Lincoln had been prepared for kindergarten. He could already read and do some addition and subtraction. He’d ended up skipping the first grade.

“Oh my God”—Eve slammed her fork on the table—“can’t you even hear yourself?”

“Don’t talk about Jesus, Mommy,” Ben whispered.

“Come on, boys,” Lincoln said, “let’s go outside. Let’s play soccer.”

“You’re a very bad soccer player,” Jake said.

“I know,” Lincoln said. “You can teach me.”

The kitchen windows were open. Even after Lincoln took his nephews outside, they could still hear his sister and mother shouting.

“Food touches!” Lincoln heard his mother say. “The world touches!”

After about twenty minutes, Eve leaned out the back door and told the boys to come say good-bye to Grandma. Eve looked frustrated and angry, and she’d been crying.

“We’re going to Wendy’s,” she said to Lincoln. “Do you want to come?”

“No, I’m full.”

“I’m not sorry about anything I said,” she said. “It was all true. You are rotting here.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I’m ripening.”

Eve slammed the back door closed.

CHAPTER 32

WHEN LINCOLN GOT to work on Monday, Greg took him aside to talk about the millennium project.

“It seems like they’re working, right?” Greg asked, looking over at the Y2K kids’ corner. “I mean, they’re putting in a shit-ton of hours.”

Lincoln decided not to tell Greg that his International Strike Force stayed pretty late some nights, playing Doom. (Right in front of Lincoln. You’d think they’d at least ask him to play.)

“They’re so quiet,” Greg said. Lincoln nodded. “Sometimes, I look over at them, and their screens are full of code, and I think about the time I had my appendix out and woke up on the operating table …I mean, they could be doing anything in there.”

“I think they’re just writing code,” Lincoln said.

“Fucking millennium,” Greg said.

CHAPTER 33

From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

To: Beth Fremont

Sent: Wed, 11/10/1999 10:13 AM

Subject: Positive.

Well, I took the test last night, and I’ve felt like I was going to throw up ever since …Not because I have morning sickness, I think it’s too early for that.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Oh my God. CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Congratulations, congratulations! OH MY GOD!!!

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I don’t feel like being congratulated right now. I told you, I feel like throwing up. I think I might have made a huge mistake. As soon as I saw that blue line, I remembered how much I don’t want to have kids, the baby shaking, etc….

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Are we talking about actual baby shaking or figurative baby shaking?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Potential. Don’t I seem like the type?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Don’t be stupid. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be wonderful. Does Mitch know?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I told him last night. He was ecstatic. Seriously, he was so happy that he almost started crying. He couldn’t stop hugging me. It was creepy.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> That doesn’t sound creepy. That sounds nice.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Says the woman who isn’t incubating a parasitic organism.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You make it sound like you have a tapeworm.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Wait until it starts kicking.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Have you told your parents?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Mitch called his parents. They were also creepy-excited. I’m not telling my mother, ever.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> She might notice when you start to show.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> She’ll just tell me that I look fat.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I’m so happy for you. I’m creepy-happy. I’m totally throwing you a baby shower.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> That sounds terrible.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Terribly awesome. I’ll be like a shower expert by the time you have a baby. I have to go to three bridal showers for my sister in the next six weeks, and I’m hosting one.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Three showers? Isn’t that excessive?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> One of them is a personal shower.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Oh, I hate those. If it’s personal, it shouldn’t be a shower. Who wants to open lingerie in front of their friends and relatives?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Lingerie is mild. My cousin got sex toys at her personal shower. And her bridesmaids made her try on her skimpy new underwear so she could give us a fashion show. My aunt kept saying, “Sexy, sexy!”

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Why did you tell me that? Now I’m going to be making the “ew” face for the rest of the day.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I’m going for a more refined vibe at the shower I’m hosting for her. We’re having a tea party. I’m making tea sandwiches.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I love tea sandwiches.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Who doesn’t? You know …I could throw you a tea party baby shower.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> With no games?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Oh, there’ll be games. That’s nonnegotiable. But no sexy underwear, I promise.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’ll consider it.

Enough about me and my tapeworm. How are you?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You can’t tell me you’re pregnant and then change the subject.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> This is all anyone is going to talk to me about for the next nine months. It’s all anyone is going to talk to me about for the rest of my life. Please, can we change the subject? How are you? How is Chris?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Chris is …Chris. I guess. He’s in one of his distant phases. He’s gone a lot, and when he is home, he turns up the stereo too loud to talk. Or he sits in the bedroom with his guitar.

I ask him if he wants to go out, and he says he doesn’t feel like it. But when I get home, he’s gone.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Are you worried?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Not really.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> You don’t think he’s seeing someone else?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> No. Maybe I should think that.

I think he just gets like this sometimes. Like he needs to pull away. I think of it like winter. During winter, it isn’t that the sun is gone (or cheating on you with some other planet). You can still see it in the sky. It’s just farther away.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> That would drive me crazy. I’d lose my temper—or get pregnant—just to shake things up.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Losing my temper wouldn’t help. I can’t imagine what would happen if I got pregnant. Then he probably would leave.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Don’t say that. He wouldn’t leave.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Actually, I think he would. Or he wouldn’t expect me to keep it.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> That’s terrible.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Do you really think so? You know what it’s like to not want children, to want your relationship to stay a certain way. I don’t think Chris would feel responsible for me getting pregnant. He would see it as my deal, my choice. And it would be, wouldn’t it?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Let’s change the subject again.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Gladly. Congratulations!!

