Lost Boys

7: Crickets

This is what happened with Stevie's second-grade project: He brought home a one-page ditto that listed the requirements, which were not very specific. The end-of-year project had to show "an environment" and the creatures that lived in it. It was due on April 22nd, and it had to include a written report and a "visual depiction."

"Most of the kids are doing posters," said Stevie, "but I don't want to." He had been reading about octopuses, and he wanted to do his project about the undersea environment. And instead of cutting pictures out of magazines and pasting them to posterboard, he got his mom to buy some colored clay, which he shaped into fishes, clams, coral, and an octopus. He arranged them on a cardboard base that DeAnne cut from the side of one of the boxes they had used in the move. Then he wrote his report, typing it himself on Step's word-processing computer and stapling it in the corner.

It was the first thing Stevie had shown any real interest in dur ing his whole time at this school, and DeAnne showed it off to Step with real pride, the night before Stevie took it to school.

"This is incredible," said Step. "You didn't help him?"

"I did nothing. In fact I advised him against doing something so hard. Who knew he could make fish that looked like fish?"

"Not to mention an octopus that looks like an octopus," said Step. "And look at the clam. There's a starfish prying it open!"

"He still never talks about school," said DeAnne. "Not even when I ask. But he did this, so it can't be all bad."

Then came DeAnne's new calling, and she was so involved with preparing her spiritual living lesson that she didn't think about Stevie's project now that it had been turned in.

On the first Monday in May, however, her lesson was over, and as she drove Stevie to school she remembered his project and asked what the teacher thought of it.

"She gave it a C," said Stevie.

"What?" asked DeAnne.

"And it got mooshed."

"It got mooshed! How! Did somebody drop it?"

"No," said Stevie. "They put them all out on display in the media center, and when the other kids walked past it they mooshed it."

"On purpose?" asked DeAnne.

"Yeah," said Stevie.

"How can you be sure? Did you see them do it?"

"Raymond said, 'Tidal wave!' and then after him they wadded it up even more so finally it was just a big mess of clay."

"Where was your teacher when they were doing this? Where was the librarian?"

"Mrs. Jones was there."

"And she didn't do anything?"

"No," said Stevie.

"She must not have seen what they were doing."

"She saw," said Stevie.

"She saw? And she didn't stop them?"

"No," said Stevie.

DeAnne felt sick. No, she thought. Stevie just misunderstood the situation. The teacher hadn't really been watching. She could ne ver have let such a thing happen.

"I'm going in to talk to your teacher," said DeAnne.

"Please no!" said Stevie, urgently.

"This has to be cleared up. There was no way that your project deserved a C."

"Please don't come in!" he pleaded.

"All right," said DeAnne. "But why not?"

"It'll just make things worse if you do," said Stevie.

"Worse?"

But they had just reached the turnaround in front of the school, and Stevie bounded out the door and raced for schoolthe first time she had ever seen him hurry toward class. Somehow it didn't make her feel any better.

There was something seriously wrong here, and not just his moroseness because of the move. Mrs. Jones could not have given that project a C. No teacher could have stood by and let the other kids destroy a child's project, either. It simply couldn't happen.

Well, if she couldn't talk to Mrs. Jones, she could at least talk to the librarian and find out from her what had happened. "Come on, kids, we're going in," said DeAnne.

DeAnne pulled the car into the teachers' parking lot, where a visitor space was open, and within a few minutes she was leading the kids down the hall to the media center. DeAnne supposed that she ought to check in at the office, but the receptionist there was so snotty, and DeAnne was already so upset, that she decided that if she wasn't going to get really furious today she'd better pretend that she didn't realize she needed to stop in at the main desk.

The librarian was a sweet-voiced older lady, and when she smiled DeAnne thought for some reason of the time she had an eye injury and when the bandages were on and she couldn't see, someone laid a cool damp cloth on her forehead. "I'm so glad when parents come by the library," said the librarian.

"Oh, I thought it was a media center now," said DeAnne.

"Well, so it is. We have two video carts and an Apple II computer, so we are a media center, but look at all these books. Wouldn't you call this a library?"

"Yes I would," said DeAnne. "And I like it all the more, knowing that you call it a library, too."

The librarian smiled and patted DeAnne's hand. "Aren't you the sweet one." Then she bent over- not far, because she wasn't very tall- and soberly greeted Robbie and Elizabeth with a hand shake each. "When will you be a student here, young man?"

"I start kindergarten next fall," said Robbie.

"Oh, and I see you have been well taught," she said. "You said kindergarten and not kindy-garden."

Robbie beamed.

The librarian turned back to DeAnne. "Did you just stop by to visit? Or is there something I can help you with?"

"I understand that the second-grade projects were displayed here."

The librarian looked mournful. "We just barely took down the display over the weekend. I'm so sorry you missed it. We're so proud of our second graders."

"It is rather remarkable, to have second- grade projects," said DeAnne. "I've actually never heard of such a thing before. I don't think we even had senior projects in high school when I was there."

"I think it's because our school is only K through 2," said the librarian. "Dr. Mariner wanted our students to mark the children's departure from our school in a special way-something they would remember, perhaps, in time to come."

"That's certainly the way my oldest boy responded to the assignment," said DeAnne. "Perhaps you noticed his project when it was on display."

"Oh, I don't think I'd remember any one in particular, Mrs . ... um ... "

"I'm DeAnne Fletcher."

Suddenly the librarian's eyes grew wide, and she flashed her wonderful smile again. "Oh, you must be Stevie Fletcher's mother!"

"I am," said DeAnne.

"What a very special boy," said the librarian. "I do remember his project, in fact. It was a sculpture garden-an undersea environment, I believe. With an octopus and that clam with the starfish opening it-and I noticed that the shark had a tiny little fish that the shark was swallowing. A little gruesome, perhaps, but very creative. You must have been proud for your son to be given the first-place ribbon."

"First place? Stevie told me the project got a C."

"But how could that be possible? Dr. Mariner came here and judged them all herself, and before she had even seen the rest of the children's posters, she laid the blue ribbon down beside Stevie's project and said, `This will stay here until I find something that makes me take it away again.' And of course she never did, because he ended up receiving it. Isn't it just awful what those other children did? They were so jealous, I suppose, but still, I think it was churlish of them to moosh it up that way."

So that part of Stevie's story was accurate. And the word moosh was apparently current enough in Steuben that a gracious, educated lady like this one could use it. "Yes, Stevie was rather disappointed, I think," said DeAnne.

"He's such a quiet boy," said the librarian. "He spends every recess here, did you know? I think he must have read half the ... um, media ... in my little ... um, media center." She winked.

"Every recess?" said DeAnne. "I know he loves reading, but I had hoped he would play with the other children."

"I know," said the librarian. "I think it's better when children play together, too. But as long as he keeps to himself, better to have the company of a book than no company at all, don't you think?"

"Oh, yes," said DeAnne. "Well, I didn't mean to trouble you. And I can't wait to tell Stevie's father about the blue ribbon. I wonder where it is!"

"Well, of course it was given to Mrs. Jones to display in Stevie's classroom. They usually keep them there until the end of the year, and then send them home with the student who won."

DeAnne made her polite good-byes and left, feeling much better. Except that Stevie hadn't told her the truth about his project. Was it possib le that he was still trying to make his parents feel bad about putting him in this school? Was it possible that he was refusing to let them know anything good about his experience there, so that they'd continue to feel guilty? That just didn't sound like Stevie, but what other explanation could there be? He must be so angry.

For the first time DeAnne wondered if they shouldn't perhaps find a therapist who could talk to Stevie, who could help him find his way through this thicket of problems. Imaginary friends. And now lying. She called Step at work and he agreed not to be late tonight.

None of Step's usual rides would be able to take him home today- not if he was leaving at five, because none of the programmers ever left until well after seven. So he hitched a ride with two of the phone girls, the ones who took orders for Eight Bits Inc. software on the 800 number. All the way home he kept thinking that there was something strange about the drive, and it wasn't because of the two girls chattering in the front seat or the fact that in the back of a Rabbit his knees were up around his ears. Not until they pulled up in front of his house and he realized that the lawn was overgrown and very badly in need of mowing did it occur to him what was so strange. It was daylight! In the two months that he'd been working at Eight Bits Inc., he had never once come home in daylight.

He thanked the girls for the ride and came into the house. DeAnne was in the living room, playing the piano while Robbie sang and Elizabeth hooted and beat two rhythm sticks together. The song was "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam."

"Somehow I never thought of this as the sort of song that needed a percussion section," said Step.

"Daddy!" cried Robbie.

"Robot!" answered Step. Robbie ran to him and Step tossed him in the air and caught him.

"Daddy!" screamed Betsy.

"Betsy Wetsy!" answered Step.

"Someday you're going to smack their heads into the ceiling," said DeAnne.

Step tossed Betsy into the air. Then, after catching her, he lifted her up and bumped her head against the ceiling. "Owie ow ow ow!" howled Betsy.

"Don't be a poop, Betsy," said Step. "That didn't hurt at all, I was just teasing."

"Owie ow!" Betsy reached for DeAnne.

"What did I tell you?" said DeAnne.

"Betsy's a poop!" shouted Robbie. "Betsy's a poop! You can bump me into the ceiling, Daddy!"

"Better not," said Step. "Your head might cause structural damage." '

"I don't mind!" insisted Robbie.

"I can't believe you came home so early," said DeAnne.

"I said I would, when you asked me to," said Step.

"I never thought it would be a quarter after five," she said. "Or were you fired?"

"Not yet," said Step. "Though I may be, after today."

"Because you left at five?" asked DeAnne.

"The lawn is really overgrown," said Step. "I never noticed that before."

"Well, that's because it wasn't as overgrown yesterday as it is today. Why might they fire you after today?"

"Because I finally worked up the guts to go in and make Cowboy Bob give me a copy of that agreement I signed with him."

"You mean you only just got it today? I assumed you had that weeks ago."

"I asked for it right after San Francisco. Well, not right after, or somebody would think that I was doing exactly what I'm doing. But the Friday after."

"And they didn't send it to you till today?"

"They didn't even send it to me today. I had to go get it. And not from Cowboy Bob, in fact, because he wasn't in and his secretary was on lunch and so it was somebody else's secretary who got it for me out of my personnel file and made a copy for me."

"So you only have a copy?"

"They weren't going to give me the original!" said Step. "Anyway, I have it, and it's possible that Cowboy Bob doesn't know that I have it even now."

"Well, then you won't get fired."

"Except what if he finds out that I came and got it behind his back? Then he'll be really suspicious."

"Well, I've got to admit, it wouldn't break my heart to have you home every day," said DeAnne. "This is such a treat, Step."

"Treat!" scoffed Step. "Hardly. It's where I ought to be, and it makes me sick that you actually had to call me and practically make an appointment to get me home to talk to my own son. I'm living like one of those high-powered stockbroker types, like a Madison-Avenue live-for-the-job hyper-ambitious robot, except that I'm not getting the money they make. Where is Stevie, anyway?"

"He's either outside in back, playing with-Jack and Scotty-or he's in his room."

Step nodded grimly at her mention of Stevie's imaginary friends. And now lying to her ... I've just been too cut off from the family. I'm practically a stranger here.

Stevie was in his room, lying on the top bunk, reading a book.

The conversation did not go well at all. Step leaned on the safety bar and said, "Your Mom tells me that your undersea project did really well."

"No it didn't," said Stevie.

"She said it got the blue ribbon."

"J.J. got the blue ribbon," said Stevie.

"Well, the first-place ribbon, anyway, she didn't actually say what color it was."

"First place was blue," said Stevie.

"Stevedore, I've got to tell you-your mom went to the school and checked. Dr. Mariner gave your underwater garden the firstplace ribbon."

"My project go t mooshed," said Stevie. "So it couldn't get first place."

"Son, Dr. Mariner judged the projects over that first weekend, before your project got ruined by the other kids. And she gave first place to you."

"No she didn't!" said Stevie, and now his voice was full of emo tion. "She said that my project was nothing but a lump of clay and it didn't deserve to be shown to anybody at all! And I got a C on it."

"Dr. Mariner actually said that?" Step could not, did not believe it.

"Yes," said Stevie.

"She actually stood there and told you that to your face?"

"No," said Stevie. "She told Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Jones told us."

"Us? What do you mean us?"

"Us," said Stevie. "Me and the other kids."

"The whole class?"

"Yeah."

Step tried to imagine it-a teacher repeating such a remark in front of all the other students. It would be too cruel to say it even in private, but in front of everybody-unthinkable.

"Stevie, are you sure that you aren't just-pretending this story?"

Stevie looked up into his fathe r's eyes. "No, Daddy" he said. "I don't tell lies."

"I know that you never have before we moved to Steuben, Stevie. But you've got to realize that this story is a little hard to believe. I mean, isn't it possible you exaggerated it a little? Or maybe pretended?"

"I'm not pretending."

"I mean, you pretend to have two friends, Jack and Scotty."

Stevie looked at him silently. "I never said that," he said.

