All the way back to her place, I was thinking about the last time I'd seen her. It was right before I'd split for New York, the summer after we graduated from college.

The summer Craig died.

As usual, we'd come home that summer and slipped back into our high-school way of life. Drinking, drugs, D&D. I'd been seeing someone at William & Mary, but we'd broken up before graduation, her choice, and I was glad of any excuse to numb the pain I was feeling and to avoid thinking about my responsibility for what had happened … which, put briefly, was that my philosophy of high-school hedonism hadn't gone over too well in college, at least not after the first few semesters, and it was only now, a little too late, that I was being forced to admit it. Or was it too late? My ex-girlfriend, Donna, had gone to New York, and the notion of following her was percolating in the back of my mind, not yet something I considered seriously, more of a romantic fantasy. Plus, that was the summer my folks finally split up, and while I welcomed the step (long overdue, as far as Ellen and I were concerned), it only made my life more unsettled just when I needed all the stability I could get.

Hung up on my problems, I didn't pay much attention to the others. Because I didn't want to admit that I had changed, neither did I care to admit the possibility that my friends, too, might be different. But of course they were. How could they not be? After four years of college, we had all changed. We didn't fit comfortably into our old friendship anymore. The roles that had once come naturally were forced, artificial. Maybe they always had been. It wouldn't have taken much to shatter the complacent illusion of timelessness with which we were deceiving ourselves. Anything at all might have done it.

If I'd been less self-absorbed, perhaps I would have seen it coming. Done or said something in time to make a difference. I've wondered about that a lot. But I didn't notice a goddamn thing. Late one night I got a call from Eric; Craig was in the hospital. Apparently, he'd tried to hang himself in the woods. The limb of the tree he'd chosen had snapped, and he'd somehow managed to crawl out of the woods to the side of Glade Drive, dragging the fucking branch behind him the whole way. There he'd lain, unconscious, until he was found by passing motorists. By the time I got to the hospital, he was dead.

It was big news for a while. Everybody blamed drugs and rock and roll: the autopsy found pot in his system, and he'd actually been wearing a Walkman when he'd hung himself. Even D&D got dragged in, as though he'd been possessed by demons summoned up at a roll of the dice. His parents were devastated and angry; they believed we'd corrupted Craig, Lisa especially, whom they'd never liked, and they made it clear we would not be welcome at his funeral. We stayed away out of respect for their grieving (he was their only child), but that same night we visited the gravesite for a service of our own, sneaking on to the moonlit cemetery grounds … the same cemetery where, years later, I would see my mother buried. We sat beside the freshly turned earth and sickly sweet, already-wilting flowers and passed around a joint and, after pouring out a libation, a bottle of Virginia Gentleman bourbon. No one said a word. Lisa wept quietly, steadily, and Eric scowled into the night, his body hunched as if in expectation of another blow. By then they'd told me the real story.

It seemed they'd been fucking behind Craig's back for pretty much the whole last year of school. It had, Eric told me, just happened. They'd never meant for it to continue so long, and they'd never meant to hurt Craig. But things got out of hand. They got careless and slipped up, and about a week ago he'd apparently seen enough to make him realize what was going on, and how long it had been going on. At least, that's what he'd written in a note to Lisa (the existence of which she kept from the cops and his parents; she didn't even offer to show it to me, nor did I ask to see it). Lisa said that he'd believed she didn't love him anymore, that she wanted to be with Eric now. And so, like a gentleman, he'd stepped aside. That was, she said, her voice half-angry, half-incredulous, really how he saw it. Or how he'd written it, anyway.

"Like offing himself was some big act of chivalry," snarled Eric from the driver's seat. We were in his car, heading to the cemetery. For once, no music was playing. He thumped the wheel with the palm of his hand. "Asshole! He didn't even talk to us! Didn't give us a chance to explain …"

"What if he had?" I asked after a moment from the back. "Did you still love him, Lis? Did you want to be with him?"

"I don't know what I wanted," she said, half-turned to me, features sunk in shadow. "Not this. Never this."

