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back to me, and I burrow into my sleeves. I wave Muppet-like, side to side, and drop my hand back in my lap.
    Drew’s sleepy eyes look right through me in a way that makes me want to pull a bag over my head. He smiles like he knows all my secrets and finds them funny.
    â€œI don’t think Mom would care,” I say, “but she’s in bed anyway.”
    Only then does Mandy flash her lightning smile. “It’s good to be hanging out with you again, Caddie. I’ve missed you,” she says, and relief washes through me.
    I always felt like I needed Mandy more than she needed me. She’s good at taking care of herself, never lets a problem get too big before she solves it. Mandy says what she thinks, does what she wants, and doesn’t look back, whereas I have to check and recheck to make sure what I’m doing is safe.
    It takes me a long time to say back to her, “I missed you too.”
    Drew attacks the curves on Cherokee Bend as if we’re in an armored tank. Every year, at least a couple of cars fall off these winding roads. A cross will mark the broken place in the undergrowth where one crashed down toward the golf course, or a ribbon might ring an enormous tree in memory of a car that wrapped itself around its trunk.
    If I hold these ugly images in my brain for too long, they might happen to us. I need to erase them, so I breathe deep and imagine the bad thoughts floating away. It’s an old game, one that comes so automatically I barely notice it anymore.
    Mandy’s telling me about the different juniors in theater. There are “the musical fiends . . . Hank’s in with them, but he likes us better”; a trio of “melancholy babies” who are “all about the harshness of life. . . . It’s like they live in a vampire novel but it’s no fun because the vampires aren’t even hot”; and a group Mandy calls “the show ponies . . . You know, the kids with the crazy stage moms who do pageants and spokesmodel contests and all that?” To distinguish herself from them, Mandy says, “Except they actually like it.”
    If Mandy quizzes me later, I’ll remember every word. I’m a good listener, even with the mental background noise.
    Drew takes a sharp curve, and we shift as his tire skirts a broken place at the edge of the pavement. All my muscles clench. Please let us be safe.
    â€œCould you maybe slow down, just a little?” I ask, but Drew doesn’t hear me, and I don’t have the guts to ask again. Once we’re on Highway 280, it’s better. Drew still drives too fast, but at least he’s got a straight lane to do it in.
    He takes us to Little Professor in Homewood because they’ve got a good theater section. When we get there, Drew goes in search of some guitar chord book while Mandy leads me to the plays. There are eight different editions of Hamlet to choose from, but we’re supposed to get one that keeps the original punctuation.
    â€œWhich version are you getting?” I ask.
    Mandy waves a CliffsNotes Hamlet in my face.
    â€œHaven’t you read the actual play?”
    She shrugs. “I get what happens. Dude wants to avenge his father’s death. Dude says, ‘To be or not to be.’ Dude fights some people. Dude dies.”
    â€œThere’s more to it than that,” I say, picking up a special edition that looks straight out of Elizabethan England, old spellings and all.
    â€œI know, but I don’t care about Hamlet. I want to be Ophelia. She gets to go crazy.” My heart beats too fast, and I feel like Mandy’s dropped a boulder in my stomach, but of course she wants Ophelia.
    â€œThere are never enough parts for girls.” I flip to a speech of Ophelia’s. I’ve read it over and over, but the old-fashioned spellings give it new color.
    â€œNadia casts girls as guys all the time,” Mandy says. “I mean, as a new person,