"I don't get it, Bernice," Luann said for the dozenth time. "How could he do this to me?" She was stalking around her bedroom dressed only in her pink underwear. "Don't want me to see him off at the airport? 'We already had the perfect good-bye'? It doesn't make any sense.

Bernice, a slender, bespectacled girl with a knot of frizzy hair, sat on the floor, leaning against Luann's bed. She was used to her friends tirades. Luann had called her, distraught, as soon as Quill had left. When Luann became unintelligible halfway through explaining what had happened Bernice simply said, "I'll be right over." She had been surprised to be greeted at the door by Luann in her underwear, but glad she had thought to bring along the graphic novel she had been reading. It was going to be a long afternoon.

Luann stalked across her bedroom, picked up a black T-shirt from the floor and started to fold it. She paused, looked at the shirt and suddenly bunched it up on her fists and tore at it, as if she had her hands around someone's neck. With a growl she threw it across the room.

"I take it this is about Quill?" she asked.

"He's going home."

"Home-home or Australia?"

"Australia."

"Bummer."

Bernice waited for Luann to expand on her problem. When her friend didn't she opened the graphic novel she'd brought along and read a page. She was reading "The Clockwork Princess on Mars," a steampunk tale about a poor robot girl who was fated to become empress of the Universe. "Lucky bastard" Bernice had grumbled the time she'd read the prophecy in the first volume. Bernice didn't believe in luck, except the bad kind. The series was horrible illogical. Robots are sexless so why is there a "girl" robot in the first place, why was she running around in a pinafore like Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, only with bigger breasts. What does a robot need breasts for? Princess Tik-tok even had a boyfriend, a human boy who liked to tinker. Still Bernice was addicted to the series.

She came to the end of a chapter and looked up to see Luann still pacing. "Could you at least put some clothes on?" she asked. Luann grunted and grabbed a T-shirt from her dresser and a pant of shorts from off the floor. "Happy?" she snapped as she flopped on the bed and groaned.

Bernice considered started the next chapter of the novel but decided she'd never the story out of her friend unless she pried.

"You know Quill was going back to Australia sometime all along."

"Yeah. So?"

"So, why are you so upset that he's doing what you knew all along he was going to do?"

"It was just the way it happened.

Bernice waited patiently.

"We were laying on the bed starting to make out when his phone rang."

"Did he touch your booby?"

"Almost. He had his hand under my shirt."

"Had he ever touched your booby?"

"No!" Luann protested.

"Are you upset because he's going back to Australia or because you're sixteen and never been groped?"

"I'm seventeen!"

"Whatever."

"Does it have to be one of the other?" Luann asked with a sigh. "Here' the deal. He said he didn't want me coming out to the airport to say good-bye because his flight was leaving in the middle of the night. Only I looked - there are no flights leaving here for Australia in the middle of the night. Then I got to thinking. His father calls in the middle of the day to say that his work here in the States is done and they're going home. Immediately. But..." Luann rolled over and leaned over the bed just over Bernice's shoulder. "Wouldn't Quill's father have known when he work was about finished and told his family before this? And what's the rush? Wouldn't they need a few days to settle their accounts here? Or to pack? Seriously, Bernice, once I started thinking about it, none of it makes sense."

"Do you usually do most of your thinking in your underwear?"

"I just... got so mad when I realize that Quill had lied me that I couldn't bear the touch of the clothes I'd been wearing. I was ready to give him my all. I dressed especially for the occasion and ... he lied to me." Luann broke down into sobs.

Bernice stood up and got a box of tissues from Luann' desk and silently handed it to her.

"I'm sure he has an innocent explanation," Bernice said as she sat back down on the floor.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Just go ask him."

"Ask him?"

"Sure, go to his house and demand to know what's going on."

"I've never been to his house."

"Never?" Bernice thought for a moment. "Neither have I. You know, I can't think of anyone who has ever visited Quill at home."

"You're right." Luann propped up her arms under her chin. "I don't recall anyone ever going to Quill's house. I wonder why that is?"

"Go see him." Bernice said, opening up her book again.

"But..." Luann sighed, "I don't have a car."

"Do what I do, take the bus."

][

Finding Quill's address was not so easy. Luann called all her friends and not one of them knew where Quill lived. She even called Tiffany Farrell, decidedly not a friend. Tiff seemed genuinely shocked that Quill was leaving for Australia and wanted to see him off at the airport as well, but didn't know where he lived. If anyone could wheedle an address out of Quill it would have been Tiffany. She'd do anything to embarrass Luann, including throwing herself at Quill.

With a groan Luann threw herself back on her bed. Bernice quietly finished another chapter of The Clockwork Princess on Mars.

Her phone rang and Luann swept it up with an excited "Quill?"

"Sorry, Lu, it's Delta." Delta was Luann's other closest girlfriend, a tall, elegant black woman, singularly focused on a life in public service. "I had a thought. There's this guy in my computer class, Wyatt Frayn,, who is always boasting about how he can break into any computer system. He's offered to change any grade scores for me."

