asked silently. 'The one you died in?'
'The accident?' Ivy repeated. 'Is that a nice, polite way of talking about my attempted suicide?'
'Ivy, you can't believe that! You know it's not true,' Will said, passionately speaking each word Tristan gave him.
'I don't know anything anymore,' she replied, her voice breaking.
'Try to remember,' Will pleaded for Tristan. 'You saw me at the train station.'
'You were there?' she asked with surprise.
'I've always been there for you. I love you!'
Ivy stared at Will. Too late Tristan realized his mistake in speaking directly.
'You can't, Will.'
Will swallowed hard.
'You should love someone else. I–I'll never love you.'
Tristan felt Will take the blow.
'I'll never love anyone again,' Ivy said, stepping back, 'not the way I loved Tristan.'
'Tell her it's me speaking,' Tristan urged.
But Will stood still and said nothing. Other couples bumped into them, laughed, and danced around them.
Will held Ivy at arm's length, and Ivy would not meet his gaze. She turned suddenly, and Will let her walk away.
'Go after her,' Tristan ordered. 'We're not finished.'
'Leave me alone,' Will muttered, and started off in the other direction, his head down.
Gregory, who was leading Suzanne into the crowd of dancers, caught Will by the arm. 'You're not giving up, are you?'
'Giving up?' Will repeated, his voice sounding hollow.
'On Ivy,' Suzanne said.
'On the chase,' Gregory said, grinning at Will.
'I don't think Ivy wants to be chased.'
'Oh, come on,' Gregory chided him. 'My sweet and innocent stepsister loves to play games. And take it from me, she's a pro.'
A pro at escaping you, Tristan thought as he moved out of Will.
'I'd never give up,' Gregory said, glancing at Ivy, who was standing at the edge of the patio. His lingering smile made both Suzanne and Tristan turn toward Ivy uneasily. 'There's nothing I like more than a girl who plays hard to get.'
'Therefore,' Philip told Ivy on Wednesday evening, 'I can watch Jurassic Park again.'
'Therefore?' Ivy repeated with a smile. Leaning over her mother's hand, she quickly repainted Maggie's nails. Her mother and Andrew were headed for another college fund-raiser.
'Andrew said so.'
'So he's already checked your homework?' Ivy asked.
'He said my story about the party was highly imaginative and very fine.'
'Highly imaginative and very fine,' Maggie mimicked. 'Before you know it, we're going to have a fourfoot-tall professor walking around here.'
Ivy smiled again. 'Go set up the VCR,' she told Philip. 'As soon as Mom and I are finished, I'll be down.'
She lifted the scarlet brush just in time as Philip jumped off the bed, leaving her and her mother bouncing.
When he was outside the door, Maggie whispered to Ivy, 'Gregory said he'd stay around tonight, so if Philip gives you any trouble-' Ivy frowned. She had always been able to handle Philip much better than either her mother or Gregory could.
'— or if you start to feel, you know, under the weather…'
Ivy knew what her mother meant-depressed, crazy, suicidal. Maggie couldn't bring herself to say those words, but she had accepted what others told her about Ivy. There was no fighting it, so Ivy just ignored it. 'It's nice of Andrew to help with Philip's schoolwork,' she said.
'Andrew cares about both you and Philip,' her mother replied. 'I've been wanting to discuss this with you, Ivy, but with everything so, well, you know, in the last three weeks…'
'Spit it out, Mom.'
'Andrew has filed adoption papers.'
Ivy blobbed Scarlet Passion on her mother's knuckle. 'You're kidding.'
'We're going ahead with it for Philip,' her mother said, wiping the knuckle off. 'But you'll be eighteen soon. It's up to you to decide what you'd like to do.'
Ivy didn't know what to say. She wondered if Gregory knew about this, and if he did, what he thought about it. Now his father would have two sons, and it was becoming more and more obvious that Andrew preferred Philip.
'Andrew wants you to know that you will always have a home here. We love you very much, Ivy. No one could love you more.' Her mother spoke quickly and nervously. 'Day by day, it's going to get better for you. It really will, honey. People fall in love more than once,' Maggie went on, talking faster and faster.
'Someday you'll meet someone special. You'll be happy again. Please believe me,' she pleaded.
Ivy capped the bottle of polish. When she stood up, her mother remained sitting on the bed, looking up at Ivy with a concerned expression, her red fingernails spread out on her lap. Ivy leaned down and kissed her mother gently on the forehead, where all the lines of worry were. 'It's already getting better,' she said.
'Come on, let me blast those beauties with the hair dryer.'
After Maggie and Andrew left, Ivy settled down on the couch in the family room to watch Jurassic Park'dinosaurs thump and thrash. She stuck a pillow behind her head and propped her feet up on the stool that her brother was leaning against. Ella jumped up and stretched out on Ivy's long legs, resting a furry chin on Ivy's knee.
Ivy petted the cat absentmindedly. Tired from her nonstop performance over the last few days, her cheerful effort to prove to everyone that she was okay, she felt her eyelids getting heavy. With the first tremors from the storm at Jurassic Park, Ivy was asleep.
Scenes from school ran together in a constantly shifting dream, with Ms.
Bryce's pie face, her probing little counselor eyes, fading in and out.
Ivy was in the classroom, then the school halls-walking down endless school halls. Teachers and kids were lined up on the sides watching her.
'I'm okay. I'm happy. I'm okay. I'm happy,' she said over and over.
Outside the school, a storm was brewing. She could hear it through the walls, she could feel the walls shaking. Now she could see it, the fresh green leaves of May being torn off the trees, branches whipping back and forth against the inky sky.
She was driving now, not walking. The wind rocked her car, and lightning split the sky. She knew she was lost. A feeling of dread began to grow in her. She didn't know where she was going, yet the dread grew as if she were getting closer and closer to something terrible. Suddenly a red Harley came around the bend.
The motorcyclist slowed down. For a moment she thought he'd stop to help her, but he sped by. She drove around the bend in the road and saw the window.
She knew that window, the great glass rectangle with a dark shadow behind it. The car picked up speed.
She was rushing toward the window. She tried to stop, tried to brake, pressed the pedal down again and again, but the car would not stop. It would not slow down! Then the door opened, and Ivy rolled out. She staggered. She could hardly hold herself up. She thought she'd fall into the great glass window.
A train whistle sounded, long and piercing. A dark shadow loomed larger and larger behind the glass. Ivy reached out with one hand. The glass exploded-a train burst through it. For a moment time froze, the flying glass