I could feel Eric's gaze in the rearview mirror, his eyes boring into me as if I'd accused her of murder, accused them both. But I felt too guilty myself just then to cast any stones. "Poor Craig. When I think of him all alone, crawling through the woods …"

"Fuck!" Eric exclaimed. "Will you shut the fuck up?" And he jammed a tape into the stereo and cranked the volume.

And now, here I was, following Lisa home. I'm not ordinarily superstitious, but I felt that something beyond mere chance was at work, that my mom had taken a hand in our meeting, bringing us together like she'd always wanted … though for what purpose, I didn't know. Corny as it sounds, I sensed her gazing down on me. I felt surrounded and protected by her love, felt it shining all around me like the headlights of another car, and for the first time in days, I found myself thinking of her without pain. Why, I haven't lost anything, I remember thinking in surprise. She's still right here.

"Jeez, it's good to see you, Lis." I studied her in the light of the street lamps. She wore cut-off jeans and a black Hello Kitty T-shirt that left her midriff bare. A tattoo of a blue and silver lightning bolt or thorn circlet ran around her left arm. Her hair was long now, pure, glistening black, and there were new piercings (nose; eyebrow; belly-button) and a hint of crow's feet at the corners of her eyes, but otherwise she looked no more than five or six years older than the last time I'd seen her. If I hadn't known better, I would have guessed her to be in her mid-twenties, tops, instead of more than ten years older: my age. "You look fucking great."

She gave me a crooked, incongruously shy smile, one I'd seen a million times before but until that instant had forgotten about completely. It floored me, that smile. "It's good to see you, too," she said.

I knew that I looked every bit of my age, and then some. I had lost some hair and put on some weight. And I'd stopped wearing an earring years ago. Silence descended as we sized each other up. I had so many questions, I didn't know where to begin.

"Come on." She took me by the hand and led me into the apartment building, to the elevator, which opened its doors as soon as she pressed the call button. We stepped on. "We live on the third floor," she told me.

"We?"

"Eric and me." She flashed that shy, crooked smile again. How could I have forgotten that smile?

"So you guys stayed together," I said. "I always wondered. Married?"

She laughed. "Not hardly."

"How is he?"

"He was diagnosed with MS a few years back."

"Shit. That really sucks."

The elevator stopped. The doors slid open.

She lowered her voice. "He doesn't like people to make a big deal out of it. He's in remission now. Uses a cane, has a bit of a tremor, but that's about it. I mean, he's not crippled or anything."

"That's good to hear. I don't know much about MS. How did …?"

"Nobody knows how you get it," she said. "One more thing. Seeing you is going to be a surprise, and he doesn't like surprises much anymore. He likes things predictable, safe. So at first he might come across a little harsh."

"Maybe I should wait out here while you talk to him."

"Do you mind?"

"Of course not."

"I'll just be a minute. Believe me, he'll be glad to see you."

By then we had reached the door. From behind it I heard the thump of heavy bass. She opened the door with her key and slid inside. "I'm home," she called above the music, which I recognized as the first song off the Talking Heads' Fear of Music LP, whose name I could never remember. "I, Zebra," or something like that. Over her shoulder, I glimpsed a paperback-filled bookcase and, hanging at an angle from one corner of the ceiling, the black rectangle of a stereo speaker; then the door closed, though not before I smelled the unmistakable odor of pot.

I leaned back against the wall with a sigh, suddenly aware how worn-out I was. It had been a long day, and now it was late, after midnight. And I had a reservation on the ten o'clock train to New York the next morning.

The volume of the music swelled as the door swung inward. I straightened as a face I recognized with difficulty as Eric's poked into the hall. "Fuck, look who's back! Get the fuck in here, Dweeber!"

I laughed; it had been a long time since I'd been called that … although, when your last name is Weber, you get used to it pretty quick, and deep down inside you never really stop expecting to hear it. "Hey, Eric." I put out my hand; he clasped it with his own, pulling me through the door and into the apartment before releasing me. "Sorry to come by so late."

