. . . a happy pussy party.

I open Heather’s front door and slip in, then grab a seat and settle down to wait. I pick a chair facing the window, rather than one where I could see toward the back of the house; I figure Alyssa will come looking for me, and if anyone else came in sight, it could be awkward.

It doesn’t matter, though. As I lean back in the chair, I hear a high-pitched female sound, faint but clear; just a few minutes later, Alyssa comes to get me. “We just told Whitney what we’re doing,” she tells me with an evil grin. “You probably heard her reaction.”

I can feel my eyes go wide. “You didn’t warn her?”

Alyssa looks startled. “You know what—well, maybe you don’t; you don’t really know Whitney. If we’d told her what we had planned, she wouldn’t have come. Now—she’s caught. C’mon.” The delighted anticipation is clear in Alyssa’s voice. I follow her to the living room at the back of the house.

The curtains are all closed, but the lights are bright. Facing me when I come through the door is Whitney, bolt upright, wide-eyed, and stiff with anxiety, sitting in what has to be her wedding dress. She’s one of eleven girls in the room; their chairs are arranged in a circle with a gap facing the door and Whitney opposite the gap. I walk into the center of the circle and look around. Alyssa is taking her seat on one side of the gap; on the other is Heather, who gives me a warm smile. There’s something about that smile I can’t figure out—but no time now. Of the other eight girls, I know five, all of whom graduated either with me or the year before; I presume they’re friends with Whitney through Heather and Alyssa.

Lana McCool is one of Alyssa’s fellow gymnasts, built to the same scale but noticeably curvier. She has an elfin face and blond hair in a pixie cut. Lana’s a high-energy, high-curiosity woman with a gamine grin, a perpetual twinkle in her heather eyes, and an impish sense of humor. She teased me relentlessly in high school, but always gently and affectionately. Lana did a lot of different things in school and tried a lot more, but her first love was always chemistry; she turned me on to Derek Lowe’s blog In the Pipeline, and especially his posts on “Things I Won’t Work With.” I half-expect her to end up there one day for having synthesized some horribly unstable compound with way too many nitrogens. (Yes, Lana, I know that’s redundant.)

Tiana Russell is the darkest-skinned human being I’ve ever met; if you wanted to carve her face in wood, it would be an exaggeration to use ebony, but a pardonable one—especially as ebony’s hardness and fine texture would suggest dignity and strength, and she has both in spades. Tiana is tall, graceful, and regal enough that she managed to look dignified even during passing period. She never seemed to rush, but her long legs covered a lot of ground in a hurry, and other students got out of her way without really thinking about it. She has a rich, powerful contralto voice which was one of the glories of our high-school choir program; during our senior year, Mrs. Wettestad joked several times that she was going to bribe Tiana’s teachers to flunk her so she had to come back for one more year. I wouldn’t have thought it was funny, but Tiana recognized the compliment and took it with her usual quiet grace.

Eileen Corrigan is hard to describe physically because she’s so average. Middling height, straight shoulder-length brown hair parted in the middle, soft brown eyes in a small square face, pale skin and freckles go with a figure that’s neither slight nor curvaceous, just . . . well, average. None of that matters to anyone, because when Eileen walks into the room, people feel happier. I’m not even sure what it is, though part of it is her soft smile and musical voice. More of it is the fact that she sees people for the best of what they are and what they could become, and she has a knack for helping them see themselves (and those around them) in the same way. A mutual friend who struggles with depression said once, “Eileen always makes me feel there’s hope for me yet.” Everyone in the room agreed.

Quiria Machado is Cuban by heritage and not much lighter-skinned than Tiana, but very different physically. She’s short, powerfully-built, and athletic; she’s not a gymnast like Lana, but is the only person I know who can match her energy level. Quiria plays basketball, but her first love is football. She’d take any chance she could get at a pickup game, invariably playing running back and safety, not caring in the least that she was the only woman on either team. If the guys on the other team hadn’t seen her play before, they’d grin with anticipation—until she trucked one of them with a stiff-arm on her way to a first down, or decleated some hapless receiver. It was always fun to see the realization hit that if they didn’t take her very seriously, she was going to bust their asses. She operates the same way on the court, playing point guard with the physicality of a power forward. Our high school won a lot of games with her running the point—she’s a beautiful passer who’s always thinking three moves ahead, and it’s hard to deal with someone who can brutalize and outwit you at the same time. Metternich University (one of BSU’s conference rivals, alas) is reaping the benefits now; she started there from day one, was all-conference last year as a true freshman, and is likely to be all-conference again this year.

Quiria’s a beautiful woman who looks a lot like a darker-skinned version of Bianca Santos, but she never found a long-term boyfriend in high school; she’s an absolute firecracker with the temper to match her energy level, and none of the guys she considered hot enough to date could deal with a girlfriend who—let’s be blunt—was stronger, smarter, and a more dominant personality than they were.

Kelly Vincent is a short, busty redhead with long, wavy hair, green eyes, and a heart-shaped face. She’s a fun-loving, freewheeling type who’s always up for a party and can usually depend on the party to find her. She went through as many boyfriends as Heather did (sometimes they traded with each other, in fact), with the same general air of someone trying on clothes who can’t quite find what they’re looking for. Kelly’s a musician and painter, and I think she’s really good—though when it comes to painting, I admit my opinion isn’t worth much. On flute and violin, though, there’s no question she’s really good, as she won all sorts of honors in high school. One of the best things I ever heard was at graduation two years ago; that was Tiana and Eileen’s senior year, and they sang a duet with Kelly accompanying them on violin. I couldn’t tell you what the piece was, but it was gorgeous.

The other three girls are probably from Whitney’s year, since I have the sense I’ve seen them before. There’s a tall, slender blue-eyed blond with an angelic oval face, creamy skin, and an incongruous look of naked desire on her face; a raven-haired, brown-eyed, copper-skinned beauty with moderately-large tits (I can tell because she’s wearing a shirt with a plunging neckline); and another young woman with black hair, this one short and slender with vivid green eyes, pale skin, and short sleeves that reveal a dragon tattoo twining itself around her right arm. Shades of Stieg Larsson . . .

I need to focus. I can’t let my attention wander to any of these girls, and especially not to Heather: I need to give everything to Whitney—who at the moment is reminding me forcibly of Makayla Randolph as she was when I first met her. This is going to be a challenge.