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as China Lake with each passing year.
    She shoved the last of the posters into the car and slammed the hatchback. She knew what to do with all this shit. Give it to Kelly.
    It was one a.m. when she screeched into Kelly’s driveway. The garage door was up, and her headlights shone on the blue Miata parked inside. The lights were on in the living room, behind closed blinds. The stereo too. Having her own private party. Well, piss on Kelly Let-It-Slide Colfax. Ceci hauled the posters out of her CR-V, dumped them on the front porch, and rang the bell.
    Nobody answered. Her anger soured. She rang the bell again. Bitch, ignoring her. She walked to the front window.
    Kelly was in there, secretly laughing at her. Stumbling around drunk and disoriented, she bet, like at those last few reunion committee meetings. The blinds were clattering in the wind, and she could see slices of the inside of the house. Past the living room a corner of the kitchen was visible. A sack of groceries was spilled on the floor.
    Wind chimes rattled and the bushes scritched. She had the eerie feeling that something was not right. She knocked again and opened the door.
    “Kelly?”
    A gallon bottle of milk had broken and run across the floor. It was mixed with something else, red wine probably.
    This definitely wasn’t right. She crept inside, heading for the kitchen. “Kelly?”
    Beyond the spilled milk, something was heaped on the kitchen floor. It looked like a coil of sausages but was too messy and too huge to have come from the butcher’s. She smelled lye, and something worse. She took another step, peering around the end of the kitchen counter.
    After that, she was screaming.
     
The moon was high when we drove back into town. Just past two a.m. we pulled into Hobo Joe’s, where the neon sign of the tramp is always lit and truckers, cops, and shift workers from the base can get hot coffee twenty-four hours a day. I grabbed my purse.
    “Want coffee?”
    Jesse spun the radio dial across long swaths of static. “Please. Large.”
    I was paying for two coffees when a police officer came through the door. His eyes were wary. He grabbed a coffee and stood behind me at the counter, sorting change in his palm. I nodded to him.
    “You on your own this morning?” His mouth was tense, his tone astringent.
    “No, my boyfriend’s in the car.”
    He glanced out at the Mustang. Slapping coins on the counter, he said, “You take care.”
    I followed him out, watching him walk to his patrol car. Jesse stuck an arm out the window and called to me, waving urgently. He looked back at the radio. I heard the news report.
     
At eleven that morning we pulled into the class picnic at the recreation center on the base. The place was packed, the mood restless and gossipy. In a small town, bad news travels faster than an explosion.
    Jesse’s voice was chill. “My graduating class was twice as big as yours, and only two people have died since graduation. Now you’re up to thirteen. What’s wrong with this picture?”
    A covered patio overlooked a playground and baseball fields. On one of the picnic tables Jesse found a copy of the Dog Days Update , which contained What-I’ve-been-up-to entries from a number of people, plus class notes and obituaries. After reading for a minute he ran a hand through his hair.
    “It’s random. Car accident. Long illness. Another long illness.” He looked up. “What’s that a euphemism for these days? Not cancer, probably not even AIDS. Alcoholism?”
    “Within a few years of graduating high school? That would take intense effort.”
    Too late, I shut my mouth. Jesse’s younger brother had gone through detox at twenty-one.
    “Ain’t that the truth. Drugs?” he said.
    “Plausible.”
    “Exposure.” He looked at me, perplexed.
    “Definitely drugs. Chad Reynolds went out in the desert and OD’ed on downers. They found his body a month later.”
    “Childbirth.” He frowned. “That’s odd. I mean in this age, in the