Peter sports a goatee Sharpay wishes he would get rid of. Yet he is a good dresser: he listens to advice and buys well-tailored suits. He does not simply buy the first thing that comes into fashion. He goes to the gym three times a week, because even a well-made suit cannot hide a body treated badly. He enjoys opera and difficult plays. He drinks in moderation and only smokes in company; it is not possible –he tells her – to refuse a cigar offered by an important client after sealing a big deal: it would be insulting, unrefined. A lack of class is a plague that is afflicting our generation. Peter says he is lucky to be working for a sophisticated man such as her father. Sharpay nods: she says he is so completely right, about everything.

Peter is confident, and successful, and well-spoken, and nothing like the scrawny, awkward teenage boys Sharpay has long since tired of. She set her goals higher.

Peter says that cultured girls are hard to find these days. When you do, they pop out like a gem. Peter says that Sharpay is such a rare gem. Sharpay agrees.


Ryan says Peter is a sleazebag. Ryan says that Sharpay has to stop being so cheap. Ryan says that everyone saw how that slimebucket was edging his hand under her skirt and how she was letting him. Sharpay says that Ryan doesn't understand her, doesn't understand a thing. That he is so common, so naive, so predictable. That she is tired of him following her around, judging her. That he should stop jerking himself off underneath his blankets, and get some real experience. She says that he should grow some balls and face up to their parents about what he's really like.


The following morning Sharpay knocks on the door of Ryan's bedroom. I'm sorry, she says, but she's not sure he's heard. She goes down and makes coffee. She checks her cell phone: one message from her mother and one from the phone company.


Ryan thinks about a story he heard about a month ago, told by a boy with dark brown eyes. The story had gone like this:

There was a square in that town, where every winter -up until last year- you could find an ice rink, a round one, with a fir tree in the middle that sprouted parabolas of Christmas lighting unto the wooden outer walls. If you happened to be a good skater, you would look up while gliding over the ice, and the strings of Christmas lights would turn into a cloud of fireflies, skimming over your head.

It was there where the accident had taken place. It had been a boy, at a guess seven, and his name was Ben or Bart, and he wore a yellow coat. He had been arguing with his sister when he went head over heels on the ice. They had to have been going fast, at a break-neck speed, because the momentum caused them to slide a great deal further, and when the wicker-work of limbs had been untangled, the iron of his sister's ice skate was discovered, buried deep into the boy's head.

When the courage to take him off the ice had finally been mustered, the blood had already formed a bright red circle that froze and became hard, like stone.

Not sure if it really did happen, the boy with the dark brown eyes had said.

But then again, Ryan had thought, stories don't need to have happened to be true.