"Not to me," he said. "But you told your mom about things that you and Jack and Scotty did."

Stevie said nothing.

"I don't mind you pretending. Maybe that's what you need to do in order to get through a hard time at school. But you can't tell Mom and me pretend things as if they were true."

"I don't," said Stevie.

"You mean you won't from now on," said Step.

"I mean I never do!" shouted Stevie.

His vehemence made Step pause. Was it possible that Stevie wasn't lying about this? That in fact it happened the way he said? Then how to account for what the librarian told DeAnne? Impossible, it couldn't have happened the way Stevie described. And yet he insisted on being believed, and it made Step remember the times when he was a kid and adults didn't believe him because they were so sure they knew how things were.

He remembered very clearly saying to his mother, "Well you weren't there so how do you know?" And now here he was, contradicting Stevie's account when in fact Step wasn't there, so how did he know?

"Stevedore," said Step, "have I been making a mistake here?"

"Yes," said Stevie.

"I've got to tell you that if Mrs. Jones stood up in front of class and said such a terrible thing, even if it was true, then she should be fired from her job as a teacher."

"Yes," said Stevie. "I wish she was dead."

Step was horrified. "Do you really mean that?"

"Yes," said Stevie. "I think about it all the time. I look at her talking and I think of blood coming out of her forehead from a bullet. I think of her falling over dead in class and then I'd laugh and I'd sing a song. I'd sing `In the Leafy Treetops' because it's the happiest song I know."

This was worse than Step could have imagined. No matter what was true about the project, it was certainly true that Stevie hated Mrs. Jones beyond all reason. It was awful to think of his sweet little boy-a child who had always been forgiving and generous-having such hatred in his heart for anyone. And these feelings must have been smoldering for some time now, yet he had said nothing.

"Stevie, why do you hate her so much? Is it because of the blue ribbon?"

"She never calls on me," said Stevie.

"Sometimes it feels like that," said Step. "It's because you're so smart, and she has to give other kids a chance to answer sometimes."

"She always calls on the other kids."

"Yes, that's how it feels."

Stevie looked at him with hot anger burning in his eyes. "I said she always calls on the other kids! That's not how it feels, that's how it is!"

Step again realized that he had just spoken like a typical adult, taking a child's clear, plain language and twisting it to fit the adult's preconceived notion of reality. But what if Stevie meant it? What if it was literally true?

"You mean she really never calls on you? Ever?"

"Never once," said Stevie.

"Are you sure she sees you raising her hand?"

"Yes," said Stevie. "She always sees me."

"How do you know?"

"Because she says so."

"She says that she sees you raising your hand, and yet she doesn't call on you?"

"Yes," said Stevie. And the tears in his eyes forced Step to believe that this must be true, or at least seem true to Stevie, because it was certain that Stevie believed it himself.

"Son, you have to understand, I'm not there so I can't see it for myself. You have to help me. What does she say when she sees that you've raised your hand, but she doesn't call on you?"

Stevie took a deep breath, and then, with his voice trembling, he said, "She says, `Of course Stephen Ball-lover Fletcher knows the answer. He knows everything."'

Step heard the words with a sickness in the pit of his stomach. It couldn't be true. No one could ever talk to his son in a tone like that. But if they did ... if they did, he'd ... he'd do something. Something. "Son, does she really say your name that way? Ball-lover?"

"Yes."

"Haven't you told her it's Boh-lee-var? That you're named for one of the greatest liberators in history?"

"How can I, Dad, when she never calls on me?"

"No, I guess you couldn't," said Step. "And she really does make fun of you like that when you raise your hand?"

"I don't raise my hand anymore," said Stevie.

"No, I imagine not." Step tried to think, tried to make sense of it all. "When did she start doing this?"

"The first day."

"Your very first day in school?"

Stevie thought for a minute. "The first day she said I was really stupid because she kept saying things and I didn't understand her and so I raised my hand and I asked her what she said, and then she said it again and I still didn't understand her."

Step thought back to what the problem had been that first day. "Because of her accent?"

Stevie nodded. "I got most of what she said, but it was like the first couple of words or a couple of words right in the middle, I wouldn't understand them. And she said I was really stupid. And all the kids made fun of me."

"Gee, why doesn't that surprise me, if the teacher called you stupid," said Step. "But then the next day you stayed in Dr. Mariner's office and took those tests, and then you came back to class the next day. What happened then?"

Stevie started to cry. "She made me stand up and she said, she said ... " He could n't go on. He just lay there on his bed, sobbing.

Step reached over and gathered Stevie up in his arms and slid him off the top bunk, and then sat on the edge of Robbie's bed and held Stevie on his lap, held his son tight against his chest while he cried. "There, there," he said. "I know this is so hard for you. It must be so hard. Why didn't you tell us any of this before?"

"I'm supposed to do my part," said Stevie.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm supposed to do my job at school like you do your job at work," said Stevie.

"Yes, Door Man, that's true," said Step. "But when things go bad at work, I don't keep it a secret, I tell your mom about it. And when she has a hard day, she tells me."

Stevie's crying grew quieter, stopped. "I didn't know that," he said.

"Of course, how could you know?" said Step. "We talk that way to each other late at night, after you kids are asleep."

"I didn't know," said Stevie.

"Can you tell me now what happened the day after you took those tests? You said that she made you stand up in front of the class, and then she did what? She said something?"

"She said that she was wrong to say what she said about me that time before. She said that I wasn't stupid at all, I was very very very smart, I was the smartest boy in the whole world, and when I didn't understand what people said it was because I was too smart to understand them because they were all really stupid compared to me, and so there was no point in anyone talking to me, ever, because I was way too smart to ever understand or care about a word they said."

Unbelievable, and yet now Step believed it. There was too much detail in it-Stevie could not possibly have made it up. And it rang true. Maybe when Dr. Mariner called Mrs. Jones to talk to her about Stevie's first day, Mrs. Jones assumed that Stevie had repeated to his parents what she said in class-though he hadn't, not till now.

And so she assumed that Dr. Mariner knew and was simply too nice to mention it openly. And so she assumed that Stevie had told on her, had gotten her in trouble with her boss, and so she decided to get even with him.

"Son, I think I believe you. I'm sorry I didn't believe you before, but you have to understand, this is such a terrible thing for a teacher to do that it's hard to believe that any teacher would ever do it. I mean, I had some strict teachers in my life, but never one who was downright mean like this. You should have told us this before.

We thought everything was going along all right."

"It is," said Stevie. "Except for that."

"So you have friends at school?"

"No," said Stevie.

"Then it's not all right, is it?"

"How can I have friends when Mrs. Jones said for nobody to talk to me?"

How far did this go? "You mean that she actually told the other kids never to speak to you?"

"A couple of them tried to at recess but she yelled at them and said, `Let's not bother Mr. Fletcher, please.

He's thinking higher thoughts and we wouldn't want to disturb him."'

Step held him closer. "Oh, Stevie, I didn't know, I didn't guess. How could I know this?"

"Jaleena talks to me sometimes," said Stevie.

"Is she one of the girls?"

"She's the black girl so Mrs. Jones doesn't really care what she does. But she doesn't talk to me much because it really is hard to understand her. She has to talk slow. And so she doesn't talk to me much."

So that was what Stevie's two months in second grade in Steuben had been like. Isolation. Ridicule. Utter loneliness. And he hadn't breathed a word of it at home. No sign of it except his reluctance to go to school.

"But you're still doing your schoolwork," said Step. "You are learning things."

"We did most of it in my old school," said Stevie.

"At least you had fun doing your project, didn't you?"

Stevie nodded.

"Son, I'm going to have a talk with Mrs. Jones."

He leapt from Step's lap and stood on the floor in the middle of the room, his eyes wide with fear. "No!" he said. "Don't talk to her! Please, Dad! You can't! You can't talk to her! Please!"

"Son, parents talk to teachers. That's how the system is sup posed to work."

"You can't, you just can't do it. It'll get worse if you do, she'll be worse!"

"Stevie," said Step. "I promise you this. I absolutely promise you. Things will get better after I talk to her.

And if they don't, I will keep you home from school."

"Yes!" he cried. "Keep me home!"

"Only if things get worse after I talk to her," said Step.

"No, keep me home now!"

"Stevie, I can't just keep you home now. There's a law that says that you have to go to school, and in North Carolina they're very strict about it. If I keep you out of school, it could mean going to court. Or moving again."

"Let's move back to Indiana!"

"Son, I can't afford to. If we moved, we'd have to move to Utah, to live in Grandma and Grandpa Brown's house. I'd lose my job. I'm just telling you that I'll do all those things if I have to, if talking to Mrs. Jones makes things worse for you. But I think when I talk to her things will get better, do you understand? The last month of school won't be so bad. I promise you."

"A whole month," said Stevie, his voice sounding dead.

"Think of it this way" said Step. "Think of it as if you had been convicted of a crime you didn't commit.

You aren't guilty, you didn't do anything wrong, but the system worked wrong and you got convicted for it and now there's nothing you can do except hang on and live through the last month of your sentence. And then you'll get out and you'll never have to see Mrs. Jones again. And next year you'll be in the middle school and there'll be a whole bunch of new kids from other schools-everybody will be new, not just you. Next year will be better. You just have to live through this year."

"Don't talk to Mrs. Jones," said Stevie. "Please."

"Trust me, Stevie," said Step. "When I talk to Mrs. Jones, I will make things better."

Clearly Stevie did not believe him. It frustrated Step, made him almost angry, that his son didn't believe that he could do it. But Step had taken a good little while before he believed in Stevie, too. Turnabout is fair play.

When he left Stevie's room a few minutes later, he found DeAnne leaning against the door of the room they shared, right across the hall. She looked grim as she opened the door and led him inside. She closed the door.

"You heard?" asked Step.

"I couldn't stand not to listen," she said. "I've been so worried."

"Well, then, you know everything." He laughed bitterly. "At least now we know why he was so desperate to believe Sister LeSueur's flattery. If the kid's been hammered at school, he's got to be starved for praise."

"Do you really believe his story?" asked DeAnne.

"I think so," said Step. "Partly at least. I've got to."

"But what about the librarian? Step, I know the librarian wasn't lying. She's the sweetest woman, she sounded like she really loved Stevie. She talked about how he comes in during recess every day and reads, and she talked about his project with such pride." Then DeAnne stopped herself. "Listen to me. I'm standing here telling you that I would rather believe a woman I only met this morning than my own son."

"We don't believe something out of loyalty" said Step. "We believe it because it sounds plausible to us.

And Stevie's story didn't sound plausible until he told so much more of it that it began to fall into place. For instance, why should the librarian have been lying? Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe Stevie's project did win first place, and maybe Mrs. Jones simply lied to her class about it."

"Oh, Step, she couldn't possibly imagine that she could get away with it, could she?"

"Who knows?" said Step. "There are a lot of crazy people in the world."

"But not teaching school."

"Why not? I mean, all those crazy people in mental institutions, they weren't born there. The day before they were in the asylum, they were outside the asylum, and a lot of them probably had jobs, and some of them were probably teachers. You don't think teachers could go crazy? Heck, they probably have a higher percentage than most, when you think of what they go through. So maybe she's just three months away from getting committed because she has come to hate children so deeply. Like a disease inside her. And this year she found a scapegoat, somebody she could pour out all that bile and venom onto, and it was Stevie."

DeAnne shook her head.

"It's possible," said Step. "I've at least got to find out."

"You made a promise to Stevie that you can't keep," said DeAnne.

"Oh, I'll keep it," said Step. "One way or another."

"How can you stop her from punishing him even more as soon as you're through talking to her?"

"If necessary I'll go to class every day."

"She'd never permit that. The school would never permit it."

"A parent, observing his child's class?"

"You'd lose your job."

"I'll quit the job!" said Step, and to his own surprise he was talking loudly, angrily. He brought his voice back down, spoke quietly, intensely. "I will quit the job. I hate the job. The job is keeping me from being a decent father to my children. The job is killing me and my family. Screw the job."

DeAnne visibly recoiled from him. "Step, please," she said.

It made him irrationally angry, to have her get upset at him for his language when he was talking about something that actually mattered. "Oh, don't you like the way I said it? The word screw is too rough for you?

It's a euphemism, DeAnne. You can't get mad at me for using a euphemism! I mean, I could have said-"

"I'm not mad at you for saying screw, you dunce! I'm not mad at you at all, and don't be mad at me either, I can't stand it!" She burst into tears. "You were about to say the f- word! You were about to say that to your own wife."

"What is this about?" asked Step. "You were mad at me, I know you well enough to know what it looks like, you were mad at me for saying screw and-"

"So I was! For one stupid second! And then I realized it was stupid and I'm sorry, I can't help getting some look on my face for one split second, I don't deserve to have you swearing at me!"

"What are we doing?" said Step. "Why are we fighting?"

"Because our son has been tormented in school and we didn't do anything to help him-"

"How could we? He didn't tell us-"

"And we're both so angry we want to beat somebody up and the only person within easy reach is each other." DeAnne stopped talking for a moment. Then, to Step's surprise, she laughed. Laughed and lowered herself to the edge of the bed.

