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neighbors are flocking to their windows.
    Danny reaches into the glove box and pulls out a joint big as a cigar. “Happy birthday, Roll,” he says, and hands Addie a lighter. “Do the honors?”
    â€œFuckin’ A,” she says.
    Late that night, when her family is sleeping, Addie sneaks out of bed, tiptoes into the kitchen, lifts the receiver on the new harvest gold wall phone, and dials Louise White’s number.
    â€œHello?” Louise says, her voice muffled. “Hello, who is this?”
    Addie hangs up.
    She calls again the next night, and the next. One night Louise’s father answers. Addie starts hanging up faster, before anyone can pick up. She starts calling at all hours. Midnight, five in the morning, different times—whenever she’s near a phone. During the day, when no one’s home, she can let it ring longer. She can let it ring and ring and ring.
    Addie’s senior yearbook contains no evidence of Roland-and-Louise, even though at school they have become one word. There are no pictures of Roland propped against Louise’s locker, none of him with his arm draped across Louise’s shoulders or smiling at Louise from the stage during senior assembly. All the pictures are from before.
    There is no evidence of Roland-and-Louise in Roland’s inscription to Addie. He fills her entire back page, as if she’d been saving it for him.
    Addie ,
    You made life very interesting for me this year. I am really appreciative to you for all the things you gave me. You have a way of reassuring me like nobody else can .
    I hope we can see each other this summer. I’m sure we’ll see each other at the beach after graduation. That’s really going to be wild. After that I doubt I will be around too much because the band and myself are going to lead very secluded and mysterious lives living together somewhere .
    When I think back on high school I think, what a waste of our formidable years. I really am glad to be moving on, although the future for me is unpredictable. All I can say when someone asks me what I’m going to do is “other plans.” No one would understand if I told them my real ambitions. You are one I think that can understand to some degree what I am trying to pull off .
    Lots of love and luck ,
    Roland Rhodes
    Underneath he has drawn a genie lamp, a flat thing with a curved spout and a cloud coming out. His words are in the cloud, as if by magic—Addie’s wish, being granted.

Beach
    But they don’t see each other. Graduation week at Ocean Drive is supposed to be for graduates, but Roland brings Louise and rents a motel room instead of sharing one of the big houses with everybody else. Addie imagines them sunning by the motel pool, Roland rubbing Louise’s back with coconut oil while he tells her the story of his diving injury.
    They don’t show up at any of the parties. This ought to be a relief, but Addie is in no mood to feel relieved.
    At the last party on the last night, she gets drunk and loses her virginity once and for all, to J.C. Green. They don’t plan it; she and J.C. barely know each other. They just happen to be the last ones still conscious after everyone else has gone home or to bed or found another place to pass out. They are sitting on a gritty sofa in the living room of a big oceanfront house. Someone has left the tone arm of the stereo cocked back and a Doobie Brothers album plays endlessly. Addie doesn’t know why she came to the party at all or why she’s still here. She gets up to leave and staggers, whirly-drunk. J.C. catches her. He’s fat, with a beery, greasy smell, mildly sickening. But his fatness is also a comfort, something to sink into.
    Addie lets him hold her. She can feel a thumping through his jeans, like a lowdown heartbeat. She doesn’t care. She lets him turn her around and fold her over the arm of the sofa. She lets him take down her striped shorts and hump her from