Superdad and Vomit in Paradise

I guess it's inevitable. Now that daughter goes to preschool, it seems that we pick up all kinds of viruses and such that make us all violently ill. Before the past couple of months, throwing up was not a regular part of my existence. Apparently it is now.

Kids throw up easily. They just do it, and they feel better and go back to sleep. They don't fight it. We grown-ups, on the other hand, fight the urge and dread the experience so much that I think we draw out the process even longer. After the last 13 hours, I can definitely say that the thought is much worse than the actual experience. And once you get last night's dinner out of the way, the dry heaves don't even have to make you get out of bed. What's Gladware for after all? We can have a couple of vomit bowls in every room so we don't even have to go looking for a receptacle. ("Use it, reuse it and you can still afford to lose it." If only they knew.)

Superdad helped us all through the whole night. Maybe he was energized by the short but sweet lovemaking we did last night. I like to watch the Amazing Race, and last night was the premiere. It reminds me of many of our "vacations" in various countries. It's fun to see that others devolve into yelling, sobbing and throwing maps at each other when they get frustrated too. Superdad had been more than a little pouty after going all of about one week without sex. Of course that week included my period, a three-night camping trip where sex is pretty much impossible in close quarters, and an overnight visit from his parents where they slept in our playbed. I guess he got so used to the everyday routine that a week just about killed him. Anyway, we made everybody happy with a nice half-hour session and then watched the show.

Shortly after we had gone to sleep, I heard daughter sobbing. I have to admit that I figured it was just a bad dream, and I did not jump up and rush to her side. I waited. The sobbing continued. I called to Jay, but he was out cold. So I got up and found most of the partially digested remnants of last night's dinner in daughter's hair. She was shivering. I started on the clean up. Jay woke up a few minutes later and joined the party, getting daughter into a warm shower to clean up and warm up. We got the linens changed and got daughter back into bed. The heaving sessions continued and Jay stayed with her.

I was feeling a bit weak so I headed back to bed with son. I should have known. A short while later I made a mad dash to the bathroom to expel my own dinner. Half-digested spinach salad is one scary sight. I spent a fun night with son in our bed nursing him and waking up to shove a bowl under his face or my own as we both periodically heaved. We did get some sleep too though.

Superdad didn't sleep much as daughter continued to heave most of the night. To the extent that he slept, he did so on a crib mattress on the floor of daughter's room. A crib mattress does not do much to support 160 pounds of Superdad.

Superdad's flaw is, of course, his propensity to sympathy vomit. He fought it off all night long, but he's still shaking in his supershoes, fearing what might be to come.

But Superdad came through for us all. He stayed home from work to care for the family. He's got the laundry going non-stop. And he's currently amusing daughter with art projects in the kitchen. She could do art projects all day so that's no small feat. I've kept down a Coke for a good hour and son insisted on eating an orange, so we may be seeing the light.

Thank you, Superdad. I knew you would come through for us. Maybe if I can get the smell of vomit off my breath we can take advantage of the afternoon at home later.

Melbourne's Finest:
My Mom's chili
Sister's cornbread
beaches
Dad's porkchops
BASKIN ROBBINS
Having one of my best friends (aka Jessica Goodwin) here!*

*She did fantastic on her meet today! Big Ups to her!!

Had some extreme deadly nightmare these past few days. I wonder what do those dreams mean. Maybe its time for me to go. Or maybe one of my family. To all the people who have been reading my blog ever since, thanks a bunch and a sincere apology goes to y'all. I hope life will be better.

i rented emma today and i despite my hate for gwenyth paltrow, i loved it! i was really surprised how much "clueless" followed the plot of emma. makes me want to read it now! and damn i wish i had a mr. knightley. sadly, i have no male childhood friends, so my hopes are shot.

anyways my mom has been going through my dvd collection lately in an effort to "learn some english." and she asked me why i haven't been trying to buy movies hoping she won't notice, and i replied that she told me i couldn't anymore. so she thought about it and was like "okay, you can buy movies, but not too much or too expensive, and they better be good." as if anything i buy is untasteful :D but yeah, that was really cool. haven't bought anything yet b/c i'm still cheap and waiting for those good deals to come around. my movie collection is pretty complete at the moment..though emma would be a nice addition to have with my clueless dvd. hmm..... :)

Boldly gone: 'Star Trek: Enterprise' cancelled

UPN announced Wednesday that it would not renew "Star Trek: Enterprise" for a fifth season.

"Enterprise" will end its run on Jul 13, thus bringing to a close 18 years of "Star Trek" spinoffs on TV.

Though "Enterprise" had struggled with low ratings during its fourth season, the timing of UPN's announcement came as something of a surprise to fans. Networks typically announce cancellations or renewals in Jun or Jul.

"I'm surprised they announced it this soon," said Steve Krutzler, editor of Trekweb.com. "Now that the series [has] gotten good, I'm really going to miss it," said a user on TrekToday.com's message boards.

Though UPN entertainment president Dawn Ostroff said recently that "we're very happy with the ideas and execution" of the show, "Enterprise's" cancellation was widely expected.

The show had been moved to Fridays from Wednesdays at the start of the fall season, and Leslie Moonves, co-president and co-chief operating officer of Viacom, the parent company of UPN, said at a January press event that "Star Trek" "may be a franchise that should be rested a year or two."

The last few episodes of "Enterprise" were its lowest-rating outings; the Jan. 28 episode garnered 2.5 million viewers, "Enterprise's" smallest audience ever.

The series also has faced stiff competition on Fridays in recent weeks from Sci Fi Channel's "Stargate SG-1," which on Jan. 28 performed better than "Enterprise" in certain key demographics, according to a Sci Fi press release.

Two fan groups had actually been working to save "Enterprise" before the cancellation was even announced, but many followers of the sci-fi franchise were philosophical about the demise of the series.

"There probably need to be a few years off," Krutzler said. "There probably need to be some new people coming in who are interested in going forward in a different direction."

"It's sad from cultural perspective that this chapter has come to an end," Krutzler added. "But maybe it will come back better."

Executive producer Manny Coto told the Tribune in December that if UPN did greenlight a fifth season of "Enterprise," he had ambitious plans for it.

As the fourth season closes, "we'll be headed toward the founding of the Federation," Coto said. "I would love to make that a season-long arc… It becomes an arc about trying to bring different cultures together which is a really resonant idea for our time. I would love to come back and we would do some serious research on the founding of the UN, how that came together."

"Enterprise" will make its debut in syndication in the fall, and executives at Paramount Television say more is in store for "Star Trek."

"All of us at Paramount warmly bid goodbye to `Enterprise,' and we all look forward to a new chapter of this enduring franchise in the future," David Stapf, president of Paramount Network Television, said in a statement.

The original "Star Trek" series ran from 1966-'69. "Star Trek: The Next Generation," which debuted in 1987, ran seven seasons, as did "Star Trek: Voyager" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." At times, there were two "Trek" series on the air.

shit happens...

You can fool some people sometimes
But you cant fool all the people all the time..heh

oh, i just have to tell you that, you're not as bad at being a fool yourself kan? because you let me fooled you!

you're so full of it, why don't you just drop dead?

Irish prostitute

An Irish girl returned home to her family after a five-year absence. When she walked through the door, her father cursed at her, "Where have ye been all this time? Why did ye not write to us, not even a line? Why didn't ye call? Can ye not understand what ye put yer old ma thru?"

The girl burst into tears and wailed, "I am sore sorry, Da! I...I became a prostitute, and I was ashamed..."

"Ye WHAT!!?" Her father roared. "Out with ye, shameless harlot! Sinner! You're a disgrace to this family!"

"Ye'r right, Da, I'll leave. I just wanted to give mum this luxurious fur coat, title deed to a ten-bedroom mansion plus a savings certificate for $5 million."

"Ye what?" Her father asked, astounded.

"And this solid gold Rolex for me little brother," the girl continued, "...and for ye daddy, that sparkling new Mercedes limited edition convertible yonder, plus a membership to the country club..." she started towards the door and added, "And if ye decide someday to forgive me, I wanted to invite everyone to spend New Years' Eve on board my new yacht in the Riviera."

