Thanks for all the great replies. I really like starting a story to good reviews, and I hope I can deliver a story that, if not a happy one, is at least one you'll like.

To answer the questions: yes, Greg is going to be in this (he comes up to be the narrator a few chapters later), and, Krazy, the way I've always heard the rhyme is "ring around the rosy/pocket full of posy/ashes, ashes/all fall down." I bet it varies a lot from place to place, though.

Okay - - Sara's up.

Chapter Two: A Nice Girl Like You (SARA)

"Hey, baby." A warm breath, fragranced with beer and cigarette smoke, tumbled into her direction. The speaker slouched over his chair, his hound-dog face turned sideways to look at her. Sara counted symptoms of drunkenness and reached twelve before she stopped, then counted symptoms of alcoholism and stopped at nine. Unaware of her inner calculation, the man said, "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

Symptoms of clichéd pick-up lines: one.

"I'm not a nice girl," Sara said. She wanted to step out of the bar altogether, get away from the smell of cheap booze and guys like this one, who hit on her in a lazy, uncaring way. It was too hot in the bar, and a balmy layer of sweat was forming on her neck. She could feel it beginning to spread over her face, like a veil. She'd been waiting for almost an hour.

The man took a moment to process her statement before lolling back in his seat with a gap-toothed grin. "I was hoping that you weren't." A hand, fingers stained yellow from nicotine, fluttered upwards as he gestured to the empty place beside him. "Let me buy you a drink."

"I'm waiting for someone," she said stiffly.

"Nobody waits for anybody here."

"I am."

"Then I think you're in the wrong place, beautiful."

She had dated a popular boy once. She never told anyone, and she knew that was stupid, but she had been ashamed of herself for being so proud of it, and felt that the two cancelled each other out so effectively that it didn't matter. It was like erasing Ryan Kingsley from some great chalkboard in her mind - - but still, she'd done it, and she'd been so proud of it, at the time. Sara Sidle, science geek - - pretty science geek but science geek nonetheless, not even on the popular radar - - being chosen by one of the high school gods. It had been like a thrall - - he'd had everything that was important to her then. She told herself that it was his mind more than his looks that drew her to him (they had shared a chemistry class), but in truth it was neither. It was just the fatalistic urge to be near a celebrity - - even if the said celebrity was only known to one high school in America. Ryan had taken her to the prom and given her pale pink roses on her birthday. All of that junior year, and though she had never been romantic enough to daydream about marriage, she had believed that she loved him.

Eventually, it ended - - a slow kind of withering from both sides. But Ryan had been the first boy she'd loved, in a sense, and he'd always called her "beautiful." With a lazy curve of his lips, and his hand brushing back her hair, it was the only endearment he ever offered.

It had been important, somehow. And even though she had become ashamed - - not of Ryan, but of her reasons for being with him - - she still liked the childish memories, the feeling of being treasured.

Grissom had said she made him appreciate beauty, and in a second, she was flushing and pink, looking at the sliding scope of ice beneath her feet. This was more than a Ryan Kingsley situation, she remembered thinking then, and it made her blush even more.

Being called beautiful was something special.

So was being turned down by a man who'd said it.

The man at the bar was staring at her, his dilated eyes out-of-whack and drifting over her like she was a map with topography to be studied. She could feel his gaze on her breasts and belly, and further down, over her hips. She'd read in books that it was supposed to feel like he was undressing her with his gaze. It didn't. It felt like she was evidence.

It felt like how Grissom might look at her, if she tried to ask him to dinner again.

"Stop staring at me," she said in a low, harsh voice. "I'm waiting for someone." Reiteration, and she knew that she'd lost whatever control she'd had over the situation. There were too many different people crowding up her head, and she didn't know if she was talking to Grissom, or Ryan, or someone else entirely. The drunk had suddenly become every man in her life. She tried to top him, because there was no way she was losing some kind of verbal battle to someone well on their way to alcohol poisoning. "I'm out of your league."

But the words felt hollow, and just as cliché as his, Worse, they made her feel shallow.

He didn't seem to mind, just rolled his eyes over her again before making a snuffling noise in the back of his throat and turning to his drink again. His shoulders drooped low over the glass as he sucked at the rim, determined to drink even the sweat off the lip. He smelled like sweat underneath the beer, and his hair, hanging over his collar, was greasy.

Sara hadn't taken psychology, but she thought she had a pretty good idea of how human beings could fall apart. She moved away from the man as if she might somehow catch a crumbling psyche. Maybe she already had. Her roommate freshman year had gotten stoned one night and given her the haunting theory that insanity might be just as contagious as the common cold. That time with schizophrenics, obsessive-compulsives, and other malfunctioning people with some switch broken or misplaced (the stoned roommate had called them God's punch-lines), could be enough to send a usually-sane person round the proverbial bend.

