Saying yes to this had been a mistake. No, the mistake had been been writing Dani a thank you note for the bag. Everyone—Steffi who'd helped her write it, Meredith who mailed it—had called it overkill, but her mom had made her write notes for every Christmas present, birthday gift, and graduation check. ("Every what?" Meredith had asked. Dad owed her so much more than 20K.)

Making nice with Dani at all had been a mistake. Meredith had meant well. Two years agom she might've been right. She'd also have seen something fishy if Lexie had talked to her about coming to this. But she'd been so happy about flying, Lexie hadn't wanted to bring her down. Then, with the E.R. closing, Derek had looked constantly stressed, and Meredith had started the past few mornings red-eyed. Lexie didn't know if it was lack of sleep or something else. She'd cried at the Tangled soundtrack the other day—which, okay, Mother Gothel? Maybe too close to home—and yesterday when her leftover chicken from Zola's favorite "hipachi" place had gotten knocked off the counter. Those were quick cries though, always waved off. Not the kind that left her red-eyed.

Not that Lexie knew much about those, these days. Out here on her dad's porch—rebuilt for her, definitely not hers—her face was hot in spite of the cold, and her eyes burned, but tears were nowhere to be found. She didn't want them. She wanted lasers. She wanted to set the house on fire.

"Honey, it's freezing out here. Why don't you come on back in?"

"Forget it. My ride's on the way."

"She just wanted to help me out. Give her a chance to explain—"

"Does she know I can use a phone? That I wouldn't have ejected her from Roseridge? That I can read? I can even write! She obviously knows I have a Facebook—Hell, I think MySpace would still email me if I got a message!—Except, I bet she sent out notifications about this shindig on blast—about every little thing she does for this 'business'—and I haven't gotten a single one. Meaning, she blocked me. She knew I wouldn't approve, and counted on me going with the flow like a good little gimp."

"That's not—"

"Your little tart used my image to make people buy her awful, faux-leather luggage, and she knew exactly what she was doing."

"Look in the mirror before you call anyone a tart, Alexandra." Lexie actually jerked back at that from tightening her hold on the joystick to stop from touching her piercing. Then, she did it anyway. She wasn't ashamed.

"You have students in there with far more ink and metal." Dad's visitors had looked nonplused by the bags set up in the living room. Lexie hadn't managed to escape to speak to any of them.

"Those women aren't sending wire transfers to Nigeria! They paid for purses; they receive purses, and plenty of that money went to making this home accessible for you."

"Give me a number. I'll write you a check."

Her phone buzzed.

MEREDITH GREY: that bitch. No, that's too good for her. She's a trollop. A troll doll.

txt Cristina she'll come up with something better.

LEXIE GREY: that bitch?

MEREDITH GREY: Mousey, though.

I'm sorry I didn't catch any of the weird news coverage.

Can I come get you? Zola's almost mastered the primary use of toilet paper; we can teach her to TP.

Lexie wanted to say yes. She wanted to already be there, in her bed with headphones in and nothing in front of her eyes. But Meredith had a migraine last weekend while Callie and Arizona took Zola. Giving her and Derek time on their own, past Zola's bedtime had been the main reason she'd agreed to attend this Gen-X Tupperware party, disguised as a "get together with my researchers and some of Dani's friends."

LEXIE GREY: another time.

It'll be a sneak attack.

Garrett's nearby w/a van full of RR ppl. Dunno how long I'll hang out.

MEREDITH GREY: if you're asking if u have a curfew, young lady…fuck no. Text from the dock. kiddo is already asleep. give us warning.

LEXIE GREY: then you're wasting precious time.

MEREDITH GREY: so you think

Lexie made a face at her phone.

MEREDITH GREY: get a pic of the face you just made, gutter brain.

She sent a picture of the filling bathtub. Gutter brain Lexie's ass, that was Derek's shirt on the floor beside it.

"Your sister?" Dad asked.

"Meredith."

"I assumed."

"For years I've felt like I had to choose. Molly's visit made me realize that wasn't true."

"We never—"

"I didn't say it was your fault. I knew I had another sister out there, and that she might be more like me. I found pictures, and she had an Anatomy Jane."

Her father's expression shifted, and it threw her to see Meredith in him so strongly, but that was her okay, this is happening look. "I didn't….You and your—You and Molly, you're not replacements. I-I hope you understand that. Meredith…. She was her own person as much as either of you. I'd say Laura reminds me of her the most."

"Laura?"

"All that energy in such a little thing. Always thinking, always trying something to find out what would happen."