"What was it ye said ye had become?" her father asked.

"A prostitute, Da! I'm sorry." And she opened the door to leave.

"Oh, Jesus!" Her father exclaimed. "Ye scared me half to death, girl! I thought ye said a Protestant. Come here and give yer old man a hug."

The Prank

By Lisa Papademetriou

Here's one activity I'll have to leave off my college applications, Lexi thought as she shifted in her seat. The unofficial Prank Committee was meeting. Every year, tradition calls for a few seniors at Stanforth Academy to pull a practical joke on the school. It isn't exactly a school-sanctioned activity, but it isn't forbidden either. Which is why Lexi was now sitting at the Big Blend, sipping a smoothie and listening to the others discuss prank options. "No way can we loosen the bolts on every single school desk in one night," Carl was saying. He was the smartest guy in the class. If there were an election, he'd be voted Most Unlikely to Get Busted, which is why he was perfect for the prank.

"I like Tate's idea," Suzan chirped. She had red streaks in her hair today, to match her red-and-black paisley tights. Suzan was borderline goth, but — oddly enough — she had tons of school spirit. She was Lexi's best friend and the reason Lexi had agreed to help with the prank. "Let's go with that," Suzan said with a nod, "and soap flakes in the pool."

"Soap flakes are environmentally unfriendly," said a girl named Cat. "And I'm not sure it's ethical to bring a goat into the school." Lexi shot Suzan a sideways look. In her batik tie-dyed shirt and ripped jeans, Cat looked like a poster child for Earth First. She was president of the school's animal-rights group, and Lexi wasn't exactly sure how she ended up on the Prank Committee. "Why don't we just do what they did last year?" Cat suggested.

"Oh, please," Tate said, waving his hand dismissively. "That was so lame."

Even though she agreed, Lexi gritted her teeth. Tate could be amazingly annoying. OK, truth: She and Tate had a history. He'd placed a rubber snake in her lunch bag in third grade, and Lexi retaliated by smearing peanut butter in his gym shoes. They had never really gotten along since then, which was why Lexi was tempted to argue with him now. She resisted the urge.

"I agree," Suzan put in. "So the lunch tables were out in the quad — big deal."

"And the year before that, the prank didn't even make sense," Lexi added. The seniors stole the cafeteria's silverware — forcing everyone to eat with their fingers. Unfortunately, they had done it on pizza day so it lacked punch. "We need to go all-out this year. Forget soap flakes — let's use dye in the pool," Lexi suggested. "Green, maybe?"

Tate gave her an approving glance. He had razor-sharp features — a nose fit to slice bread, distinctly high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes. His black hair often flopped over his right eye, as it did now. "Great idea, Lexi. And the goat will be fine," he added, "He belongs to my uncle. Believe me — I'll make sure he doesn't get hurt."

Suzan looked at Cat with lifted eyebrows. "Sound OK?"

Cat shrugged. "I'll buy the dye," she offered. "I know where I can get some that's made from plant extracts."

Slurping the end of her blueberry-and-wheatgrass drink, Suzan put the cup down and grinned. "Perfect!"

"Where's Suzan?" Tate asked three days later from the top step of the side entrance, readying to start the prank.

"She'll be here," Carl assured him as he cupped his hands around his eyes and looked through the glass doors. "She'd better be. She's got the keys."

"How did she get them?" Tate asked.

Lexi shrugged. "Last Christmas, she gave the janitor a box of chocolates that her parents had bought for the teachers. They've been friends ever since."

"Man, it wasn't easy to get Henry here." Tate cast a glance at the goat, who was standing at the end of a rope. "I thought he was going to chew off half the upholstery in my brother's car." As if to prove Tate's point, the goat leaned over to nibble the cuff of his jeans.

"This dye wasn't cheap," Cat added.

Even though it was nearing the end of May, Lexi shivered inside her sweat-shirt. It was 7 o'clock, and the sun had set. Light shone dimly from street lamps at the curb's edge. The ancient oak trees at the front of the school cast nearby shadows. Stanforth Academy was an old building with a massive limestone entrance, but it didn't have much charm. Now, in the almost-dark, it seemed sinister, like a jail. "This place is giving me the creeps," Lexi said.

A single white light cut through the darkness and into the parking lot. "That's Suzan's Vespa," Lexi said.

Suzan loped across the lawn. "You got it!" she cried when she saw the goat, which made everyone else realize they had been whispering.

"Bring the keys?" Tate asked.

Suzan jingled them. "Bingo!" she said as a key slipped into the lock. She gave it a twist and shoved the door open.

Footsteps echoed against the floor as the pranksters hustled down the hall and up the stairs. "OK, Lexi and Tate, you guys know what to do," Suzan said as she unlocked Mr. Sparks' history classroom. "We're headed to the gym. Once you're done, get out as fast as you can. I'll make sure the side exit is locked up."

Lexi gave her friend a wistful wave as Suzan let the door swing closed. She wished she could head to the pool with the others instead of staying with Tate. But Carl insisted that she and Tate were the funniest in the group, so they were to write all over Mr. Sparks' whiteboards — stuff like, I learned more about history when I was back on the farm! As if the goat had written it.

"Look!" Tate said, pointing at what he'd just written: Smells better in the shed!

Lexi snorted. "Hilarious," she said.

Tate frowned. "What have you got?"

History books: taste great, less filling, she scribbled. "That's ba-aa-aa-ad," Tate bleated, goat-like. Lexi threw an eraser at him, and he ducked, laughing.

They wrote a few more, and finally Tate said, "OK, let's get out of here."

"See you later, Henry," Lexi said to the goat. She put her hand on the doorknob. It didn't move. She tried again.

"What's up?" Tate asked.

"I think it's locked." Lexi shoved her shoulder against the door. Nothing.

"Let me try."

"It's locked," Lexi repeated. "You can't do anything."

Shoving her aside, Tate grasped the handle. Then he banged on the door. "It's locked," he said.

Lexi rolled her eyes. "I just said that."

Tate spun to face her. "Why didn't you make sure it was open before Suzan took off with the keys?"

"Like this is my fault?" Lexi said. "This goat thing was your idea!"

Tate opened his mouth, and Lexi prepared herself for a cutting comment. But he took a deep breath and said, "How are we going to get out of here?"

They turned toward the windows. "It's three floors up," Lexi said.

"Maybe we could tie my jacket to your sweatshirt," he suggested. "We could jump the rest of the way."

"That's the dumbest idea ever," Lexi told him as a loud thud sounded behind them. Henry was trying to nose his way into a desk and had succeeded in shoving it against the wall. "Besides," Lexi went on, trying to ignore the goat, "the windows don't even open all the way."

"We could break one," Tate said.

"And climb through broken glass?"

"Got a better idea?"

Lexi glanced around the room. Her heart was pounding. Suddenly, her eyes lasered in on a possible solution. "Transom!" she cried, looking up at the small window over the door.

"Genius!" Tate said. "I'll give you a boost." Interlacing his fingers, he nodded for Lexi to put her foot in his hands.

She winced, but there was no other way. At least, not one she could think of. She kicked off her shoes, grimaced at the hole in the toe of her left sock, and put her right foot in his hands.

"I'll lift you on three," Tate said. "One, two, three…"

Lexi reached for the edge of the transom, wrapping her fingers around it. Tate shoved her upward while she struggled to pull herself through.

Tate grunted. "You can do it!"

Her arms shook with effort as her chin reached the ledge, then her head went through- "I can't!"

"Come on, you have to!" Tate pushed up against her legs.

She flailed like a frog and pulled harder. "I can't do it, Tate!" Lexi snapped. "Let me down!"

"No!"

"Let me down!" She kicked at him, then fell to the floor in a heap.

Henry looked up. He gave her a puzzled look, then bent back over the pencil box he had been investigating.

"What now?" Tate asked, sinking to the floor beside her.

"Maybe I could boost you" she said.