Sara had thought it was a genuinely disturbing idea, and had told as much to the almost hysterically-laughing girl before leaving the room and driving all night before pulling over at a rest stop and sobbing, knowing that she had be back at class in the morning, knowing that she looked used and screwed-up, crying into a hank of McDonald's napkins pulled from her dashboard. She had cried out of fear - - and probably more than a dash of hormones - - fear that Judy, the roommate, was more right than she suspected, and that one day Sara herself would catch insanity off a stranger on the bus. She'd been studying hard and the stress and driven her emotions up to outrageous levels, and once she'd started crying, she couldn't stop, and that terrified her even more - - because maybe she'd already caught that fatal glimmer. Little Miss Sara Sidle, another amusing and conclusive punch-line brought to you by the creator of the heavens and the earth.

When she finally could stop, she had called it a minor breakdown, taken two Tylenol for her new headache, and driven back to the campus.

She'd met Lizzie Zimmer the year after Judy had told her that insanity was just another infectious disease.

After she had called Grissom, Sara had gone through the only photo album she had, hoping for some snatched image of Lizzie, even a bad one from some party, with the focus shot to hell and the lights wrong. Even a crowd shot. She found none, but by the time she found the picture of Judy, she had been sufficiently submerged in college memories to come up with a face.

Lizzie had been willowy, with a plain, oval-shaped face. Blonde hair, long and usually tied-back. Her laughter had been shrill and nervous. Sara hadn't known her very well at the time of the seminar, Lizzie had been more of a friend of a friend - - a vague but common social position. When they found themselves in the same class, they had gravitated towards each other with the natural inclination of people shying away from the unknown in favor of the familiar. Most of the other attendees, of course, were criminology students, and they all seemed to know each other. Lizzie was pre-med and Sara was in theoretical physics, both on the fringes of the crowd.

In three hours, Sara had gone from not being able to remember Lizzie's face to waiting for her in a sleazy bar. If insanity was an infectious disease, it was an energizing one. Then again, she always had been good at multi-tasking.

The bartender was starting to glare at her. She had, after all, ordered nothing. She was not a paying customer. Well, to hell with him. She was a woman with a mission - - saving her boss, friend, and wouldn't-it-be-nice-if lover from a rape accusation by meeting with his accuser and getting the truth.

The black-and-white headline on the tabloid had read:

WHAT EVIDENCE CAN SAVE HIM?

Everybody had an opinion.

What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?

You can catch it just like a cold.

Standing there, she told herself that it was the college breakdown all over again - - too much stress and too many negative factors. Denied or not, she was still in love with Grissom - - she was willing to acknowledge that in favor of avoiding a less unpleasant realization - - and the relationship between them had been tense lately. It had almost been a relief to call him and realize how indignant, for his sake, that she actually was, spitting bitter words into the phone, assuring him she knew he didn't do it. Lizzie Zimmer's accusation was simply breaking her out of a rut, and, again out of routine, she was confused - - drifting. The variables in her current circumstances were just frustrating.

It was a completely understandable reaction.

Soft voice. "Sara? Sara . . . Sidle?"

Her first reaction to Lizzie Zimmer, years later, in regards to all of the previously-mentioned circumstances, was not a slap or a scowl but a smile. She was there not to browbeat Lizzie, but to assure her old friend of a friend that she was a woman, too, and on her side. Then, gradually, she could lead Lizzie down the road to some kind of confession. She could deliver a verdict - - people who lied were only making trouble for themselves - - and Lizzie, realizing her mistake, could turn around and change her mind to the reporters and the lawyer.

"Lizzie." Sara hadn't hugged anyone in years. Her arms creaked as she got them around Lizzie, who was just as thin and anxious-looking as ever.

"Dr. Lizzie." That same shrill laugh was there, too. Lizzie settled down into a creaky leather booth, primly crossing her legs and looking around with some puzzled expression of distaste. "I'm an MD now. Guess all that studying paid off."

"I guess it did." Sara moved in across from her. A waiter, sensing near-purchases, began to move their way. Sara had a few seconds of privacy before he arrived. "I never expected to run into you again - - not this way, you know."

"I never expected it to happen like this, either. But sometimes you have to stick up for yourself, even if it takes years to work up the courage." It had the feeling of a rehearsed speech, practiced carefully in front of the mirror, and the charming, self-assured smile didn't seem at all related to the Lizzie who had stumbled through greetings just a moment before. It was too confident - - too prepared.

