"Salty dogs don't use words like abstinence ," I corrected him. "They would say laying off the sauce. "

He gave me a dark look and very slowly popped his neck. Then he looked up and addressed the circle with his honeyed sarcasm. "Hey, everyone, look who's here! It's Zoey!"

"Zoooooooeeeeeeeeyyyyyy," the men cheered. They had heard about me. Only Doug's dad stayed silent, eyeing me and exhaling cigarette smoke.

"Hello," I called back, suddenly aware I was wearing very short gym shorts and a long-sleeve V-neck T-shirt that showed my cleavage. This was what I wore after swim practice. Bullying Mike, chasing down Officer Fox, bonding with the chief of police, I hadn't given my clothes a thought. Now I did. I shifted to one side so Doug was in front of me.

"Do you like raw oysters?" he asked me over his shoulder.

"I've never tried one."

Seven of the ten men hailed me at once, offering to shuck me one if I sat beside them. I suppressed the urge to take another step backward.

"Y are too, too kind," Doug told the men. "Zoey and I have some business to take care of--"

Two wolf whistles.

"Frank, Barry, thanks for making Zoey feel comfortable and welcome," Doug said. "Zoey and I will have a t�te-�-t�te."

Two more men grumbled, "Teat-a-what?" as they found two folding chairs and dragged them behind the circle for us. They also left a bucket of oysters.

I sank with relief onto one of the chairs. "This property must be worth millions of dollars," I whispered as I reached up to steady Doug.

"Easily," he agreed, gripping me hard for balance. He sat down.

"Couldn't your dad get a loan on it to send you to college?"

"Oh, God! My dad doesn't own this." He dropped his crutches to one side, picked up a glove and a dagger the men had dropped, and pried an oyster open with a flick. "He freeloads. He got in good with an admiral while he was in the navy. He's squatting in this house until the admiral retires and builds on the property." Doug tossed the top shell aside. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dark, I saw the driveway was paved with these shells.

"My dad operates the admiral's fishing boat," Doug went on, "and the admiral gets the profit from the charters. See, that's why my dad wants me to go into the navy, to find an admiral of my own to freeload off. That's how Foxes spell success." Expertly he slid the knife between shell and oyster with one smooth motion. He handed the bounty to me.

Several of the men in the circle turned around to watch me. I stared down at the glistening oyster, psyching myself up. I'd seen people do this a million times. My dad sucked down raw oysters by the bushel.

Doug's elbow was on his good knee, chin in his hand, watching me. "Y don't have to."

I glared at him, then dumped the oyster down my throat and swallowed swallowed swallowed, trying to keep my tongue out of the way so I wouldn't taste it. It was my bottle of beer, fortifying me for what was coming. I was capable of all things when I was angry.

Several of the men clapped for me.

"Impressive," Doug said. "And you didn't even have the condiments that make oysters go down more easily. Crackers. Tabasco. Lemon. Civilization. Do me a favor."

I swallowed once more to make sure the oyster didn't come back up. "What," I croaked.

"Promise me you will never, ever come over here on Thursday night again. What are you doing here anyway?"

I nodded toward the bucket. "May I have another?"

He raised one eyebrow at me. "Uh-oh. What happened? Is it that bad?"

"I've just been to the police station," I told him. "I found out you were in my car."

Suddenly the men cheered, and Doug hadn't even handed me another oyster yet. A police car ground across the shells paving the causeway and parked behind the Benz. Officer Fox got out and ambled across the clearing. He waved and called to the men as they called to him, but he made a beeline for me and for Doug, who fixed Officer Fox with that laser-stare of his, even through the alcohol.

"Where's your phone?" Officer Fox snapped at Doug.

Doug eased forward, slipped his cell phone out of his back pocket, and handed it to Officer Fox.

Officer Fox peered at it. "It's off, dumbass. I've been trying to call you to warn you she was coming. Why'd you turn your phone off?" He pressed a button and handed the phone back to Doug.

"I didn't want Zoey to call me while I was drunk," Doug said self-righteously, "because that would be embarrassing." He pocketed the phone.