"OK, share the joke with the rest of us in this room," said Step.

"I was just thinking-this is so stupid, it isn't even funny ..." She wiped tears away from her eyes.

"I know, I can see how funny it isn't," said Step.

"I just thought, when I said we're so mad and the only person we can reach is each other, I thought, `Let's go beat up Sister LeSueur."'

She was right. It wasn't really funny, and yet Step had to sit down beside her on the bed and laugh and laugh.

Step didn't actually ask for permission to leave work in the middle of the day. He just leaned his head into Dicky's office and said, "I'm taking lunch at two-thirty this afternoon because I have to go meet with my son's teacher after school."

"Your wife can't do that?" asked Dicky.

"Dicky," said Step, "it's my lunch hour, and I'm taking it at two-thirty. I'm only telling you because I want you to know where I'm going to be during that time period. I wasn't asking permission.

Dicky made no argument, just shrugged and gave a sort of half smile that made Step say to himself, You're too sensitive, too prickly Step. Dicky didn't mean anything by what he said, and you jumped all over him.

Then, at twenty after two, as Step was sliding his microcassette recorder into his right pants pocket just prior to leaving, Dicky buzzed him on the phone. "Come by my office, please," he said.

"I'm on my way out," said Step. "To lunch."

"On your way, then, please stop by my office."

Step felt a sick dread in the pit of his stomach. Is he firing me? Because I spoke rudely to him? Impossible.

Or maybe Ray Keene found out that I snuck a copy of my employment agreement, and so he thinks I'm looking for another job and so I'm being sacked because of that.

Instead, Dicky was all smiles when Step came into his office. There was another man there, a tall, thin fellow with a dark complexion and a sepulchral face that would have been rather fright ening if he hadn't been smiling so broadly. In fact, his head was so narrow and his smile so wide that it looked for a moment as if he really were, literally, grinning from ear to ear. A mouth like a Mup pet, though Step.

"Meet Damien Weinreiter," said Dicky. "We're interviewing him for that programming position we have open."

"Oh? I didn't know we were looking for a programmer." Step never knew when they were hiring or firing people-he wasn't exactly part of the personnel process.

"Oh, yes, and I thought we couldn't very well have him come through without you having a chance to interview him."

Interview him! When Step had to get to Stevie's school?

Of course, he realized. This was how Dicky was getting back at him for speaking so sharply to him earlier today. Trying to put him into a position where he had to stay and miss that appointment. And the worst thing was that it was going to work. There was no gracious way that Step could tell Dicky to sit on his thumb, Step was taking his lunch now.

"Dicky, why me? I write manuals."

"Oh, Step, don't be so modest. You're not just our manual writer."

I knew it! thought Step. He knew about my secret assignment all along.

Dicky went on. "You're also the programmer of Hacker Snack. So of course Damien wants to get a chance to meet you."

"Great game," said Damien. "You're the best."

Yeah, right, thought Step. And you want a job here and you have the delusion, you poor thing, that sucking up to me will help you get it. Dicky here has probably already decided that you're not going to get an offer, and he's just using you to screw up my family life.

Well, Dicky, it isn't going to work.

Step did as Dicky asked-came in and sat down while the interview continued. But he knew Dicky had no intention of actually letting Step take part in the conversation. This was a humiliation game, so Dicky was going to make Step sit there in virtual silence while he conducted an interview in which Step was obviously not needed for anything.

So Step opened his attache case, took out a yellow notepad, and wrote a brief note to Dicky.

Dear Dicky, I'm putting this on a note so I don't embarrass you in front of your interview.

I'm going to meet with my son's teacher, as I told you I would. And I can't wait to be there at the meeting when you tell Ray Keene that you are now including me in the hiring process for programmers. With such a broadening of my responsibilities, I'm sure I'll get a raise!

Affectio nately yours, Step He stood up, wordlessly put the note on Dicky's desk, and left, closing the door behind him.

On the way to the school, Step tried to calm himself down. His anger at Dicky would do no good if it made him approach Mrs. Jones carelessly. He had to handle this exactly right with her, or he would do more harm than good. Being angry wouldn't help.

DeAnne had let him take the car today. He had been trying to catch more rides with other employees more often lately, because he knew how trapped she felt, being home all day without a car. Somehow he knew they had to come up with a second car-especially after the baby was born this summer. No way could he leave her home with a newborn without transportation. And yet it really didn't work out well fo r him to ride with others.

He always ended up keeping them late. Or coming home with Gallowglass, and he hated bringing Gallowglass to his home. He didn't even want Glass knowing where he lived, though of course it was far too late for that.

And Glass still asked him, every time, when Step was going to call on him to babysit. No, Step needed a car and DeAnne needed a car and there was no way they could scrape together the money right now even to buy a junker, let alone something dependable.

He pulled up in front of the school as the last buses were pulling out. Too late he remembered that DeAnre had told him that he had to take Fargo Road so he could park in that hidden lot up on the hill. Oh, well, thought Step. What are they going to do, shoot me? So he pulled in behind the last bus and followed it around the turnaround and pulled into a visitor parking place.

Dr. Mariner was at the door as he approached the school. "I'll bet you didn't know that parents aren't supposed to use the turnaround after school," she said.

"Actually, I did," said Step, "but I forgot until I was here and then I saw the last bus was leaving so I figured it wouldn't do any harm."

"Why, in fact, I think you're right. No harm done at all. Can I help you with something?"

"I hope so, ma'am. I'm Step Fletcher, and I'm here to-"

"Stevie Fletcher's father?"

"Yes," said Step, "I am."

"Oh, what a remarkable young man you have! And your wife is such a sweetie. And I think you have a little boy who's going to be in our kindergarten next year."

"Yes, that's Robbie."

"Well, I can hardly wait, though of course I'll be sad to see Stevie leave us. He's the sweetest boy, and so smart. Why, Mrs. Jones is always telling me how well he does in class, and of course you already know how he did with his second-grade project."

"I did hear something about it," said Step. He wanted her to tell him, in part because he didn't know which story was going to be true.

"Hear something about it indeed," said Dr. Mariner. "First-place winner, and you 'heard something about it.'

We don't get many students of his caliber. You must know that."

"Oh, yes," said Step. "But I'm glad to know you know it."

"Well, of course," said Dr. Mariner. "But I mustn't keep you--I'm sure you came to have a consultation with Mrs. Jones, and we don't want her to be kept waiting."

"Actually, she doesn't know I'm coming."

"Oh, well, all the more reason to hurry-you want to get there before she goes home. My I hope she hasn't already left! Do you know where her classroom is?"

"Actually, no," said Step.

"Then let me take you."

"No, just tell me, I don't want to inconvenience ..."

But she was already five steps ahead of him down the corridor.

Mrs. Jones was still there, though she was already shrugging on her coat and if Step had waited to get directions instead of having a guide, he probably would have missed her. So he thanked Dr. Mariner profusely, even as he wondered whether this interview was even necessary. Clearly the librarian's version of reality had been the true one.

"Why Mr. Fletcher," said Mrs. Jones, after Dr. Mariner had left. "We don't have many fathers come to school. If only you had made an appointment, I could have stayed longer."

"Perhaps this won't take long," said Step. "I mostly came to talk to you about Stevie's project."

"His project?" she asked.

"His second- grade project. The-environment thing. He did an underwater scene. Out of clay."

"Oh, of course, yes. That was so creative."

His heart sank. He should be relieved, of course, to know that Mrs. Jones had not given him a C. But it meant Stevie had lied.

No, he told himself. Don't give up on Stevie so easily.

He reached into his pocket and switched on the microcassette recorder. He had already tested it in the pit at work. It picked up very well through the denim of his jeans.

"I wondered if you could tell me, Mrs. Jones. What grade did you give Stevie for that project?"

"Oh, I can hardly remember, that was so long ago."

"A week ago," said Step.

"Oh, here it is." She had her thumb down on the gradebook, but Step noticed that she glanced toward the door. Why? To see if Dr. Mariner was still there? "My," she said. "I see here that he got a C."

"Ah," said Step. He felt himself to be on fire inside. Stevie had told the truth. And so had the librarian. The project won first place, and yet somehow, somehow it got a C.

"Yes, that's it," said Mrs. Jones. "Definitely a C."

"Well, now," said Step. "That's hard to understand."

"Not really," said Mrs. Jones. "There's nothing wrong with a C. It means average."

Step had already scanned down all the other grades in the column of her gradebook where Stevie's C was marked. "It's hardly average," said Step, "when everybody else got A's and B's."

"Now, Mr. Fletcher. We don't let parents look at other children's grades, and you clearly were peeking at the wrong column of my gradebook."

But Step was looking around the classroom, not at her. "I was hoping," he said, "to see what an A project looked like, if Stevie's was only worth a C. It would help us as his parents, you see, to know what the standard is that he must meet, so we could help him do better on future projects."

There was the thing he was looking for. A blue ribbon, pinned to a bulletin board. Nothing written on it or by it. Just a blue rib bon.

"Oh, the projects have all been returned," said Mrs. Jones. "Stevie chose to throw his away, I'm afraid, but it was just a mass of clay by then. It was a shame what those ill- mannered children did to his project, but then, we really didn't have any practice at dealing with sculpture. If Stevie had brought a poster like everyone else, it wouldn't have happened."

Step reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the folded-up assignment sheet DeAnne had armed him with. "I've looked and looked on this assignment sheet you sent home, and it says nothing about a poster. It just says, 'A depiction."'

"Well, you see," said Mrs. Jones, "that means a poster."

Step looked back at the blue ribbon. "Ah," he said. "And how was I supposed to know that? I mean, the Mona Lisa is a depiction, isn't it? And yet it isn't a poster. And wouldn't you call Michelangelo's David a depiction?"

"All the other parents managed to figure out that a poster was what was intended," said Mrs. Jones. Her tone was getting quite frosty now.

"I see," said Step. "Perhaps they knew the local custom. But we're new here, and we did not."

"Obviously," said Mrs. Jones.

"But surely you're not telling me that Stevie's project was given a C because it wasn't a poster, are you?" asked Step.

"Not at all. As I said- it was creative."

"Then I still need your help to figure out what Stevie did wrong."

"And I keep telling you, Mr. Fletcher. You don't have to do something wrong to get a C. That signifies average. It was an average project."

Short of calling her a liar right now, there wasn't much Step could say to that, not directly. It must be time to talk about the ribbon. "Well, Mrs. Jones, it makes me wonder why Dr. Mariner would give the first-place ribbon to an average project."

"Dr. Mariner has her judgment, and I have mine," said Mrs. Jones.

Yes, thought Step. She is definitely sounding quite cold. "Oh, of course," said Step. "But you see, you didn't give your grades until after Dr. Mariner had made her decision, did you?"

"My judgment was completely independent."

"But wouldn't you say, Mrs. Jones, that for you to give the lowest grade in the class to the very project that won first place, you must surely have found something wrong with it?"

He faced her. Her expression was hard, but she was holding her hands together in front of her very tightly.

Oh, yes, she's afraid. She's very much afraid. Because everything that Stevie told me was true.

"Very well, Mr. Fletcher," she said, ending the silence at last. "I will tell you what was wrong with Stevie's project. It was the writ ten portion of the project, the report. The other children turned in reports of five or six pages. Stevie's report was only two pages."

With great difficulty, Step controlled his rage. "Stevie's paper was typed. Was anyone else's paper typed?"

"That hardly matters," she said.

"They were all written in big letters, weren't they- like these papers on the board. Right?"

"Of course. This is the second grade, Mr. Fletcher."

"My rough count here gives me ... let's see ... about fifty or sixty words per page, handwritten. Is that right?"

"Oh, I suppose."

"But Stevie's paper was single-spaced, and that means he got between four and five hundred words to a page. So each of his pages was about the same amount of content as-"

"A page is a page!" said Mrs. Jones.

"And the assignment sheet," said Step, "said nothing about a minimum number of pages."

"Everyone else managed to figure out that four or five pages were required! And they didn't have their mothers type it for them-they used their own handwriting."

"The assignment sheet didn't say anything about penmanship being part of the assignment," said Step. "So naturally Stevie thought he should do the same thing I did with my dissertation. He went to my computer, turned it on, brought up WordStar, and typed every letter of every word himself. Then he printed it out and stapled it- himself."

"That was another problem," said Mrs. Jones. "The other children's reports all had very nice plastic covers, and your son's report was nothing but two sheets of paper with a staple. It showed a lack of respect."

"The assignment sheet didn't mention a cover," said Step. "If it had, there would have been a cover. But in graduate school, you see, I turned in my papers with a staple in the corner. So of course Stevie thought that that was the grown- up way to do it. And in fact, Mrs. Jones, it is, isn't it? Surely you're not telling me that the difference between an A and a C is a twenty-nine-cent cover?"

"Of course not," said Mrs. Jones. "It's just part of the difference."

