"Adam," Cee Cee said. "Don't be such a spaz. I highly doubt she wants to marry you."

"I don't think it's a good idea to marry anyone until my divorce from my first husband is finalized," I said, gravely. "What I want to do is go to the hospital and see Bryce."

Adam's shoulders slumped. "Oh," he said. There was no missing the dejection in his voice. "Is that all?"

I realized I'd said the wrong thing. Still, I couldn't unsay it. Fortunately, Cee Cee helped me out by saying, thoughtfully, "You know, a story about Bryce and Father Dominic bravely battling back from their wounds wouldn't be a bad idea for the paper. Would you mind if I tagged along, Suze?"

"Not at all." A lie, of course. With Cee Cee along, it might be difficult to accomplish what I wanted without a lot of explaining....

But what choice did I have? None.

Once I'd secured my ride, I started looking for Sleepy. I found him dozing with his back to the monkey bars. I nudged him awake with the toe of my boot. When he squinted up at me through his sunglasses, I told him not to wait for me after school, that I'd found my own ride. He grunted, and went back to sleep.

Then I went and found a pay phone. It's weird when you don't know your own mother's phone number. I mean, I still knew our number back in Brooklyn, but I didn't have the slightest idea what my new phone number was. Good thing I'd written it in my date book. I consulted the S's – for Simon – and found my new number, and dialed it. I knew no one was home, but I wanted to cover all my bases. I told the answering machine that I might be late getting back from school since I was going out with a couple of new friends. My mother, I knew, would be delighted when she got back from the station and heard it. She'd always worried, back in Brooklyn, that I was anti-social. She'd always go, "Suzie, you're such a pretty girl. I just don't understand why no boys ever call you. Maybe if you didn't look so ... well, tough. How about giving the leather jacket a rest?"

She'd probably have died of joy if she could have been in the parking lot after school and heard Adam as I approached his car.

"Oh, Cee, here she is." Adam flung open the passenger door of his car – which turned out to be one of the new Volkswagen Bugs; I guess Adam's parents weren't hurting for money – and shooed Cee Cee into the backseat. "Come on, Suze, you sit right up front with me."

I peered through my sunglasses – as usual, the morning fog had burned away, and now at three o'clock the sun beat down hard from a perfectly clear blue sky – at Cee Cee squashed in the backseat. "Um, really," I said. "Cee Cee was here first. I'll sit in the back. I don't mind at all."

"I won't hear of it." Adam stood by the door, holding it open for me. "You're the new girl. The new girl gets to sit in the front."

"Yeah," Cee Cee said from the depths of the backseat, "until you refuse to sleep with him. Then he'll relegate you to the backseat, too."

Adam said, in a Wizard of Oz voice, "Ignore that man behind the curtain."

I slid into the front seat, and Adam politely closed the door for me.

"Are you serious?" I turned around to ask Cee Cee as Adam made his way around the car to the driver's seat.

Cee Cee blinked at me from behind her protective lenses. "Do you really think anybody would sleep with him?"

I digested that. "I take it," I said, "that's a no, then."

"Damned straight," Cee Cee said just as Adam slid behind the wheel.

"Now," the driver said, flexing his fingers experimentally before switching on the ignition. "I'm thinking this whole thing with the statue and Father Dom and Bryce has really stressed us all out. My parents have a hot tub, you know, which is really ideal for stress like the kind we've all been through today, and I suggest that we all go to my place first for a soak...."

"Tell you what," I said. "Let's skip the hot tub this time, and just go straight to the hospital. Maybe, if there's time later – "

"Yes." Adam looked heavenward. "There is a god."

Cee Cee said, from the backseat, "She said maybe, numbskull. God, try to control yourself."

Adam glanced at me as he eased out of his parking space. "Am I coming on too strong?"

"Uh," I said. "Maybe...."

