Instantly, the junior bathroom mobilized. I guess hippies couldn’t always be at peace with the weather. All the girls started scrambling to get their massage oil back in their hemp bags so they could save their junior-spirit banners from the elements.

On her way out the door, Tracy cupped my elbow.

“J.B. doesn’t know a thing,” she said. “Probably best if we keep it that way — know what I mean?”

Then she and her friends scattered, taking their tempest outside. The only sign of life in the empty bathroom was the swinging door that led out to the hallway — the swinging door with J.B.’s face plastered on it.

Can’t a guy change?

The question still rang in my ears. But I’d heard that one too many times before. So I stood before the half-ripped poster and ran my hand over his face, the way they do in the movies to close the eyes of the dead.

Then, glancing around the empty hallway, I snatched it off the door, folded it neatly in half, and dropped it in the junior-class recycling bin. I wasn’t so far away from my own junior year that I’d forgotten how to voodoo.

CHAPTER Two THE VALOR OF MY TONGUE

“ I have had the foulest day,” I said that evening, slipping my purple backpack off my shoulder and tossing it on the French window seat in Mike’s bedroom.

He was standing in the doorway, wringing out of his rain-soaked football jersey, but when I started skivvying out of my damp jeans — just slowly enough to give him a little show — I could see his reflection in the window perk right up to attention.

“Define foulest,” he said, taking a step toward me. The room was dark except for the warm glow of his bedside lamp and the diffused white light coming through the window from the golf club down below. Mike ran the back of his hand up the length of my leg and gave me a sexy half smile. “Food-poisoning-from-Waffle-House foul, or just slightly more dire than yesterday’s foulest day ever?”