Treasure Island!!!

to struggle into my coat and secret myself in the backseat of her surprisingly filthy car. There I lay, perfectly still, resisting the urge to read her crumpled mail or put the caps back on her ballpoints. When the driver’s door opened, she slid herself in with a hummmph, and started up the motor, having, thank goodness, taken no notice of me.
    I don’t know that I’ve had occasion to mention this, but I don’t drive much. I have a license, but I don’t like unfamiliar roads, or narrow lanes, or driving at night, or on highways, or in bad weather. Under the best conditions, my heart thumps and my palms drip and don’t even get me started on my perineum. Because I prefer anyone but me to do the driving, I pay scant attention to navigation and tend, when it comes to street directions, to be a little vague. Although I know Adrianna drove down Curtis Boulevard, once she took a few quick turns, I was disoriented. I could only see the treetops and couldn’t follow the curves the roads were taking. I was completely clueless as to our whereabouts, when a sudden crackle of static made me jump.
    A drive-in! Did her boyfriend work here? She gave her hamburger order, and the voice on the intercom answered her without love or undue recognition. We drove to a second drive-in; did her boyfriend work
here
? No, she ordered a Caramel Frappucino and drove on. I had just begun to doubt this adventure when the car came to a halt and she cut the motor. I could tell we were parked in somebody’s driveway. She ate the last bite of her burger and tossed the paper bag into the back seat, where it landed on my neck. A long silence—during which she checked her teeth in the rearview mirror—and then she opened her door and plonked herself out. I counted to twenty-five and then followed.
    She had led me to a house—a modest two story with sagging windows and yellow aluminum siding. A narrow cement path, adequately shoveled, led to the front door, but I trod on the lawn for fear of alerting Adrianna to my presence. As soon as the snow crunched underfoot I realized, with regret, that I was leaving footprints. But even with this mistake, the cold night air, and the silvery moon in the sky, and the sudden realization that Adrianna could be in danger inside this squat little house, exhilarated me. I ran for an opening in the shrubs and crouched under a curtained window, hoping to hear something. I heard wind. A squirrel fussing in a tree. A neighbor’s stereo (Bonnie Raitt, I think). And then, from within that unknown house, I distinctly heard a scream.
    There was no time to think. I sprung from my crouch and fell upon the front door, which swung open and immediately plunged me into darkness. I took a few tentative steps and heard sounds—short, weird, panting sounds—as if Adrianna were on the floor getting her throat slit.
    “Who’s there?” I cried, stumbling forward, palming the wall until I found a switch. The lights blazed on and there was my sister sitting on a man’s face.
    I knew him. Not right away, of course, but as the tableau dissolved, his face was plain to me. He was the principal of the middle school where my father taught and a friend of my parents. In fact, now that I thought about it, I had been to this house as a kid, once or twice, to trim the tree.
    It’s shocking and unpleasant to see your sister getting eaten out by anyone, let alone an old man. I screamed; she screamed; I gagged a little; then he, Mr. Tatum, got up, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, and tried to pretend this was the kind of situation where people can look each other in the eye.
    “Did you
follow
me here?” Adrianna said. Then—I forget her exact words—she called me a stalker and said some more in that melodramatic vein. Mr. Tatum tried to calm her down.
    “Is something wrong?” he asked. “Everything all right with your folks?”
    My parents’ health was everything we would wish it to be, I admitted.
    “Then why are you here?” Adrianna said.
    “Because I thought you said you had a
boy
friend. And I wanted to make sure you weren’t in over your head or needlessly debasing yourself.”
    “Shut up,” she said. “I am not debasing myself!”
    “But Adrianna!” Obviously it was an effort not to say terribly rude things about Mr. Tatum as he stood right there, fussing with his belt buckle, but I did my best. I alluded to him not by name. I called their relationship ‘this.’ As in “
This
is a terrible mistake.
This
is one