"No," I replied. "No one was hurt."

"That's good," Michael said.

"Is it?" I pretended to be looking out the passenger side window. But really I was watching Michael's reflection.

"What do you mean?" he asked quickly.

I shrugged. "I don't know," I said. "It's just that … well, you know. Brad."

"Oh." He gave a little chuckle. There wasn't any real humor in it, though. "Yeah. Brad."

"I mean, I try to get along with him," I said. "But it's so hard. Because he can be such a jerk sometimes."

"I can imagine," Michael said. Pretty mildly, I thought.

I turned in my seat so that I was almost facing him.

"Like, you know what he said tonight?" I asked. Without waiting for a reply, I said, "He told me he was at that party. The one where your sister fell. You know. Into the pool."

I do not think it was my imagination that Michael's grip on the wheel tightened. "Really?"

"Yeah. You should have heard what he said about it, too."

Michael's face, in profile to mine, looked grim.

"What did he say?"

I toyed with the seatbelt I'd fastened around myself. "No," I said. "I shouldn't tell you."

"No, really," Michael said. "I'd like to know."

"It's so mean, though," I said.

"Tell me what he said." Michael's voice was very calm.

"Well," I said. "All right. He basically said – and he wasn't quite as succinct as this, because, as you know, he's pretty much incapable of forming complete sentences – but basically he said your sister got what she deserved because she shouldn't have been at that party in the first place. He said she hadn't been invited. Only popular people were supposed to be there. Can you believe that?"

Michael carefully passed a pickup truck. "Yes," he said quietly. "Actually, I can."

"I mean, popular people. He actually said that. Popular people." I shook my head. "And what defines popular? That's what I'd like to know. I mean, your sister was unpopular why? Because she wasn't a jock? She wasn't a cheerleader? She didn't have the right clothes? What?"

"All of those things," Michael said in the same quiet voice.

"As if any of that matters," I said. "As if being intelligent and compassionate and kind to others doesn't count for anything. No, all that matters is whether you're friends with the right people."

"Unfortunately," Michael said, "that oftentimes appears to be the case."

"Well," I said. "I think it's crap. I said so, too. To Brad. I was like, 'So all of you just stood there while this girl nearly died because no one invited her in the first place?' He denied it, of course. But you know it's true."

"Yes," Michael said. We were driving along Big Sur now, the road narrowing while, at the same time, growing darker. "I do, actually. If my sister had been … well, Kelly Prescott, for instance, someone would have pulled her out at once, rather than stand there laughing at her as she drowned."

It was hard to see his expression since there was no moon. The only light there was to see by was the glow from the console in the dashboard. Michael looked sickly in it, and not just because the light had a greenish tinge to it.

"Is that what happened?" I asked him. "Did people do that? Laugh at her while she was drowning?"

He nodded. "That's what one of the EMS guys told the police. Everybody thought she was faking it." He let out a humorless laugh. "My sister – that was all she wanted, you know? To be popular. To be like them. And they stood there. They all just stood there laughing while she drowned."

I said, "Well. I heard everyone was pretty drunk." Including your sister, I thought, but didn't say out loud.

"That's no excuse," Michael said. "But of course nobody did anything about it. The girl who had the party – her parents got a fine. That's all. My sister may never wake up, and all they got was a fine."

We had reached, I saw, the turn-off to the observation point. Michael honked before he went around the corner. No one was on the other side. He swung neatly into a parking space, but he didn't switch off the ignition. Instead, he sat there, staring out into the inky blackness that was the sea and sky.

I was the one who reached over and turned the motor off. The dashboard light went off a second later, plunging us into absolute darkness.

"So," I said. The silence in the car was pretty deafening. There were no cars on the road behind us. If I opened the window, I knew the sounds of the wind and waves would come rushing in. Instead, I just sat there.

Slowly, the darkness outside the car became less consummate. As my eyes adjusted to it, I could even make out the horizon where the black sky met the even blacker sea.

Michael turned his head. "It was Carrie Whitman," he said. "The girl who had the party."

I nodded, not taking my gaze off the horizon. "I know."

"Carrie Whitman," he said again. "Carrie Whitman was in that car. The one that went off the cliff last Saturday night."

"You mean," I said quietly, "the car you pushed off the cliff last Saturday night."

Michael's head didn't move. I looked at him, but I couldn't quite read his expression.

But I could hear the resignation in his voice.

"You know," he said. It was a statement, not a question. "I thought you might."

"After today, you mean?" I reached down and undid my seatbelt. "When you nearly killed me?"

"I'm so sorry." He lowered his head, and finally, I could see his eyes. They were filled with tears. "Suze, I don't know how I'll ever – "

"There was no seminar on extraterrestrial life at that institute, was there?" I glared at him. "Last Saturday night, I mean. You came out here, and you loosened the bolts on that guardrail. Then you sat and waited for them. You knew they'd come here after the dance. You knew they'd come, and you waited. And when you heard that stupid horn, you rammed them. You pushed them over the side of that cliff. And you did it in cold blood."

Michael did something surprising then. He reached out and touched my hair where it curled out from beneath the knit watch cap I was wearing.