“No way. And no one had any idea?”

Parker shook his head. “Not a clue. I only met him once or twice, but he seemed normal. Like someone who should be busy coaching soccer and complaining about mortgage rates.”

“Creepy,” I say. Years ago, I remember learning about the mark of Cain in Sunday school and thinking that it wasn’t such a bad idea. How convenient if you could see what was wrong with people right away, if they wore their sicknesses and crimes on their skin like tattoos.

“Very creepy,” he agrees.

We don’t talk about the accident, or Dara, or about the past at all. And suddenly it’s three o’clock and the first shift of my new job is over, and it didn’t totally suck.

Parker walks me back to the office, where Mr. Wilcox and a pretty, dark-skinned woman I assume is Donna, the woman who hoards all the Cokes, are arguing about additional security for the anniversary party, in the good-natured, easy tones of people who have spent years arguing without ever essentially disagreeing. Mr. Wilcox breaks off long enough to give me another hearty slap on the back.

“Nick? You enjoy your first day? Of course you did! Best place in the world. See you tomorrow, bright and early!”

I retrieve my backpack. When I reemerge into the sunshine, Parker is waiting for me. He has changed shirts, and his red uniform is balled up under one arm. He smells like soap and new leather.

“I’m glad we get to work together,” I blurt as we walk into the parking lot, still crowded with cars and coach buses. FanLand is open until 10:00 p.m., and Parker has told me that the night crowd is totally different: younger, rowdier, more unpredictable. Once, he told me, he caught two people having sex on the Ferris wheel; another time he found a girl snorting coke off a sink in one of the men’s toilets. “I’m not sure I could handle Wilcox all by myself,” I add quickly, because Parker is looking at me strangely.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m glad, too.” He tosses his keys a few inches and catches them in his palm. “So you want a ride home? I think the Chariot’s missed you.”

Seeing his car, so familiar, so him, I have a quick flash of memory, like an explosion in my brain: the windshield fogged up, patterned with rain and body heat; Parker’s guilty face; and Dara’s eyes, cold and hard, gloating, like the eyes of a stranger.

“That’s all right,” I say quickly.

“You sure?” He pops open the driver’s-side door.

“I have Dara’s car,” I say quickly. The words come out before I can think about them.

“You do?” Parker seems surprised. I’m grateful the lot is crowded, so my lie isn’t immediately obvious. “All right, then. Well . . . I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I say, willing away another image of that night, of the way it felt to know, deep down, that everything had changed; that nothing would ever be the same between the three of us again. “See you.”

I’ve already started to turn away—lingering, now, so that Parker won’t see that I’m headed toward the bus stop, when he calls me back.

“Look,” he says, all in a rush. “There’s a party at the Drink tonight. You should come. It’ll be super low-key,” he goes on. “Like twenty people, max. But bring whoever you want.” He says the last part in a funny voice, half-strangled. I wonder whether it’s a hint, and he’s asking me to bring Dara along. Then I hate myself for having to wonder it. Before they hooked up, there was never any weirdness between us.

One more thing that Dara ruined because she felt like it, because she had an itch, an urge, a whim. He’s so fuckable, I remember her saying one morning, out of the blue, when we’d all gone across the street to Upper Reaches Park to watch his Ultimate Frisbee game. Did you ever notice that he’s undeniably fuckable? As we were watching him run across the ball field, chasing the bright red disk of the Frisbee, arm outstretched—the same boy-body-arm I’d known my whole life was transformed, in an instant, by Dara’s words.

And I remember looking at her and thinking that she, too, looked like a stranger, with her hair (blond and purple, then) and the thick dusting of charcoal eye shadow on her lids, lips red and exaggerated with pencil, legs stretched out for miles underneath her short-shorts. How could my Dara, Little Egg, Nosebutton, who used to wrap her arms around my shoulders and stand on my toes so we could pretend to be one person as we staggered around the living room, have turned into someone who used the word fuckable, someone I barely knew, someone I feared, even?

“It’ll be just like old times,” Parker says, and I feel a hard ache in my chest, a desperate desire for something lost long ago.

Everyone knows you can’t go back.

“Yeah, maybe. I’ll let you know,” I say, which I won’t.

I watch him get into his car and drive off, waving, smiling big behind the glare, and pretend to be fumbling for keys in my bag. Then I walk across the parking lot to wait for the bus.

BEFORE

FEBRUARY 9

Nick

“Ow.” I open my eyes, blinking furiously. Dara’s face, from this angle, is as big as the moon, if the moon were painted in crazy colors: coal-black eye shadow, silver liner, a big red mouth like a smear of hot lava. “You keep poking me.”

“You keep moving. Close your eyes.” She grabs my chin and blows, gently, on my eyelids. Her breath smells like vanilla Stoli. “There. You’re done. See?” I stand up from the toilet, where she’s installed me, and join her at the mirror. “Now we look like twins,” she says happily, putting her head on my shoulder.