"Fuck, you call this late?" He stumped past me, leaning heavily on a cane of polished blond wood. "Come on in and have a beer."

I followed him into the living room. I didn't know if the MS was to blame, but he looked to be around two hundred pounds, which, for a guy who stood about five-seven, with a bad leg, was serious baggage. His face and cheeks were puffy behind a scraggly brown beard, and when we'd shaken, I'd noticed that his hand was swollen, though his grip was firm enough. He wore jeans and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. He smelled of sweat.

"Make yourself at home," he said, and let himself fall with a satisfied grunt into a well-used leather recliner.

I surveyed my options. The room was a cluttered mess. A leather couch strewn with paperbacks, magazines, and comic books; a couple of wooden chairs with clothes draped over their backs; a glass coffee table covered with CDs, albums, more books, comics, and magazines, beer and soda bottles and cans, two overflowing ashtrays, computer and video game boxes, and a cherry-red plastic bong. Along one wall was a desk with a PC on it; the monitor was on, a screensaver endlessly generating the fractal patterns of a Mandelbrot set. Set against the opposite wall, as though in obedience to a law of techno-feng shui, was a TV; Letterman was on, sans sound. There were three bookcases, all stuffed full, one holding the stereo and hundreds of CDs. A few framed photographs hung on the walls, along with a reproduction of Starry Night and a large map prickling with colored pins. Curtains were pulled shut over the windows. As for the floor, it was basically a legless table with a carpet on top.

"Go on," Eric urged, tilting back in the recliner; swollen, filthy feet levered up into view, and I looked away. A side table at his elbow held a second bong, this one blue, and a remote. He picked up the latter, thumbed it repeatedly, and the volume of the music dwindled slightly. "Sit your ass down."

I cleared a space on the couch and sat. Lisa, meanwhile, entered the room carrying three bottles of Rolling Rock beer. She handed one to Eric and one to me. I thanked her, and she sat beside me on the couch, raising her bottle in a toast.

"To old times."

"Old times," Eric and I chorused, and drank.

"Lis says she ran into you on the paths," Eric said.

"Yeah," I said. "Old times, right?"

"Are not fucking forgotten," he said. "Not around here, that's for fucking sure."

I didn't know what to make of that, so I had another swallow of beer.

"Back for a visit, Dweeber?"

"Not exactly." I told them about my mother.

"Shit," said Eric. "Leukemia, huh? That sucks, man. How the hell'd she get that?"

"No one knows."

He grunted. "Fucking doctors don't know shit, man."

Lisa slipped her arm around my shoulders and squeezed. "I'm sorry, Johnny. She was a good lady. I liked her."

"Thanks," I said. "She was."

"I used to see her every once in a while," Lisa went on. "Not to talk or anything. Just in passing. You know, in the Giant or whatnot. We'd wave, say hi. I always thought about asking how you were."

"She asked about you guys a lot," I said. "She wanted me to look you up."

"Well, now you have," said Eric.

I couldn't tell if that was sarcasm or not, so I simply nodded, drank more beer. No one had mentioned Craig yet, but he was right there with us, his absence filling the room. I thought I would finish the bottle and split.

"So, how long are you staying?" Lisa asked, offering me a cigarette from her pack.

I shook my head no. "I'm heading back to New York tomorrow."

Eric's laugh was a sharp, ugly bark. "Figures."

"Eric, please," Lisa began, lighting a cig.

"No," said Eric. "I mean, listen to this fucking guy. Dude disappears for what, seventeen years, then when he finally does show his face again, and not because he decides to look up his old buds after all this time, but because he gets his ass busted on the bike paths and has no choice, he can't wait to get out of town! What's the problem, Dweeber? Don't like hanging out with murderers?"

I could only stare. Had Eric been storing up all this vitriol for seventeen years? It was like a switch had been thrown, transforming him into a red-faced, spittle-spraying lunatic.

"Eric—"

"Shut up, Lis! Well, Dweeber? I'm waiting for your answer."

I set the bottle down on the glass coffee table. My heart was pounding. "It's not like that, Eric. It never has been, and you should know it."

