I’M REMARKABLY CALM, really, until the principal of Ponaganset High School starts to give me a telephonelecture on political correctness. “For God’s sake,” he sputters. “What kind of message does it send when agroup of Native American students names their intramural basketball league ‘The Whiteys’?”

“I imagine it sends the same message that you did when you picked the Chieftains as your school mascot.”

“We’ve been the Ponaganset Chieftains since 1970,” the principal argues.

“Yes, and they’ve been members of the Narragansett tribe since they were born.”

“It’s derogatory. And politically incorrect.”

“Unfortunately,” I point out, “you can’t sue a person for political incorrectness, or clearly you would havebeen handed a summons years ago. However, on the flip side, the Constitution does protect variousindividual rights to Americans, including Native Americans—one for assembly, and one for free speech,which suggest that the Whiteys would be granted permission to convene even if your ridiculous threat of alawsuit managed to make its way to court. For that matter, you may want to consider a class action againsthumanity in general, since surely you’d also like to stifle the inherent racism implicit in the White House, theWhite Mountains, and the White Pages.” There is dead silence on the other end of the phone. “Shall Iassume, then, that I can tell my client you don’t plan to litigate after all?”

After he hangs up on me, I push the intercom button. “Kerri, call Ernie Fishkiller, and tell him he’s gotnothing to worry about.”

As I settle down to the mountain of work on my desk, Judge lets out a sigh. He’s asleep, curled like a braidedrug to the left of my desk. His paw twitches.

That’s the life, she said to me, as we watched a puppy chase its own tail. That’s what I want to be next.

I had laughed. You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don’t need anyone else.

I need you, she replied.

Well, I said. Maybe I’ll come back as catnip.

I press my thumbs into the balls of my eyes. Clearly I am not getting enough sleep; first there was thatmoment at the coffee shop, now this. I scowl at Judge, as if it is his fault, and then focus my attention onsome notes I’ve made on a legal pad. New client—a drug dealer caught by the prosecution on videotape.

There’s no way out of a conviction on this one, unless the guy has an identical twin his mother kept secret.

Which, come to think of it…The door opens, and without glancing up I fire a directive at Kerri. “See if you can find some Jenny Jonestranscript about identical twins who don’t know that they—”

“Hello, Campbell.”

I am going crazy; I am definitely going crazy. Because not five feet away from me is Julia Romano, whom Ihave not seen in fifteen years. Her hair is longer now, and fine lines bracket her mouth, parentheses around alifetime of words I was not around to hear. “Julia,” I manage.

She closes the door, and at the sound, Judge jumps to his feet. “I’m the guardian ad litem assigned to AnnaFitzgerald’s case,” she says.

“Providence is a pretty tight place…I kept expecting…Well, I thought for sure we’d run into each otherbefore now.”

“It’s not all that hard to avoid someone, when you want to,” she answers. “You of all people should know.”

Then, all of a sudden, the anger seems to steam out of her. “I’m sorry. That was totally uncalled for.”

“It’s been a long time,” I reply, when what I really want to do is ask her what she’s been doing for the pastfifteen years. If she still drinks tea with milk and lemon. If she’s happy. “Your hair isn’t pink anymore,” I say,because I am an idiot.

“No, it’s not,” she replies. “Is that a problem?”

I shrug. “It’s just. Well…” Where are words, when you need them? “I liked the pink,” I confess.

“It tends to take away from my authority in a courtroom,” Julia admits.

This makes me smile. “Since when do you care what people think of you?”

She doesn’t respond, but something changes. The temperature of the room, or maybe the wall that comes upin her eyes. “Maybe instead of dragging up the past, we should talk about Anna,” she suggests diplomatically.

I nod. But it feels like we are sitting on the tight bench of a bus with a stranger between us, one that neitherof us is willing to admit to or mention, and so we find ourselves talking around him and through him andsneaking glances when the other one isn’t looking. How am I supposed to think about Anna Fitzgerald whenI’m wondering whether Julia has ever woken up in someone’s arms and for just a moment, before the sleepcleared from her mind, thought maybe it was me?

Sensing tension, Judge gets up and stands beside me. Julia seems to notice for the first time that we are notalone in the room. “Your partner?”

“Only an associate,” I say. “But he made Law Review.” Her fingers scratch Judge behind the ear—goddamnlucky bastard—and grimacing, I ask her to stop. “He’s a service dog. He isn’t supposed to be petted.”

Julia looks up, surprised. But before she can ask, I turn the conversation. “So. Anna.” Judge pushes his noseinto my palm.

She folds her arms. “I went to see her.”

“And?”

“Thirteen-year-olds are heavily influenced by their parents. And Anna’s mother seems convinced that thistrial isn’t going to happen. I have a feeling she might be trying to convince Anna of that, too.”

“I can take care of that,” I say.

She looks up, suspicious. “How?”

“I’ll get Sara Fitzgerald removed from the house.”

Her jaw drops. “You’re kidding, right?”

By now, Judge has started pulling my clothes in earnest. When I don’t respond, he barks twice. “Well, Icertainly don’t think my client ought to be the one to move out. She hasn’t violated the judge’s orders. I’ll geta temporary restraining order keeping Sara Fitzgerald from having any contact with her.”

“Campbell, that’s her mother!”

“This week, she’s opposing counsel, and if she’s prejudicing my client in any way she needs to be orderednot to do so.”

“Your client has a name, and an age, and a world that’s falling apart—the last thing she needs is moreinstability in her life. Have you even bothered to get to know her?”