Tate gave it some thought. "I could probably pull myself through," he said. "Do you think you could lift me?"

"Clearly, I'm incredibly weak," Lexi said dryly, making Tate smile. "But maybe you could stand on a desk and pull yourself up a little. Then I'll push you the rest of the way."

So Tate pulled and Lexi pushed. He lifted himself higher, higher, then he was through. "Oh, crap!" he shouted as Lexi gave him a shove that sent him over the edge, head first. He landed with a thud.

"Are you OK?" Lexi shouted.

Tate's head popped up. He gave her a smile, and Lexi's head felt light. We're getting out of here, she thought. It worked. We're going to get…

And that's when Tate ran off.

For a few minutes, Lexi couldn't believe what had just happened. He'd ditched her! He'd just left her here to spend the night alone with a goat in a creepy classroom. Lexi felt her blood boil and a sudden urge to strangle someone. Tate was the prime target, of course, but at this point, she'd settle for Suzan — the one who had gotten her into this.

Lexi climbed on top of the desk and tried again to pull herself up again. Her arms throbbed. It was useless.

She sat on the floor while Henry munched a page from the Flannigan-Murtry Guide to American History: Teacher's Edition. She lay down in front of Mr. Sparks' desk, imagining what Tate would tell Suzan. Probably something like, "Lexi had to go home. She said to tell you she'd see you tomorrow."

Why did I ever trust him? she thought. Why? But for a moment, they had been a team. Everything else — the arguments, the rubber snake, the peanut butter, all of that — had disappeared.

Now, she was going to get blamed for the goat and probably the pool dye, too.

She looked at the clock. Ten past 9. Halt an hour had passed since Tate had left. Only 10 hours and 50 minutes until Mr. Sparks unlocks his room and discovers her…with a goat.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Lexi sat up straight as the door swung open. Tate stood there, water dripping from his face and trickling onto the beige carpet, turning it a bluish-green. Suzan was right behind him.

"Sorry!" Suzan said brightly. "There were technical difficulties at the pool."

"I thought you weren't coming!" Lexi cried as she scrambled to her feet. She glared at Tate. "Why didn't you open the door before?"

"It was locked — both sides," Tate explained. "I had to get the keys. Sorry it took so long." A drop of water dripped from the tip of his nose.

"Why are you both wet?" Lexi asked.

Suzan snorted. "Oh, that lousy dye Cat got," she said. "She poured it in, and it sank, making a solid-green splotch on the bottom of the pool. We were wondering what to do when Tate showed up. He said we should jump in and kick the water until it spread around."

"My legs are killing me," Tate complained. But he was smiling.

Suzan swiped her wet red-and-black bangs from her face. "Let's get outta here," she said with a grin.

Lexi waved to the goat. Tate flipped off the lights, and Suzan locked the door. "I can't wait for tomorrow morning," she said as they squished and squeaked down the hallway.

As they stepped outside, Lexi breathed in the cool night air. Mission accomplished, she thought. Carl and Cat had already left. "I guess that's it!" Suzan said. She gave Lexi a damp hug, then took off on her Vespa.

"Did you really think I wasn't coming back?" Tate asked Lexi.

"I didn't know," she admitted.

"I wouldn't do that to you."

It took all of Lexi's strength not to blurt, "Are you kidding me?" But she could see Tate was serious. "I'm sorry," she said at last. "I just got worried."

Tate nodded. "Come on," he said. "I'll drive you home." He unlocked the passenger door to his brother's Jetta and held it open for her.

"I can't wait for tomorrow. Everyone will be shocked! A green pool — and a goat in history class!" he said as he slid into the driver's seat.

"Yeah," Lexi responded. "You sure are full of surprises."

"We are," Tate corrected. He grinned, his teeth flashing white in the darkness. "We're a team."

He looked so happy that Lexi just couldn't help laughing. Tate Islip and Lexi Jones, a team? It was hard to believe. But he'd come through for her. When she least expected it.

"I guess we are," she said at last.

Lexi is helping to plan a surprise that will shock the school … but is the joke on her?

"We need to go all out. Forget soap — let's dye the pool," Lexi suggested. "Green, maybe?"

Lexi couldn't believe what happened. He'd left her to spend the night with a goat.

Kansas

By Antonya Nelson

The girls left early, the two-year-old being driven to Montessori by her seventeen-year-old cousin. Three of their four parents lay in bed hungover; the fourth had risen unsteadily to fix breakfast, nauseated by her new pregnancy. Standing dazed at the stove, Anna had felt grateful to her niece, Kay-Kay, for her morning cheer, her willingness to dress little Cherry Sue, settle her in at the table, wash her face and hands--one of them bound in a bright-green cast--and then carry her off to school. Cherry Sue had been singing about babies, waving her bandaged fist like a maraca. She sang about everything these days, gesturing wildly, as if her life were a musical.

"Don't forget her plug," Anna told Kay-Kay, meaning the pacifier.

"My plug, my plug," Cherry Sue chorused.

Anna was in despair about her second pregnancy, and furious with her husband, Ian, for having announced it to everyone. Now she had no choice. In her daughter's songs the new baby already had a name--'No White or Toto--and everyone at Montessori had congratulated Anna. She was still exhausted from having Cherry Sue, who had only this month finally been weaned--by force. Just when Anna had thought she might actually repossess her body, here she was a hostage again. In more ways than one. Having another child with Ian meant that she was further delayed in leaving him. If it weren't for Cherry Sue, she and her husband would have gone their separate ways years ago, but now their fates seemed impossibly knotted. He refused to use condoms, and he failed to withdraw because he wanted her pregnant; the baby was a weapon that he could plant like a bomb. Cherry Sue loved him, and so would the new child; children didn't know any better. He was like the Devil, Anna thought: somebody who kept his deceits hidden until it was too late, until you were already implicated in them.

"Bye, Aunt Anna," Kay-Kay said, with Cherry Sue hoisted on her hip, riding her cousin like a horse. Anna sniffed sentimentally. The girls were the only two people in the house who got along a hundred per cent of the time. Often mistaken for sisters (even, alarmingly, for mother and daughter), they were both fair and freckled, light-eyed, and plump in a healthy way.

"Bye-bye, Mama," Cherry Sue sang out. "Don't cry, Mama."

"Don't cry," Kay-Kay joined in, smiling brightly. Four years ago, her adolescence had descended on the household like a lit match in a powder keg. Now the disaster had passed. Gone were the frightening clothes, the angry music, the Sharpie-marker makeup. Restored was the pretty child who bathed every day and made conversation with her family.

"Goodbye," Anna said, sighing and waving at the girls.

It was a sunny day in Wichita, the birds were pouring their hearts out in trees just beginning to bud, and Anna fell asleep in the back-yard hammock, waking later with a sunburn, the skin on the backs of her thighs imprinted with hemp netting like a rump roast.

The family cell-phone plan had seven subscribers, their numbers each one digit apart. Kay-Kay's was the easiest to remember, 246-2460, and she was the one most frequently called.

Her father, Henry, often forgot to turn on his phone or to charge it; he left it places--restaurants or jacket pockets. (Cherry Sue carried around one of his phones that had gone through the wash.) Henry was the oldest parent in the house, fifty-eight, a psychiatrist, a mild man who let life happen to him, let the people he loved talk him into things--like cell phones or children or trampolines. This was his third marriage, and his wife, Emily, Anna's sister, was a generation younger than he. He kept marrying women in their twenties, having a daughter with them, then divorcing. Probably this would be his last marriage and daughter; he'd stayed in this one the longest, seeing Kay-Kay into puberty and beyond. The other girls he'd left when they were still in grade school, two half sisters whom Kay-Kay barely knew. One had married a cop. The other was a lesbian whose lover had been a patient of her father's. Wichita was just that size, big enough for lesbians and psychoanalysis, small enough for impractical, coincidental cross-pollination.

