Penny and Susan were giggling uncontrollably as their Volkswagen tore down the road.
It was the first weekend either of their parents had let them go out since they'd visited Fielder, and they intended to spend it raving. Susan drove as Penny's impossibly long safety-cone orange hair streamed out her open window. In Penny's lap was a zippered plastic bag full of pills both she and Susan had managed to collect while faking taking them. Susan perhaps felt a little guilty about that, especially since they'd done it so they could trade them for better drugs, probably ecstasy. Penny had convinced her, though, that anyone who took a pill without knowing what it was deserved what they got.
"Besides," Penny said, "we got these to make sure the stomach bug from the water was gone. We're healthy, and what the hell harm would they do to anyone? Oh, I'm so scared, we're ridding a few junkies of intestinal parasites! We're going to hell!"
The tainted water had changed Susan's father's mind about sending her to Fielder. That of course made up her mind that she simply had to go there in the fall. Slowly, she was convincing him that all the water problems would be taken care of by the time she was attending.
She wasn't worried about that tonight, though. Tonight, all she wanted to do was cut loose, dance, and maybe get into an altered state...
"It's no use," Charlotte said to her friend, "Terri just doesn't go out anymore.
"What does she do with her time, then?"
"Draws, paints, sculpts, always wolves; big black wolves. Her new obsession."
"Let's just go to dinner, Charlotte, maybe we'll think better on how to help her after we've eaten."
"You're probably right, Carla."
Amy Sheppard points her telescope skyward nightly. It's become almost ritual. She looks up through the contraption of glass and metal until her eyelids droop, and she has to go back inside. Her studies are slipping a little, but not enough for worry.
She has to watch the sky, she knows. She just has to watch and wait.
Sooner or later, the stars would be right.
Amanda finally put her car in gear again at about midnight. Pulling onto major roads again, she made a beeline for a convenience store and feasted ravenously on whatever hot food she could manage to purchase there. Checking back into her hotel, she slept fitfully but purposefully.
Another big day of searching lay ahead.