"Yeah? How should I fucking know it? Not from you. You made your feelings fucking plain as day, taking off like you did, leaving us behind to, to …" He spluttered, gesturing with his beer, as if whatever he was trying to say was summed up perfectly by the cluttered room around us, the overflowing ashtrays, the mindlessly cycling loop of the screensaver on the computer monitor, the tightly drawn curtains, the piles of books and magazines on the carpet, David Byrne's yelping, growling voice on the stereo, the smell of stale beer and bongwater.

"I'm sorry you feel that way." I got to my feet. "I guess I'd better be going."

"Going?" Eric blinked in surprise.

"You obviously don't want me here." I turned to Lisa. "It was good to see you again, Lis."

"I'm sorry, Johnny," she said. She looked angry and mortified at once.

"Shit, man," said Eric. "Don't get your fucking panties in a wad! Nobody said anything about not wanting you here. Fuck! You always were too sensitive for your own good, Dweeber!"

"Yeah, well, fuck you, Eric," I said, and started for the door.

"Don't let him go, Lis," Eric directed. "Go after him, for Christ's sake. He's not gonna fucking walk out on us again, goddamn it. Do you hear me?"

That stopped me. I was at the door, but I turned around. "Is that really how you see it, Eric? I walked out on you?"

"Well, you did, didn't you? A week after they put Craig in the ground, you were gone. I mean, you didn't even wait long enough for those pot seeds we planted to sprout!"

"Did they?" I asked.

"You bet your ass they did!" he affirmed with pride, and his face glowed as he thumped one armrest of the recliner with an open palm and let loose with a string of wheezy chuckles.

Lisa, still sitting on the couch, the cigarette held between the fingers of her drooping hand, its tip pointing toward the ceiling, smiled. "His parents were not pleased."

Eric nodded. "Man, that's the understatement of the century! They had cops crawling everywhere. You would have thought we'd desecrated the tomb of a saint instead of a guy who was like the biggest head in Reston at the time. Of course, they never knew it was us."

"Oh, they knew," said Lisa. "They just couldn't prove it."

"Same difference," said Eric. "Shit." He was breathing heavily, almost gasping. It was alarming to witness; there was a stroke somewhere in his not-too-distant future.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

He waved away my concern. "Nothing a bong hit won't cure."

I glanced at Lisa, but she only shrugged. I figured she saw this sort of thing a lot.

"Come on, Dweeber," he wheezed, prepping the blue bong for action. "Stay. At least finish your fucking beer."

I sighed. "All right." And returned to the couch. "You know, you guys could have left the same as I did."

Eric shook his head vigorously as he sucked in a lungful of pot smoke.

"Why not?"

He gestured to Lis, who sighed. "It's hard to explain," she said.

"Fuck if it is!" said Eric, smoke exploding from his lips.

"Let me do this my way," said Lisa.

"Whatever."

I looked from one to the other. "Jesus, you sure you two aren't married?"

"Funny, Dweeber." He had packed another hit into the bong, and he now extended it to me. "You still toke, don't you?"

I hesitated; for the first time, I noticed the tremor that Lisa had mentioned.

"You're not gonna catch MS, if that's what you're thinking."

I took the bong. "Jesus, Eric! I know that." I picked up Lisa's lighter from the coffee table and lit the bowl, drawing the hot, harsh smoke deep into my lungs. I rarely smoked pot anymore, an occasional drag from a joint at parties, and it had been a long time since I'd last used a bong. Something akin to what occurred in the seconds following the Big Bang began to take place in my chest. I started hacking like a neophyte.

Eric giggled delightedly.

But if my lungs had forgotten how to expand with the intake of pot, my brain still remembered. "Wow," I said, when I could talk again. "Good shit."

"Eric grows it himself," Lisa said, taking the bong from me and passing it back to him. "This strain goes back to those seeds we planted at the grave."

"Wow," was all I could say.

"Yeah, we managed to save some of the plants," Eric said. "Transplanted 'em."