"But…Meredith says she was quiet as a kid."

"She could be, absolutely, but at home, playing in her room? She was always narrating her games, and singing little songs to herself. Such a funny little girl. She'd make up new stories for anything she couldn't read or didn't have memorized from her books. She loved Sesame Street. Anything with the Muppets would hold her attention.

"One night, we'd just sat down to dinner, and, word-for-word, she said, 'I am aware Muppets aren't alive. They don't have 'gorgons,' or blood, or bones. Does the electricity from the puppeters' brains wake them up?'

"I think she'd seen some behind-the-scenes thing with the puppeteers wearing those microphones?" He gestured around his head to indicate the headset. Lexie nodded. "And there's that scene in the movie, with the weird doctor electrocuting Kermit. She hated that. she'd say, 'doctors should not be mean.' She understood so much, but her four-year-old sensibilities just couldn't accept that there wasn't some form of magic involved."

"You should tell her that story," Lexie said. "She doesn't remember much, or says she doesn't. I'm sure a lot of that is her mother never wanting to talk about Seattle.

"Why didn't you tell us about her? Fine, Mom could be convincing, and protective…. Ellis was stubborn and vindictive. She was also a single mom, with almost no family; the court would've given you holidays and summers! Heck, the suicide attempt would've gotten you full custody. Did you know about that?"

"They reached me in the office on Monday. Ellis had been discharged. Your mom said that meant she could call me if she needed anything, and I…I let myself believe that. I assumed she was being taken care of."

So, she'd been right, in a way. "By whom, her aunt?"

"Gosh, no. There was every chance Ellis wouldn't let her know they'd moved back east. No, I, uh…" Dad crossed his arms. "To tell you the truth, hun, I didn't realize Ellis and Richard didn't work it out."

"Seriously? Even after…?"

"I told you, I didn't know the details! I assumed there must've been a misunderstanding, or…or it got through to him. She couldn't have meant to kill herself, or she would've done it. I don't see Richard ignoring that, but I can't blame him for not wanting to be manipulated.

"It wasn't until his tenure as Chief of Surgery at Seattle Grace was announced on the news that I put it all together. One minute, we're watching Johnny Frost do the weather, and the next there they were. Richard and Adele.

"It was a fist to the chest, I can tell you. For sixteen years, I'd believed that Meredith had him. Ellis had already determined that she would be a surgeon—who else was she clearing the shards out of the ceiling for?—but Richard, he understood that she was a little girl. He was good with her; at explaining things on her level. Usually, he could get Ellis to adjust her expectations. I'd born the brunt of her moods. She could be witty and charming; she could spend hours answering a chain of 'whys,' but she could also belittle and demean. In that moment, I had to completely reconsider what I'd done. Meredith was twenty-one. It was too late to change anything. At least, I thought so. Your mom wanted me to reach out—"

"Mom did?"

"She thought I should've left the door open. I felt I'd been jerked around enough by Ellis. We'd decided to settle in Seattle from the start, and suddenly she was interviewing for East Coast fellowships and talking about being mentored by Harper Avery…. I wasn't confident I'd get hired at Harvard or BU, much less on a tenure-track. She was dismissive; there are hundreds of colleges in the area, she'd say. We'll get you something. I didn't want 'something.' She'd gotten me my position here, but I'd kept it, no thanks to her."

The set of his jaw reminded Lexie of times he'd stormed off to the study arguing with Mom, or gotten tired of listening to Molly and Lexie bicker over a board game. It'd made the whole house feel stormy when he did that, and every time she'd asked Mom if they were getting divorced. Her mother attributed it to the amount of divorced parents in her class. Maybe it had been, but in Lexie's mind it'd been an expected trajectory—parents fought, they got divorced, and everyone went their separate ways. Since there were two daughters this time; they'd probably get split up. She'd almost always decided she'd stay with Dad, because a step-dad could potentially be far more volatile. She'd thought.

"Mom told Meredith she'd convinced you to give Ellis what she wanted. That you'd just married, and it was new. I figured that meant she wanted you focused on…on me."

He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but the only sound were the crickets until an engine approached. The van crept up to the driveway, and Lexie raised an arm. Because what's the chance that this woman in a wheelchair isn't the one they're looking for?

She turned back to her dad seconds before a multi-voiced shout of "DOC!" rang out as the side door of the van slammed open. Garrett bounded out. "Gonna play some people Tetris in here, then you can board."

"Sounds great!"

