Feeling my skin crawl, I pushed the door in, and said, "Hello?"

Rank, housebound air puffed out. It smelled like damp ash-trays and rancid milk. I felt for and flicked the light switch, but it was dead, so I leaned in to let my eyes adjust. For a second my heart seized up at what I thought was the shape of a person in the gloom-Oh God, oh God-until the shape resolved itself into a life-size cardboard cutout of Pamela Anderson. Getting a grip, I stepped inside.

Not much to see: mustard-colored shag carpeting, a bunch of baggy old furniture, TV, stereo-typical guy stuff. Pamela was the only decoration. These were the kind of men who could argue heatedly about which pro athlete should be president. I tried the TV and got nothing, but there were several remotes, and it's possible I didn't do it right.

So this was Stoner Central. I was a little disappointed. Except for a few cigarette burns the place was pretty clean. I'd always pictured something a little more exotically nasty. To tell the truth, I'd had a secret yearning to come in here since Mum and I first arrived, and had gone so far as to spy on their New Year's Eve party, skulking around under the trees as the place roared like a bonfire: sleazy-voluptuous tattooed women slithering against crude roughnecks, none of them much older than me, yet as confident in their skins as royalty, while music and laughter and the clink of bottles pushed back the solitude. I had fantasized about walking into that circle of light, all of them falling silent and the most scarily beautiful couple-the branded boy with the pierced lip and his languid, stunning gangsta princess-coming up and taking me by the waist. Welcoming me in.

That party was the last peep we'd heard out of the house, and I realized it was likely that no one had been here since then.