Officer Fox put his hands on his hips. "Y ou're f**king wasted. Y didn't take a Percocet before you drank beer, did you?"

"Come on, Cody, I never do anything foolish." He watched his brother angrily until Officer Fox sauntered over and joined the circle around the fire.

Then Doug plucked another oyster from the bucket and popped it open. "Y I went in the Benz."

es,

I opened my mouth to tell him I meant the Bug and the wreck, not the Benz. I closed my mouth, realizing I needed to know about him going in the Benz too. As always, there was even more going on with Doug than I'd imagined.

"Actually, my brother did it for me," Doug went on. "He used his official police door unlocker hook thing to bust in. Then he took out a fuse to keep the engine from starting. He swore to me it was safe and wouldn't do any permanent damage. He even laughed at me for thinking it might." Doug handed me the oyster.

I slurped it down whole and wiped the juice from my chin with my hand. I thought I'd fortified and collected myself before I spoke, but my words still came out as a splutter. "Y ou--Doug--Y broke into my car ? Y sabotaged my car ?"

ou ou

"Well, I wouldn't use either of those terms when a policeman did it for me. My brother's friend never towed it to his garage to fix it, because there was never anything wrong with it. My brother just put the fuse back. I think they really did drag race it on the way back to your house, but I told you that already." He sucked down an oyster himself.

"But, Doug, why did you mess with my car?" My outraged squeal echoed against the walls of the house, and men turned to stare at me again.

"To stop you from going parking with Brandon." Eyes narrow and vicious, Doug said quietly, "I knew you would."

"All this is news to me," I said. "What I meant was, I got the accident report from the police station. Y were in the Bug when I wrecked."

He blinked.

He shucked me an oyster.

I sucked it down.

"Now," I said, "is there a place we can talk about this without being observed? This whole crew meeting is getting a little--"

"Pedophilic?" he suggested.

"Intense, yes."

With a nod he threw the glove and knife into the bucket, retrieved his crutches, and heaved himself upward very slowly. I walked with him toward the house, so close to him I thought I'd tripped him a few times. I kept him between me and the circle of men.

"Going to take care of business, Doug?" one of them called.

"Barry, shut the f**k up," said Officer Fox. 14 Doug's bedroom was the entire basement level of the house. At a glance I took in the walls of homemade bookshelves, boards stacked on cement blocks and filled with paperbacks, with more books piled on the floor. The walls that weren't lined with books were wallpapered with foreign movie posters. Japanese men and women locked in embrace, Japanese men taking on a ring of warriors and kicking ass.

Doug limped toward his bed against the far wall. "Y want to find out where we were headed in the Bug at two thirty in the morning," he said. "Y were

ou ou just taking me home, in a roundabout way." He eased down on the bed and patted beside him as a seat for me.

"Oh, well then. That explains everything!" I said in his sarcastic tone. I sat on the bed and poked him in the chest, looking straight into his eyes. "Doug, you were in my car at two thirty AM after you called me a spoiled brat at the game. Y told me you loved me, after I told you first. Y tell me what

ou ou happened !"

His green eyes were wide and surprised and serious. He glanced toward the door, visualizing salty dogs listening in. He reached for the stereo beside his bed. Fell off his bed with a thunk and an oof.

"My Lord." I slipped off the bed to sit beside him. "Are you okay?"

He detangled himself from his crutches and sat up. "I've got it." He slid a CD off the teetering stack on the nearest shelf and popped it into the player. Hard rock blasted through the room from speakers in every corner. I felt the bass line in my gut.

He extended his cast in front of him and pulled his good knee up to his chest, then leaned his head toward mine so I could hear him over the music. "Y know how Gabriel always says he's not going to get drunk, so he drives to a party, and then he gets drunk? I knew he would do that." He flattened one

ou hand like a notepad and used the opposite finger like a pen to draw a diagram--not so much for me as for himself. "I left my Jeep at school" (tip of pointer finger) "and drove with Connor to the beach party" (heel of his hand). "When the party was over I could drive Gabriel's Honda to his house, drop him off" (thumb tip), "and then walk to school to get my Jeep" (tip of pointer finger). "At the party, you and I hooked up, so Ian and Connor got Gabriel and his Honda home. But you still had to drive me back to my Jeep at school when we were done."

