“Right here,” Macon said cheerfully, taking my pass and handing it over. Joe examined it carefully, taking much longer than he had with Macon’s.

“Y’all drive safe,” Joe said, handing my pass back. “I mean it, Faulkner. ”

“Right,” Macon said. “Thanks.”

Joe grumbled, ambling back to his stool and mini-TV in the guardhouse, and Macon and I pulled out onto the road, free.

“I cannot believe you,” I said as we cruised toward town, playing hooky on a Friday. It was my first time, and everything looked different, brighter and nicer, the world of eight-thirty to three-thirty on a school day, a world I never got to see.

“I told you not to worry,” he said smugly.

“Do you have a whole stack of those passes, or what?” I pulled at the visor and he laughed even as he grabbed my hand, stopping it.

“Just a few,” he said. “Definitely not a stack.”

“You are so bad,” I said, but I was impressed. “He didn’t even hardly look at your pass.”

“He likes me,” he said simply. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“First Street.”

He switched lanes, hitting his turn signal. “What’s on First Street?”

I looked over at him, so cute, and knew I’d have to trust him. We both would. “Scarlett.”

“Okay,” he said easily. And as I looked over, the scenery was whizzing past houses and cars and bright blue sky, on and on. “Lead the way.”

Scarlett was sitting on a bench in front of the clinic with a heavyset woman in a wool sweater and straw hat.

“Hey,” I said as we pulled up beside them. Now, closer, I could see the woman had a little dog in her lap with one of those cone collars on its head to keep it from biting itself. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly, grabbing her purse off the bench. To the woman she said, “Thanks, Mary. Really.”

The woman petted her dog. “You’re a good girl, honey.”

“Thanks,” Scarlett said as I unlocked the door and she slid into the backseat. “I paid her five bucks,” she explained to me. The dog in the woman’s lap looked at us and yawned. To Macon, in a lower voice, Scarlet said, “Go. Now. Please.”

Macon hit the gas and we left Mary behind, pulling out of the shopping center and into traffic. Scarlett settled into the backseat, pulling her hands through her hair, and I waited for her to say something.

After a few stoplights she said quietly, “Thanks for coming. Really.”

“No problem,” Macon said.

“No problem,” I repeated, turning back to look at her, but she was facing the window, staring out at the traffic.

When Macon stopped at the Zip Mart and got out to pump gas, I turned around again. “Hey.”

She looked up. “Hey.”

“So,” I said. I wasn’t sure quite where to start. “What happened?”

“I couldn’t do it,” she blurted out, as if she’d only been waiting, holding her breath, for me to ask. “I tried, Halley, really. I knew all the argurnents-I’m young, I have my whole life ahead of me, what about college-all that. But when I lay down there on that cot and stared at the ceiling, just waiting for them to come do it, I just realized I couldn’t. I mean, sure, nothing is going to be normal for me anymore. But how normal has my life ever been? Growing up with Marion sure wasn’t, losing Michael wasn’t. Nothing ever has been.”

I watched Macon as he stood in line inside, tossing a pack of Red Hots from hand to hand. Two months ago, when Michael died, I hadn’t even known him. “It isn’t going to be easy, at all,” I said. I tried to imagine us with a baby, but I couldn’t picture it, seeing instead just a blur, a vague shape in Scarlett’s arms. Impossible.

“I know.” She sighed, sounding like my mother. “I know everyone will think I’m crazy or even stupid. But I don’t care. This is what I want to do. And I know it’s right. I don’t expect anyone to really understand.”

I looked at my best friend, at Scarlett, the girl who had always led me, sometimes kicking, into the best parts of my life. “Except for me,” I said. “I understand.”

“Except for you,” she repeated, softly, looking up to smile at me. And from that moment, I never questioned her choice again.

We spent the whole day just driving around, eating pizza at one of Macon’s hideouts, looking for some guy he knew for a reason that was never quite clear, and just listening to the radio, killing time. Scarlett called Marion and said she’d taken a cab home. Everything, for now, was taken care of.

Macon dropped us off a few streets over from our houses, so I could pretend I’d taken the bus, then drove off, beeping the horn as he turned out of sight. Scarlett steadied herself and went to wait for Marion, and I walked in the door and found a strange, uneasy silence, as well as my father, who darted out of sight the second he saw me. But not fast enough: Milkshakes. Big Time.

“I’m home,” I called out. The house smelled like lasagna, and I suddenly realized I was starving, which distracted me until my mother stepped out of the kitchen, holding a dishtowel. Her face had taken on that pointy, angular look, a dead giveaway that I was in trouble.

“Hi there,” she said smoothly, folding the towel. “How was school today?”

“Well,” I said, as my father passed by quickly again, into the kitchen, “It was ...”