CHAPTER 34

LINCOLN HAD SEEN Beth’s boyfriend half a dozen times now. Justin had really taken to Sacajawea after that first show. Now he called Lincoln whenever the band was playing. Dena, Justin’s girlfriend, would come, too. They usually ended up at the Village Inn afterward. They’d all order pie and listen to Justin dissect the night’s show.

“How are these guys not f**king rock stars?” Justin always asked. “Why aren’t they on MTV instead of all that Backstreet bullshit?”

Lincoln shrugged.

“Look,” Dena said, nodding toward the smoking section, “there’s the guitarist again.”

Chris was sitting in a booth, eating a breakfast skillet and reading.

“How does a guy like that not have a girlfriend?” Dena asked.

“Maybe he does,” Lincoln said.

“No way,” Dena said. “Guys with girlfriends don’t spend Friday nights eating alone at the Village Inn.”

“He should be out nailing groupies,” Justin said.

“He’s always by himself,” Dena said.

“If I looked like that,” Justin said through a mouthful of meringue, “I’d be banging a different girl every night.”

“You were doing that anyway,” Dena said, rolling her eyes, “looking like you do.”

“You’re right,” Justin said. “If I looked like that, I’d be banging two different girls every night.”

“Maybe he has a girlfriend,” Lincoln said.

“Then I feel sorry for his girlfriend,” Dena said.

“Maybe he has a boyfriend,” Justin said.

“Then I feel sorry for his boyfriend,” Dena said.

“They have another show tomorrow,” Justin said. “We should go.”

“I’m playing D & D tomorrow night,” Lincoln said.

“Talk about things you do when you don’t have a girlfriend,” Justin said.

Justin was always needling Lincoln to go out more. To be around women. To try. Maybe because Justin had known Sam in high school. Because he remembered the days when Lincoln was the one who always had a beautiful girl on his arm. “A little mouthy for my taste,” Justin had said once during golf practice. “But hotter than a jalapeño milkshake.”

After California, when Lincoln showed up at the state university a year behind everybody else, Justin never asked what happened with Sam. Lincoln had even tried to tell him about it one night, over Papa John’s pizza and a six-pack of Dr. Diablo, but Justin had cut him off.

“Dude. Let it go. Good riddance to bad rubbers.”

CHAPTER 35

IN THE END, Lincoln hadn’t told anyone what happened with Sam in California. (Even though his mother had asked and asked and eventually confronted Sam’s mother at the grocery store.)

He didn’t talk about it because talking about would have been conceding it. Giving in to it. And because if he told someone, he knew it wouldn’t sound that bad. That it was really a fairly standard teenage heartbreak. That the saddest part of the whole story was that he missed a semester of school and lost all his scholarships. That would be the saddest part to someone else, to an outside observer.

He didn’t talk to his mom about it, not once, not ever, because he knew how happy it would make her to be right.

When he first left for college, she called him twice a week.

“I’ve never even been to California,” she said.

“Mom, it’s fine. It’s a nice campus. It’s safe.”

“I don’t know what it looks like,” she said. “I can’t picture you there. I try to think about you and to send you positive energy, but I don’t know which way to send it.”

“West,” he said.

“That’s not what I mean, Lincoln. How am I supposed to visualize good things happening for you if I can’t visualize you?”

He missed her, too. He missed the Midwest. All the scenery Sam had wanted was making his head hurt. Northern California was impractically beautiful. Everywhere you looked there were trees and streams, waterfalls, mountains, the ocean…. There was nowhere to look just to look, just to think.

He’d been spending a lot of time in the campus library, a place without windows.

Sam had been spending a lot of time at the school theater. She wasn’t taking classes in the drama department yet, but she’d gone out for a few plays and landed small roles. Back in high school, when Sam went to rehearsals, Lincoln would go with her. He’d bring his homework and sit in the back row of the auditorium. He could study just fine that way. He could block out the talking and the noise. He liked to hear Sam’s voice occasionally pealing through his chemistry problems.

Lincoln would have happily studied at the college theater while Sam rehearsed, but she felt like he was drawing too much attention to her there. “You’re reminding them that I’m other,” she said. “That I’m a freshman, that I’m not from around here. I need them to look at me and see my role. To see my talent and nothing else. You’re reminding them that I have this cloying Heartland backstory.”

“What’s cloying?” he asked.

“The adoring-Germanic-farm-boy thing.”

“I’m not a farm boy.”

“To them, you are,” she said. “To them, we both just fell off the tomato truck. They think it’s funny that we’re from Nebraska. They think the word Nebraska is funny. They say it like, ‘Timbuktu’ or ‘Hoboken.’”

“Like ‘Punxsutawney’?” he asked.

“Exactly. And they think it’s hilarious that we came to college together.”

“Why is that funny?”

“It’s too sweet,” she said. “It’s exactly what two kids who just fell off the tomato truck would do. If you keep coming to rehearsals, I’m never going to get good parts.”