"When we were done hooking up," I said, nodding as if this made perfect sense, as if my skin weren't tingling and the room weren't spinning. "Tell me how we hooked up."

He shrugged. "Y wanted to leave the party and go parking with Brandon. I talked you out of it."

That was the end of my patience. I leaned forward, grabbed his good thigh with both my hands, and squeezed. "Douglas. Do me a favor and do not shrug again like this is all obvious or doesn't matter so much, because when you shrug it makes me very angry."

I'm not sure whether it was his depthless eyes staring at me, or my hands around his thigh, or our heads so close together that I could make out every black hair in the stubble on his upper lip. But the air vibrated with the energy between us. We were still, yet everything moved. The FSU on his T-shirt quivered as he breathed. The tip of his tongue snaked out to lick his lips.

"I wanted to go parking with Brandon," I prompted him. "Y talked me into going parking with you instead?"

He shook his head no ever so slightly, his eyes never leaving mine. "That just happened. As we were talking."

"But why did you talk me out of parking with Brandon?" I asked. "Brandon is my boyfriend."

The spell broke. Doug collapsed against the bed. "Brandon is your boyfriend, right. Y keep saying `Brandon is my boyfriend,'" he moved his fingers in

ou quote marks, "and it makes as much sense as `I am balancing the planet Pluto on my big toe' or `Kumquats make the best nuclear physicists.'"

I knew he was growing more upset because his gestures grew bigger. The finger quotes had exclamation points attached. Furious as I was at this boy, I smoothed my hands across his thigh, inching farther up. "Okay, okay. Just tell me what happened."

"What happened is, Brandon is cheating on you with Stephanie Wetzel." He clasped both my hands in his big hands, brought them up between us, and shook them. "I don't have to tell you this. Y know in your heart that Brandon's been cheating on you for your entire tumultuous week-and-a-half love affair,

ou but you pretend you don't see it. Y had sex with him once but now you'll stay with him forever just so in your mind it will mean something. He'll get you

ou pregnant--"

"I'm on the pill," I interrupted with my logic.

"I know," Doug said meaningfully. "But he'll get you pregnant anyway because shit happens to you, Zoey, and he'll keep right on cheating on you, and you'll keep right on telling everyone including yourself that he's the love of your life. Y ou'll stay here in town and raise the baby while he's off at FSU partying. When he gets kicked out for his low GPA he'll come crawling back to you and marry you. Why not, if your wife doesn't mind you screwing Stephanie Wetzel?"

When he took a breath to go on, I interjected rationally, "You've made this up. Y realize that, right?"

My pulse quickened and my blood went strangely cold as he looked straight at me again, green eyes focused on me and deadly serious. "I can see the future."

As quickly as he'd zeroed in on me, he was gone again, gesturing widely. "Y ou'll have more kids with him. He'll get the job in town that doesn't require a college degree and pays the most with the least effort expended. Insurance salesman. Something large and blank, just like Brandon. And you'll get a job too. Eventually maybe you'll even leave him. But your chance to do something bright and beautiful, like you--that will be long gone."

He stared at one of his speakers in the corner of his ceiling, as if a camera hung there like in my dad's house. And I stared at the underside of his chin dusted with black stubble, gathering my self-control around me like my comfy swim team sweatshirt so I didn't burst into tears in Doug Fox's bedroom with ten salty dogs outside. "It doesn't sound so bad when all you really want in life anymore is to get your mother home safe and avoid going insane yourself." I hadn't even realized this until I spoke the words out loud.

Doug didn't skip a beat, like he'd known this about me all along. His tirade continued. "And that's exactly why you need to break up with Brandon. Y ou want to handle your problems yourself. Y think you are handling them, but you're not. Y