Anna and Emily's mother--known to everyone in the family as Nana--remembered to carry her cell phone with her, but she often mistook it for other objects: the TV remote, a radio, her glasses case. Nana lived across town in a condo that she left only on Tuesdays, when she made her "rounds": hairdresser, physician, bridge club, grocery. Occasionally, Kay-Kay stayed over at her grandmother's. That had been one of her dodges, during the time of trouble--saying that she was with Nana when she was simply at large. She had also thrown parties at Nana's condo, Tuesday-afternoon blowouts, where she shared with her friends the old woman's pharmaceuticals and liquor. Some late nights she had sneaked off with Nana's car. For Christmas this year, however, Kay-Kay had embroidered a set of pillowcases for her grandmother, with bluebells and daisies, sheep and a shepherdess, and "I Love Nana" in rose-colored thread. The rest of the family was still taking in this revised self, this hellion turned hausfrau.

Emily and Anna had programmed into their cell phones the identical ring-tone for Kay-Kay's calls, an assaulting electronic jangle that ended on a sour interrogative. Recently they had discussed changing it, since it no longer seemed to suit Kay-Kay. She had become someone more dulcet, they said. They had yet to settle on a new Kay-Kay ringtone, though they were reminded of the need every time the girl called, setting off that noise that never failed to startle.

Ian's phone had a lock on its functions. Because he violated others' privacy, he assumed that they would violate his. He had his phone in his possession at all hours, clasped in his palm like a gun. It was set to vibrate so that he alone would know when he'd been summoned. When Kay-Kay had stolen his cocaine stash, Ian had been frustratingly unable to report the theft to anyone but his wife. In debt himself--to Anna and her family, to his boss, to all his friends--he'd felt especially outraged. He was owed, by somebody: an apology, a sum of money, carte blanche.

The seventh phone belonged to Kay-Kay's ex-boyfriend Wesley. For two years Wesley had lived in the house, eighteen when he moved in, yet not in any way an adult; Kay-Kay, only fifteen back then, had seemed more mature. Wesley's parents were divorced, living in different states; he had no real home of his own, no address or phone number. Including him on the family plan cost an extra $9.99 a month: nothing, really. Henry paid the bills without giving them much thought. He was generous by nature. And, as a therapist, he made a lot of money, his life financed by other people's troubles. Why shouldn't he contribute to the welfare of his daughter's boyfriend? When Wesley had needed a root canal, it was Emily who made the appointment. The family had coached him on his A.C.T.s, and he still stopped by to consult about perplexing pieces of the grownup world--student loans or car insurance. He was a working boy who had loved Kay-Kay dearly, and who, when he lived in the house, had kindly tolerated her teasing, about her status as a minor and his as a statutory rapist. Now he had a new girlfriend, Lucy, who was exactly-- exactly--like the Kay-Kay they'd known three years ago. She even sounded like the old Kay-Kay whenever she happened to answer Wesley's phone--sullen, stoned, suicidal. For just a second, you could be fooled, suddenly jerked back into the nightmare.

Midmorning, Emily rolled out of bed. In the kitchen she found the usual mess: Anna's sloppy breakfast makings, eggshells, milk left out to spoil, as well as the residue of the previous night's drinking--empty bottles and glasses, a crusty bowl of salsa, the tart odor of pickle juice, desiccated cheese rinds. Emily muttered as she ran hot water. She had been forever in this role: a mother first to her little sister, through their childhood and beyond, then to her husband, and then, of course, to Kay-Kay. Now, since Ian had declared bankruptcy and he, Anna, and Cherry Sue had moved in, she was a mother to her brother-in-law and her niece as well. And then there was Nana, who seemed more and more in need of mothering herself--unpleasant mothering, of the variety that involved wheedling and deception, and that would soon include feeding and diapering.

Responsibility was plaguing. Sometimes, to fight it, Emily was purposely irresponsible--she drank too much. She enjoyed drinking, the bright pup of the wine bottle relinquishing its cork, the gentle bell of stemware leaving the rack, the silly conversation over snacks and music, her brother-in-law showing his most tolerable self in service to the party, Henry just so happy to see everybody get along.

Emily had turned forty a week before. She hadn't thought she'd mind it, but evidently she did.

She drank cold water, then hot coffee. Some days, there was nothing but fluid.

Kay-Kay had left her school binder behind in a pool of syrup on the kitchen table. Emily pried it off and carried it upstairs to her daughter's bedroom, where she stood at the door. For years she'd snooped in Kay-Kay's life, read her diary, slit open the seams of her coat, turned over the dresser drawers, shoved a hand between the mattress and the box spring. She didn't want to do those things anymore. Suspicion was soul-killing. She told herself that Kay-Kay deserved her trust. She tossed the binder onto the bed and shut the door.

Sometimes at noon Kay-Kay came home from school. For a while, last fall, as she began her climb out of rage and wretchedness, she had brought friends back with her for lunch. She'd been proud of her quirky home life then, proud of her rambling old house with its many airy rooms, a place where you might come across her Aunt Anna sunbathing nude on the porch, or her father brandishing a civilized glass of Merlot at midday. "For my heart," he would say. "Purely medicinal." At noon, her boyfriend, Wesley, would be rising, zipping himself into his coveralls, ready for his shift at the lube pit; cute Cherry Sue would be humming in her high chair, Emily serving up lasagna or soup. It was a capacious kitchen, with a dining table made from an ancient farmhouse door, eight expectant chairs. Flowers in vases, fruit in bowls, cursing in the conversation.

But these days Kay-Kay mostly came home alone. She was getting ready to leave: high school, her friends, this house. Her future, Emily hoped, held college, Europe, Africa; what else had they been prepping--as well as preserving--her for but departure? Once upon a time, Emily had believed that she would do these things herself: attend Harvard, adopt orphans, observe the world from the basket of a hot-air balloon. But then she'd fallen in love with Henry--scandalously her elder, and married, to boot--and then with this funky old house, and then her daughter had been born… .

Today, Kay-Kay didn't come home for lunch.

Indulging his hangover, Henry rose from bed only long enough to cancel his appointments and lumber back. Fridays were half days anyway. Emily doubted that he'd even opened his eyes between bed and phone. He was a bear, gruff, kind, loyal to a fault. He had grown soft in their nineteen years together; she was his last wife, he always said, last and best. He'd had a starter wife for practice, and another for refining his skills. Now he performed with forbearance, faith, and patience, permitting Emily to be the hotheaded one while he stood by.

"Admit it!" Emily had accused him crazily on her fortieth birthday. "I'm the oldest woman you've ever slept with! Old women are witches! No one even notices them, let alone finds them attractive. You don't find old women attractive, admit it!"

"Not yet," he'd confessed mildly.

Still woozy now, Emily decided to join him in bed, nudging herself against his furry chest. They lay together into the afternoon, bound in a cocoon of indolence: it was spring again, and they had arrived here with their girl, after a long, treacherous journey, and it seemed that only now, just now, were they safely out of the woods. Henry slept, wheezing, and Emily lay in his arms, and it wasn't until three o'clock, when Anna borrowed Emily's car to pick up Cherry Sue, that anyone realized that something was wrong.

"You phoned this morning," Miss Juliet said, proving it by producing the form with the time, Anna's name, and the fact that Cherry Sue wouldn't be coming to school today. All the Misses at Montessori had the same voice, blameless and assured. If Cherry Sue wasn't there it wasn't their fault.

Kay-Kay's cell phone sent all calls immediately to voice mail. Her greeting was a leftover from the year before. "Kay-Kay says shut up and fuck off!" a boy yelled, Sid Vicious-ly. It wasn't even Wesley but a stranger, with Kay-Kay's slurred laughter in the background.

The next number Anna hit was her husband's. Like Kay-Kay, Ian was sending callers to voice mail. Shaking, Anna phoned her sister, and Emily (who always answered) advised driving to East High. "School's not out yet. Maybe she took Cherry Sue with?"

"Maybe."

"Show-and-tell?"

"Sure."

At the house, Emily closed her eyes, thrown instantly back into the grim fright of the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that: her daughter, a force of nature, out wreaking havoc. "God damn it, Henry!" He sat up blurrily, his face imprinted with his own palm, as if he'd been slapped. She clapped the phone shut and threw it at him, fear leading directly to rage, and her husband, right there, ready to receive it.