She hadn't thought about flying, much, one way or the other. If she was in this chair, she was Zola's preferred pilot for her Little People plane, holding it with one hand while she used the other for the joystick. When she'd seen the proud flush on Meredith's face whenever Derek brought it up at Joe's the night of his birthday, she hadn't been envious. She didn't care. Just, sometimes, someone would use a word that had been all over their depositions—who boarded after you? And you boarded before or after Dr. Robbins? When you boarded the plane, did you notice anything unusual—and she'd want to scream.

"Doc, huh?" Dad asked. Hadn't he heard it at Roseridge? He'd kept up Saturday visits, and people were always drifting in and out of the common area on weekends.

"It was great before I found out it was the name of my sister's tragic love dog." Lexie said, not sure why, only that the words were there. She didn't expect it to make her father into a human buffering error.

"Uh…Mer…Meredith has…Meredith has a…a dog?"

"Had. Her intern year. He died."

"Shame. I, uh…. You remember Cottontail?"

"Of course. Why…?" Once, Molly had let her ice cream cone drip down Lexie's back. What she felt now was similar, except it started at the nape of her neck and stopped at exactly C-7. Never mind, I don't want to know this.

She looked up at him. He wouldn't meet her eyes.

"Ellis wanted to wait until we moved, or so she said. I assumed she'd then want to put it off until Christmas, and her birthday, and on, and on. I thought Meredith would benefit from…from having a pet during the upheaval. Something consistent."

Lexie's gut squeezed. Once they'd settled in Boston, Meredith had stayed in the same house, and even the same school, she hadn't had the harmony or steadiness that were part of that word's definition.

"But then…." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Your friends are waiting. Why don't we do this another time?"

"What? You can't—I'm sure you've told the story to hundreds—thousands, now? of anonymous people. Meredith wiped away the debt, but I didn't."

The plaintive look would've made her fold before. She kept staring. "I assumed the hours Ellis had been pulling were typical for her final year. The one person I could check in with was Adele."

Adele knew, Meredith had said. Filling Dad in might've given Richard incentive to leave her. It didn't make it okay that she'd kept it to herself.

"We'd been going back and forth about Boston, but they weren't heated arguments. There hadn't been all that much heat between us in some time, but she said she was stressed about her research…and her boards…her interviews…. And she was. That's what gets me. She really did it all." For the majority of her life, Lexie wouldn't have been able to catch the bitter edge to his laugh, but it had existed before she did. "One night she put Meredith to bed, came downstairs, and told me that once she completed her residency, she'd be leaving, and taking Meredith. She was in love with Richard. Not sure I'd heard her say that before. 'In love.'

"I was thrown for a rollercoaster's worth of loops. Nowhere to go but campus. We were between terms. I know you're a determinist, but that I ran into your mother always seemed serendipitous. We'd been acquaintances, to that point. Verging on friendly. Later she'd say she had a crush on me. University's not all that different from your hospital." He laughed; the edge was gone, but that didn't make it better. "She helped me find a place, went with me to get my books, hit it off with the puppy."

"Cottontail," she murmured.

It would have almost been better if her parents had also been having an affair.

"Yes. Your mom said I might as well keep the dog after I'd been treated like one. I can still see her snapping that leash on. So decisive. I would've gone under without her. I…I did. You know that better than anyone."

Lexie turned to the van. Garrett was crouched over someone in the back, clipping on straps; an echo of her mom securing a leash to Cottontail's collar.

"All things considered, I'm…I'm not sure I'm not exactly where I deserve to be in your sister's life, Lex. I can give all the justifications in the world, but the truth is, I'm the man who left her with an unstable, selfish mother, and took her dog. Whatever I believed the situation to be, it's as simple as that.

"Your mom didn't tell me what she told her, but it doesn't surprise me. She'd say…. She didn't push me to fight, but thought I should keep in contact. While she was trying to bring her around, she'd say, 'She has a mother. I'll be the evil stepmother, if that's what she needs.' Meredith, she didn't…didn't know what to do with Susan.… I could empathize. Not that…I don't think it's that she's like me so much as we'd both only had Ellis to compare her to.

"Meredith would always say how nice Susan was, even when you could tell that having her space invaded…. I imagine that once she moved out, Ellis didn't show up on her doorstep with groceries."

Lexie smiled, remembering her mom arranging Stop 'n' Shop hauls in the crates she used to store food in her various campus residences. Sometimes, she'd get grainy camera-phone pictures of full cabinets from Molly, captioned: the grocery goblin attacked! She liked thinking that they all had that in common.

