “Which car is yours?” I asked.

  He pointed me to a black Ford Explorer.

  “Hey, you should call me sometime on that fancy phone of yours,” Billy said. He gave me his number. “If you ever have another bad dream.”

  “Assuming this thing really is a phone,” I said.

  Billy took it from my hand, held it up to the light.

  “It is suspiciously small,” Billy said.

  “Pocket-size,” I said. “For a doll, really.”

  He flipped it open, pretended to dial a number, and pressed it to his ear.

  “Hello?” he asked. “God? Is that you?”

  I laughed. I dropped the phone back in my purse.

  “Well?” I asked. “Was it God?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But he was very busy. Said he’d call me back.”

  * * *

  At home, I went to the Rolodex and looked up Jan’s address right away. She was not hard to find. The first entry under J: Jan Newman, 38 Lindell Drive.

  “Peter was very upset on the phone,” Mom said the next morning. And suddenly, she was on Peter’s side. Upset on his behalf.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “He came over in his little tux,” Mom said. “It was very sweet. Very sad.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “And I didn’t even know what to tell him when he asked where you were! I said, Peter, your guess is as good as mine.”

  I hung my head.

  “That was a very mean thing you did,” Mom said. “You should have called. What did we get you that phone for if you aren’t going to use it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  But then Dad came home with a six-pack and a carton of strawberries and all conversation about Peter stopped. Dad had just been golfing. Dad put down the beer and said, “Don’t ask,” not like anybody was about to ask.

  We didn’t have to, really.

  “My swing is all off,” he said. “Last week, my swing was great. This week, it’s all off.”

  Mom raised her eyebrow at me. She wanted to tell him about Jan, and you, and how he shouldn’t worry; his swing will be fine. Just fine. These were the comforts that you brought us from heaven, small and shortsighted assurances.

  But she didn’t say anything; she did not bring up Jan in front of Dad because she knew there was no point. Dad would never believe in Jan. Dad believed in computers, in carpets, in cell phone towers. Dad cut the strawberry stems off, put the berries in a silver bowl, and we sat there, spreading whipped cream on each one.

  It was quiet for a while.

  “But you know what? These strawberries are good,” Dad said. “Too damn good.”

  “Yeah,” I said. It was true. I didn’t know why these things still sometimes took me by surprise.

  After Mom and Dad left the room, I called Billy right away. He didn’t pick up, so I left a message.

  “You were right,” I said. “We found it. We actually found it. Jan’s house.”

  And then I hung up and called Peter.

  “You made me miss my own prom, Sally,” Peter said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know.”

  “I’m the homecoming king! I should have been there.”

  “You could have still gone.”

  “I did go,” he said.

  “Oh. You went?”

  “I’m the homecoming king,” he said. “I had to go. But that’s not the point.”

  “What’s the point? That the homecoming king shouldn’t have to go to prom alone?”

  “The point is you’ve been extremely weird lately.”

  “Since when have I been weird?”

  He lowered his voice. “Ever since that night your mom had the psychotic episode.”

  “It wasn’t a psychotic episode.”

  “Whatever it was. You’ve been a little distant.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on with me,” I said.

  And I really didn’t. I was confused.

  I wanted to see Peter.

  Peter was my first real boyfriend.

  “Do you want to come over?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you come here?” Peter asked.

  * * *

  By the time I got to Peter’s, he had forgiven me. Mostly because he wanted to complain about how much prom sucked. Prom was actually a shit show, Peter said. Everybody got too drunk, way too quickly. And then Valerie’s heel broke. And then Rick dumped her.

  “Because her heel broke?”

  “No,” Peter said.

  Apparently, Rick was in love with someone he met at NYU, which was confusing because he wasn’t even at NYU yet.

  “How did it happen then?” I asked.

  “Some internet group,” Peter said. “I guess he’s been chatting with some girl who is going to be in his dorm. They’ve already had cybersex.”

  “That’s fast,” I said. “We haven’t even had cybersex yet.”

  “I prefer real sex to cybersex, thanks,” he said.

  “How would you know, if you haven’t done either?”

  “It’s just a guess,” he said. Peter pulled me into him, on his couch. He started to kiss me, but then pulled away. “So, do you want to have sex?”

  “One day,” I said.

  “I mean, with me.”

  “Oh, with you,” I joked. “I thought you meant, with Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

  “You’re so random, sometimes,” he said. “Be serious with me.”

  “Okay. Yes. I would.”

  “I was thinking graduation.”

  “You want to do it in our robes?”

  “Sally. No. I want to do it on graduation night,” he said. “It’ll be special. I’ll get a hotel room.”

  “Okay,” I said, because it sounded special. Because I always liked hotels. The little soaps. The white robes hanging on the back of the bathroom door. We used to always put those on before we went to bed.

  “It’s a plan then,” he said, because Peter liked plans.

  * * *

  But then Billy called me back.

  “I had a feeling we’d find Jan,” he said. “I can’t explain it other than to say I had a feeling.”

  Then I told him about my bad dreams. There were so many bad dreams that week before graduation. In one of them, you were standing alongside the road. You were wearing a princess dress. The bottom was wet. Like you had just washed up to shore, but there was no water in sight. You were like, Sally, why didn’t you guys tell me I was dead? Do you know how embarrassing it’s been to walk around for hours, looking for our house? Where’s our house, by the way?

  In another dream, you are sitting next to me in the car. You are alive! We’re all thrilled. Dad is driving and Mom turns up the radio, but then I see something in the corner of your eye. A gray spot that spreads like blood. And I know the truth: You’re still dead. You’re just pretending to be alive so Mom doesn’t get upset. And that is very stressful because then I have to pretend for the rest of the car ride.

  “In mine, we went to the movies,” Billy said.

  He didn’t remember which movie, just some stupid movie she didn’t want to watch.

  “But when it’s over, I can’t get her to leave,” Billy said. “I say, Kathy, we’ve got to go now. The movie is over. And she’s like, No. Just let me sit here. And I go to pick her up but I can’t. She’s like a statue. Fixed to the ground. And then she becomes a statue. Actually turns into rock.”

  And that’s how we began to talk again—every night, on the phone, like old times.

  It was nice to see Mom dressed up for my graduation. She was wearing lipstick again. She had on her gold earrings again. She looked like Mom. Even sounded like Mom. “Honey, I’m so proud of you,” she kept saying.

  She was proud of all of us.

  Proud of Peter, too, who gave his big speech about self-acceptance as it related to the rising cost of oil and China’s super-economy.

  “But I must say, I did not understand the valedictorian’s speech,” she said.

  Oh yeah. Our valedictorian was the worst. He was this guy Jim Kravitz. A stoner anarchist pothead who was also a genius. He stood up at the podium and pretended to have a hamster in his hand. Then he pretended to crush the hamster with two little fingers. He shouted, “Crush the hamster!” and half the crowd went wild, like it was some kind of strange joke he had with the universe.