School was letting out when Anna arrived. The wind had picked up, and dirt filled the air, trash flattened into the chain link. She drove against the current of muscle cars and trucks surging around her, unnerved by the exuberance with which the teen-agers handled their vehicles, their lives. They yelled and honked and screeched their tires, lighting cigarettes and popping up through sunroofs and out back windows, some riding on hoods, dust and exhaust whirling as they revved their engines. Anna scanned desperately for her niece's gold Celica, still willing to forgive Kay-Kay if she found her there. Plenty of students came to school with their babies, or with their big embarrassing bellies held before them like basketballs. Anna guessed that Kay-Kay wasn't beyond vying for some attention, a different kind of attention than she'd been accustomed to getting these past few years, when she'd been warned and suspended and flunked and arrested and handed poor marks not only in performance and attendance but in attitude and appearance as well--in personality, it seemed.

Often, Anna had defended her niece, even envied her--as if on behalf of her own former self, both patriotic and nostalgic for a lost homeland.

Now she searched the thinning trickle of cars and pedestrians with growing pessimism.

"They're not here," she told Emily on the phone, driving home.

"Where's Ian?" Emily demanded.

"I don't know." Anna had no idea what Ian did with himself; borrowing her sister's car had become a daily necessity.

"We ought to find Ian." He had been helpful on a few occasions. He'd located tolerable community service for Kay-Kay after her possession conviction. He'd stayed up all night talking to the speedy girl when the other adults were utterly worn out. Once, when she'd declared that she would be fine with being a prostitute, he took her to the seedy side of Wichita, to some strip clubs he knew, just to give her a taste.

"You call him," Anna said. "He won't answer me."

Sure enough, Ian took Emily's call. The noise at his end of the line suggested a submarine. "Where are you?" she asked.

"Work," he said flatly. "What do you want?"

"I wonder if you've seen Kay-Kay. She took Cherry Sue this morning, but they didn't go to school." On his end she could hear a door close, an echoing clatter. Racquetball court, she guessed. He practically lived at the club, hanging out in the seating area of the juice bar, disguising himself as a healthy body-builder type when in fact he made most of his income dealing drugs in the parking lot and the men's locker room. His uniform was a warmup suit. A sport bottle full of vodka. Of particular appeal was the fact that he had an excuse to exit his in-laws' house every morning, leaving his killjoy wife and her stuck-up family to themselves.

Or at least that's what Emily thought he thought. She had no idea what really went on in her brother-in-law's head. He'd been hanging around in her life since he was a bratty neighbor boy ten years her junior. Often, she imagined the two words he'd most like to say to her: Whatever, bitch. Now she couldn't tell if his lack of reaction meant that he was thinking or merely stunned or already concocting a story. His silence was hermetic, and she was tempted to hang up. But Kay-Kay sometimes confided in Ian--he had the tactical advantage of being the other acknowledged delinquent in the house. Drunk, he could be endearing. The night before, for example, he'd done hilarious imitations of all four principals in "The Wizard of Oz" as if they'd been pulled over for driving under the influence.

Sober, however, he defaulted to paranoia. "I know what you're thinking," he said.

"No, you don't," she assured him.

Ian said, "Let me get back with you," and hung up.

"'Get back' with me?" Emily said to Anna, who was coming through the mudroom door. "He said he'll get back with me."

"He's an asshole," Anna said for at least the hundredth time. Then she turned her pleading, tear-streaked face to her big sister. "Where are they?"

Meanwhile, Henry had pulled himself out of bed to perform his ritual: driving around. He had done this whenever Kay-Kay or any of the pets had disappeared. It never paid off, but it seemed somehow necessary, a biological imperative. He was confirming that the obvious explanation didn't prevail: the lost dog wasn't chasing tail at the park or lying like a rug in the road; the girls weren't parked down at the Dairy Queen or visiting any of Kay-Kay's known acquaintances.

The last time she'd run away, she'd taken a bus to Burning Man; the time before that, she'd hitchhiked to Ohio. But she'd never before had her own getaway vehicle. It was Henry who had insisted on buying Kay-Kay a car, even though Emily was opposed. They'd argued for weeks--the girl had totalled two of the family cars in a single year!--and later Emily had grudgingly acknowledged that he had been right: Kay-Kay had got a job to pay for gas, had not had one ticket or wreck, and often volunteered for trips to the grocery store or to drop off Cherry Sue.

But now look what had happened. Wait around long enough, Emily thought, and you can win any argument.

Henry slapped at his jacket pocket before he left, to show her that he had remembered his phone.

"Pointless," Emily said, of his errand. "Complete waste of time."

Anna began to cry again. "I'm being punished!" she said to Emily.

"For what?"

"Bellyaching about Cherry Sue! Being pissy about being pregnant!"

"Oh, please, Anna. You're not being punished."

"Why can't I learn to keep my big mouth shut? Just count my fucking blessings?" Anna threw herself into a kitchen chair.

"Stop it, stop it. You're hungry." Emily was already pulling open the cupboard doors. "You need to eat."

That evening, the usual emergency-vehicle sirens seemed especially frequent and jarringly loud; the wind blew so hard that it whistled through all the old house's cracks. Tornado season was upon them again; possibly they'd end up in the basement tonight.

Their three cell phones lay on the scarred kitchen table while Emily microwaved leftovers for Henry and Anna. She herself had taken a Valium.

It was Anna who noticed the wall calendar. "Today is Friday the thirteenth!" she wailed.

"Kay-Kay doesn't know that," Emily said. "She loses track of what month it is, let alone the date."

"I probably should have seen my patients today," Henry said reflectively, a napkin tucked like a bib into his collar. "Some of them are surely superstitious." He had stopped at the police station while he was driving around and ascertained that there'd been no accidents involving a gold Celica, no ambulance summons for a teen-ager and a toddler. His oldest daughter's husband, Buzz, was a cop; he'd promised to keep an eye out. "The desk sergeant asked if I wanted to report a kidnapping," Henry told Emily and Anna. "I mean, really." He rocked his head in disbelief; he'd never grown accustomed to thinking of Kay-Kay as a criminal, even when she'd been arrested and charged, found guilty and made to pay--this despite the fact that he made his living hearing how people were routinely failed by their loved ones. At the office, he used the when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife approach, asking not if but how often his patients fell short. With his daughter, however, he was as blustering and dumbfounded as a sitcom stereotype, a dad handicapped by blind love.

Tonight, Henry kept positing the same fuzzy scenario. "She's doing something for somebody," he said. "Somebody in crisis, who called her on her way to school. And then it was more complicated than she thought--it snowballed."

"If somebody lured Kay-Kay with a phone call," Emily said, "it wasn't about helping someone."

"But why take Cherry Sue?" Anna asked. "Why run away with a two-year-old? I'm always trying to run away from her."

"Kay-Kay would never let anything happen to Cherry Sue," Henry assured his sister-in-law.

"Not on purpose," Emily amended.

Henry gave his wife the familiar disappointed look. "Please, Em," he said, not wanting to believe her heartless.

"I didn't mean what I said about running away from Cherry Sue," Anna said pleadingly. "She's a lot of work, but she's good company. Much better company than her dad." Nobody disagreed with her.

The house phone rang, and Emily answered, then held it up so that they could all listen to the high-school-attendance-office recording letting them know that their "son or daughter missed one or more classes today."

"Oh, fuck you," they chimed in unison while the voice went on in its flat scolding way about what steps should be taken next. They'd heard it many, many times before. Kay-Kay's trouble, however often it had involved officials--the rule-makers and the rule-enforcers--had never been solved by them.

The mudroom door slammed open but yielded only Wesley, the ex. "Find her?" he asked. He wore his dirty garage coveralls with his name on the pocket, long-sleeved because his boss couldn't abide tattoos. "I drove by Nana's, just to see if her car was there, but it wasn't …" Wesley trailed off. "It smells good in here."

