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in. Lincoln had the whole upstairs to himself; he even had his own bathroom. And he usually didn’t mind being around his mom. He wished she would give him a little more space sometimes. Head space.
    “Don’t you hate telling people that you still live at home?” Eve would ask.
    “Who asks me where I live?”
    “New people.”
    “I don’t meet any new people.”
    “You won’t ever meet any new people as long as you’re living at home.”
    “Who am I going to meet if I get my own apartment? Do you see me hanging out at the pool? Starting conversations in the community weight room?”
    “Maybe,” she said. “Why not? You know how to swim.”
    “I don’t like apartment complexes. I don’t like the carpet and the little concrete balconies and the cabinets.”
    “What’s wrong with the cabinets?”
    “They’re made of fiberboard, and they smell like mice.”
    “Gross, Lincoln. Whose apartments have you even been in?”
    “I have friends who live in apartments.”
    “Gross apartments, apparently.”
    “Single-guy apartments. You don’t know what it’s like.”
    Eve had moved out when she was nineteen. She’d married Jake, a guy she’d met at community college. He was ten years older and in the air force. He bought her a ranch-style house in the suburbs, and Eve painted every room a different shade of cream.
    Lincoln used to sleep over at their house on weekends. He was eleven, and Eve let him have his own bedroom. “You’re always welcome here,” she told him. “Always. For as long as you want. This is your home, too.”
    He liked staying at Eve and Jake’s house, but he never felt like he needed to escape to it. He’d never felt like he needed to escape from their mother, not like Eve had. He didn’t understand the anger between them. He didn’t even recognize his mother in the stories Eve told.
    “Mom never had a bong,” he’d protest.
    “Oh yes, she did. It was made out of a Dr Pepper bottle, and she kept it on the coffee table.”
    “Now I know you’re lying. Mom would never drink Dr Pepper.”

    WHEN LINCOLN GOT to work the next afternoon, Greg was arguing with someone on the phone. He’d hired an outside consultant to take care of the newspaper’s Y2K issues, and now the consultant was saying he wouldn’t be able to get to The Courier until early February. Greg called the guy a charlatan and a one-eyed gypsy, and hung up on him.
    “I can help with the Y2K stuff,” Lincoln said. “I’ve done some programming.”
    “Yeah,” Greg said, “we’ll have you, me …a couple of eighth-grade magnet students …I’m sure it’ll be fine …” He turned off his computer by yanking the power cord from the surge strip. Lincoln cringed. “‘Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage,’” Greg said, gathering up his papers and jacket. “See you tomorrow, Senator.”
    Huh. Programming. Debugging. It wasn’t Lincoln’s favorite, but it beat archiving and compressing. At least it was a problem to solve. And it would only be for a few months, maybe less.
    He checked the WebFence folder. There were only two red flags. Which meant Lincoln had anywhere from thirty seconds to five minutes of actual work to get him through the night. He’d already decided to save it for after dinner.
    Tonight, he had a plan.
    Well …a plan to make a plan. He’d gotten up early that day, at noon, and gone to the library to check out that parachute book Eve had mentioned. It was in his backpack right now with a copy of today’s want ads, a yellow highlighter, a ten-year-old Mead notebook, an Entertainment Weekly , and a turkey sandwich that smelled so good he was having a hard time thinking about anything else.
    He was done with the sandwich and the magazine by seven.
    He thought about looking at the want ads next or cracking What Color Is Your Parachute? —but reached for the notebook instead. He laid it on the desk and carefully leafed through the pages, through notes on the