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have to forgive me for not recognizing you.”
    She was so pale that her skin was nearly translucent. I could see blue veins in her temples. Her hand was chilly.
    “Hey, Nosebleed.”
    My lips parted, but something had nailed my tongue to the floor of my mouth. I read her name tag. Valerie Skinner.
    Her voice was a rasp, slurred at the edges. She pointed to her head. “Brain thing. Messes up my speech.”
    “Sorry to hear it,” I said. “Really sorry.”
    “Sure you are. You like my new look?” Turning her head, she showed me her profile. “I’ll send you the bill for the nose job. The weight loss has a downside, but at least I’ll die thin.”
    “You look . . .”
    “Don’t sweat it. Close your mouth; flies are getting stuck in your teeth.”
    Luckily, I had laminated a smile to my face before coming over. Otherwise I would have looked like The Scream .
    She gazed around. “Time to get a drink and hold court. This is my last chance to get these rubes bowing at my feet.” Her smile was self-aware. “Once a diva, always a diva.”
    She walked off with the cautious gait of an octogenarian. I wanted to run straight to a Catholic church and confess my sins to a priest.
    Ceci sidled up. At length she said, “Is it a tumor?”
    I frowned, galled that she would put it so baldly. “I didn’t see the X-rays.”
    She twisted her hands together. “I just thought . . . you’ve been talking to him all night; maybe he told you what’s wrong.”
    “Say again?”
    She nodded across the room at Jesse. “The wheelchair—does he have cancer?”
    “Broken back. A car ran him down. Why would you think—”
    “Good.” She relaxed. “We don’t need to add any more names to the list.”
    But she continued twisting her hands, gazing at the display she had just set up. It was labeled, Hound Heaven .
    “Excuse me, Ceci.”
    I walked over to it. Under the caption, “In Fond Memory,” Ceci had tacked up photos, remembrances, and newspaper obituaries. I gazed at them, feeling a tingling in my fingers.
    Jesse rolled up beside me. “Ev?”
    I continued gazing at the display. After a moment he leaned back.
    “Jesus,” he said. “What happened, a sniper in the clock tower?”
    Billy D’Amato. Car crash.
    Shannon Gruber. Pneumonia.
    Teddy Horowitz. Aircraft accident aboard the USS Nimitz .
    Linda Garcia. Long illness.
    Sharlayne Jackson. Complications of childbirth.
    I put a hand to my head.
    Marcy Yakulski. Auto accident. Pinned next to Marcy’s photo was an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer : Four Die in Fiery Crash.
    Cancer.
    Long illness.
    Exposure.
    Jesse shot me a look. “You may want to think about carrying a good-luck charm.”
    Light caromed off the disco ball, flickering over the names on the board. I read the last name and felt a sick headache spiraling up.
    Dana West, RN. Surgical nurse. Died in a hospital fire.
    “I have to get out of here.” I rushed for the door, queasy and desperate for fresh air.
     
The Mustang roared up Highway 395 heading north out of town, headlights swallowing the road. I kept the pedal down.
    “I knew Dana West. The nurse who died,” I said.
    I knew all the other names on the memorial board, but Dana West’s face stayed with me. She had a warm smile, a laugh that cut through the lunch line in the cafeteria, and an ease about comforting anybody who was in pain. She’d lived three houses down from me. Jesse put his hand on the back of my neck.
    “A hospital fire. She died on duty. This bitch universe, sometimes I . . .”
    I ran the back of my hand across my eyes. Twelve classmates were gone. And Valerie Skinner was going to be next.
    The desert night was radically still, the sky a black sail scooped full of stars. The road climbed over open country and, though it had been fifteen years, the rise and the twist in the road presented themselves to me as gifts. I pushed it up to the summit and found the turnout.
    We were at the top of a natural amphitheater, looking west