Emily offered him food, but he declined, gesturing toward the driveway, where the new girlfriend, Lucy, was smoking a cigarette.

"I'll stop by the hookah bar," he volunteered. "And maybe Java the Hut. I've got my cell."

"Good man," Henry said.

"Thanks, Wes," Emily said, smiling wanly at him. She'd always thought he was too nice for the likes of Kay-Kay, who, Emily believed, required a little wickedness.

"WHERE R U??" Anna text-messaged Ian at midnight. It embarrassed her not to know where her husband was, not to know for sure that he wasn't somehow involved in the girls' disappearance. Her mother had labelled him a hoodlum years ago; as a teen-ager, he'd stolen dogs in order to claim the rewards. Anna herself had collected the cash, since she looked more like a savior than Ian. Another time, he'd shown her how easy it was to break into homes, summoning a locksmith and waltzing right into the neighbors' house. Ian had handed down to Kay-Kay his black shirt with a neon-yellow "SECURITY" emblazoned on the back. In it, you could go anywhere, do anything.

"Looking for girls," he texted back. Anna knew that this was true--but which girls?

She glanced up to find her big sister glaring at her, giving her an order. "You should sleep." Pregnancy was insistent that way. This new baby, no bigger than a plum, was overruling her ability to stay alert on behalf of her other baby. She left her phone with Emily, knowing that its ring might not rouse her.

Emily sent Henry to bed, too. He kissed her cheek, leaving her on the couch, where, every hour, she dialled Kay-Kay's number.

At four-thirty, her daughter finally responded. A couple of lines of text appeared: "We r fine Dont worry! Luv u."

The message proved that Kay-Kay was in possession of her phone, her wits, and her cousin. Nevertheless, Emily began to cry, and, of course, this was when Ian arrived home, sneaking in like a thief.

"What?" he said, alarmed.

"She called," Emily said. "They're fine, she says."

He smelled of a bar. She wanted to kill him--for being who he was and not someone else, for catching her in tears. He had never liked her, not even when he was a child. Always he'd preferred Anna; always he'd chosen Anna over Emily. Now he was beholden to Emily, her unhappy house guest. He blinked his heavy-lidded eyes. "A couple of people have seen her today," he said, dropping into the easy chair.

"Really?"

"They think so. Cherry Sue is hard to miss, specially with that cast on her arm. They had breakfast at the I-Hop by Nana's, then around noon they were out busking with a guitar in Old Town."

"Where have you been?"

"Everywhere."

"Buzz knows to look for her."

"Buzz?"

"Henry's son-in-law, the cop."

Ian scowled now; Emily thought she could read his mind: What good was a cop to them? Hadn't Ian himself supplied the most useful information yet?

"I talked to her earlier," he said, rising.

"What?"

"She said that we really upset her last night. She's feeling disappointed in all of us, you and me and Anna and Henry, all of us. She said she--"

"She called you?"

His mouth snapped shut, and Emily knew that he wouldn't open it again. Whatever, bitch. Fuming, she listened as he made his way up the stairs and down the hall to the room that he and Anna shared.

On Saturday, the sky was murky, churning with a wind that seemed to want to tear the roof from the house. Henry called Buzz to confirm that nothing bad had happened overnight on the police radio band. Emily made herself turn Kay-Kay's room upside down, page through her journal, sniff at her jewelry box, open her closet and drawers and CD cases. But Emily knew that if Kay-Kay wanted to hide something these days it would be in her car, in the trunk she could lock.

"What else did she say to Ian?" Emily finally asked Anna. Pride had prevented her from asking him. Pride, and the fear that he would tell her that it was none of her fucking business. Like a teen-ager, he had the capacity to shame you--even when you knew he was in the wrong.

"She said that we were terrible role models." Anna was making bread, keeping busy. She leaked a tear or two into the dough, continuing to knead.

"Terrible role models?" Emily and Henry said together. Henry was making a "Missing" poster, with photographs--Cherry Sue in nothing but a diaper, Kay-Kay still sporting braces. He'd had to find a photo where her hair was its natural color, not the coal-black she'd dyed it until last Christmas.

"That's what Ian said she said." Anna wasn't sure that she believed her husband. It would be just like him to try to take advantage of the situation to punish his wife and her family.

"I was telling stories about my patients," Henry said, chastened. "About the stalker, and a few of my chem-deps--"

"You never said any names," Anna assured him. "You're always really careful to protect privacy."

"Still, I shouldn't have been talking about them."

"I'm sure that wasn't it."

Emily sat across from Henry at the table, staring into her coffee as she tried to reconstruct the evening; she was prepared to take responsibility. But for what, exactly? For having been too drunk to remember, she supposed. She could recall Ian making them all laugh: the cop pulling over the drunks on the Yellow Brick Road, the Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, even that wacky dwarf, representative of the Lollipop Guild. And round-heeled, blasted Judy Garland, in her earnest full-throated way, inviting the officer for a romp in the poppy field. It had seemed like a good evening, Kay-Kay joining them for dinner, sticking around as the hour grew late, rocking Cherry Sue on her hip, helping Anna fix snacks, changing the CD when Ian complained about Henry's music. Emily had the impression that they had been trying to please the teen-ager, all four of the adults staging an impromptu production called "Life Is Worth Living," right here at this very table.

What they had learned about Kay-Kay, during the past few years, was that she truly could not see the point, that she did not care whether she lived or died. And, if she did not care, what was to stop her from following whatever impulse seized her? Sleep with a stranger? Why not? Inject an unknown drug? O.K. Hitchhike, wander the streets, invite outlaws into her life and hallucinations into her head--all of it without regard for what her family kept calling "the consequences," a future with her in it. They all agreed that it was Cherry Sue who'd saved her, Cherry Sue who'd been able to light what otherwise seemed a dark void--by loving Kay-Kay as passionately as she did, by assigning Kay-Kay special status as queen of her heart. Her name had been the second one Cherry Sue said, right after Mama; when she finally learned to walk, it was Kay-Kay's arms she aimed for and fell into.

"What do you think?" Henry asked now, holding up his poster. He put himself into motion without waiting for an answer. He would photocopy it, and then drive around posting it: in Old Town, on Douglas, by East and the other high schools, at Wal-Marts and gas stations and bars and grocery stores and truck stops and at both of the big malls. "I'll have my cell," he assured Emily, patting his pocket.

"Absolutely futile," Emily told Anna when he was gone.

They watched through the window as branches flailed in the wind above the trampoline, Ian's sole contribution to the household. He had brought it home the same way he did all his dubious belongings, with the implicit instruction that no one ask questions.

The trampoline vibrated, like a living thing. When it was first set up, Cherry Sue and Kay-Kay had climbed right on and begun to bounce together, holding hands. They danced on it to Kay-Kay's boom-box music; they loped around its rubber surface singing about the Muffin Man; they lay upon it in the dark, after it had absorbed the sun all day, watching as the stars popped on.

Emily hadn't wanted to accept the trampoline, not because it came from Ian but because she had foreseen the broken limb or crushed skull. Somebody would be made to pay, she knew. Some bone would have to be offered up. In the end, the sacrifice was Cherry Sue's, her little left wrist. Off to the E.R. they'd raced, the two-year-old sobbing into Kay-Kay's neck while Emily weaved through traffic, Anna riding shotgun, crying uselessly. Emily had met her daughter's eyes in the rearview mirror, a complicit glance between them, the levelheaded ones. Emily had liked that moment.

Now, with her sister flour-dusted and sad before her, Emily recalled another piece of Thursday evening's conversation. This had concerned their childhood. When they were young, and shared a bedroom, it had been Emily's habit to lie on the bunk above Anna and cross-examine her about her imaginary friend. Every night, the same conversation: "Tell me what she looks like," Emily would insist.

"No."

"What's she doing right now?"

"I'm not telling."

Night after night Emily wheedled, by turns threatening and pleading. She was a bully and she had to win. Finally, she'd pledged, "If you tell me her name, I'll name my first child after her." This promise she'd made at age nine. Down below, a long silence came from her four-year-old sister.