"Don't you think that computer literacy and college- level presentation should count for him rather than against him?"

"Other children don't live in wealthy homes with computers in them, Mr. Fletcher. Other children don't have fathers who went to college. I'm hardly going to give one child an advantage over others because of money."

"I'm not rich, Mrs. Jones. I work with computers for a living. I have a computer at home the way car salesmen sometimes bring new cars home." Watch it, Step. You're letting her sidetrack you. "What matters is that Stevie's paper was probably ten times as long as any of the other children's papers. He did all the work himself, and he did not violate the assignment sheet in any way. Now, why did the first-place project get a C in your class?"

"I don't have to justify my grades to you or anyone else!" said Mrs. Jones.

"Yes," said Step mildly. "In fact you do. You can justify it to me, today, or you can justify it before the school board."

"Are you threatening me?" asked Mrs. Jones.

Step almost brought out the tape recorder then, to confront her with it. But he knew that the moment she saw it, she would say nothing more-and there was more that he needed her to say.

"No, Mrs. Jones. I wouldn't dream of it. If my son earned a C, then he earned a C. I'm not trying to get you to change the grade. I just want you to help me understand it."

"This discussion has gone on long enough. It isn't right for you to be here alone in this room with me anyway, Mr. Fletcher."

"Perhaps you're right," said Step. "Let's go get Dr. Mariner to join in this conversation with us. I haven't mentioned Stevie's C to her yet, but I'm sure she'll want to know the reason for that grade as much as I do."

Mrs. Jones glared at him, then sat down at her desk and began rummaging through a file drawer. She came out with Stevie's paper. Sure enough, there was a big red C at the top.

And not another mark.

"I guess all the flaws in the paper are on the second page," said Step.

"What?" she said.

"There aren't any marks on the first page, so the errors must all be on the second page. I'd like to see them."

She handed him the paper.

He opened it. There was only one red mark on the second page. Mrs. Jones had circled the word octopuses and in the margin had written octopi.

"Oh, but you must be making a little joke here," said Step.

"A joke?"

"Look," he said, showing her the paper. "You must be kidding, right?"

"I'm not kidding when I correct errors on my students' papers."

"But Mrs. Jones, surely you know that the plural of octopus is either octopus, with nothing added, or octopuses."

"I think not," said Mrs. Jones.

"Think again, Mrs. Jones."

She must have realized that she was not on firm ground here. "Perhaps octopuses is an alternate plural, but I'm sure that octopi is the preferred."

"No, Mrs. Jones. If you had looked it up, you would have discovered that octopi is not the preferred spelling. It is not a spelling at all. The word does not exist, except in the mouths of those who are pretending to be educated but in fact are not. This is because the us ending of octopus is not a Latin nominative singular ending, which would form its plural by changing to the letter i. Instead, the syllable pus in octopus is the Greek word for 'foot.' And it forms its plural the Greek way. Therefore octopoda, not octopi. Never octopi."

"Well, then, octopoda. Your son's paper said octopuses."

"I know," said Step. "When he asked me the correct plural, I told him octopoda. But then he was still uncertain, because my son doesn't think he knows something until he knows it, and so he looked it up. And to my surprise, octopoda is only used when referring to more than one species of octopus, rather than when referring to more tha n one actual octopus. What Stevie put in his paper is in fact the preferred dictionary usage.

Which you would have known, too, if you had looked it up."

"So I'm human, Mr. Fletcher. I made a mistake."

"As did I, Mrs. Jones, as did I. But the fact remains that the only red mark on this C paper is in a place where you have taken a correct plural and replaced it with an incorrect one. Isn't that right?"

"If you say so," said Mrs. Jones.

"So I'm still baffled," said Step. "How can I possibly help Stevie do better next time? You haven't really pointed out a single thing wrong with his paper-oh, except that he didn't put a plastic cover on it."

"There won't be a next time," said Mrs. Jones. "Your son will never have to do another second grade project as long as he lives. So it doesn't matter, and therefore you're wasting my time as well as your own. Good afternoon, Mr. Fletcher!"

"One more question, Mrs. Jones."

"No," she said. "I have to go home, right now."

"It's just one more question," said Step, mildly. If she didn't stop, however, the tape recorder would definitely come out. She would not be going home anytime soon.

"Very well, what!"

"Who is going to take that ribbon home?"

Mrs. Jones looked at the ribbon that Step was pointing to.

"That is the first place ribbon for Stevie's project, isn't it?"

"It might be," said Mrs. Jones.

"Then who will take it home?"

"If it's the particular ribbon you're referring to, then of course Stevie will take it home at the end of the school year."

"Ah," said Step. "Then what in the world are you going to tell J.J.?"

She blanched.

Stevie's story was completely vindicated now.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"Why, I mean that Stevie's whole class is under the impression that J.J. received that award."

"That's impossible," said Mrs. Jones.

"Is it? Let's call J.J.'s parents and see," said Step.

"I certainly will not bother my children's parents over such a thing."

"Then I'll go to Dr. Mariner's office right now and she and I will place that phone call together," said Step.

"You won't mind, will you?"

Mrs. Jones was barely holding herself together now, Step could see that. She was wringing her hands and he could see that she was trembling. "It's possible that someone might have gotten a false impression. That perhaps someone made a mistake and ..."

No, thought Step. You aren't going to weasel out of this. You're going to say it outright. "You stood in front of the class and announced that J.J. won the prize, didn't you?" he asked.

"Oh, now, don't be silly," she said.

"What if lawyers representing the school board came to your students and asked them how they got the idea that J.J. won the ribbon? What would they say?" Step knew that of course such a thing would never happen, but he figured that Mrs. Jones was not going to be confident of that, not in the state she was in right now.

"I may have said something that gave that impression," said Mrs. Jones.

"May have, or did?"

She looked toward the window, weaving and unweaving her fingers. "I thought that Dr. Mariner had judged very hastily, and so she missed the superior merits of J.J.'s project."

"Ah," said Step.

"If you want," said Mrs. Jones, "I will change Stevie's grade. And of course I will correct the mistake about the ribbon."

Yes, I'm sure you will, thought Step. And then you'll torment and ridicule Stevie even more mercilessly every day until school ends. "No," said Step. "I don't want you to change Stevie's grade. In fact, I insist that you not change it. I want it there on the books, just as it is now."

Mrs. Jones looked at him narrowly. "Then what is all this about? Just the ribbon? Very well."

"The ribbon- yes, that would be nice. You can tell the students that there was a mistake and in fact the ribbon belongs to Stevie."

"Very well, I will do that tomorrow."

"But that's not all," said Step.

"I think it is," said Mrs. Jones. "Unless you changed your mind about the grade."

Step pulled the tape recorder from his pocket, pressed rewind for a few moments, and played it back. It was fuzzy, but it was clear. "... the superior merits of J.J.'s project." Then Step pushed stop.

Her face turned white, and it occurred to Step that perhaps he had overplayed this moment- it wouldn't be very good for anybody if the woman fainted right now.

But she didn't faint. And when she did speak, her voice was stronger than he expected. "That's illegal," she said. "To bug a conversation like that."

"On the contrary," said Step. "It's only inadmissible when it was obtained by a government employee without a warrant. I'm not a cop. I'm just a man who carries around a tape recorder. Besides, I don't intend to use this in court. I only intend to play it for Dr. Mariner and every member of the school board as I put an end to your career."

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"The real question is, why have you been doing all the things you've been doing to Stevie?"

"I haven't been doing anything to him," she said defiantly. "Go ahead and use that tape."

"All right," said Step. He put it back in his pocket and walked around her, through the door, and down the corridor toward Dr. Mariner's office. With each step he became more uncertain. Maybe she really could talk her way out of this. Maybe she understood the system here better than he did, and even this tape recording would end up being worthless. Maybe he had broken his promise to Stevie, that he wouldn't make things worse.

"Mr. Fletcher!" she said. Her voice echoed down the empty corridor.

"Yes?" he said, not turning around.

"There was one more thing that I forgot to show you about Stevie's work."

He turned around and headed back down the hall.

When they were alone again in the room, she looked tired, defeated. "I didn't mean anything by it," she said. "Is that thing off now?"

He pulled out the recorder, took out the tape, and put them back in different pockets.

"I didn't mean anything. I just- it's very hard being a teacher and having parents come down on you all the time. And so when Dr. Mariner called me that night-at home-because Stevie was upset and you were upset, when all I did was make a foolish little joke-I mean, everything I said, he made me say it over and over and over, and it was disrupting the class. So I made a joke-'

"Calling him stupid."

"A joke," she insisted. "And then he tells his parents and you call Dr. Mariner-well I was just sick of it, and when he came back to class I was just so angry the moment I saw him, and so I said things that I shouldn't have said and I'm sorry."

"But you've kept on doing it," said Step.

She started to cry. "I know it," she said. "And I felt bad about it, but I just couldn't seem to stop, I just ...

couldn't seem to stop. And then he stopped raising his hand, and so ... I thought it was over."

"If you thought it was over, why didn't you let him have the blue ribbon?" said Step. "Why didn't you let him have the A on his project?"

"I don't know," she said. Her voice was so small and high, like a little girl's voice. It made Step feel like a bully, like a tyrant, coming in here and pushing this woman around until she cried.

Then he remembered how Stevie had cried. And how this woman had tormented him, and even if she talked now about how she felt bad about it and tried to stop, the fact was that she could have stopped at any time and she did not. She even lied about something as utterly stupid as the ribbon awarded by the principal. Surely she must have realized, in some rational part of her mind, that this could not possibly go undiscovered. That this was far too public, too open for he r ever to get away with it.

She wanted to be caught, Step realized. The most obvious psychological insight of them all. Maybe because she hates teaching. Or she hates the children. She doesn't want to teach anymore, and yet she can't stop because that's how she makes her living. So she gathered up all her hatred and poured it out on my son, again and again and yet he continued to take it; nothing happened, so she pushed harder and harder, and still Stevie took it, absorbed it all; and then finally she pushed so hard that she succeeded. Stevie broke. Stevie wept out the truth to his father, and now I have finally come to give her what she wanted all along.

"There's a month left in school," said Step. "From now on if Stevie raises his hand, I want you to call on him. Not every time, but as often as you'd call on any other bright kid. Do you understand me? I want you to treat him normally. If he gives the right answer, you don't say anything snide to him, and if he gives the wrong answer, you correct him kindly. Do you understand?"

She nodded, dabbing at her eyes.

"If a kid talks to him, then you let the friendship develop. You do nothing to interfere. I don't mean you're to order kids to be friends with him, because then they'd hate him even more. I want you treat my son fairly and normally. Can you do that?"

Again she nodded.

"Yes, I think you can," said Step. "It's whether you will. Just keep this in mind. If you get the urge to say something spiteful or cruel to Stevie, or for that matter to any of your students, just remember that this tape exists. Along with however many copies I feel like making. For the rest of your life, if another child suffers anything like what Stevie has been through, you can expect to hear this tape again. I'll be watching."

"You aren't a Christian, then!" she said. "Christians believe in forgiveness!"

"I'm a Christian who believes in repentance before forgiveness. If you never again mistreat a child, then you have nothing to fear from me. This tape will never surface. All you have to do is control your hate. If you can't do that, Mrs. Jones, then you shouldn't be a teacher."

"It's my life!" she said.

"No," said Step. "The woman on this tape is not a teacher, Mrs. Jones. The woman on this tape is a Nazi."

She buried her face in her hands. Step remembered Stevie weeping the night before. More than ever before in his life, he found himself longing to hurt someone, to tear at her. It frightened him to feel such a hunger for violence. Nor had he felt it so strongly until she was helpless and weeping. It was a terrible thing to know about himself, that he could feel such a lust to punish a submissive enemy.

He turned and fled from the man he had found in that room.

In moments the rage was gone, replaced by satisfaction. He had fulfilled his promise to Stevie. As he walked down the corridor toward the front door, it occurred to him that he had confronted evil and subdued it.

The mythic theme of half the movies and TV shows and novels and of a good deal of history as well. Of course, it had been too clean and simple for the movies. She should have had a gun in her purse, the one that Mr. Jones had bought for her to defend herself. She should have taken that gun out of her purse and followed him and shot him and taken the tape, right now, before he could make copies of it.

What if she did have a gun? What if she was going to follow him?

It was an absurd thought, a childish sort of thought, and yet he walked faster. She won't shoot me in the corridor here, he thought, because there are still other teachers in the building, and the custodial staff- witnesses.

No, she'll do it in the parking lot, around the corner, where no one can see and she can drive away. He hurried, almost ran out the door and around the corner to his car. He fumbled with his keys, dropped them. Picked them up, looked around, and yes, there she was, coming out the door of the school. He unlocked the door of his car and opened the door and then looked up and saw that she was heading past him, that in fact she didn't even see him, or at least didn't give any sign that she saw him. She got into her car, a sad- looking little Pinto, and backed out of her parking place.

