The Six Rules of Maybe

to stick it out. He couldn’t run and disappear forever. Jitter needed him.
    I didn’t know what to say. I went back to the conversation we were having before, tried to steer him there too. I hoped he’d stay on that path, not go off onto other, dangerous ones. “My friend’s depression—it isn’t about unrealistic expectations, anyway. He’s seen a lot of life already. He knows it isn’t always perfect.” Clive Weaver’s wife, Mary, had died a dozen years ago. A wife he had loved and who had loved him back; at least, he still had her high school graduation picture on the fireplace, her with horn-rimmed glasses and swooped-up hair and a string of pearls. He’d told me once, too, the story of how he had helped invade the peninsula during the Korean War. He left out the most important details. A former soldier was under no misconceptions about what life held.
    “Well, it’s a fine thing that you’re helping him,” Hayden said.
    “I don’t know. Maybe it just makes me feel better.”
    We both stood there on the porch. Zeus was peeking at us from the other side of the screen. It was all quiet there between us.
    “Remember, Scarlet. A good lot of the time, nice people are doomed.”
    I smiled, and so did he, and then he went inside, letting the screen door slam shut behind him. I looked at the moon for a while. It seemed both so far away and close enough to touch. Finally, I went inside too.
    I laid out the mail I had found. Credit card applications, a magazine subscription solicitation, ads for mainland appliance stores, and a seed catalog. I stuck some white labels over Mom’s name, wrote in Clive Weaver’s instead. I filled out a postcard of the Eiffel Tower that I’d snitched from Mom’s craft box from her scrapbook club. Dear Mr. Weaver , I wrote. Paris is enchanting. Wish you were here . On a whim, I took a pizza advertisement, cut the paper to make a square, folded it corner to corner and back the other direction intoa triangle. A thousand paper cranes makes a wish come true, right? Wasn’t that what they said? Maybe a few less than that could make your wish come pretty close. I made a good day’s worth of progress toward the goal, stashed away the whole project in an old shoe box.
    I woke that night from a dream. It was a smell that woke me, not a sound. A smell drifting in my window. The smell of a cigarette. I sat up, got out of bed, and crept to the window. I could hear the night screech of the island hawks, who circled endlessly above us looking for rabbits to swoop down upon. I expected to see Hayden’s muscled back, his skin white in the moonlight, his jeans around his hips, the orange tip of cigarette. If it had been him I might have gone out there again, because I was still sleepy and sleep could soften things, could make you forget your promises. But what I saw instead was a pair of triangular red lights. The red lights of the back of Buddy Wilkes’s El Camino, heading down our street.

Chapter Twelve
    I trusted you,” Kevin Frink said.
    “What’s the matter?” He stood by my locker. His big face was red. His arms were folded across the front of his puffy coat.
    “I thought you were my friend.”
    “God, I am. What? Tell me! I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what I was apologizing for. It was a cover-your-bases apology. A please-don’t-bomb-my-locker apology.
    “She said no.”
    He looked crushed. He hit the side of his head with his palm as if his ear had water in it. Or maybe as if he were trying to displace the memory of prom rejection.
    “You’re kidding,” I said.
    “You set me up.”
    “No,” I said. I put my hand on his arm, but he yanked away. “I swear, I know she wanted you to ask her.”
    Two red Volkswagens. Henderson Law? Goth Girl? Was she out of her mind? In terms of hope and possibilities, this seemed ridiculously out of reach. She had to know that.
    “She’s a vampire,” Kevin said. And he was Bomb Boy. They would have made a great couple.
    “I know,” I said. “You’re right. I am so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” Henderson Law happened. How could this be? This was terrible. I felt awful.
    “I didn’t want to go to that stupid fucking dance, anyway.”
    “It’s all my fault,” I said.
    “You can say that again.”
    I would have—I would have said it again and again if it would make him feel any better. But Kevin Frink had already turned and slumped away, his huge head morose over his huge body.
    “I’ve got a plan,”