And then Anna had said, "Her name is Kay-Kay."

"That's why you named me Kay-Kay?" Kay-Kay had asked, Thursday night.

"You knew that already," Emily said, tilting her empty wineglass once more into her mouth, not wanting to open a third bottle.

"I did not."

"I didn't, either," Anna claimed.

"I've told you both, a thousand times." The thing about being Anna's sister was that, by the time Emily made good on her end of the deal, Anna had forgotten it was owed--was totally nonplussed over the telephone when Emily called blissfully from the delivery room. But Anna had been a scornful teen-ager herself then, repulsed by her sister's marriage to a man practically their father's age.

That had been a long time ago. Now Anna knew all about the tender sentiment attached to babies and their names. When she was pregnant herself, she'd agreed to the name that Ian chose; at that point, she had wanted him to stick around. "Cherry Sue," he'd declared. "Just like my first Z car, may she R.I.P."

"I don't even remember having an imaginary friend," Anna said to Emily now, as if she, too, had been trying to reconstruct Thursday night. "Maybe I already knew that the imaginary ones worked out better than the real ones?"

Ian entered the kitchen. "You got a problem with reality?" he said to Anna.

On the table, one of the cells rang with Kay-Kay's awful tone. It was Anna's, a text message: "How much Ch Sue weigh?"

"Why is she asking me this?" Anna cried.

"What the fuck?" Ian said.

Emily took only a moment to process the request. "She's giving her Tylenol," she deduced. "She wants to get the right dose."

"I don't know how much Cherry Sue weighs!" Anna burst into tears.

Ian said, "What could it be, like forty?" He was making fists, flexing his elbows as if hefting barbells.

"Twenty-five," Emily instructed. She remembered from the E.R., when the bone had been set. "Let me text her back."

"Thanp" was Kay-Kay's reply.

Saturday night was a repeat of Friday night, with the actors now sick of their roles, stuck in the production. Ian had not come home, and Anna's new baby was urging her to bed. Henry had developed the dark circles beneath his eyes that indicated that a migraine was coming, and Emily was furious at the helpless way he looked out from their depths. "A hundred posters," he'd said, accounting for his exhaustion. There was a fleet of pill bottles on his night table, the place where his age was most evident. "Go to bed," she snapped. "I'll stay here with the phones."

At 2 A.M., Wesley called. There was wind and static on his end. He was outside a party from which he had been banished, but he thought that Kay-Kay might be there. "Lucy needs to chill," he explained, so he was going to drive her home, but he gave Emily the address.

It took Emily two seconds to decide to call Ian instead of waking either of the others; as usual, he took the call, albeit unhappily. "Yeah?" he said. He, too, was standing outside a party. He smelled of bonfire when he picked Emily up ten minutes later.

"This is a weird address," he noted. "You sure she'd be here?"

"No," Emily said. The address, it turned out, was a house in a new subdivision, not yet finished, with a baby-blue Porta-Potty tilting in the front yard, stakes and PVC pipes strewn about, the only lights coming from within the giant structure itself.

To Ian's credit, he performed beautifully as party crasher. He nodded as they entered the massive front door, murmuring a few "How's it going's as they pushed through the crowded rooms, Emily following in his wake. The place was cavernous, echoing, warmed by body heat, smelling of sawdust. Men with stringed instruments played folk music in a corner. The people milling around, holding plastic cups and cigarettes, were older than Kay-Kay by a decade or more. Many wore cowboy hats; a yard-long sheet cake rested on a set of sawhorses.

Ian said, "This isn't a party, it's a hoedown."

"I'm looking for Kay-Kay," Emily said hopefully to the man tapping the keg in the kitchen.

"Hey, yeah," he said. "Where is that chica?" Everyone recognized the name and nodded, smiling fondly, but no one had seen her. Ian accepted a plastic cup of beer, then grimaced as he drank.

"I was picturing teen-agers," Emily confided to him. Some bit of Kansas miscreance, a meth lab maybe.

"You were picturing a big-ass opium den of iniquity," Ian scoffed. "I guess I was, too."

Emily canvassed the first floor, just to make sure, and then headed upstairs, carefully, since there was not yet a rail. Here were the future bedrooms, five of them, each white, and blank, vacant bathrooms, the smell of new carpet still in rolls. Out the windows, other hulking houses, dark like quiet ships. Was it just fatigue that made everything seem strange to her? she wondered. She dialled Wesley. "Where did you think she might be, exactly?"

"I couldn't get to the upstairs."

"I'm there. It's totally empty."

"Huh. Hang on, Emily." Wesley was talking to somebody on his end. "I'm at St. Francis," he said apologetically. "Lucy may have O.D.'d."

"May have?"

"She turned blue. Now she looks better--her mom says she's hypoglycemic, so sometimes that happens--but we're already here …" he trailed off, sighing. Once again at the hospital: he'd performed a similar duty on Kay-Kay's behalf, not that long ago. ("If one is good," Kay-Kay had explained, "why wouldn't two be better?") "I'm sorry," Wesley said. "I thought Kay-Kay might have been staying at that place. She knows some of the guys working on it. I gotta go, Emily. We're up."

"Good luck, Wes," she said.

Emily went back downstairs to find Ian accepting a second beer from the man in the kitchen. "Coors?" he asked Emily. "Cake?"

"No, thanks. I was hoping somebody had seen my daughter."

"They're not here," Ian said, downing his beer in one wincing swallow.

"Thanks for coming!" a few people called as they exited.

In the car, Ian snorted. "Yee-haw." Then he grabbed his thrumming phone. "I'll drop you off," he said, studying its screen.

Anna, in her dream that night, birthed an apple. A green apple. The same green as Cherry Sue's cast. In her last dream, she'd had a small black monkey, his chattering mouth full of teeth, his hair greasy. In another, she'd produced kittens, a litter of three, and one had died, just quit breathing right before her eyes. She wondered sometimes what her brother-in-law, the professional interpreter of dreams, would say about hers, what he would know about her if he heard what went on in her sleeping head.

Tonight the tornado warning siren swooped into Anna's dream but didn't wake her; it was Emily who pulled her to her feet and led her down into the basement, where the three of them leaned against each other on the moldering couch, waiting for the all clear.

Sarah, Henry's oldest daughter and Buzz's wife, arrived Sunday morning with the sun. Heavy, stoic Sarah with the hairdo, holding a hot casserole before her. Besides the oven mitts, she was dressed for church. Her greeting was a list of ingredients: egg, sausage, hash browns, cheese. "And cream-of-mushroom soup," she finished. Sarah always wore a sorrowful expression in her father's house, as if she saw all of its inhabitants headed in that handbasket toward Hell. At first, Emily had reciprocated, pitying Sarah back. Later, when Kay-Kay had gone wild, she simply refused to make eye contact.

The sky was blue, the air still. Emily began thanking her stepdaughter perfunctorily. At this, Sarah gazed demurely out the kitchen window, saddened but not surprised at what had befallen this group of savages. Then her brow furrowed. Out there on the trampoline slept the two missing girls, plus someone else. You could see the blond heads tipped together, little Cherry Sue's neon-green cast on top of the tarpaulin covering them. "Thank you, Jesus," Sarah murmured, pointing. "There they are," she said.

"Ian said you were upset by us Thursday night."

"Why did he say that?"

Emily glared at her brother-in-law, who glared back. Whatever, bitch. "You weren't?"

"I may have been." Kay-Kay shrugged. She had the air of someone to whom blame could not be attached, nor shame or repentance, either. "It's temporary," she'd said of the rainbow tattoo on her shoulder, before Emily could ask. Cherry Sue had a matching one on her thigh.

Ian said, "I thought you were on the run from the Man."

Kay-Kay scoffed. "That's you, not me. Why weren't you all worried about poor Nana?"

The third person sleeping on the trampoline had been Anna and Emily's mother, also missing these past two days. She, and her little dirty-white dog, unmissed by her children. This was unforgivable, according to Kay-Kay, though she was clearly also bemused.