"Mom probably knew Mer would never hold a grudge. She's forgiven her mother…is forgiving her. Seems like every day she uncovers a new lie or omission, because the only truths Ellis ever told her were about medicine. She'd have every right to be way more bitter. Frankly, I don't know how she does it.

"She had a mom. She's never had a father. That means you wouldn't have to do very much to do better. Just don't expect her to come to you. She assumes she's not wanted by default."

He winced, and she had to tense all the muscles she could to hold her own bitterness in check. Her mom hadn't been the evil stepmother, but her dad wasn't the villain, either. He reminded her a little of the rulers in some Disney movies, the minion in others; well-meaning older men, easily swayed by strong women and magic. Part Sultan, part Kronk. A lot the king from Cinderella, who never came face-to-face with Lady Tremaine, but would've crumpled if he had. She wished she knew how to tell him that the one thing he could never do was use her sister, or let Dani do it. He wasn't a total puppet, but she could imagine lines of electricity connecting their brains.

"Okay, Doc, your turn," Garrett said. "Glide on up here, and I'll get you fastened."

"I know how to buckle in a chair," she said. "I don't drive, I do ride."

"Ah, but can you do it in twenty seconds with your eyes closed? Me neither, but I am fast!" He pecked her on the cheek and leapt up out of the van, folding the side door. ramp up behind him.

Her dad stood on the driveway a foot or two further back than he would be to any other car. "I'll talk to Dani."

"Sure."

"Do you have plans for your birthday?"

"Meredith and Derek are gonna host something small." Even Mer had insisted that she needed to celebrate this birthday.

"That's nice."

"Yeah…. We could have lunch, maybe?" She could feel the others in the van pretending they weren't listening. She should've just called Jean-Philippe. He would've said, "hey, girl, what's got you so quiet tonight?" And if she didn't want to talk about it, he'd turn on the radio; saying, "all right, Lucy-girl," when she rapped along.

"I'd like that," Dad said. Garrett stood by the door, waiting to close it.

"Great. I'm—" She wasn't sorry she'd made a scene in there. Not at all. "Bye, Dad. Don't let her recruit your students."

"Have a fun night, everyone." He backed up, and Lexie winced as snowmelt sent him sliding into one of the MLM crones' sedans.

(They weren't crones. They talked to each other the way girls in some sororities did; they truly knew and liked each other, but everything was cutthroat. Surgery was competitive, but how you lived your life wasn't part of that. Usually.)

"Okay, Doc," Hank's cheerful wheeze brought her attention back to the present. "Tell…us."

"One sec. This was a 'codone collision.'" Laughter came at her in stereo. Although not everyone in the car had had a stint at Roseridge that overlapped with Lexie's, they either did outpatient therapies there, used the gym facilities, or attended some other program. They all knew Damien, a good-natured guy whose T-4 injury came from a devastating MVA. His legs had been in a worse state than Lexie's, and his arms, while not paralyzed—had had breaks and burns. Hence, his tendency to judge wipeouts based on painkiller doseages.

Damien had given her the moment she'd dreaded: A resident doing a double-take and saying, "Holy shit, Dr. Grey, I know I made SCI life look glamorous, but that wasn't a recommendation!"

That had been the only mention of their previous acquaintance, but sometimes she'd look at him and remember him lying on a backboard in a cervical collar. She'd been the expert. Now, she watched him go through the advanced wheelchair skills courses—the ones that might as well be wheelchair parkour—and he was absolutely the competent one.

Lexie had been upright without a break all day, and spasms played across different patches of her back where nerves were connected and confused, but when she thought about what hurt, well…. "Okay, so you know those jars at coffee shops collecting money to buy wheelchairs, because insurance paying for one every five years doesn't make any sense?"

"Oh. My. God," Garrett said. "She did not."

"Just about! Apparently, she first marketed her 'store—'" Lexie's air quotes were more like jazz hands. That was kind of fitting. Dani didn't have a store; she had a production. "—Resilience, using her 'journey to sobriety,' which, fine, that's her right. Dad wants to make drinking himself into liver failure in one year into some heart-string, sob story? Whatever.

"But while I was comatose, they decided they could use my story in her PR. It starts benign… 'sorry I didn't post my haul this week, we're just going through a rough time here so if you could find it in your hearts to forgive me, …' and she linked the news story shout us being missing. Dad's quoted, and since someone I talked to the other day referred to 'the daughters,' I bet there are others. Probably calling her a 'local entrepreneur.'