A Pinto. She drives a Pinto. She's a teacher, for heaven's sake, making a pathetic salary and getting no respect from anyone, putting up with people's miserable children all these years and all the flak from stupid angry parents yelling at her over nothing, when she was trying to do her best, and here he was, the ultimate angry parent, the parent from hell, destroying her, when all she ever wanted to do was teach. What am I, he thought, to set myself up as an angry god, deciding who needs to be punished, who deserves to have a career and who doesn't.

Then he remembered Stevie crying, and he thought, some things, some people, simply have to be stopped.

It doesn't mean that the person who stops them is noble or great or some kind of hero. I'm no hero. But maybe I've stopped her. Maybe now she won't end up doing something even worse to some other kid, driving him to suicide maybe. And who's to say she hasn't done this before? Maybe she's always had a goat in all her classes, some poor kid who becomes the target of her vicious abuse, only this time she just happened to pick the wrong kid. This time she picked the kid who would put an end to it.

I shouldn't feel proud of this, thought Step. But I also shouldn't feel ashamed. I should just feel glad that it's over. If it's over.

She drove away.

He got into his car, started it, pulled out, and headed home.

The song on the radio was the one by Hall and Oates that had been a big hit back in January when Step came to Steuben for interviews. "Maneater." That's what I saved Stevie from, a maneater. Mrs. Jaws. Doing all she could to chew up this child and spit him out. So why don't I feel better?

Because I'm not better. I just chewed her up and spit her out, and I don't like how it feels. I don't like being cruel. I don't have the stomach for it.

And yet I do, don't I, because I did it. Maybe that's a good thing and maybe it's not.

When he pulled into the driveway, he noticed that something was different about the lawn. Then he turned the engine off, and the radio stopped, and he heard the lawnmower. DeAnne was mowing the lawn.

But it wasn't DeAnne. When he got out of the car and went around to the back yard, there was an old man mowing the grass. One of the neighbors?

Suddenly DeAnne was beside him, slipping her arm around his waist. "How did it go?" she asked.

"Who's he?" he asked.

"Oh, he's Bappy. You know, I told you about him, the land lord's father. I called him to ask if he knew any neighbor kids who mowed lawns, and he said he'd do it."

"I can mow our lawn," said Step. "We can't afford to pay a grown man."

"When are you going to mow it, Step?" she asked. "You don't have time. And if you did have time the kids and I would much rather have you spend that time with us than mowing the stupid lawn. And besides, he's doing it for free. He says that living at the condo he never gets an excuse to get outside and have some exercise."

Step looked at Bappy. He waved. DeAnne waved back, and so did Step, halfheartedly.

"So come inside and tell me how it went."

As they headed for the house, he said, "She agreed to everything I said. The harassment stops. The last month at school should be better."

"But will she actually do it?" asked DeAnne.

"Oh, yes," said Step. "I think she will."

"Well tell me what you said, and what did she say? Was it as bad as Stevie said?"

"Every word that Stevie said to us was true," said Step.

"How could she? How could anyone?"

"I'll tell you what," said Step. "Tonight, I'll make sure you hear every word. Word for word."

"What, you memorized it?"

He pulled the tape recorder and the tape out of his pockets. She looked from one to the other and then whooped once with laughter and then got a frown on her forehead. "You did have the tape in the recorder, I hope!"

"You'll hear it all, Fish Lady," said Step. "The Junk Man really got the junk this time."

She threw her arms around him, as far as they would go, with her belly so large and solid in front of her.

And she kissed him. "Come on inside," she said. "Stevie's been so nervous, you need to tell him everything went well. This is great, you having the afternoon off work like this."

"What am I doing?" said Step. "I can't believe that I even came home. I'm on my lunch hour. I've got to go back."

"Oh, no!" she said. "It's four o'clock, there's only an hour left anyway."

"Yes, but Dicky and I had a run- in about me leaving, so I've got to show my face there, but I'll tell you what, I'll get home as early as I can, all right? Tell Stevie it went fine, tell him that his teacher will never pick on him again-and if she gives even one hint of it tomorrow, I'll get her fired, and I can do it."

DeAnne laughed. "I'll bet you can."

"And thanks for getting the lawn mowed," he said.

"I'll pass it along to Bappy."

But he couldn't go. "Aw, Fish Lady" he said, in his mock-sorry voice, "I gotta tell him myself."

"Oh, of course, you goof," said DeAnne. "He's in the family room playing computer games."

Step leaned through the doorway from the kitchen to the family room. Stevie was sitting at the Atari, playing some game with a pirate ship, talking at the screen. "Come on, Scotty!" Stevie said.

"Stevie ," said Step. "I've got to go back to work, but I wanted to tell you."

Stevie pushed the reset button on the computer, and the screen went blank and then blue.

"You didn't have to turn it off," said Step. "I was just telling you, everything went fine with Mrs. Jones. The tough days are behind you, I promise you."

Stevie nodded-glumly. Well, of course, Step thought. Even if I'm right, he knows that getting the teacher off his case won't instantly give him a whole bunch of friends at school. But at least maybe some of them will talk to him.

Step kissed DeAnne again, got back in the car, and headed back to work. When he got there, he saw three notes on his desk. All three were messages from Ray Keene. They all said the same thing: Ray called. Wants to know where you are.

Dicky was so low, so petty, so spiteful that after months of trying to make sure that Step never got a chance to talk to Ray Keene directly, he got Ray to attempt direct contact when he knew Step was gone in the middle of the afternoon.

Step immediately picked up the phone and punched in Ray's extension. As he had hoped, it was Ray's secretary who answered. "Hi," he said. "I'm returning Ray's call."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Ray's in a meeting right now," said the secretary.

"Isn't that the way it goes?" said Step. "I'll bet the meeting is with Dicky, isn't it?"

"Well, Dicky's one of the guys in there, anyway," she said.

"Isn't that the silliest thing?" said Step. "Ray was trying to call me, and yet Dicky was with him, and Dicky knew that I had taken a late lunch today so I could meet with my son's teacher. You'd think Dicky would have told Ray so Ray wouldn't waste his time trying to reach me."

"Oh, Dicky probably just forgot," said the secretary.

"I'm sure you're right," said Step. "Would you tell Ray that I'm sorry he called me during my late lunch today? And give Dicky a poke in the ribs for me, forgetting to tell Ray where I was like that!"

"I sure will," said the secretary. "Isn't that just the way things go?"

"Ain't it the truth," said Step, and hung up.

Maybe the scene would play right and maybe it wouldn't, thought Step, but at least Dicky might have an embarrassing moment or two, if the secretary actually relayed the message even halfway accurately, and if Ray just happened to be standing there when she did.

Because he hadn't been there for much of the afternoon, Step wasn't deeply involved with any projects and so he was able to get away by five-thirty. When he walked past the pit on his way to the door, Glass called to him. "Hey, Step!"

"Hey, Glass," said Step. He came a little way into the room. There were several programmers there, but they were goofing around, not working- he knew that, because he recognized the games that were on the screens, and none of them were published by Eight Bits Inc. They did that sometimes, staying after work and fooling around with other companies' games. They called it "industrial espionage" but the truth was that they loved computer games, and here were all these machines and all this software lying around, and most of them didn't have families anyway except maybe parents, and so why the hell not stay late and play?

"Heading for home?" asked Glass.

"Wish I had time to play" said Step. "But yeah, I'm going home."

"Ray was looking for you," said Glass.

"I got the messages. I was taking a late lunch."

"It sounded important."

"Well, when. I got back, I called in and so Ray knew that I was back and he didn't call again, so it can't have been too important."

Glass rolled his eyes. "Do you know what the term 'deep shit' means?"

"Glass," said Step, "Dicky knew where I was. Dicky didn't like where I was, but it was my lunch hour, and I wasn't cutting out on work. So if this is even a halfway rational universe, I'm not in deep shit."

"I didn't say you were in it," said Glass, grinning. "I just asked if you knew what it meant."

Step faked slapping him across the face. "Why I oughta ..."

"Oughta what?"

"Never mind, you're too young," said Step. "In fact, I'm too young. I don't get it myself. Seeya tomorrow, humans. Seeya tomorrow, Glass."

Step headed out to the car. On the way, it occurred to him that he'd seen practically every game on the market for the Atari, and he didn't remember any of them with that pirate ship he had seen Stevie playing with.

He'd have to check and see what the game was. Probably just one of the games he brought home from work to look at- it was one of the perks of working for a software company, that you could bring games home as long as you brought them back. Stevie must have found one that Step hadn't actually seen on a machine yet.

By the time he got home, his mind had turned to other things, and when he finally stood there in front of the Atari, he could only remember that there was something he wanted to do with it but he couldn't remember what. Oh well, it would come back to him.

The family actually had dinner together, and he was able to coax Stevie into playing some games with them afterward. He wasn't much fun, though, but at least he was playing, and after he saw that things were better at school, maybe things would also start to get better at home.

Step was all set to help DeAnne get the kids through bathtime and bed when the phone rang. It was Sam Freebody, the elders quorum president. Freebody was a tall man, sloppily fat, and he seemed determined to prove every cliche about the joviality of fat people. So it took a bit of convivial chitchat before he finally came to the reason for the call. It was what Step had expected-and, truth be known, dreaded. "I'd like to give you your home teaching assignment," Brother Freebody said.

"You know," said Step, "if yo u could hold off on that for a while, I'd be grateful."

"We're really short-handed in the quorum," said Freebody. "Everybody has to do his share or the Church will grind to a halt."

Step remembered giving the same speech many times when he was elders quorum president back in Vigor.

"Brother Freebody," he said, "I know what you mean, and I believe in home teaching and I'm actually an excellent home teacher, but right now at work I'm putting in twelve- hour days most days and I never get to see my family and I don't think it'd be fair to them or to me if I spent one of my few days home going out-"

"You're home now," Freebody pointed out.

Step wanted to scream over the phone, It's none of your business! But he knew Freebody was only doing his calling, and doing it well. "Yeah, I guess so," said Step. "OK, look, I'll do my best. I just warn you that I might not get to everybody every month."

"Right now, Brother Fletcher, you would improve our quorum average if you just got to anybody, any month."

Step laughed and then wrote down the names of the families they were supposed to visit and a few notes about each of them. Freebody was an excellent elders quorum president, Step realized-he actually knew who these people were, they weren't just names on the roster to him. Home teaching wasn't just something Freebody had to get other people to do, it was an enterprise that he cared about and understood. It made Step determined to take the time to do his home teaching, to help Freebody and because Step, too, believed in the program.

Really believed in it, except when he forgot to think about it at all, which was most of the time.

"And your companion is a young prospective elder named Lee Weeks. He's a new convert, nineteen years old, and I'm hoping to get him ready for a mission maybe in a year or so. So set him a good example!"

"You mean, like, don't take him out for a beer afterward?"

Freebody guffawed. "I mean show him what a normal member of the Church is like. He has a lot of enthusiasm, but some of it is directed toward some kind of weird ideas."

"Weird ideas?"

"How can I put this, Brother Fletcher? Let's just say that he was first contacted by Brother and Sister LeSueur, and he took all the lessons in the ir home."

"I'm not sure I know what that means," said Step. Of course, he knew exactly what Freebody meant-the kid had been exposed to the strangest, most self- servingly charismatic version of the gospel that could be imagined.

But Step was already getting into the spirit of the way things worked in the Steuben 1 st Ward: You know that certain people are difficult, but you just work around them as best you can and try not to put the nastiness right out in the open. As a westerner, Step was used to a more direct way of doing things. But if this elaborate effort to avoid hurting anybody's feelings or provoking any conflict was the southern way, then Step would learn to act southern.

So Step wasn't surprised when Freebody's only explanation was to say, "You'll see. He's a good kid, though."

Step wrote down Lee Weeks's name and phone number. "Does he live at home or will I maybe get a roommate when I call?" he asked.

"Lives at home. His mom's a shrink. Divorced, so I haven't met the father. She approved of Lee joining the Church, though, so there's no problem with hostility."

"So she'll deliver messages."

"Heck, she'll probably push him out the door to go home teaching with you. She even drives him to church on Sunday."

"He doesn't have a license?"

"I guess not, or maybe he cracked up the car once too often or something. She drives him, anyway."

That was that. Step said his good-byes and hung up the phone and sighed as he sat back down at the kitchen table.

"Home teaching, right?" said DeAnne. She was loading the dishwasher.

He got up and started helping.

"No, Step, I'm almost done, and you've already been the hero of the day. I just want to hear the tape."

"The kids are all bathed?"

"I'm real fast now," said DeAnne. "Splish-splash and I pop 'em in bed. And Stevie takes his own bath. Done in record time. I'm a wonder"

"You are, you know," he said.

She smiled. "Let me hear the tape."

So they sat in the family room and listened as Step copied the tape from the microcassette recorder to the cheap little Panasonic that clearly wanted to be a boom box when it grew up but would never, never make it.

The quality of the recording wasn't that good, especially when Step had been across the room from her, but it was certainly good enough to hear pretty much everything, and even the copy was OK.

"Oh, Step," said DeAnne when the tape was finished. "You are sly."

