"Suze!" A shadow blocked out the light streaming from the bay windows to my room.

I looked back over my shoulder. Gina was leaning out, looking anxiously after me.

"Shouldn't we – " She sounded, I noted in some distant part of my mind, frightened. "I mean, shouldn't we call the police? If this stuff about Michael is true – "

I stared at her as if she'd suggested I … well, jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.

"The police?" I echoed. "No way. This is between Michael and me."

"Suze – " Gina shook her head so that her springy curls bounced. "This is serious stuff. I mean, this guy is a murderer. I really think we need to call in the professionals here – "

"I am a professional," I said, offended. "I'm a mediator, remember?"

Gina did not look comforted by this piece of information.

"But … well, what are you going to do, Suze?"

I smiled at her reassuringly.

"Oh," I said. "That's easy. I'm going to show him what happens when somebody tries to kill someone I care about."

And then I leaped off of the roof into the darkness.

I couldn't bring myself to take the Land Rover. Oh, sure, I was perfectly willing to commit what pretty much amounted to murder, but drive without a license? No way! Instead, I hauled out one of the many ten speeds Andy had tucked away along the carport wall. A few seconds later, I was flying down the hill from our house, tears streaming from my eyes. Not because I was crying, or anything, but because the wind was so cold on my face as I sailed down into the Valley.

I called Michael from a pay phone outside the Safeway. An older woman – his mother, I suppose – answered. I asked if I could speak to Michael. She said, "Yes, of course," in that pleased way mothers use when their child gets his or her first call from a member of the opposite sex. And I would know. My mother uses that voice every time a boy calls me and she answers. You can't really blame her. It happens so rarely.

Mrs. Meducci must have tipped Michael off that it was a girl, since his voice sounded much deeper than usual when he said hello.

"Michael?" I said, just to be sure it was him and not his father.

"Suze?" he said in his normal voice. "Oh, my God, Suze, I'm so glad it's you. Did you get my message? I must have called about ten times. I followed the ambulance to the hospital, but they wouldn't let me into the emergency room to see you. Only if you were admitted, they said. Which you weren't, right?"

"Nope," I said. "Fit as a fiddle."

"Thank God. Oh, Suze, you don't have any idea how scared I was when I heard that crash and realized it was you – "

"Yeah," I said shortly. "It was scary. Listen, Michael, I'm in a jam of a different kind, and I was wondering if you could help me out."

Michael said, "You know I'd do anything for you, Suze."

Yeah. Like try to kill my stepbrothers and my best friend.

"I'm stranded," I said. "At the Safeway. It's kind of a long story. I was wondering if there was any possible way – "

"I'll be there," Michael said, "in three minutes." Then he hung up.

He was there in two. I'd barely had time to stash the bike between a couple of Dumpsters in the back of the store before I saw him pull up in his green rental sedan, peering into the brightly lit windows of the supermarket as if he expected to see me inside riding the stupid mechanical rocking horse, or whatever. I approached the car from the parking lot, then leaned over to tap on the passenger side window.

Michael whipped around, startled by the sound. When he saw it was me, his face – pastier than ever in the fluorescent lights – relaxed. He leaned over and opened the door.

"Hop in," he said cheerfully. "Boy, you don't know how glad I am to see you in one piece."

"Yeah?" I slid into the front passenger seat, then slammed the door closed after I'd tucked my feet in. "Well, me too. Happy to be in one piece, I mean. Ha ha."

"Ha ha." Michael's laugh, rather than being sarcastic, as mine had been, was nervous. Or at least I chose to think so.

"Well," he said as we sat there in front of the supermarket, the motor running. "You want me to take you, um, home?"

"No." I turned my head to look at him.

You might be wondering what I was thinking at a moment like that. I mean, what goes through a person's head when they know they're about to do something that could result in another person's death?

Well, I'll tell you. Not a whole heck of a lot. I was thinking that Michael's rental car smelled funny. I was wondering if the last person who had used it had spilled cologne in it, or something.

Then I realized the smell of cologne was coming from Michael himself. He had apparently splashed on a little Carolina Herrera For Men before coming to get me. How flattering.

"I have an idea," I said, as if I had only just then thought of it. "Let's go to the Point."

Michael's hands fell off the steering wheel. He hurried to right them, placing them at two and four o'clock, like the good driver he was.

"I beg your pardon?" he said.

"The Point." I thought maybe I wasn't being alluring enough, or something. So I reached over and laid a hand on his arm. He was wearing a suede jacket. Beneath my fingertips, the suede felt very soft, and beneath the suede, Michael's bicep was as hard and as round as Dopey's had looked.

"You know," I said. "For the view. It's a beautiful night."

Michael wasted no more time. He put the car in gear and began pulling out from the parking lot before I even had time to remove my hand.

"Great," he said. His voice was maybe a little uneven, so he cleared his throat, and said, with a little more dignity, "I mean, that sounds all right."

A few seconds later, we were cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway. It was only ten o'clock or so, but there weren't many other cars on the road. It was, after all, a weeknight. I wondered if Michael's mother, before he'd left the house, had told him to be home at a certain time. I wondered if, when he didn't come home by curfew, she'd worry. How long, I wondered, would she wait before calling the police? The hospital emergency rooms?

"So nobody," Michael said as he drove, "was really hurt, right? In the accident?"