"I thought you'd been carjacked," Henry confessed, wiping his eyes. "I thought you'd picked up hitchhikers and got stolen, a good deed gone bad." He kept laying his hand on Kay-Kay's shoulder, as if never to let her leave home again. Kay-Kay studied the "Missing" poster. "I'll have to go take those down," he said.

Kay-Kay nodded. "I'll help."

Why weren't they angrier? Emily wondered. Why had the girls' return inspired so little in her and Anna and Henry and Ian besides relief? What was wrong with them that this was their reaction--this sense of gratitude, as if Kay-Kay had performed a rescue rather than the reverse? Cherry Sue nuzzled at Anna's neck, absolutely fine, a faint sunburn on the bridge of her nose and her cheeks as if from healthy recreation.

"You never once dialled Nana's cell," Kay-Kay said. "We checked."

"I wasn't thinking of her," Emily admitted. "You O.K., Mom?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Nana sat at the table with her dog in her lap, no worse for wear, unkempt in her usual way. She had enjoyed her trip with the girls. Medicine Lodge, a hundred miles southwest, was her home town. She hadn't visited there in she didn't know how long. "We stood in the back yard of the old farmhouse."

"That's right, Nana. For our picture."

"That fellow with the cart full of cans took it for us."

"You gave him a dollar."

"And then Nipper ran off after a rabbit."

"That's right."

Nana looked relieved, as always, to have her memory confirmed. She wore her standard floral muumuu; her hair hardly existed anymore, a few white tufts. Her fingers twitched in her pet's fur, which was filled with twigs and burrs and mulberry fluff. She had not panicked when picked up by her granddaughter on Friday morning; for all she knew, it was a plan they'd made. "They've always had the best pie at the Toot Sweet," she recalled. "And we slept in a motel." Moe-tel.

"I sleep with Kay-Kay," Cherry Sue said, smiling slyly.

"You drove to Medicine Lodge and checked into a motel?" Ian asked skeptically.

"Nana wanted to visit the old homestead," Kay-Kay said. "It's pretty out there. Some places, you can't even get phone reception."

Sarah had served everyone a glass of milk, though only Cherry Sue ever drank the stuff. As soon as she'd seen the girls and their grandmother, Sarah had phoned Buzz to say that she would be missing church today. Called to a higher need, she'd tucked a dish towel into her waistband and begun spooning out her eggy casserole while the family sat obediently. The blandness of the offering went with the blandness of the adventure being described. From the old woman and the baby they learned that there'd been burgers along with the pie, Tylenol for teething, television, some jumping on the beds, games of go fish, a walk around Nana's old land and ruined house, the three of them holding hands, moving slowly, trailed by Nana's little dog, trotting along leashless.

Emily listened, marvelling, exhausted: the most dramatic things, it seemed, had been happening here at home, in their heads. They had woken this morning from an experience that was precisely like a nightmare--Technicolor catastrophes, figments of imagination, suspicion, now totally erased in the light of an ordinary day. There hadn't even been storms in Medicine Lodge, the bad weather passing just north of there. "We should call Wesley," she noted absently. He'd no doubt had a bad dream or two himself.

"I texted him," Kay-Kay said. "He's still at St. Francis with the freak."

"Nipper's a bad dog," Cherry Sue reported, pulling out her pacifier." You a bad dog," she sang at the animal.

"Nipper tends to run away," Nana said, plucking at his nasty fur. "Just to scare us silly. Oh, we called and called, till we were blue in the face." But then she wasn't certain and turned uneasily to Kay-Kay.

"Hours, Nana," Kay-Kay assured her. Both Emily and Anna waited for the girl to make a meaningful ironic comment, to let them know that she, too, had run away for the thrill of scaring some people silly, of taking their concern out for one last whirl. But Kay-Kay went back to forking up the sausage-and-egg casserole, drinking milk. Apparently, she'd forsaken her decade-long vegetarianism. On the back of the hand holding the fork was a seven-leafed marijuana plant she'd carved into it in ninth grade, a faint, fading white. She'd removed the metal stud from her tongue and the ring from her lip, so silverware went in and out without clinking. If she wasn't careful, Emily and Anna thought at the same time, she would run to fat, like Henry's other daughters.

She hadn't gone anywhere alarming. She hadn't done anything dangerous. Could they be disappointed?

"Oh, hey, check out the picture," Kay-Kay said, wiping her mouth and flipping open her phone. She found the image.

Around the table went the cell phone, everyone squinting at the mini-picture of Nana, Kay-Kay, Cherry Sue, and Nipper. They stood beside a broken storm-cellar door, above them the bleached Kansas sky. Three big grins, and Nipper with his nose in the air, preparing to run. "I'm gonna get a print made for you, Nana," Kay-Kay told her grandmother. She took back her phone and gazed into its tiny depths. "In black-and-white, don't you think? Wouldn't that be best?"

TheNewsBoy

Because it's probably true

1: Under no circumstances may two men share an umbrella.
2: It is ok for a man to cry ONLY under the following circumstances:
a. When a heroic dog dies to save its master.
b. The moment Angelina Jolie starts unbuttoning her blouse.
c. After wrecking your boss' car.
d. One hour, 12 minutes, 37seconds into "The Crying Game".
e. When she is using her teeth.
3: Any man who brings a camera to a bachelor party maybe legally killed and eaten by his buddies.
4: Unless he murdered someone in your family, you must bail a friend out of jail within 12 hours.
5: If you've known a guy for more than 24 hours, his sister is off limits forever unless you actually marry her.
6: Moaning about the brand of free beer in a buddy's fridge is forbidden. However complain at will if the temperature is unsuitable.
7: No man shall ever be required to buy a birthday present for another man. In fact, even remembering your buddy's birthday is strictly optional.
8: On a road trip, the strongest bladder determines pit stops, not the weakest.
9: When stumbling upon other guys watching a sporting event, you may ask the score of the game in progress, but you may never ask who's playing.
10: You may flatulate in front of a woman only after you have brought her to climax. If you trap her head under the covers for the purpose of flatulent entertainment, she's officially your girlfriend.
11: It is permissible to drink a fruity alcohol drink only when you're sunning on a tropical beach... and it's delivered by a topless model and only when it's free.
12: Only in situations of moral and/or physical peril are you allowed to kick another guy in the nuts.
13: Unless you're in prison, never fight naked.
14: Friends don't let friends wear speedos. Ever. Issue closed.
15: If a man's fly is down, that's his problem, you didn't see anything.
16: Women who claim they "love to watch sports" must be treated as spies until they demonstrate knowledge of the game and the ability to drink as much as the other sports watchers.
17: A man in the company of a hot, suggestively dressed woman must remain sober enough to fight.
18: Never hesitate to reach for the last beer or the last slice of pizza, but not both, that's just greedy.
19: If you compliment a guy on his six-pack, you'd better be talking about his choice of beer.
20: Never join your girlfriend or wife in discussing a friend of yours, except if she's withholding sex pending your response.
21: Phrases that may NOT be uttered to another man while lifting weights: Yeah Baby! Push it! C'mon, give me one more! Harder! Another set and we can hit the showers!
22: Never talk to a man in a bathroom unless you are on equal footing: i.e. Both urinating, both waiting in line, etc. For all other situations, an almost imperceptible nod is all the conversation you need.
23: Never allow a telephone conversation with a woman to go on longer than you are able to have sex with her. Keep a stopwatch by the phone. Hang up if necessary.
24: The morning after you and a girl who was formerly" just a friend" have carnal drunken monkey sex, the fact that you're feeling weird and guilty is no reason for you not to nail each other again before the discussion about what a big mistake it was occurs.
25: It is acceptable for you to drive her car. It is not acceptable for her to drive yours.
26: Thou shall not buy a car in the colors of brown, pink, lime green, orange or sky blue.
27: The girl who replies to the question "What do you want for Christmas?" with "If you loved me, you'd know what I want!" gets an Xbox. End of story.
28: There is no reason for guys to watch Ice Skating or Men's Gymnastics. Ever.