Sarah surprises everyone—well, okay, me, anyway—by showing she was paying attention to us all along when she shakes her head and says, not taking her gaze from the court, “It’s almost gone. Make Heather go get more.”

“Get me a soda,” Pete says.

“I could use some nachos,” Tom adds.

“No!” Magda shrieks, apparently at a call down below. “He really is blind!”

Cooper says, “What?” and slides down into the seat I’ve vacated. “What was the call?”

“Offensive foul,” Magda spits. “But he barely touched the kid!”

Shaking my head in disgust, I turn and make my way down the bleachers toward my father. He is still staring, enraptured, at the ball court.

“Dad,” I say, when I reach him.

He doesn’t take his eyes off the game. Nor does he say anything. The scoreboard over the middle of the court is counting down the time left in the game. There appear to be nine seconds left, and the Pansies have the ball.

“Dad,” I say again. I mean, it really isn’t any wonder he doesn’t realize I’m talking to him. No one has called him dad in years.

Mark Shepelsky has the ball. He’s taking it down the court, dribbling hard. He has a look of concentration on his face I’ve never seen him wear before… not even when he’s filling out a vending machine lost-change report.

“Dad,” I say for a third and final time, this time much louder.

And my dad jumps and looks down at me—

Just as Mark stops, turns, and throws the ball across the court, sinking it into the basket right before the halftime buzzer goes off, and the crowd goes wild.

“What?” Dad asks. But not me. He’s asking the fans around him. “What happened?”

“Shepelsky made a three-pointer,” some helpful soul shrieks.

“I missed it!” Dad looks genuinely upset. “Damn!”

“Dad,” I say. I can’t believe this. I really can’t. “Why’d you come to the house? You said you were going to call first. Why didn’t you call?”

“I did call,” he says, watching as the Pansies run from the court, high-fiving one another, their expressions ecstatic. “No one answered. I thought you might be trying to avoid me.”

“Did it ever occur to you I might not be avoiding you?” I ask. “That I just might not have gotten home yet?”

Dad realizes, I guess from the stress in my voice, that I’m not happy. Plus, all the action on the court is over for the moment, so he actually spares a second to look down at me.

“What’s the matter, honey?” he asks. “Did I screw up?”

“It’s just,” I say, feeling idiotic for getting so upset, but unable to help myself, “things with Cooper, my landlord… I mean, they’re delicate. And you showing up like that, out of the blue—”

“He seems like a nice guy,” Dad says, glancing over at where Cooper is sitting. “Smart. Funny.” He grins down at me. “You certainly have your old man’s approval.”

Something inside me bursts. I think maybe it’s an aneurism.

“I don’t need your approval, Dad,” I practically shout. “I’ve been getting along fine for the past twenty years without it.”

Dad looks taken aback. I guess I shouldn’t blame him. It’s not his fault what he seems to think is going on between Cooper and me isn’t.

“What I mean is,” I say, softening my tone guiltily, “it’s not like that. With Cooper and me, I mean. We’re just friends. I do his billing.”

“I know,” Dad says. He looks confused. “He told me.”

Now I’m confused. “Then why’d you say you approve? Like you thought we’re dating?”

“Well, you’re in love with him, aren’t you?” Dad asks simply. “I mean, it’s written all over your face. You might be able to fool him, but you aren’t fooling your old dad. You used to get that same look on your face back when you were nine years old and that Scott Baio fellow would come on TV.”

I gape at him, then realize my mouth is hanging open. I close it with a snapping sound probably only I can hear over the din of the gymnasium. Then I say, “Dad. Why don’t you go sit down with Cooper? I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Where are you going?” Dad wants to know.

“To get the nachos,” I say.

And stagger away to do so.

I’m not totally unfamiliar with the layout of the Winer Sports Complex. I’d signed up for a twenty-five-dollar-a-semester aerobics class there last semester, after passing my employment probation, and had even shown up for one session.

Unfortunately, I’d soon learned that only skinny girls take aerobics at New York College, and that larger young ladies like myself—if the waifish young things were to be able to see the instructor around me—had to stand in the back, where we, in turn, couldn’t see anything, except tiny arms flailing around.

I quit after the first class. They wouldn’t give me my twenty-five dollars back, either.

Still, the lesson at least familiarized me with the sports center, so that during halftime I’m able to find a ladies’ room deep in the bowels of the building, where there isn’t a mile-long line to use a stall. I’m washing my hands afterward, gazing at my reflection in the mirror above the sinks and wondering if I should just let nature take its course and go brunette, when a toilet flushes and Kimberly Watkins, in her gold sweater and pleated skirt, comes out of a nearby stall. Her red-rimmed eyes—yes, definitely red-rimmed, and from crying, I’m pretty sure—widen when she sees me.

“Oh,” she says, freezing in her tracks. “You.”

“Hi, Kimberly,” I say. I’m pretty surprised to see her, too. I’d have thought the cheerleaders got some kind of special VIP bathroom to use.

But maybe they do, and Kimberly chose to use this one because in here, she could cry in private.

She seems to recover herself pretty quickly, though, and starts washing her hands at the sink next to mine.

“Enjoying the game?” she wants to know. She apparently thinks I can’t see that her mascara is smudged where she’s wiped away her tears.

“Sure,” I say.

“I didn’t know you were a fan,” she says.

“I’m not, really,” I admit. “They’re making us attend. To show everyone that Fischer Hall isn’t really a Death Dorm.”

“Oh,” Kimberly says. She turns off the water and reaches for the paper towels at the same time I do.

“Go ahead,” she says to me.

I do.

“Listen, Kimberly,” I say, as I dry. “I paid a little call on Doug Winer today.”

Kimberly’s eyes go very wide. She seems to forget her hands are dripping wet. “You did?”

“I did.”

“Why?” Kimberly’s voice breaks. “I told you, it was her freaky roommate who killed her. Her roommate, not Doug.”

“Yeah,” I say, tossing the wadded-up paper towels I’d used into the trash. “You said that. But it just doesn’t make sense. Ann’s no killer. Why would you say she was? Except maybe to throw the police off the scent of the person who really did it.”

This gets to her. She averts her gaze, and seems to remember her hands. She pulls out a wad of paper towels from the dispenser on the wall. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.

“Oh,” I say. “So you’re saying you didn’t know Doug deals?”

Kimberly purses her perfectly made-up lips and stares at her reflection. “I guess. I mean, I know he’s always got coke, I guess. And E.”

“Oh,” I say sarcastically. “Is that all? Why didn’t you say something about this before, Kimberly? Why were you trying to make me think Ann was the guilty party, when you knew all this about Doug?”

“Geez,” Kimberly cries, tearing her gaze away from her reflection and glaring at me. “Just ’cause a guy deals drugs doesn’t mean he’s a murderer! I mean, heck, a lot of people deal. A lot of people.”