They gave their orders to the waiter, who smiled at Lizzie and gave Sara a stern glower for just now ordering after so long of being in the bar. She wanted to flip him off or say something, but she could feel another sheen of sweat appearing at her temples, and she just turned back to Lizzie and waited for him to walk away.

Lizzie said, "So you live in Vegas now."

"Yeah. I moved here a couple of years ago." She shifted on the booth, thankful for her long slacks that wouldn't squeak against the leather. "There was a job opening that I just couldn't pass up."

"You didn't say where you worked."

Sara had reached Lizzie through a complicated network of phone calls to old college friends and acquaintances, reintroducing herself over and over again to get the numbers of people who knew Lizzie, or people who might know Lizzie, until she finally got Lizzie's cell-phone number and reached Lizzie herself. Lizzie had been so surprised to hear from her that career choices hadn't been part of the short conversation.

And now it was, and now she needed some decent lie, because if Lizzie had found Grissom, she must have known where Grissom worked.

"Chemistry professor at UNLV," she said, and immediately berated herself, because it was a terrible lie that would be almost pathetically traced. She jumped the topic immediately. "It's funny, really, because I just saw him the other day. Dr. Grissom." She struggled to add the title in there, to disconnect herself from Grissom at all costs.

It had the desired effect. Lizzie's pale green eyes widened. "Really?"

"He was giving a lecture. I hadn't seen him in years - - you know, since the seminar." She tried to make her voice sound compassionate, calling up all the real victims of rape she'd ever dealt with to inspire the right disbelieving, hurt-for-someone-else's-behalf tone. "Was that when it happened?"

"On the last night," Lizzie said. "I thought he was kind of cute, you know. I mean - - old, but cute. I asked him out to dinner, and he said yes."

A dull, grinding hurt had started in Sara's stomach. She ached for an elsewhere - - wanted to get out of the bar and maybe even out of Vegas. Drive like she had that night in college. At least this was further verification that Lizzie was lying. Grissom didn't accept dinner invitations from girls he met at Harvard seminars.

Her expression must have been still, and Lizzie mistook it for rapt interest and continued.

"He asked me back to his hotel room afterwards, and I turned him down."

I wouldn't have.

Sara forced herself to swallow more of her drink. It was tasteless. She couldn't remember what she'd ordered and she no longer cared. She tried hard to channel Judy, who had been a stoner and dropped out in her second year, but a regular social butterfly under most circumstances. Failing Judy, she could fall back on Catherine, who sounded convincing even when she didn't know what to say.

"Was that when it happened?"

"In the backseat of his car," Lizzie said, giving a small, neat shudder. "I never told anyone until now."

"So - - you tracked him down and decided that he shouldn't have gotten away with it?"

"Well, he shouldn't have." Lizzie sipped at her drink. Sara tagged it as an apple martini and watched her tiny little swallows. "People shouldn't get away with things like that. When I found out that he was a supervisor now of that criminology agency - - it made me mad. I've changed. I don't just lie back and take it anymore." She settled her glass down, wrinkling her nose. "Was there some reason why you picked this bar?"

Sara gave a small, helpless laugh. It almost sounded natural. "I don't like the press. I didn't want to run into any reporters. I know you're high-profile right now."

"Yes," Lizzie said, smiling. "I am." But her smile was suspicious and she turned her head to look around and gaze for the exit, eyes fixing on the glowing red sign. Lizzie had had enough, and she wanted out.

She's going to check when she gets back to her hotel, and she's going to find out that I'm not a chem. professor at the university. In fact, she'll go one step further and realize that I'm not even working there - - and then it's only a skip in intuition to find out where I'm really working.

Sara glanced at her watch. "I have to run. I've got a class." And she also had a hole she was digging for herself, the deeper the better, and she might as well hop in and finish it off. She tried for a sincere smile and really hoped that she pulled it off. "It was good to see you again - - I'm just sorry that it had to happen like this."

Lizzie shrugged. "You lose touch with people you meet in college," she said.

"You lose touch with everyone," Sara said, and knew it was wrong the instant she heard it. She recovered, blushing. "I mean - - a lot of my old friends, I barely see them anymore, after the move." She stood and paid, digging worn bills out of her purse and flattening them on the table, forgetting a tip and not caring. The bar was swelteringly hot and Lizzie's face was drawn, and Sara wanted nothing more than to explode into the parking lot and into her car. Burn rubber to the lab so she could talk to Grissom - - or maybe just avoid him. Because insanity was contagious and you really did lose touch with everyone.

"Maybe I'll see you later," Lizzie offered, that small smile hovering on her mouth.

Sara started to reply that maybe she'd see Lizzie's lawyer, too, but she bit it back behind a smile of her own. "That'd be nice," she said. "Really great."