“Of course I have,” I lie, as Judge begins to whine at my feet.

Julia glances down at him. “Is something wrong with your dog?”

“He’s fine. Look. My job is to protect Anna’s legal rights and win the case, and that’s exactly what I’m goingto do.”

“Of course you are. Not necessarily because it’s in Anna’s best interests…but because it’s in yours. Howironic is it that a kid who wants to stop being used for another person’s benefit winds up picking your nameout of the Yellow Pages?”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I say, my jaw tightening.

“Well, whose fault is that?”

So much for not bringing up the past. A shudder runs the length of me, and I grab Judge by the collar.

“Excuse me,” I say, and I walk out the office door, leaving Julia for the second time in my life.

When you get right down to it, The Wheeler School was a factory, pumping out debutantes and futureinvestment bankers. We all looked alike and talked alike. To us, summer was a verb.

There were students, of course, who broke that mold. Like the scholarship kids, who wore their collars upand learned to row, never realizing that all along we were well aware they weren’t one of us. There were thestars, like Tommy Boudreaux, who was drafted by the Detroit Redwings in his junior year. Or the head cases,who tried to slit their wrists or mix booze and Valium and then left campus just as silently as they had oncewandered around it.

I was a sixth-former the year that Julia Romano came to Wheeler. She wore army boots and a Cheap Trick T-shirt under her school blazer; she was able to memorize entire sonnets without breaking a sweat. During freeperiods, while the rest of us were copping smokes behind the headmaster’s back, she climbed the stairs to theceiling of the gymnasium and sat with her back against a heating duct, reading books by Henry Miller andNietzsche. Unlike the other girls in school, with their smooth waterfalls of yellow hair caught up in aheadband like ribbon candy, hers was an absolute tornado of black curls, and she never wore makeup—justthose sharp features, take it or leave it. She had the thinnest hoop I’d ever seen, a silver filament, through herleft eyebrow. She smelled like fresh dough rising.

There were rumors about her: that she’d been booted out of a girl’s reform school; that she was some whizkid with a perfect PSAT score; that she was two years younger than everyone else in our grade; that she had atattoo. Nobody quite knew what to make of her. They called her Freak, because she wasn’t one of us.

One day Julia Romano arrived at school with short pink hair. We all assumed she’d be suspended, but itturned out that in the litany of rules about what one had to wear at Wheeler, coiffure was conspicuouslyabsent. It made me wonder why there wasn’t a single guy in the school with dreadlocks, and I realized itwasn’t because we couldn’t stand out; it’s because we didn’t want to.

At lunch that day she passed the table where I was sitting with a bunch of guys on the sailing team and someof their girlfriends.

“Hey,” one girl said, “did it hurt?”

Julia slowed down. “Did what hurt?”

“Falling into the cotton candy machine?”

She didn’t even blink. “Sorry, I can’t afford to get my hair done at Wash, Cut and Blow Jobs ‘R’ Us.” Thenshe walked off to the corner of the cafeteria where she always ate by herself, playing solitaire with a deck ofcards that had pictures of patron saints on the backs.

“Shit,” one of my friends said, “that’s one girl I wouldn’t mess with.”

I laughed, because everyone else did. But I also watched her sit down, push the tray of food away from her,and begin to lay out her cards. I wondered what it would be like to not give a damn about what peoplethought of you.

One afternoon, I went AWOL from the sailing team where I was captain, and followed her. I made sure tostay far enough behind that she wouldn’t realize I was there. She headed down Blackstone Boulevard, turnedinto Swan Point Cemetery, and climbed to the highest point. She opened her knapsack, took out hertextbooks and binder, and spread herself in front of a grave. “You might as well come out,” she said then, andI nearly swallowed my tongue, expecting a ghost, until I realized she was talking to me. “If you pay an extraquarter, you can even stare up close.”

I stepped out from behind a big oak, my hands dug into my pockets. Now that I was there, I had no idea whyI’d come. I nodded toward the grave. “That a relative?”

She looked over her shoulder. “Yeah. My grandma had the seat right next to him on the Mayflower.” Shestared at me, all right angles and edges. “Don’t you have some cricket match to go to?”

“Polo,” I said, breaking a smile. “I’m just waiting for my horse to get here.”

She didn’t get the joke…or maybe she didn’t find it funny. “What do you want?”

I couldn’t admit that I was following her. “Help,” I said. “Homework.”

In truth I had not looked over our English assignment. I grabbed a paper on top of her binder and read aloud:

You come across a horrible four-car accident. There are people moaning in pain, and bodies strewn all overthe place. Do you have an obligation to stop?

“Why should I help?” she said.

“Well, legally, you shouldn’t. If you pull someone out and hurt them more, you could get sued.”

“I meant why should I help you.”

The paper floated to the ground. “You don’t think very much of me, do you?”

“I don’t think about any of you, period. You’re a bunch of superficial idiots who wouldn’t be caught deadwith someone who’s different from you.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing, too?”

She stared at me for a long second. Then she started stuffing her backpack. “You’ve got a trust fund, right? Ifyou need help, go pay a tutor.”

I put my foot down on top of a textbook. “Would you do it?”

“Tutor you? No way.”

“Stop. At the car accident.”

Her hands quieted. “Yeah. Because even if the law says that no one is responsible for anyone else, helpingsomeone who needs it is the right thing to do.”

I sat down beside her, close enough that the skin of her arm hummed right next to mine. “You really believethat?”

She look............