"Then, it's 'please send your good vibes to my guy—'" Lexie faked a gag and the car was laughter filled again. "'His daughter is stable, but we have no idea what things will look like going forward. It's one day at a time here, today and all days.' Next, 'Fellow travelers, it's rare that I don't regret skipping out on college, but seeing the numbers on Lexie's student loan payment is eye-opening…yes even when you're in a COMA the bills come due.'

"'LEXIE UPDATE: Our girl had another operation today (and can I just say, those of you writing notes for her in the order form is so HEART WARMING)….' She violates HIPAA and talks about Dad pricing ramps and remodels, and then…." She paused. She'd been scrolling through the feed, grimacing at a picture of herself in the ICU, not thinking about what the group in the van knew. She let her eyes linger on a photo Dani had posted of Mark, taken from Seattle Grace promo material. She'd referred to him as Lexie's "dear friend," but the picture accompanying that was from a dinner out with her dad, and it was obvious that they had been more than "dear friends."

"Uh, and then I wake up, and the pictures of the ramp are all 'hashtag with your help!' There's a picture that makes it seem like my powerchair would be an upgrade to my manual, rehab brochures, an affiliate link to 'helpful equipment for tetraplegics.' She talks about vans, even though Dad will never drive anything other than a sedan. So many people in the comments make it obvious that their order is to 'support a fellow traveler.'

"I had to log into the Facebook page my sister never uses to see any of this. On the event page for tonight…." She swiped up. "Oh, wait, first this—" She turned her phone around. "—is from Christmas. My younger sister and I with the bags she gave us. This—" She tapped back to Facebook. "Is what she posted with the caption 'look who loves her Xmas gift! (Lexie's) Luscious Leather backpack is great for wheelchair users'—it's not, with the strap shortened it drags on a manual and I can't reach it on this one— 'Find it on the Resilience Store!'"

"She…cut your…sister out!" Hank said with a crow of a laugh.

"Oh, yes."

"I just wasn't sure if I'd get in trouble, considering Eric's position!" Like he was in the CIA! "And it's a horrible crop. Look at that half a child!" exclaimed Quinta, who was riding in a regular seat next to her, her walker propped in front of her.

"Child or gargoyle?" Garrett asked.

"Child with gargoyle aspirations. Here's tonight." Lexie handed her phone off, biting her lip as it was passed around. No one would click away, and really what would her phone tell them? That she was with them to give her pregnant sister a chance to bang her husband on the couch while it was still comfortable? That she loved a man who'd been dead for five months, but she hadn't had sex in over a year—and it hadn't been with him?

She didn't care what they knew anymore.

"That's adorable!" Lexie startled, and smiled at Faye, whose van this actually was. She had a chair that was an earlier model of Lexie's, but orange where hers was green.

("Kermit green," Meredith had said the day it arrived. While she'd been looking at swatches, Dad had said, "You used to call that Kermit green, remember?" She did. Did he feed it to her, unintentionally? Were she and Meredith that similar? Was it just a very Kermity green?)

"You look absolutely autumn chic," added Quinta.

"Thanks." The picture advertising Dani's party had been taken from her Facebook. "Meredith took it in November, and it's the first picture where… I dunno, I felt like I looked like me." The Dr. Lexie Grey in the pictures on Dani's feed was obviously the same woman; but she didn't see herself.

Murmurs of understanding made the tips of her ears feel warm. Whenever she'd considered saying that aloud, she'd imagined the reply being, you're always you, Lexie!

"It's cute, Doc," Faye said. "But it's missing something. That piercing suits you. Were you a high school goth?"

"Oh, no. Um…. Mostly I was just a nerd, but….I had a few years where I was sort of a skater? I couldn't manage the stoner, too cool for school part, but baggy tie dye, beanies, and hanging out at the skatepark."

"All right, all right, I see it," Quinta said, handing her back the phone.

"Really?"

"You seen you on the obstacle course? I know paras who won't try those stairs."

"Could see you as a derby girl, for sure," Faye said. "Keep saying we need wheelchair roller derby."

"Oh, God, you'd have to use a murderball chair," Wallace said.

"A what?"

Wallace had a complete injury at C-5, so he had no elbow or wrist flexion; he clapped the back of his left hand under the right every time he laughed. "Wheelchair rugby! Ah, man, Doc, it's great."

"If you look at the history of rugby," Faye said. "It started out as letting a boarding school full of boys loose to kick a ball around. That evolved into football, which is basically the concussion game. Aussie rules football is pretty rough, too. Wheelchair rugby is played on a basketball court, Doc. It started as a tetra-friendly alternative to wheelchair basketball—they called it quad-ball for a while—It's your basic 'get the ball into their goal' game, co-ed, four on the court, and generally played by people with no sensation in the majority of their bodies."