"But you get straight 'As'."

"I think that's his way of asking me out. As if." Unlike Bernice who never got any attention from boys, Delta's good looks brought an endless stream of boys, both black and white, who wanted to date her. She turned them all down, saying that she didn't have time for romance. As a cancer survivor this was, perhaps, true. But it always struck Luann as ironic that the one girl who had no trouble meeting boys was the one girl who didn't want to meet boys.

"Anyway," Delta continued, "The one place where Quill home address would be, would be in the school admissions records. I don't know whether Wyatt can actually break into the school's computer but it wouldn't hurt to ask him." Delta read off Wyatt's phone number and hung up.

Wyatt may have been a nerd but he wasn't an idiot. He insisted on taking Luann to lunch the next day and a walk through the zoo in exchange for digging up Quill's address.

"Man, I feel so dirty," Luann said afterwards. She had actually negotiated down from dinner and a movie to get Quill's address.

A half hour later Wyatt called back with the address. It was some ways away from the school, almost in another school district. As Bernice lead her to the bus stop Luann reflected that if Quill were trying to hide something from his classmates the sub-division he lived in did a pretty good job.

][

The Mount Hope sub-division offered neither a mound or much hope. It had been built a couple generations before. The houses were all small ranches, somewhat worn with age. Most were in need of a fresh paint job, or a lawn mowing. For Sale signs dotted the street. Quill's house was situated at the end of a cul-de-sac. The curtains were closed. There was no car in the driveway and the grass didn't look like it had been cut any time recently.

Luann marched up to the front door and knocked.

When no one answered she knocked again, harder and longer. Bernice waited on the sidewalk below the porch, fretting. She could imagine that silent eyes peered out at her from every window on the block.

After pounding a third time, Luann tried to peer in through the window set in the door, but it was too dark inside for her to see anything.

"Let's try around in back." she say and hopped off the porch and took the drive past the house into the space between the garage and the back door. She began knocking on the door there.

"Obviously no body's home," Bernice said, following her friend around to the back. "You tried your best. Let's go home."

"Not till I've had it out with Quill!" Luann snapped. She stepped off the back porch and began trying the windows. "Hey, this one's open!"

"What are you doing?" Bernice demanded. "That's breaking and entering. If we get caught we'll go to prison!"

"We're not going to get caught. Besides, Quill might be lying in there, injured and needing our help. We have to go in to be sure."

Bernice looked to the heavens for support. "I won't help." she said.

"But you gotta, you're the only one small enough to go through the window."

"This is going to end badly," Bernice insisted as she put her foot in Luann's hands and got boosted up to the window. It was over the kitchen sink, which was filled with dirty dishes. Bernice was about to complain some more when she felt Luann's hands on her butt, giving a mighty heave. With a cry of alarm Bernice was through the window and piled up on the floor beyond the sink.

"You OK in there?" Luann asked.

"I'm going to kill you!"

"Open the door. Let's get this over with."

][

The first thing Bernice said as Luann came in through the door was, "this place smells like the boy's locker room." Luann paused in mid-step, wondering when and how her friend had ever been in the boys locker room. The smell, though was pungently obvious. To Luann it smelled more of old cigarettes, stale beer and her brother's armpit. When younger Brad would torment her by sticking her under his arm while giving her an "Indian burn."

She called out Quill's name a couple of times and sighed disappointedly when there was no answer. They looked around the kitchen. From the condition of the dishes in the sink most had been there a couple days. The overhead cabinets held clean dishes a couple boxes of cereal and and not much else. The refrigerator - Luann always figured you could tell what kind of a person lived there by what they had in the fridge - was empty but for some boxes of Chinese take-out. Beside it was a waste-basket of empty beer cans. Which accounted for that part of the smell in the place. A scrap of paper lying half-way under the refrigerator caught her eye. She picked it up. It was a postcard from Yosemite National Park. It had a lovely view of a meadow with high mountains in the background, a river ran through the bottom of the picture and bison grazed on the high grass. Over the photo was printed 'Hello from Yolanda's Jackelope Inn. Scenic Yosemite.' On the other side was a note in Quill's handwriting addressed to someone named Frankie-boy: "Why can't you ever find a suitable bimbo around here. I love the scenery. It's wonderful. Pittsville, what kind of place can that be? See you next week." The card was addressed to a Frank Herrad. The address was this houses'.

A wide archway lead into a living-room on the left and a hallway on the right. The living-room was furnished with a sofa, some armchairs, a coffee table and a large screen TV. The TV was turned sideways as if someone had pulled a lot of cables in a hurray. On the coffee table were scattered some newspapers and magazines. "Variety." Bernice held up the newspaper. "Someone is jonesing about Hollyweird."