She meant it as a compliment, but to Step it had a hollow ring. He didn't like thinking of himself as a sly person.

"You should have heard me later," said Step. "I stopped being sly, and turned into a bully." Then he told her in some detail what he had done after he stopped recording. And how Mrs. Jones had called it blackmail, and he wasn't sure but what she was right. At some level, anyway.

DeAnne slapped him playfully on the arm. "There, I hereby punish you. Case dismissed."

"I just thought it would feel better than it did."

"Come on, didn't it feel just a little bit good when you pulled out the recorder and showed her?"

"Yes," said Step. "But afterward ..."

"Afterward you found a way of making yourself the villain of the piece," said DeAnne. "But you weren't.

You were rescuing your little boy."

"Yeah," said Step. "When I remember that, I feel better. But I don't always remember it."

"Then I'll remind you," she said. "Again and again and again." To his surprise, she kissed him long and soft and deep, and he realized that she was going to make love to him tonight.

"Maybe I should bully defenseless teacher ladies more often," he said, when the kiss was finally done.

"Shut up, Junk Man," she said, and kissed him again.

"Step! Step!" He dreamed that DeAnne was very, very upset and she was calling to him, softly so she wouldn't wake the kids but her voice was full of fear. Then he opened his eyes and looked at the clock and at the same time heard her call his name again and he realized that it wasn't a dream at all, it was three in the morning and something was wrong and DeAnne was calling out for help, she needed him to help her.

He threw back the covers and got up and realized that he was naked; he must have fallen asleep as soon as they were through making love. I hope I stayed awake long enough to actually finish, he thought. And then remembered that yes, he had. DeAnne had not been left unsatisfied tonight, as she had so many nights before.

He inwardly slapped himself for the churlish thought and went to get his bathrobe out of the closet. The only light in the room was what spilled in from the kids' bathroom, which was around the corner and down the hall, so he could hardly see anything; but he found the robe and put it on. She called again.

"I'm coming," he said, trying to be loud enough and yet soft enough at the same time.

"Put on your slippers first," she said.

"I don't need them," he said.

"Yes you do!" she said, and her voice rose almost to a scream at the end, and so he put on his slippers and then went to the door into the hall and just as he was turning on the light he realized that he had just stepped on something, and something had just bumped against his leg, and now the light was on and he saw that the floor was jumping with crickets. Dozens of them, hundreds of them.

"Holy shit," he said. "I mean good heavens."

"Where are they coming from, Step?"

"What an excellent question," he answered. He bent over and brushed several of them off his legs. It was almost impossible to take a step without crushing one under his feet while others jumped at him, landed on him.

DeAnne was standing there holding a can of Raid. "I don't think I should be breathing insecticide fumes when I'm pregnant," she said.

"There isn't enough Raid in a can to kill them all," he said. "We'd asphyxiate the children long before we got the crickets."

"What, then? Sweep them up into garbage bags?"

"Sounds better than trying to stomp them all," he said. "Where are the seagulls when you really need them?"

"I'll get the garbage bags," she said, heading for the kitchen.

While she was gone, he tried to find the source. The hall was the worst place, it seemed-there were only a few in Betsy's room and in the bathroom. But when he turned the light on in the boys' room, it was even worse.

The crickets were so thick on the floor that in places he couldn't even see the carpet. The crickets jump ing on him made him want to scream, and walking was very slow when he had to keep brushing them off, and finally he just stopped brushing them off, even though he couldn't stand the way it felt to have their feet on his naked legs. He couldn't brush them off because they were here in his children's bedroom and he had to get rid of them and so what did it matter whether he was comfortable or not?

They were coming up from a small gap in the back of the boys' closet. He could see them crawling out, first the antennas and then their black, mechanical bodies, their legs like pistons. Robot crickets, that's what they are, he thought. Somebody made them.

And then he thought, 1 made them. Crickets from hell. A plague of crickets. A sign to me that God saw the way I bullied that woman today and he knows that I secretly loved doing it, that I loved the power I had over her. So just like Pharaoh, I get a plague.

DeAnne was in the room now, holding several garbage bags and a broom and dustpan. "You'll have to hold the dustpan while I sweep," she said. "I can't bend over that far these days."

"Forget the dustpan," said Step. "They'd just jump off. I'll hold the bag open for you. But first we've got to stop them from coming in."

"You found the place?"

"A crack between the floor and the wall in the back of the closet. Do we have any rags?"

"All the old socks," she said.

"Get them wet and we'll jam them in," he said.

"Wet? Why?"

"Oh, please, DeAnne, I don't know, just do it." He wasn't really sure why. He just had some vague idea that if the socks were wet then he could jam them in tighter and they'd stay in place better and it would do a better job of keeping the crickets from coming through.

It took all the socks DeAnne had been saving for dustcloths, but when he had jammed them in, no more crickets were able to come through.

Then the hard part started. The crickets were not inclined to hold still, and so it seemed an almost sisyphean task. Step would keep the bottom of the garbage bag flat on the floor by holding down two corners with his feet, and then hold the top open as far as he could with his hands, while DeAnne tried her best to sweep them in. All the while, of course, they were jumping up at Step's head and onto his arms and legs; yet he couldn't let go of the bag to brush them off, he could only shudder and shake his head. The boldest of the crickets seemed to enjoy this, and hung on for the ride until Step finally asked DeAnne to sweep them off.

Gradually they began to make progress, especially after Step figured out that by spraying Raid into the garbage bag itself from time to time, he could convince the ones they had already caught to stay put. It took an hour before all the visible crickets were collected and the bags tied tightly and carried out to the garage. Then began the hunt for the strays.

They pulled the kids out of their beds, one by one, and perched them sleepily in Step's and DeAnne's room, where there were no crickets remaining; then they closed the door. Since the kids had slept right through the time when masses of crickets were moving around, there was a good chance that they wouldn't see any of the crickets at all, and therefore wouldn't have nightmares about them later.

I hope we're so lucky, thought Step.

They found three crickets that had crept down into Robbie's sheets, which meant that DeAnne would not think of anything less than stripping down all the beds and changing the sheets-even the top bunk, Stevie's bed, where no cricket could possibly have reached. But finally it was done. All the crickets were gone, or at least if there were any left they had the sense to stay out of sight and not chirp. DeAnne proposed bathing the kids again but Step told her to forget it. "These weren't dung beetles, honey, they were crickets, and let's let the kids get back to sleep."

They already were asleep, sprawled in a tangle on top of Step's and DeAnne's bed, but one by one Step carried them back to their rooms and DeAnne tucked them into bed. In moments they were sleeping again.

"Wouldn't it be nice," Step said to DeAnne as she tucked Betsy into her clean sheets, "wouldn't it be nice if all the bad things in life could happen in their sleep and we could make them go away without them ever knowing what happened?"

"I've got to wash," said DeAnne. "I can still feel cricket feet all over me." She shuddered. "I'm surprised I didn't go into labor."

Now that she mentioned it, he still felt the tickling of those tiny feet, and it got worse the more he thought about it. "You get the first shower," he said, "but make it snappy."

She didn't make it snappy, but he understood. When it was his turn, he had to soap himself up and rinse himself off three times before he finally felt clean enough to dry off and go to bed. And even then, he inspected the sheets, though no cricket had jumped on their bed and he knew it, he knew it, but he still had to look. He had to be sure.

"Tomorrow, the exterminators," he said as he finally pulled the covers up over him.

"Yes," she said, "I already tho ught of that. I'll call Bappy to find out if they have some kind of contract, like with Terminex or somebody."

The next morning he was late to work, of course, later than usual, because he had lost so much sleep the night before. He came in to find a memo sitting on top of his desk. It was from Ray Keene, and even though it was addressed to everybody Step knew that it was aimed at him.

It has come to my attention that some employees have been abusing our relaxed attitude toward work hours. Therefore a new policy is instituted beginning tomorrow. All employees must be at their work stations promptly at eight-thirty. Lunch is to be taken from twelve noon to twelve-thirty, the only exceptions being that those who must work the telephones will be assigned half-hour shifts between I 1:30 and 1:00. Anyone arriving even five minutes late in the morning or taking a lunch even five minutes over thirty minutes will be dismissed on the spot. The only exceptions are for medical reasons or genuine, documented family emergencies.

Step wanted to storm into Dicky's office and call him every name he could think of. But he couldn't. If only Arkasian had come through. If only Step had a contract with somebody else, a way to get out of this place. It would be such a joy to tell Dicky Northanger exactly what he thought of him. Instead, Step put the memo into his attache case, locked it again, and then headed for the pit.

The pit was silent when Step came in, and for a moment he thought that they all blamed him for this. But their silence, he realized, was because Dicky was in the room, leaning over the shoulder of one of the programmers. Since Dicky rarely came into the pit, this was in itself significant-but then, perhaps Dicky was doing it in order to stifle the outrage that they were all no doubt feeling. Well, that was fine with Step. The longer Dicky hung around in the pit, the more their anger would focus on him instead of on Step.

"Glass," said Step. "I need you in my office, if you can. I'm having some trouble with the way hyphenation is handled and I think there's a system to it that you can explain to me." They had worked all of this out the week before, but Dicky certainly wouldn't know that.

It didn't matter. "Glass will not go into your office right now," said Dicky. "And there is no reason for you to be in the pit. Glass is helping me work with my programming staff, and that takes precedence over anything the manual- writing staff needs. In fact, you should make a list of your questions and leave them on my desk, and I will get the answers for you. The programming staff has been inclined to goof off, and I am not allowing any further distractions."

"Documentation is not a distraction, Dicky," said Step.

"No, it's not," said Dicky. "But people walking into the programming center and talking loudly are a distraction, and I won't have it. Leave your questions on my desk."

Step stood there a moment, looking at him, and then he thought: We didn't get all the crickets last night.

There's one left, waiting to jump on me the second he thinks I'm not watching. Well, Dicky, I'm a champion cricket killer. I'm an expert at it. And if I can slaughter those crook- legged hordes, I can handle one lone whining fiddler like you.

Step went back to his office and wrote a memo.

Dear Ray, Dicky has barred me from the pit, and wants me to funnel all my questions for the programmers through him. If that's the way you want it, fine with me. But if that isn't the way you want me to do my job, then the change will have to come from you.

Step signed it and carried it to Ray's secretary, Ludy. "Is Ray in?" he asked.

"Yes, but he's not seeing anyone," she said.

"Does he have anyone in there with him?"

She looked a little startled. "Step, I can't see that that's really any of your business."

"I just wanted to know if, when I walk in there and lay this memo on his desk, I'm going to be embarrassing him in front of someone else or not."

Ludy didn't blink an eye, and her smile didn't fade. "Compared to barging into his office, Step, embarrassing him in front of somebody else is hardly going to be a problem. I really advise you against it."

"Well, then, tell me what else I can do to make sure he gets my memo. I've written him a couple of dozen memos about different things since I've been here, and as far as I know he's never got them. He never answers them anyway, and the only time he ever phoned me was yesterday when he knew perfectly well that I wasn't in."

Ludy reached her hand closer to him across her desk; if he had been sitting by her, the gesture probably would have been a touch on the arm. "Step, he gets all your memos."

"Cross your heart?"

She smiled. "And hope to die."

He handed her the memo. "And you might tell him that if he doesn't answer this one, he's going to be looking for a new manual writer."

"I'll tell him," she said, "that you'd really appreciate an answer as soon as it's convenient. That way, if he does want to send an answer, you'll be around to receive it." She winked at him.

"You've got a twitch in your eye." Then he winked back. Ludy rolled her eyes, and he left.

When DeAnne called Bappy to find out about what exterminator to call, he seemed almost excited. "I do that myself!" he crowed. "I worked for one of them companies way back and I've kept up! I'll be right over, and you just make sure all the containers in your kitchen is closed up tight."

"The kitchen?" she asked. "Do you have to spray stuff in the kitchen?"

"That's where the bugs like to be best, where the food is," he said. "And you best get the kids out of the house while I'm doing it."

She had plans for today. And Step had taken the car, since he was so late to work. Maybe she could take the kids over to Jenny's house. And most of her work could wait. Mostly checkbook balancing, not that there was much to balance. She could do it after Bappy was done. And her little hope of perhaps taking a nap at the same time as the children, to make up for last night's lost sleep-well, she had scheduled naps before, but she didn't often get to actually take them, and that was OK, it was part of the territory. Part of the never-ending struggle to get organized. When she finally got organized, there'd be time for naps. "How long will it take?" she asked.

"Couple hours," said Bappy. "Got to get under the house and up in the attic, you know. Do it right. You said you already got the place plugged where they came up through?"

"With old socks is all," said DeAnne.

"'Bout what I'd use myself, anyway," said Bappy. "Just so it's plugged. Anyways, two hours after I'm done the stuff will all be settled and then y'all can come on back into the house and open up the windows and air it out. But don't you be thinking of coming back too soon. Got to take care of your precious burden."