"They…manufacture massive…wheelchairs…that can take…the shock," Hank added.

"Urgh," Garrett said. "I'm not a contact sports guy, but murderball is ultra-brutal."

One night at the batting cages, Alex had told her about the kid he'd treated who'd let someone beat her with a baseball bat because she was immune to pain. She'd been mystified. Didn't she get bruises? Broken bones? It wasn't as though pain was the damage; it was a result of the damage. The primary alert, sure, but not the only one. Messing around with her manual chair the other day, Lexie had ended up with a strawberry on her thigh that Meredith dubbed exactly like Geena Davis's base-sliding contusion in A League of Their Own. That it didn't hurt made it easier to appreciate it. She'd always thought bruises were fascinating; the colors and how they indicated the progression of healing.

She didn't want the pain, but whenever she touched the bruise, she'd think, this time? this time? She could imagine a little kid—a foster kid—who didn't understand why she was missing out on something big everyone around her experienced, thinking this time it'll happen. This time I'll get it. Everyone had been that kid in one way or another. Lexie knew she wasn't going to wake up with sensation that far down. She didn't want more of what she felt in the areas around it, but she kept prodding.

"Definitely makes people who think we're weak reconsider."

"Faye, don't be silly." Lexie said. "We're so strong. We're resilient,"

"So many people get their injuries from car crashes," Garrett continued. "Why would you go seeking out collisions?"

Lexie pulled up a video of the sport with the volume off. She watched one player go flying out of his chair to block a pass, and said, "Control. Accidents happen out of the blue. We can't always get out of bed without help, and if we get injured it's from something frustrating like our own spasms. Whatever they think about weakness, people expect meekness, and this? It's anything but. I was sort of chaotic neutral before…. I don't know if I still am, but I'd rather have people slam into me than keep a six-foot distance like I'm contagious."

Wallace whistled. "All right, Doc."

"You ever do spoken word?" Faye asked. Lexie laughed. "I'm serious! That was intense."

"I'm not usually great at speaking words, so, no," she said. "I overthink, and I ramble, which you wouldn't think overlap, but they do, a lot. My sister, Meredith, and my dad are the same. Actually, she can be really good with words, if she has time. That may be more related to her horrible mom. Anyway, um, where are we going?"

For a second, she felt thirteen again, in the car with her history fair group doing a Wendy's run. Someone who could drive saying, "Oh, I'll spot you, sweetie. That's what friends do!" had been so incredible to her that she'd been sure they must be able to see the glow in her chest—She also hadn't said another word until they were back in the library, and the conversation had been solidly on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

"Gate, seriously, what'd you say to the girl? 'We'll come get you in my friend's white van, take you to a second location, but I'm not saying where?'" Faye demanded.

Garrett was laughing too hard to reply.

"He'd asked me to come out with you guys tonight, but I had to be the picture of Resilience. When I texted him that I should've ditched Dad and Dani, he said I wasn't too late."

She had an out, the out she always had these days: Jean-Philippe. Once or twice he'd had to connect her with another driver, but usually she didn't mind waiting for him to finish with a fare. It wasn't surprising that he'd cross the city without a fare for her, since it usually got him out to Bainbridge and back.

"Well, Doc, it's Saturday night, which means my friend PowerWheels DJs at The Jeweler, which is one of the few accessible clubs in this city."

("You're young," Mark had said a dozen times, this one followed by, "Don't you want to be out, I don't know, clubbing or something?"

"You have the wrong Grey. I was in a sorority. It was all basement parties."

"Here's where you tell me you never went; you were always studying, and make me feel like the slacker I was."

"I think you're stereotyping both of us. I had fun. Too much, sometimes. Too young, at first. The thing I had to learn was, the point of the party should never be about who you might see there. What mattered was who you went with, be it a guy, or your friends. If Mer decides she wants a bachelorette party, or something, I'd be up for it, but I can guarantee you, if I wasn't with you, I wouldn't be at a club.")

Lexie checked her phone. Not long enough for the meds to have kicked in. They didn't banish Mark. She wouldn't want that. They just ensured she could feel other things, too.

"Sounds like fun."

No one challenged her. She must not have sounded like she was lying.

Maybe she wasn't.

(interlude nine)

From the diary of Alexandra Caroline Grey

June 06, 1998

No more school! All the books! Ignoring Molly's dirty looks!

