“James—”

He held up a hand to stop me. “Not yet. Let me get used to you again.” He crossed the kitchen and came close. My God, that too-sweet cologne. His trademark. The first man I ever knew who used cologne every day. He used to steal the beautiful silver bottles from Grieb’s pharmacy. I hadn’t smelled it in years but the memory was like a flashbulb going off in my face.

Hands still in his pockets, he leaned forward until we were inches apart. What I wanted to know, had to know, was, how much was he here? If I reached out and touched him would he be skin and bones, real, or a ghost, a shade, my imagination gone screaming?

He shook his head and closed his eyes. “Don’t do it. You don’t want to know.”

I shivered and pulled back. “You know what I’m thinking?”

“No, but it’s in your eyes.”

I put my face in my hands and lowered it to the table. The wood was cold. My skin was hot. I no longer understood anything.

There was a deep, abiding silence.

Slowly I began to hear noises. The volume rose. Higher. Together, they were familiar. Years-ago familiar.

Rushing, the slamming of metal, everything loud, jarring. Many voices, laughter, scuffling feet, and movement. A clanging bell. School? The bell that rang eight times a day in my high school when class was over and you had three minutes to get to the next?

These sounds were so recognizable. I lifted my head and saw. It was all familiar, blood familiar, but because it was impossible, it still took time to understand, to register. I was back in school. I was back in high school!

Faces from so many years ago swirled and streamed around me. Joe del Tuto, Niklas Bahn, Ryder Pierce. A football whizzed through the air and was caught with a two-hand slap by Owen King.

“Mr. King, give me that ball.”

Miss Cheryl Jeans, the algebra teacher, stood in the doorway to her classroom. Tall, thin as a pencil, she gestured for Owen to hand over the ball. She was so beautiful and good-natured that she was one of the most popular teachers in school.

“Come on, Miss Jeans. We won’t do it again.”

“Get it after school, Owen. Right now it’s mine. Hand it over.”

He gave her the ball and kept staring at her even after she turned and walked back into her room.

School. I stood in the hall of my high school surrounded by many of the same people I had seen at the reunion months before. But there they had been adults, what they would turn into years after leaving this place and going out into life. Here they were teenagers again with the bad haircuts, braces on their teeth, and unfashionable clothes that had been so cool and necessary to us fifteen years earlier.

I stood transfixed. Kids I’d known, hated, loved, dismissed, worshipped, pushed by on their way to class, the toilet, out the back door to sneak cigarettes. Tony Gioe. Brandon Brind.

And then I walked out of a classroom with Zoe. Eighteen-year-old Zoe Holland and Miranda Romanac passed within two feet of where I stood. Both smiled conspiratorially, as if something funny and secret had just happened and they were savoring it between them. To prove it was real, I was blasted with the smell of strong perfume. Jungle Gardenia—that cheap stuff I wore every day to high school. The two girls continued down the hall and I followed. They didn’t notice. I walked parallel with them and neither noticed.

“I don’t believe it! Miranda, you’re telling the truth? You absolutely swear to God?” Zoe’s eyes were alive with curiosity. Miranda’s face stayed blank and emotionless, but then she couldn’t hold it anymore and burst out laughing. “We did it.”

Zoe brought her books to her face and stomped her feet. “Oh God! Come in here!” She pushed Miranda down the hall and into the girls’ bathroom. They went to the mirrors and rested their books on adjoining sinks. “And?”

Miranda looked in the mirror and made a moue. “And what?”

Taking her shoulder, Zoe turned her around hard. “Don’t fool around, Miranda. Tell everything.”

“When he picked me up last night he said we were going on an adventure. I went, ‘Uh-oh,’ because you know what James means when he says that. He drove to Leslie Swid’s house and parked down the block. It was dark inside the house because the Swids are out of town, right? James said we were going to break in.”

Zoe looked at the heavens. “Oh my God! And you did? You broke into their house with him? You’re a criminal!” She giggled.

“He promised not to do anything—we’d just go in and look. So we snuck around the back of the house. Naturally I was so scared the police were going to come that I had seven heart attacks. But James tried all the windows and found one he could open with this tool he had—this car tool thing. So he opened the window and we climbed in. It was scary, but exciting too. We went around the house just looking. When we got to her parents’ bedroom, he took me and pushed me down on the bed and… it happened.”

“Was it good? Was it great?”

“First it hurt, then it was nice. I was just basically scared, Zoe. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

I had never slept with James Stillman in high school. I had never slept with anyone in high school. Why was I lying to my best friend?

Something touched my shoulder. Adult James Stillman stood directly behind me.

“Come. I need to show you something.”

Although I didn’t want to leave, I followed him.

James hurried down the school hallway through swarms of kids and clamor. Through fifteen– and sixteen-year-old lives hurtling along toward anything that looked interesting, glowed, or blinked brightly, anything enormous or tempting or even dangerous, up to a point. Following him was like swimming in a sea of ghosts from a time of my life that was suddenly furiously there again.

None of the kids noticed us. Perhaps because we were adults moving through their world—which meant we were invisible. What we did was of no concern to them.

“Where are we going?”

“Outside.”

We walked down the hall to the back door and out to the school parking lot. It smelled of dust and fresh asphalt. It was a hot, still day. The weather would probably change later, because everything felt too thick and heavy. Insects chirred around us. The mid-afternoon sun glinted off a hundred car windshields. James stopped to get his bearings, then started off again. I had questions, but he clearly had a destination in mind, so I held my tongue and followed silently. We wove in and out of the cars and motorcycles. Here and there I recognized one from so long ago. Mel Parker’s beige VW. Al Kaplan’s Pinto with all the bumper stickers on it. One read:

James walked to the other side of the lot and only then did I see where he was going. The old green Saab his parents gave him when he got his driver’s license was parked near the exit to the street. How could I forget? He always parked his car there so we could make a quick getaway after school. I saw two people sitting inside.

James was sitting inside. Eighteen-year-old James, and a policeman. Although it was very hot, the car windows were rolled halfway up, but I could hear what they were saying. The policeman was talking. His voice was slow and genuinely sorrowful.

“There were two of you up there at the Swid house last night, James. You and a girl. So don’t keep denying it because then you’re insultin’ my intelligence. People saw you two and wrote down your license plate number. Are you going to tell me who she is? It’ll make it easier on you.”

“I was there alone, really!” James’s voice was respectful, eager to tell the truth.

The cop sighed. “Son, it’s going to be very hard on you this time. We’ve let you get away with a lot of crap over the years, but not this time. You broke into a rich man’s house and people saw you. You’re definitely going to have to do some hard time for it. Maybe if you tell me who the girl was, I can talk to the judge—”