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“How ’bout a game of checkers?” Granddad asked him.

Otis told him maybe later. He got up and walked out of the room and through the empty house—everyone was gone these days—out the back door and down to his shed. There was a full moon, and the sky was unusually clear, smattered with stars. He got his Geiger counter from the shed, turned it on, and began sweeping it around the backyard. The dial on the Geiger counter glowed in the dark, and Otis saw that the radiation levels in the yard were now up to the top of the dial, just like in the shed. But all this meant was that if he stood there beside the reactor for fifteen minutes he’d be absorbing 50 milligrams of radiation. A dental X-ray was equal to 150 milligrams, and that was way safe! The only thing was that this particular Geiger counter didn’t measure levels higher than 50. It was a piece of crap. So he actually had no idea of the true level being emitted.

His insufficient instrument registered top of the dial radioactivity three houses away.

There was always the Marines. A good option, if it weren’t for the Iraq war.

Anne Frank was her go-to girl. Suzi stayed in her room as much as they’d let her, rereading Anne Frank’s diary for the millionth time so that she wouldn’t feel sorry for herself. After all, all that had happened to Suzi was that 1. She’d hurt her knee playing soccer and had missed Olympic soccer camp; and 2. She’d given a grown man a blow job. Big deal. It wasn’t like he’d raped her or she’d been forced to hide in an attic for years. And she hadn’t done it to protect Ava, as she’d told her mother. That idea had occurred to her only after the fact—that she’d been protecting Ava.

She was glad that it had happened to her and not to Ava, because Ava had already had enough counseling and attention and hand-wringing focused on her. Now it was Suzi’s turn. She’d always thought of Ava as the weaker one of the two of them, but she was thinking differently now. Now she admired the way Ava had told Buff to buzz off. Ava had had no problem telling Buff to forget it. That boded well for Ava in the future, she’d heard her mother saying to her father one night in the kitchen. (This was another good side effect of the “crisis”—her father was no longer working late every night.) But what did her behavior say about her future?

The fact that her parents thought that Buff had forced her to do it, or talked her into doing it, made Suzi feel bad, because, actually, as she’d told Nance and Ava, it wasn’t that way at all. She’d seen an opportunity, and she’d taken it.

Suzi’d decided not to try and correct her parents’ version of the events, because she had the feeling that they would see Suzi as the innocent party no matter what. And she didn’t want them to think she was some kind of oversexed slut. She’d thought Buff was attractive, and the truth was that she was just curious to see how far he’d go, and what it would be like with an experienced guy. She was curious! Did that make her a slut? Were sluts just curious? Slut wasn’t a word she’d ever imagined applying to herself, but then most sluts probably didn’t think of themselves that way either. She hadn’t wanted to do anything much with her ex-boyfriend Davis or any boys her own age. They were so goofy and clueless and easily embarrassed and self-centered and insensitive and would’ve blabbed all over school. Buff never would’ve told a soul. It was her fault it had all come out in the open. If only she hadn’t told Ava. But she had to tell somebody besides Nance, who’d been horrified but had tried to hide it. And Ava was the only person she knew who wouldn’t judge her, who would listen and ask for details, but in a nonjudgmental way. She hadn’t told Ava the whole truth, though. She hadn’t taken off her clothes and posed for Buff. The blow job was the only thing that actually happened.

And now four other girls from the church, girls she didn’t know, had come forward and told on Buff. He did this all this time, apparently, which made Suzi feel as special as a