It took her just a moment to realize that her "precious burden" was the baby, who even now was pressing hard against the distended wall of her stomach. Well, she didn't need Bappy to tell her that she shouldn't be inhaling bug-killer when you never could tell what might cross the placenta. And she didn't want her older kids to be breathing it straight into their lungs, either.

She called Jenny, who really sounded delighted about having sudden all-day company, and when Bappy pulled into the drive way in his pickup truck and started pulling what looked like scuba gear out of the back, DeAnne gave him the spare housekey, shouldered an extra-heavy diaper bag, and led the kids off on the walk to the Cowpers' house.

DeAnne had driven Stevie to school this morning, but, knowing that Step would be late enough getting up that he'd need the car to get to work, she told Stevie to take the schoolbus home. He would have no idea that the house was being fumigated. It was only eleven o'clock, so maybe they'd be back in the house before the schoolbus dropped Stevie off-but maybe not. She'd have to make a point of being there to meet him. She hated the idea of any of her children ever, even once, coming home to an empty house.

Life in Jenny Cowper's house was hard for DeAnne, at first. Chaos bothered her, the children running every which way, yelling at each other or coming in at odd intervals to scream out a report of some disaster to Jenny, who, likely as not, said, "Thanks for telling me, dear," and then did nothing. At first DeAnne was horrified at how lackadaisical Jenny was about her children's safety. And when DeAnne saw Jenny's five-year-old sitting on top of the crossbar of the swing set in the back yard, riding it like a pony, she could not restrain herself. "Jenny, you've got to do something."

Jenny looked up at her and smiled. "Like what, staple his feet to the ground? The first time he climbed up there I nearly had a heart attack, but the fact is that he's a good climber and he never falls. I've watched him, and he's careful. So I figure, he's going to climb, and better if he does it where I can see him, where he can show off to me, instead of doing it when I'm not watching. Now that's dangerous. So we have a deal- he can climb up there, but only when I'm watching."

"Forgive me, Jenny," said DeAnne, "but you're not watching. You're talking to me."

Jenny laughed. "OK, then, I'm listening. If there's a scream, I know I need to do something."

"There've been fifty screams already"

"I know, but they weren't the kind of scream you worry about. And half of them were you, anyway, DeAnne."

"Did I scream?"

"This little high-pitched scream, yes. I know you think I'm the worst kind of mother, and I'll tell you, I used to be like you. After my kids all the time. Hovering over them."

"Do I hover?"

"Don't you?" asked Jenny.

"I want them safe," she said. "If something happened to them..."

"But things will happen to them. You think just because you're watching them, stopping them from having any fun, they won't still break their arms or split their lips? And what are you going to do when your Elizabeth starts dating, make it so she never gets a broken heart? God gave our children life, and it's not our place to take it away from them just because we're afraid. That's what I think."

It sounded so sensible, so wise. And yet, and yet. "What about this missing child?" DeAnne said, pointing to the newspaper.

"Isn't that awful?" said Jenny. "And there was that other one I told you about not six months ago. I tell you, you see those faces on the milk cartons, and you think, there's some mother out there, and one day she looked for her little boy and called his name and he didn't answer, and she went out and called and called, and he didn't answer, and then all of a sudden it comes into her heart that he never will, he'll never answer her again, and oh, DeAnne, doesn't it tear your heart out?"

"Yes," said DeAnne. "He was just walking over to his friend's house, three doors away, and he never got there."

"And that mother's going to blame herself, DeAnne, I know she is," said Jenny. "She's going to say, if only I had watched him. Walked out in the front yard and watched him till he went in the front door of that house."

"Yes," said DeAnne. "Yes, and she's right!"

"No she isn't," said Jenny. "Because inside that house there could have been a gun with bullets in it, and so what should she have done about that, stood over him the whole time he was playing? Forbid him ever to go to a friend's house? Lock him in his room? Do you think that the boy wouldn't have known that his mother was watching? That she didn't trust him to get from his house to a friend's house three doors away?"

"But he couldn't!"

"This time he couldn't," said Jenny. "But maybe he's already done it a hundred times. Like when your kids learn to walk, you don't hold their hand anymore, they get to a point where you just let go of their hand and they walk by themselves. Do you think that means they never fall down again?"

"Turning up missing isn't quite the same thing as falling down."

"Do you think I don't know that? Do you think I don't know that one moment of carelessness and my Aaron could be lying there under the swing set with a broken neck? Dead or paralyzed for the rest of his life? Do you think I don't have a stab of fear go through my heart when I see him up there?"

"Then why do you let him?"

"Why does God let us live on this earth?" asked Jenny. "Why doesn't he come down and watch every move we make and keep us from ever, ever, ever doing anything wrong? Because we can't grow up if somebody's doing that. We can't become anything. We'd be puppets."

DeAnne didn't know how to answer. Anguish was twisting her inside. Partly it was the newspaper story about the mother of that little lost boy. Partly it was the strain of not being in her own home, of having her kids playing with these wild hellions that Jenny was raising so free. Partly it was what Stevie had gone through at school for weeks and weeks, without DeAnne having any idea. It was Dolores LeSueur taking him aside and sowing the seeds of some terrible life-sucking weed in his mind, and by the time DeAnne knew about it, the seeds had already taken root, and there was nothing she could do except hope that Stevie's native goodness and common sense would help him get rid of those thoughts on his own.

"I just can't stop watching out for them," said DeAnne, "even though I know that I can't protect them from everything. I know that. I know that they're out of my protection for so much of the time. Stevie at school, and when I'm out of the room even. Anything could happen. But I can still do something, I can still try."

"For what it's worth, DeAnne, I actually do step in and stop my kids from doing really dangerous stuff," said Jenny. "It's just my, um, my threshold isn't as low as yours is."

"Jenny, I'm not talking about you now," said DeAnne. "I'm talking about me. Because I know you're right, and I'm just-I don't want to overprotect my children and turn them into frightened little hamsters in the corner of a box. But I can do something. I can maybe save 'them sometimes, can't I? It's like my neighbor across the street in Orem. There was this guy with a pickup truck who used to roar down the street, going too fast, and she just hated it, and her husband even spoke to him about it but he just laughed and told him to drop dead. So one evening, it's dusk, you know, when it's dark enough that you can't really see anymore but you still can, sort of, and she realizes, I've let the children play too late, I've got to get them all into the house, and she goes outside and she's calling out for them and then she hears that truck turn the corner and gun the motor and there's the headlights coming down the street and then she hears the sound of her son's Hot Wheels on the asphalt of the street. Not on the sidewalk, on the asphalt, and she thinks, he's in the street, he's going to die, and sure enough, there's her son tooling across the road, his legs churning, and there's the truck, and she knows the truck will never see the boy in time to stop, and her son is twenty yards to her right, much to far for her to run to him in time, and the truck is coming from the left, and he'll never hear her shouting at him, not with that engine, and so without even thinking about it she just steps into the road in front of the truck. Just steps into the road."

"Good heavens," said Jenny.

"And the truck guy saw her and he slammed on his brakes and it turned out that he really could stop in time, but then she was a full- sized person, who knows whether he would have seen her little boy? And he gets out of his truck just yelling and cussing at her, you know, what kind of idiot are you, and she just stood there crying and crying until finally the guy sees the little kid pull up to his mom on his Hot Wheels, right there in the middle of the road, and the guy realizes that he never saw the little kid until right that minute, and he says, 'My God,' and they didn't have any trouble with him speeding down that road anymore."

"I don't know if I could have done that," said Jenny. "I would have stood there on the curb and screamed or something. I don't know if I could have just ... stepped into the road."

"She didn't know either, till she did it," said DeAnne.

"Well of course you save your kid from a speeding car," said Jenny. "Even a lousy mother like me would try to do that! But what she did-I mean, that's beyond love, that's all the way into crazy. What if the truck couldn't stop? What does that do to the lit tle boy, seeing his mother killed right in front of his eyes? And he grows up without his mom."

"He grows up knowing that his mom gave her life to save his. That's got to help."

"Or he feels guilty all his life because he feels like it's his fault she died. DeAnne, I'm not saying she was wrong-I mean, she was right because it all worked out. But even saving his life, she might also do harm.

Anything can do harm, anything might work. Well, not anything, but you know what I mean. Maybe you're right to be so protective, and maybe I'm right to run a looser ship. Maybe maybe maybe."

"So no matter what we do, we're probably wrong."

"No, DeAnne, don't think of it that way. Think of it that no matter what we do, as long as we're trying to do our very best for our kids, it will work out. Maybe they'll get hurt. Maybe they'll grow up so mad at us that they don't speak to us for twenty years. Maybe they'll get killed-that's part of life. It's the worst thing in the world, to lose a child. At least I can't think of anything worse. But it happens. And when the child dies, God takes him into his home the same way that he takes old people who die. I mean, even if his life was short, it was life, and was it good? Was he happy? Did he have a chance to taste it, to choose things for himself, to-"

"I know," said DeAnne. Despite her loathing for herself when she was weak enough to cry in front of someone else, her tears started flowing. Just thinking of children dying, and the mother whose son was lost today, and her friend in Orem who knew, knew, that she would give her life for her child. And Stevie. "I'm sorry. It's just ... what we've been going through for the past while with Stevie ... ever since we moved here. I've just felt so helpless. And now things are going to be OK with him, because Step went to school and took care of it, I mean things are going to be fine now, if he can just get rid of these imaginary friends. So why am I crying now? Why do I just feel shaky and cold and-"

Jenny slid her chair over next to DeAnne's and put her arms around her and DeAnne cried into her shoulder. "You can't stop bad things from happening," said Jenny softly. "That's why you're crying. You think I didn't ever have a day like this? Days like this? And then I came out of it and I realized that I can only do what's possible, and I stopped expecting myself to make life perfect for my kids, perfectly happy, perfectly safe. They cry sometimes, they hurt sometimes, and it still tears me up inside, but I can only do what I can do, and that's what you've got to realize too, DeAnne. I saw that the day I met you, that you just expect too much of yourself, and so you're bound to fail all the time, because you don't count it as success unless you've done what nobody can do."

It sounded so good, so comforting, and yet DeAnne didn't believe it. Oh, she knew that she spent too much time feeling like a failure, Jenny was right about that. But Jenny was wrong when she responded to it by deciding not to try very hard anymore. How could you ever learn to be perfect if you didn't try to reach beyond yourself and do more than you could do? And then the Lord would take you the rest of the way. Wouldn't he? If she honestly did everything she could possibly do, then the Lord would do the rest, and things would work out, the way they were finally working out for Stevie. Because you had to try.

But she would be less protective. She would try to do that, too. Jenny was right about that. Kids had to have a chance to be kids. Like when she was a girl and played in the orchard behind her house. It was dangerous back there, with old metal equipment and wires and things lying around, especially along the irrigation ditches, and she and her friends did crazy things. She had climbed much higher into cherry trees than little Aaron Cowper ever got on the swing set. And those were wonderful times and wonderful years. She couldn't let her children miss out on that, just because their mother felt so afraid for them. But she also couldn't sit back and get so- so distant from what her children were doing and feeling. It just wasn't in her.

"You are the kindest person," DeAnne said, withdrawing from Jenny's embrace. She wiped her eyes on a paper napkin from the kitchen table. The paper was rough on the tender skin of her eye lids. "I really wasn't coming over here to cry my eyes out," she said. "I came over because an old man is spraying bug poison in my kitchen."

"And if I know you at all," said Jenny, "you're going to throw away every box of cold cereal that was open.

In fact, I'll bet you even throw away the ones that were closed, because you won't be able to convince yourself that the bug spray didn't get through the cardboard or something."

DeAnne had to laugh. "Jenny, I already did throw them away. Before he even got there. Isn't that stupid?"

"It's just you, DeAnne. And one thing you are not is stupid. Why, you're the teacher who finally gave the women in the Steuben 1st Ward permission not to pretend to worship their husbands in that sicky- icky way that Dolores LeSueur does. I mean, you stood up to the she-spider right in her own web."

"I think that proves that I'm stupid," said DeAnne.

The tumult outside spilled back into the house and it was time to fix lunch. About two o'clock, when DeAnne finally had her kids down for their naps-and Robbie actually went right to sleep; he had run around so much with Jenny's kids that he had worn himself out-she headed back over to her own house to see if the Bappy was done and the smell was gone. Then she realized that she should have gone over at noon to see when he actually finished, so she'd know when the two hours were up. But no, he had left a note on the side door: Finished at noon. Key on table.

Such a thoughtful man.

Thoughtful, but dead wrong about how long it would take for the poison to settle out of the air. Her eyes stung when she went inside. The stink was awful. She fled back outside, leaving the door open behind her. She could smell it from here. It wasn't going to go away, either, not if she left the house closed up tight.

She ran back inside and held her breath the whole time she was rinsing a dishtowel and wringing it out.

Then she held it over her mouth and nose as she went through the house, opening all the windows and doors.

The living room windows didn't have screens, so she couldn't very well leave them open. Nor could she bring herself to leave the doors standing open, even with the screen doors closed. Of course a serious burglar could easily get through any of the windows, so why not leave the doors open? But she just couldn't do it.