I don't mind school, obviously, or I wouldn't be taking an extra math class at UW this summer. I don't think Dad gets that it's real math, because he keeps trying to get me interested in his investment stuff. Snoozefest.

Class doesn't start for another couple weeks, which means I'll have time to hang out over at the park. It's not the same without Devon. When we're reunited at Yale, he'll be impressed by how good I've gotten.

Do college girls skate?

June 13, 1998

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Trevor Van Breun kissed me.

June 14, 1998

Okay, diary, story time: Trevor has been at the park every afternoon this week. The first day, I'd just gotten there when he said, "I haven't heard anything from Devon, Lexie."

Seriously! I hadn't said a word, yet. For all he knew I wasn't going to ask him about Devon at all. (I had planned on it, but I didn't think we had all that much more In common. I was SO WRONG.) After that, I was obviously going to ignore him, and I was doing pretty well at it, when he tried some stunt that I didn't see because I was ignoring him, and his Walkman came unclipped from his pants. It flew right to the bottom of the ramp I was messing around on. I wiped out. Before I could even process what had happened, he'd run over to help me up. He gave me his hand, and when I stood up, he kept holding it. We were so close that I could see that he has a lot more freckles than I'd ever noticed. He was sweaty from skating, but it didn't sound gross like when guys come into class from gym without showering. He just smelled real. We started picking up his Walkman. It hadn't just lost the battery backing like most stuff does. It had lost the front tape deck part, too. He started, like, panicking anout how his mom had made him promise not to skate with it so this wouldn't happen. It wasn't exactly like mine, but the parts were basically the same. The screwdriver I had in my bag made it an easy fix.

His smile when he thanked me made me understand how a boy can be beautiful. While I was putting his Walkman back together we talked about the Soundgarden tape he'd been listening to. The next day, I took my portable CD player out there, with a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD. At first I felt kind of dumb, because Travis wasn't out there, and a whole phalanx of junior high boys were. I was thinking about packing up and going home; I need to start my simmer reading soon if I want maximum EC. Right before I did, Trevor came around the corner. Our eyes met, and he smiled at me. When he stopped in front of me, he took his helmet off, and said he'd been hoping I'd be there. His hair is so thick. I'd never noticed it before. He looks a little like a fourthfifth Hanson brother (there's another brother who's not in the band. He's like ten.) His hair's the same color, but it's only to just above his shoulders. I wanted to run my fingers through it then. I hardly believed that I'd get to. We spent all that afternoon talking about stuff. He wants to get out of this dreary city, too. He teased me about how much drearier anywhere with an Ivy would be, but he wants to go out to California and surf. I hadn't really considered Stanford. Mom and Daddy would probably be happier if I stayed on the West Coast.

We talked until it'd gotten dark, and I had to go home for dinner. It was like that for a couple of incredible nights. We started walking around the neighborhood a little, to avoid the brace-face brigade, and the first day he took my hand. I'd went back out after dinner that night, and we'd hang out with the guys out there. They all smoke budMJ marajuana, and no one tried to peer-pressure me into anything. I was still constantly afraid he was going to tell me I was like one of there guys, so last night, I asked him to walk me home so I could let him borrow the Diana Wynne Jones book we talked about. I'd already finished the Sandman collectiion he brought me the night before, but I didn't want to be Lexie the Speed Reader, even if it wasn't all that long. I stopped at the streetlight, which is where you have to be to be unseen from any of the house windows. We're basically the same height, so it wasn't difficult to lean in and kiss him, except that I was afraid my heart was going to explode! I think he kissed me back, but it was sort of hard to tell, because I pulled away as soon as our lips touched to see how he reacted. He smiled, and did the little head movement that flips his hair out of his eyes, and then, he kissed me.

He kissed ME!

June 17th, 1998

I did it!

Not like, it-it. Trevor and I have only kissed a lot. He even took me to his house while his parents were working, and I didn't think we were going to do that, but maybe? It's supposed to happen fast, right? But his little sister had a bunch or shrieking twelve-year-olds there. We kissed on his bed for a while, and I could feel him, his thing. All the little girls gave me the stink eye. Like they have a chance with a fifteen-year-old boy. (He's older than me, but who isn't?) I'm glad I don't have an older brother for everyone to crush on. I wonderThe it I meant is pot. Since I don't have to worry about being labeled one of the guys, hanging out has gotten easier. Everyone out there is really nice, and they're not always talking about APs and weighted GPAs. They're smart; Peter is always talking about Vonnegut, and Lyle was in the spring musical. They're just not…obsessed. I have to be obsessed, and there are always other things going on in the back of my mind. References to books I've only read because Dad assigns them. They'll be talking about a movie plot, and there's me all, "Oh, that's Shakespeare! Blah blah blah." Sometimes they're interested, but it always feels like I'm showing off, and I don't mean to.

