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successful than he was. He never read anything you published. Not one of the hundreds of magazine articles you sent him. Not one of the books you’ve written. Not a word.

CHAPTER 3
False Starts
    CHEERS STARTLE THE SILENT VERMONT NIGHT. A ladder slaps against the sill of my dormitory window. All along the third floor, girls in rag curlers and baby doll pajamas throw open their windows and stick their heads out, straining to witness a scene as dramatic as a high school production of Romeo and Juliet .
    â€œHe’s here! Gail, come out!”
    My roommate is calling for me, calling for the girl who was thrilled only hours ago because of a summons from her excitable boyfriend.
    â€œI’m coming to get you,” he had announced over the long-distance line in his dark and secretive voice. “After midnight. Be ready.”
    Tremors of dangerous delight.
    â€œBut they lock the doors after curfew.”
    â€œI don’t need a door. I’ll use my extension ladder. Your room’s the last one on the left, third floor, right?”
    â€œYour ladder! You’re a genius.”
    â€œWait at the window.”
    Ladders have always excited me. I used to climb a ladder up to the ten-foot diving board. That was a heart-in-the-mouth climb. The ladder my father put up against the little roof under my bedroom window was meant to discourage me from jumping. I used it in high school to sneak out in the middle of the night and meet my friends to drink beer and smoke cigarettes. Ladders are challenge. Ladders are adventure. Ladders allow escape.
    I am in the bathroom primping, knees shaking, heart racing. How does a girl dress to elope? I’m not ready. This is only my third week at the University of Vermont. I’ve hardly finished unpacking. I don’t have a white dress. The black-and-white polka dot I was going to wear to the first freshman dance will have to do. And white gloves, the beautiful white kid gloves my mother gave me for church. The thought of church turns me limp. I can’t put my lipstick on straight. Does God know?
    â€œ C ’ MON, GAIL , C ’ MON! He’s climbing up the ladder!”
    I am about to be wooed away from confinement on the freshman women’s campus of a remote university into the arms of a lover who will not take no for an answer. I am all of seventeen. He is a ravishing twenty-two, a real man, a brooding veteran who has seen the hell of war and has the wounds to show for it. My Romeo holds the lure of jailbreak.
    I had warned him. “If the housemother sees a man on the girls’ campus, my God, she’ll call out the Green Mountain Boys!”
    â€œI’ve got my knife, got my ladder, I’m ready for them,” he said. He sounds like he’s back in the swamps of Korea. He’s a man on a mission. My crazy brave Romeo is going to spirit me away on his extension ladder to a life of adventure where my father can never hold a gun to my back again. All my new girlfriends are jealous.
    They sing to me as I back out the window, sobbing silently. Goodnight, sweetheart , well it’s time to go, Doo doo doo de do. One last glance at my roommate’s sad face, our cozy little room, the poster of Elvis we tacked to the wall, the books on my desk that invite me into new worlds—do I really want to give all this up? I hate to leave you, baby, and I don’t mean maybe . My foot slips, the high heel falls off— heels, Gail, what are you thinking? I feel his hands, big mannish hands, the hands of a tree surgeon who knows how to brace branches. His hands circle my whole waist and steady me like a falling tree. I am in his hands now.
    We get no farther than the Vermont border before I ask to stop. “I need to make a phone call.” I can see that McCarthy—that’s his name (he likes to be called by his last name as if he’s still a soldier)—is not pleased. He senses something is not right. His mission is to steal me