"The thing is, it's been so long since even a remotely interesting girl has shown up around here." Adam, I saw with some relief, was a very careful driver – not like Sleepy, who seemed to think stop signs actually said Pause. "I mean, I've been surrounded by Kelly Prescotts and Debbie Mancusos for sixteen years. It's such a relief to have a Susannah Simon around for a change. You decimated Kelly this morning when you went, 'Hmm, do angels leave blood stains? I don't think so.' "

Adam went on in this vein for the rest of the trip to the hospital. I wasn't quite sure how Cee Cee could stomach it. Unless I was mistaken, she felt the same way about him that he evidently felt about me. Only I didn't think his crush on me was very serious – if it had been, he wouldn't have been able to joke about it. Cee Cee's crush on him, however, looked to me like the real thing. Oh, she was able to tease him and even insult him, but I'd looked into the rear view mirror a couple times and caught her looking at the back of his head in a manner that could only be called besotted.

But just when she was sure he wasn't looking.

When Adam pulled up in front of the Carmel hospital, I thought he had stopped at a country club or a private house by mistake. Okay, a really big private house, but hey, you should have seen some of the places in the Valley.

But then I saw a discreet little sign that said Hospital. We piled out of the car and wandered through an immaculately kept garden, where the flower beds were bursting with blossoms. Hummingbirds buzzed all around, and I spotted some more of those palm trees I'd been sure I'd never see so far north of the equator.

At the information desk, I asked for Bryce Martinson's room. I wasn't sure he'd been admitted actually, but I knew from experience – unfortunately firsthand – that any accident in which a head wound might have occurred generally required an overnight stay for observation – and I was right. Bryce was there, and so was Father Dominic, conveniently situated right across the hall from one another.

We weren't the only people visiting these particular patients – not by a long shot. Bryce's room was packed. There wasn't, apparently, any limit on just how many people could crowd into a patient's room, and Bryce's looked as if it contained most of the Junipero Serra Mission Academy's senior class. In the middle of the sunny, cheerful room – where on every flat surface rested vases filled with flowers – lay Bryce in a shoulder cast, his right arm hanging from a pulley over his bed. He looked a lot better than he had that morning, mostly, I suppose, because he was pumped full of painkillers. When he saw me in the doorway, this big goofy smile broke out over his face, and he went, "Suze!"

Only he pronounced it "Soo-oo-ooze," so it sounded like it had more than one syllable.

"Uh, hi, Bryce," I said, suddenly shy. Everybody in the room had turned around to see who Bryce was talking to. Most of them were girls. They all did that thing a lot of girls do – they looked me over from the top of my head – I hadn't showered that morning because I'd been running so late, so I was not exactly having a good hair day – to the soles of my feet.

Then they smirked.

Not so Bryce would have noticed. But they did.

And even though I could not have cared less what a bunch of girls I had never met before, and would probably never meet again, thought of me, I blushed.

"Everybody," Bryce said. He sounded drunk, but pleasantly so. "This is Suze. Suze, this is everybody."

"Uh," I said. "Hi."

One of the girls, who was sitting on the end of Bryce's bed in a very white, wrinkle-free linen dress, went, "Oh, you're that girl who saved his life yesterday. Jake's new stepsister."

"Yeah," I said. "That's me." There was no way – no way – I was going to be able to ask Bryce what I needed to ask him with all these people in the room. Cee Cee had steered Adam off into Father Dom's room in order to give me some time alone with Bryce, but it looked as if she'd done so in vain. There was no way I was going to get a minute with this guy alone. Not unless ...

Well, not unless I asked for it.

"Hey," I said. "I need to talk to Bryce for a second. Do you guys mind?"

The girl on the end of the bed looked taken aback. "So talk to him. We're not stopping you."

I looked her right in the eye and said, in my firmest mediation voice, "I need to talk to him alone."

Somebody whistled low and long. Nobody else moved. At least until Bryce went, "Hey, you guys. You heard her. Get out."

Thank God for morphine, that's all I have to say.

Grudgingly, the senior class filed out, everybody casting me dirty looks but Bryce, who lifted a hand connected to what looked like an IV and went, "Hey, Suze. C'mere and look at this."

I approached the bed. Now that we were the only people in it, I was able to see that Bryce actually had a very large room. It was also very cheerful, painted yellow, with a window that looked out over the garden outside.

"See what I got?" Bryce showed me a palm-sized instrument with a button on top of it. "My own painkiller pump. Anytime I feel pain, I just hit this button, and it releases codeine. Right into my bloodstream. Cool, huh?"

The guy was gone. That was obvious. Suddenly, I didn't think my mission was going to be so hard, after all.

"That's great, Bryce," I said. "I was real sorry to hear about your accident."