She left the dishtowel hanging over the inside knob of the side door that led to the carport, and then went out to the street to wait for Stevie's schoolbus.

Immediately after lunch, Dicky appeared in the doorway of Step's office. Step thought at first that he was there to make sure that he hadn't stayed out longer than his allotted half hour, and maybe that was part of the reason, but the main reason was to deliver a message. "Ray seems to think that you can't do your work properly unless you have unrestricted contact with the programmers, and in fact I agree with him."

Of course you do, thought Step.

"So you can go back to visiting them in the pit," said Dicky. "But I'd appreciate it if you held your distractions to a minimum."

"Sure, Dicky," said Step.

"And I'd still like a report from you on everything you ask them about."

"That's a wonderful idea, Dicky. That will cut my productivity almost in half, I'd say, if I not only have to do my work, but also have to write a detailed report of all of it for you."

"Nevertheless," said Dicky

"When hell freezes over," said Step cheerfully. "My report to you on each project is the finished manual."

Dicky stood there, looking at him with that steady, animal- like gaze of his, showing no more expression than a sheep. At last he left.

I shouldn't have goaded him, thought Step. I shouldn't have pushed.

But it felt good to push. It felt good to know that Ray Keene still thought Step, or at least Step's role in the company, was valuable enough to put Dicky in his place. It was Dicky who had pushed too far this time, not Step, not Step at all. Besides, Dicky still had his victory over the schedule.

A few minutes later, Step was in the pit, so the guys could see exactly how short a time Dicky had been able to make his absurd restriction stick. As soon as he came in, one of the programmers murmured, "Dicky check," and a couple of them got up and sauntered out into the halls for a moment. "No Dicky," they reported.

Immediately they all turned their chairs to face the center of the room. It was as if they had been waiting for Step to show up in order to have a meeting.

Step plunged right in. "Guys," he said, "I'm sorry. I think this schedule thing is all my fault, because I took that late lunch hour yesterday and threw it in Dicky's face."

"Screw all that," said Glass. "Dicky's not a force of nature or something. He does what he does because he chooses to, not because of anything you did."

"He does what he does because he's an asshole," said one of the programmers.

"So the thing is this," said Glass. "If they're going to make us show up at eight-thirty and take lunches exactly one damn halfhour long, then our response is obvious."

"We quit," said one.

"We burn the place down," said another.

"Nothing that dramatic," said Glass. "In fact, it's simple and it's elegant. We leave at five."

They sat there looking at him, and then they all began smiling and chuckling and some of them pantomimed slapping their knees.

"Five sharp," said Glass. "Every night. In the middle of a line of code, if need be. Save your work, shut down, and leave this place dark at five oh one. Everybody agreed?"

"With all my heart," said Step. The others echoed him.

"One for all and all for one," said Glass.

"Now," said Step, "everyone back on your heads."

Step was home by five-fifteen. He found a note on the side door.

Pls chk to see if bug spray still bad. At Cowpers'.

When he went inside, the stench was unbearable. He felt like he could taste it, it was so intense. The house was a bit chilly- it was going to be a cool night, and there was already a stiff breeze. If it rains, Step thought, all these open windows are going to mean soaked carpets and furniture. But we can't close them, either. Just have to keep watch on the sky.

No way will we be able to sleep here tonight.

He set the lock on the front-door screen and left the door open. Maybe somebody could break in and steal everything, but they could do that with the windows open anyway, and the living room just wasn't airing out at all-when he went in there his eyes stung. Then he closed and locked the side door, got back in the car, and drove to the Cowpers'.

"You're home so early again," said DeAnne, happy to see him.

"Maybe from now on," said Step. "Unless they back down. But I can never be late again in the morning."

He kissed her. Jenny Cowper was standing right there watching, but Step only waved as he kissed DeAnne again.

"Don't mind me," said Jenny. "I already guessed that you two knew about kissing."

"We're still beginners at it," said Step, "so we need all the practice we can get." Jenny la ughed and then went back into the kitchen or somewhere.

"How did things go with Stevie?" asked Step.

"Not what we expected," said DeAnne. "A substitute."

"Ah," said Step. "So she couldn't face it."

"And Stevie came home with his ribbon. Mrs. Jones must have said something to Dr. Mariner, because she came into class today and said something about-"

But at that moment several children charged into the room.

Robbie and two unidentified Cowper children-Step hadn't even bothered to try to tell them apart; they all looked like identical twins of different ages. Stevie followed, carrying a book. Not part of the game, apparently.

But at least he was talking.

"Hi, Dad."

"I hear you had a substitute today."

He nodded. Step squatted in front of him, then realized that his knees didn't respond well to that position anymore, and he knelt on one knee. "Hear you got your ribbon."

"I didn't care about the ribbon," said Stevie.

"Well, I guess Dr. Mariner did."

Then Stevie looked Step in the eye and said, "Did you kill Mrs. Jones?"

"No!" Step said, appalled. "No, of course not! I didn't touch her, I didn't hurt her at all. Son, she stayed home today because she's ashamed."

Stevie didn't look convinced. "Dr. Mariner said she was sick. She said Mrs. Jones wouldn't be coming back the rest of the school year and our substitute would be our teacher from now on."

Mrs. Jones had taken the coward's way out, after all. She could be bold as brass when it came to heaping scorn on a seven- yearold in front of his classmates, but when it came to making up for it a little, she just couldn't face it. Well, too bad.

"Dad," said Stevie, "what did you do to her?"

DeAnne, realizing that they needed some privacy for this, herded Robbie and the Cowper creatures out of the living room. Thanks, DeAnne, Step said silently. "Door Man, all I did was tell her the truth about what she was doing, and I made it clear that if she didn't stop, I was going to tell the truth to everybody else, too. So she stopped. In fact, she stopped so completely that I wouldn't be surprised if she never teaches again, even after this year."

"Wow," Stevie whispered.

"I mean, that's what you do with bad people, when you can. You just name their sin to them. That's what the prophets always did," said Step. "Just name their sins, and if they have any spark of goodness in them at all, they repent. Maybe she's going to repent."

"What if they're bad all the way through? What if they got no spark?"

"Well, it's like Alma and Amulek. The Lord wouldn't let the evil people harm them, even though a lot of other people got killed. They finished giving their message and then they left."

"The bad guys burned Abinadi," said Stevie.

"Yes," said Step. "But not until he finished naming their sins. And that's what eventually stopped the wicked people from doing their wickedness. Telling the truth about them. They can only do their evil when they think that nobody knows."

"But Abinadi was dead."

"Son, I guess he knew and the Lord knew that death isn't the worst thing in the world. The worst thing in the world is knowing that something really bad is going on and then not doing anything about it because you're afraid. So when Abinadi died, death tasted sweet to him."

"Burning to death?"

"No, I don't think that was sweet. But then it was over, and he went to live with his Father in Heaven.

Anyway, Stevie, that isn't the point. Nobody was going to burn me to death for telling the truth about Mrs.

Jones. I'm no Abinadi, I was just a very angry father of a very wonderful son who had been treated very badly and now it's over. Mrs. Jones won't be able to hurt you ever again, and my guess is that she won't be able to hurt anybody."

Stevie threw his arms around Step's neck and clung to him for a long time. Then Stevie pulled away and took off out of the room, probably a bit embarrassed.

Step got up and wandered into the kitchen and joined in the conversation there. "You're going to sleep on our bed because you're pregnant, DeAnne," said Jenny.

"1'm not," said Step.

"Uh-oh," said Spike. "Hyper-courtesy alert."

"Oh, please," said Jenny. "We all know how this conversation goes. You protest that Step can sleep on the floor while DeAnne sleeps on the couch, only you both know perfectly well that DeAnne would wake up perfectly dead if she did that and we'd feel so guilty we couldn't sleep a wink. Besides, what you don't realize is that Spike and I went camping on our honeymoon."

"There's a way to zip two bags together," said Spike, in a confidential tone. "I'll show you sometime."

"It does not hurt our feelings to sleep in sleeping bags on the floor," said Jenny. "We actually find it romantic, not that anyone who knew our kids would think we needed any more romantic opportunities. So please, let's just skip the arguing part and all agree right now, you on the bed and us in the bag."

Step and DeAnne were laughing, and DeAnne said, "That's just fine."

It wasn't until about nine that night, with the children bedded down, that DeAnne realized that she had never even checked the mail.

"We can always get it tomorrow," said Step.

"Or we could take a walk over there tonight," said DeAnne. "And check on the house while we're at it."

Why not? The Cowper house was so intensely extraverted that Step was glad for a chance to get away for a while.

On the way to the mailbox he told her what had passed between Stevie and him. "So I guess we've finally gotten over the hump," he said. "Stevie's going to be fine."

"I hope," said DeAnne.

"You only hope?"

"Today when he got off the bus, I started to explain to him about the bug spray and how we couldn't get in the house, and finally he says to me, 'I know, Mom. Jack already told me about it. "'

The imaginary friends. "Well, I suppose we couldn't expect them to just suddenly go away."

"I'm worried, Step. He's way too old to have an imaginary friend. And besides, who ever heard of somebody having more than one? I mean, aren't imaginary friends supposed to be like Snuffy on Sesame Street? Just one big strange creature or something?"

"Give him some time," said Step. "As things get better at school, he'll let go of this fantasy life. I mean, let's face it-these imaginary friends got him through what amounts to a concentration camp experience. Let's not be too quick to kill them off!"

"It's not a joke, Step," said DeAnne. "Stevie just absolutely refuses to admit that they're pretend. I think he really believes in them."

"So what if he does? The fantasy wouldn't have done him much good if it hadn't seemed real."

"But these imaginary friends aren't real, Step, and what if they don't go away? What if he insists on having one of these imaginary friends as the best man at his wedding? It's going to start interfering with his social life sometime, you know."

"But not today," said Step. "Give him some slack. He's just come out of hell into daylight, and it takes a while to shake off the shadows."

They were at the mailbox. Step opened it and checked for spiders, as he always did, ever since the black widow had scooted right up his sleeve when he was getting the mail one time in Orem. He had never known that you really could rip all the buttons off your shirt in one smooth movement and tear a whole shirt off your body in less than a second. It hadn't bit him, but he hadn't forgotten, either.

DeAnne started tilting the letters so she could see the return addresses under the streetlight. "We can take them inside," said Step. "We do live here."

"I'm not going in there again till that stink is gone," said DeAnne.

"The Cowpers aren't going to be thrilled about having us live with them forever, you know," said Step.

"They might. I was very helpful today with the housework. Here's one from your brothe r." She tore it open and started scanning it.

"You know what Spike Cowper said to me?" said Step. "He said, I know you folks need a car, and we've got this ugly beat-up rusted-out Datsun B-210, it runs fine but it's so ugly we'll never get what it's worth. So why don't you take it off my hands? Five hundred bucks. And I said, We can't afford anything right now. And he said, So we'll send you our address, and you pay us when you can."

"I hope you said yes," said DeAnne.

"You think I'm an idiot? I almost kissed him. I can take the Datsun to work, and you can keep the wagon."

"It'll feel like emancipation day," she said. "I think your brother's letting you know that he needs you to pay him back the money we borrowed for the move."

"Blood from a stone," said Step. "I'll call him. He's probably just afraid that we've forgotten we owe it to him."

"I didn't make the house payment in Indiana this month," said DeAnne.

"I didn't think we could anyway," said Step.

"This is the second month in a row," said DeAnne. "I don't think we're going to be able to make up these missed payments unless we get a surprise royalty check or something."

"I know-I'll ask Ray Keene for a raise. No, I'll ask Dicky for a raise."

She held out the last envelope to him. A big manila envelope. "Agamemnon," she said.

"You're kidding," said Step. He tore it open.

"I can't believe we're reading our mail out here on the street," said DeAnne, looking around the neighborhood. There was nobody outside.

"Isn't that what everybody does when their house has been turned into a gas chamber?" asked Step. "It's the contract. Arkasian came through."

"Took him long enough," said DeAnne.

"It just felt like a long time. It's only been a few weeks. In fact, he probably did this right away and it just took this long to process it." He looked up from the letter. "You know, Fish Lady, if you had got the mail at the regular time and called me and told me this was here, I would have quit my job right then, before lunch, and that would have been really stupid and totally unnecessary, because after lunch things got better again at work. I mean, it was a really lucky thing that you didn't get the mail then. Because I really can't quit yet, not until I know whether Eight Bits Inc. is going to do IBM games or not."

"Lucky thing," said DeAnne.

"Yeah, right," said Step. He put his arms around her, there under the streetlight, each holding handfuls of mail behind the other's back. "Maybe the Lord really is looking out for us a little bit."

"Or maybe the law of averages said it was about time," said DeAnne.

"Yeah, well, who do you think wrote the law of averages?" He kissed her and they headed back to the Cowpers' house. As they walked away, Step stole a look back at the house, wondering whether Stevie's imaginary friends had also been driven out by the insecticide.