They always offer me the joint, but it's not PEER PRESSURE the way they taught us in D.A.R.E. I'd been watching them for days, because those workbooks always made it look like everything made you as loopy and out of it as drinking does. But a few of these dudes have curfews like mine, and their parents have no idea, Aaron's parents don't care; they think there's way worse trouble he could be getting in! So, when Ricky held it up yesterday, expecting me to pass it to Trevor, I puff-puffed first (ha ha). I'd been paying attention, I knew how to do it. No one made ab ig deal about it, and Trevor kissed me right after, so I didn't care that much that it burned my lungs. It slowed everything down, and made it so that nothing mattered but that moment. Not whether Trevor would be interested in me in September, when we went back to school, or where I'd be going to college, or if being a doctor would be right for me, or just what you say when you're a "smart kid." I could just be Lexie. Not even just Lexie, I could just be a girl kissing a boy, and looking at the stars.

June 30, 1998

SUSAN GREY IS THE WORST MOTHER JN THE WORLD. I HATE HATE HATE HER!

Last night I came in a smidge late, and before I could even say sorry, she accused me of smelling like pot. Which 1. It had been hours since my last hit, no way did I smell like it. 2. If she knows what it smells like, she's done it, making her a huge hypocrite. She wouldn't let up, so I told her some of the guys smoke, but I don't. Then she asked if Trevor smoked, and before I could deny it, Molly said it was his weed. How would she know?

Not only did Mom the little narc, and ground me by association, she did the worst possible thing:

She called Trevor's mom.

Like we're g.d. children. I can literally never show my face at the park again. He'll never forgive me, and there's no way I'll ever meet someone else who just gets me like he does. I know it's only been a couple of weeks since our first kiss, but I really think we might be soulmates. Everything he says makes so much sense—I mean, why do we need college? I wanna be a surgeon, why can't a surgeon teach me exactly what I need to know? Anything else I want to learn about I can do on my own. He's so smart, and so cute. Imagining that I'll ever be able to run my fingers through his hair again absolutely breaks my heart.

I already lost the first love of my life, and now my own mother has ruined the second.

July 16, 1998

Thank God for math, is all I have to say. I get to ride up to campus with Dad in the morning, and then I'm in class for three hours. The other half of the day, I'm supposed to be in the library, but as long as I'm in the area, what are my parents going to know? Dad's teaching a new class in the fall, so he's in his office winding his hair into weird spirals and muttering about "pedagogy."

Yesterday, I was looking for the Brett Easton Ellis book Roger had been reading, (Thank God. The book in my bag was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone! How embarassing would that have been?) and I ran into one of the boys from my class, Sam Cheung. He's in high school, too, a junior. He said he was really impressed by how quickly I solved the problem on the board this morning, and asked if we could do homework together.

He doesn't really need help, and half the time we end up talking about other things. Nick is planning to go to med school, too. He says that everyone thinks it's because it's what his parents expect, and it is, but he also knows that smart kids are pigeonholed into being doctors, because you have to be able to think a certain way to do it. It's not just memorizing how the body works, it's also having to understand how people work. If you don't have that, if you only know how to do the technical things, you'll miss things. Isn't that smart? He builds robots, too. They're the future of surgery, but his just attack each other. Once I'm ungrounded, he wants me to come over and see them.

He turned the cutest shade of pink when he said his mom wold have to call my mom to make sure I'm not some trampy girl trying to seduce her son. (He didn't say that, exactly. There was a lot more stammering, but not in the annoying way Dad does where he can't commit to words. Like he wanted to be careful about his words.)

July 20, 1998

Lynn called today. Her sister is going out with Trevor Von Breun. That. Asshole. Her sister doesn't even know how to balance on a skateboard. She's a total poserposeur. If he can't see through that, they deserve each other.

July 22, 1998

This morning, there was an article next to my cereal bowl. I expected something Dad had printed off; but it wasn't from the computer. It was xeroxed from an actual medical journal. The Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. I'm going to take my time with it tonight, but basically it says that the problem isn't weed, it's that everything affects developing brains. That we shouldn't be taught to just say no; we should learn the science. That's so true!I miss the quiet sometimes, but Sam says he likes how fast my brain works.