A utility closet and bathroom were next to each other in the hall. The closet contained a washer and drying, hot water heater and furnace. Shelves on the other wall held towels and cleaning supplies. From the condition of the bathroom the cleaning supplies had never been used. Damp towels were hung over the shower curtain indicating that someone had washed up that day, so the house had been inhabited within the last few hours. "Eww!" Bernice said at the sight of some porno mags on the floor next to the toilet. She was about to pick one up when Luann stopped her. "You don't know where they've been," she warned. Luann gritted her teeth at the sight of them. Her brother had a couple porno mags hidden in his bedroom, a Playboy, Maxim compared to the ones in Quill's house those were PG rated magazines. It made her a little sick to think that Quill might have been exposed to magazines like that. It also disturbed her that the magazines were laying out in plain sight. What kind of mother would allow something like that? What kind of father, for that matter? What bothered Luann was that this house was beginning to resemble some kind of a frat house than the home of a research chemist and his son.

There were two bedrooms. The first was rather small, with two twin-size beds pushed against opposite walls. The bed linens lay in a twisted pile but the closet was empty. Dust Bunnies under the bed confirmed that lack of any kind of housekeeping. There was an abandoned sock and a pair of men's underpants under one bed. Luann almost reached for the pants, thinking they might be Quill's, then realized how creepy keeping a pair of Quill's underpants would seem. The other bedroom was slightly larger, but also had two twin beds pushed against opposite walls.

"Didn't Quill say his mother came with them?" Luann asked.

"I don't think he ever mentioned a mother," Bernice told her.

"Two beds? What kind of married couple sleep in separate beds?" Luann asked.

""My parents sleep in separate beds!" Bernice answered defensively. "My father works odd shifts so he has his own bed so he won't disturb mom when he gets up."

"There's that. It certainly doesn't look like a mother was ever here, though." Luann said. She looked under the beds and pulled out a photograph. She took a look at it and cried out "That bastard!" and started crying.

Bernice took the photo out of her hand and looked at it. There was Quill, blond, casually handsome arm in arm with a pretty brunette. Written in marker under the faces was, "with love forever, Elizabeth." Raising over their heads in the background was the Seattle Space Needle. Bernice put it in a pants pocket. "Come on, let's go," she told her friend and lead her friend back to the living-room.

Luann was wiping away her tears when a plopping sound caught her attention. Looking around she saw mail being shoved through a slot in the door. She'd never seen a door with a mail slot before but recognized what it was from old movies. She went over to pick up the mail. Most was junk. Advertisements for "Resident" or occasionally Frank Sherrad. One enveloped addressed to Sherrad was from the phone company. The monthly bill. Luann looked at this blankly for a minute, then stuck the envelope into her pants pocket.

"You can't do that," Bernice protested. That stealing. Government mail. That makes it a Federal offense!"

"Look, this place has been abandoned. Whoever lived here has fled. No one's coming back to pay the bills. It'll be curious to see who Quill has been calling the last month."

"I don't like it," Bernice opined. "Let's get out of here before the neighbors call the police and we get arrested." She headed towards the back door. Luann took a final glance around the house and followed her out.

][

"Let me see it," Delta demanded. Luann had called Delta over for a conference while she and Bernice were riding the bus back from Quill's house. Everyone knew that Bernice was the smart one. Ask her any question about science or math and she'd know the answer. Delta was smart in her way: logical, analytical, careful when it came to parsing someone comment. She was headed to Law School and clearly was going to do well there. Luann handed her the postcard. Delta looked at the photograph printed on the other side, turned it over and read the message. Then squinted at the postmark. "June of last year. Well, we know where he was a year ago. Odd that he never mentioned seeing Yosemite. Visiting a National Park ought ot be worth a story or two."

"He never really said much about life in Australia, either," Luann added. Bernice had slummed down in her usual spot on the floor next to Luann's bed. She'd pulled out the graphical novel and started on another chapter. The Clockwork Princess was lost in some sewers and was running out of coal for her steam engine power source... Bernice could listen to Luann and Delta talk and read at the same time. She was good at multi-tasking.

With a quizzical last look Delta laid the postcard down beside her."So what else did you find there?"

"This photograph. It was under one of the beds."

Delta took it and studied it critically.

"He never loved me!" Luann started crying again.

"There's a datestamp on the photo. It's from three years ago. Just because it says 'love forever doesn't mean it'll last forever."

"Really?" Luann sniffed, found the tissues and wiped her eyes.

"But what was he doing in Seattle three years ago when he was supposed to have just come over from Australia?" Bernice asked. "Lu, give her the phone bill."

Luann handed the opened envelope to Delta.

"There's a lot of calls to the same place. I don't recognize the area code, though. And the place looked like a Frat House?"

Luann nodded.

"It sure sounds like Quill was living some kind of double-life. I wonder what his game was?"

Luann threw her damp tissue in the general direction of the wastebasket. She shook herself like a dog shaking off water and clenched her hands into tight fists. "So help me," she swore, "If I ever get me hands on that bastard I am going to tear his head off and stuff it up is ass. I am going to cut him a new one and kick him so hard that his mother gets a black eye! I'm..."

"You'll never see him again," Bernice reminded her.

"I'll track him down like the dog he is!"

"How?"

"Road trip!"