Suddenly Mark understood. "You mean you want me to go out for sports," he said.

Blake said nothing, but the long, questioning look he gave his son spoke for him.

"I thought we already talked about that-" Mark began

His father silenced him with a gesture. "That was before- and you were right. In San Marcos, you probably wouldn't have made the team. But this is a much smaller school, and Jerry tells me there's room for everyone."

Mark's eyes clouded. "But-"

Once again, Blake didn't let him finish. "All I want you to do is try. Okay?"

Mark hesitated, then reluctantly nodded, knowing there was no point in arguing with his father right now. Still, when he left for school a few minutes later, he was already starting to think of a way around the decision his father had so abruptly made for him.

"Hey! Wait up!"

Mark was still two blocks from the school when he heard the girl's voice. He ignored it until he heard the shout again, this time with his name attached to it, then stopped and looked back. Half a block away, running to catch up, was Linda Harris. She was breathing hard when she came abreast of him, and a sheen of perspiration glistened on her forehead. "Didn't you hear me?" she gasped. "I've been yelling at you for two blocks."

"I didn't hear you," Mark protested.

"You mean you weren't listening," Linda contradicted him, her blue eyes dancing mischievously. "I've been watching you, wandering along with your head in the clouds. You could have gotten run over by a bus, and you wouldn't even have noticed."

Mark felt himself flush, but it was more with pleasure than embarrassment. For Linda, too, had changed since the last time he'd seen her. In three years she'd grown from a gangly girl with braces on her teeth and her hair in braids into a gently curved fifteen-year-old whose blond hair-a little darker than her brother's-flowed softly over her shoulders. "There aren't any buses in Silverdale, are there?" he countered, simply to make conversation. He fell in beside her as she started walking once more.

"A couple," she told him. "There're a few kids who live out on ranches, and they have to go to school, too, you know." She glanced at him curiously. "So what were you thinking about?"

Mark hesitated. His first instinct was to tell her the truth- that he'd been trying to figure out a way around his father's determination that he go out for football-but he wasn't sure how she might react to that. And, with a jolt, he realized that he didn't want Linda Harris to react badly to him. So he shrugged his shoulders amiably and smiled at her. "I don't know. I guess I was just looking around. You know, getting the feel of things. I… well, I do that a lot," he finished lamely.

To his surprise, Linda nodded. "I know. I do that, too. Sometimes people think I'm weird, 'cause I just all of a sudden tune everything out. But just because people are talking doesn't mean you have to listen, does it?" She looked at him so earnestly that he almost burst out laughing.

"I guess not," he admitted. "Not that I ever really thought about it, but I guess you're right. And most people don't seem to have much to say anyway. I guess that's why I like animals better than people."

They turned the last corner and Mark stopped short. "Jesus," he breathed. "Is that the high school?"

Linda stared at him blankly. "What's wrong with it?" she asked, her voice taking on a defensive note.

"N-Nothing," Mark stammered. "It's just-well, it's just not what I was expecting."

Without even thinking about it, Mark had supposed that the school in Silverdale would look like all the others in the innumerable small towns they had passed through since leaving San Marcos-a simple wood-frame structure, its paint peeling, sitting in the midst of a dying lawn on a dusty block on the outskirts of town, with a dirt playing field behind it.

But Silverdale High School resembled nothing he'd seen before. It was a red-brick building, rising three stories high in its central core, with two-story wings jutting out from it to form an imposing V shape. All the windows were framed by white shutters, and the high, peaked roof of the core structure was supported by six soaring columns.

The columns were made of white marble.

The building faced a velvety lawn that was crisscrossed with winding brick paths, and in front of the building were gardens that, even in September, were ablaze with brightly colored flowers.

A flagpole stood in the center of the lawn. As Mark watched two boys slowly ran an American flag up the pole, as the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner" began to sound. Next to him, Linda stood still, facing the flag, and a moment later Mark realized that on the lawn in front of the school, and on all the pathways, too, the other students had stopped as well, as though frozen in place, their eyes fastened on the flag. It rose slowly in the morning sun, then, as it reached the top, it began flapping in the breeze just as the last notes of the anthem sounded from the public address system. Only when the music had died away did the school come to life once more.

Mark blinked, then looked at Linda in puzzlement. "Everyone does that every day here?"

Linda frowned for a split-second, then nodded. "I guess it seems kind of dumb to you. Robb said it really bugged him when we first came. But it's a tradition now."

"And everybody does it?" Mark pressed. "They just all stop and face the flag?" He was trying to picture the kids at San Marcos High-the ones with their hair dyed green and orange, and rings through their nostrils-stopping their talk for the raising of the flag. But of course they wouldn't have: They would have turned their ghetto blasters up louder and kept right on with whatever they were doing.

But then, as he and Linda started across the wide lawn toward the school building itself, he realized that none of the kids here wore punk hairstyles, or leather jackets covered with studs. Everywhere he looked he saw only boys in chinos and sports shirts, and girls in sweaters and skirts or carefully pressed slacks and crisp blouses.

They mounted the flight of steps that led to a wide,terracelike porch between the marble columns and the main doors of the school. "Well, do you like it?" Linda asked eagerly.

Mark grinned. "What's not to like?"

Linda waved to a group of her friends who were standing next to one of the columns but made no move to join them. Instead, she took Mark's arm and edged him toward the door. "Come on, I'll show you where the office is."

Inside the front doors was an enormous hall whose ceiling rose the full three floors to the roof. A broad staircase at the end of the hall rose to the second floor, and above that, split into two narrower flights, one on each side of the hall that led to the third floor. The ceiling itself was made of white plaster, but was decorated with an ornate molding around its edges.

The floor beneath Mark bore a complicated geometric design of black and white marble. He paused for a moment, trying to take it all in, but Linda urged him on. "The principal's office is down this way," she said, leading him off to the right. A moment later they'd stepped through a white paneled door with a fanlight above it and were facing a smiling secretary.

"This is Mark Tanner, Miss Adams," Linda said. "He's starting today."

The secretary nodded. "Your father called me last week," she said, then turned to Mark. "Did you happen to bring your records with you?"

Mark shook his head blankly, but the secretary seemed unconcerned. "Just start filling these out, and I'll have them before you're done," she said. She pushed a small stack of forms and cards toward Mark, then turned to a computer terminal on her desk. Her fingers flashed over the keyboard, and a few minutes later a printer on a table next to the wall clattered to life.