Tina Weymouth's bass line was wrapping itself around the drift of smoke from Lisa's cigarette. Or maybe it was the other way around. I closed my eyes for a second, or what seemed like a second, and it was as if seventeen years had fallen away, and I was sitting in the gloomy basement of Craig's parents' house waiting to start a game of D&D.

"So, tell him, Lis," came Eric's voice.

I opened my eyes. There was a beer in my hand, so I took a drink.

"Why were you on the bike paths tonight?" she asked.

I shrugged. "It wasn't anything I planned. I was just driving around." I found myself speaking slowly; the words had an unfamiliar feel in my mouth, like they'd changed shape slightly and no longer fit as they once had. "I ended up down by the Hunters Woods swimming pool. We used to sneak in, remember? Anyway, that's where I got on the paths. Got lost after about five minutes! But I didn't care, you know? I mean, shit, I buried my mom today." I realized that I was about to start blubbering, and suddenly Lisa was handing me a bunch of Kleenex.

"Had to," Eric drawled in imitation of the voice of W. C. Fields, and I knew exactly what he was going to say, the line from My Little Chickadee, a movie we'd watched a million times on video, along with everything from the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges, and while on the one hand it was wildly inappropriate and insensitive, on the other it was perfect, and so I joined him in completing the quote: "She died."

Then we were cackling like idiots. Lisa shook her head and smiled her lopsided smile.

I wiped my eyes with the Kleenex. "Man, I found this kickass station on the radio when I was driving the paths! Way down to the left of the dial. Played all these cool tunes from back in the day. I kept waiting for a DJ to come on, but it faded out before anyone did. You guys know that station?"

They were looking at me like they couldn't believe their ears.

"What?" I said.

"You heard it?" Lisa asked.

"Yeah, I heard it. What's the big deal?"

"You remember what you heard?" Eric asked in turn. He was rummaging around through a stack of papers on the floor beside the recliner.

"Just that it was a lot of great shit I hadn't heard in years."

He pulled out a crumpled and stained sheet of paper and passed it over to me. "Any of this ring a bell?"

It was a handwritten list of songs. I was pretty sure that I'd heard most of them on the radio. And even in the same order. "What's this?" I asked, looking up. "The playlist? Are you guys running some kind of pirate radio station or something?"

"Yeah, it's the playlist, all right," Eric said. "Craig's playlist. This was the shit he was listening to on his Walkman when he fucking did the deed."

"No way." I looked from one to the other; their faces were dead serious.

"You can listen to the goddam tape yourself if you want," said Eric. "I managed to grab it at the hospital, when things were so confused. Before his folks went psycho on us."

"A few months after that, Eric and me started hearing the station," Lisa said. "It was freaky. I mean, it only happened on the bike paths, and only when we were there at night, and only if it was one or both of us. If there was anybody else in the car, we could never pick it up."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.

"Shit, you'd split by then," Eric said. "Anyway, we never figured you'd hear it, too. Nobody else could. Just Lis and me. We figured he was, you know, haunting us."

Lisa picked up the story. "We tried all sorts of shit to get in touch with his ghost or spirit or whatever you want to call it. Trying to find out what he wanted. Trying to make him go away. Seances, Santería, exorcism. Nothing worked."

"That's when I thought, what if we found the source? I mean, we were picking it up on the radio, right? So it had to be broadcasting from somewhere." Eric heaved ponderously to his feet, the recliner squealing in protest, and lumbered across the room to the map I'd seen earlier, hanging on the wall, covered with different-colored pins. "C'mere, Dweeber. Take a look at this."

I joined him. I wasn't sure how to take all this. If Craig could reach out from beyond the grave, what was to stop my mom from doing it? The idea creeped me out, but at the same time, there was nothing I wanted more than some concrete, unmistakable sign that she still existed, that she was watching over me, that she forgave me for all the times I'd caused her pain or disappointment, that, in those last horrible days, when she'd been buried alive within the coffin of her body, unable to communicate, she hadn't been suffering, or, if she had, that she didn't blame me for it, for withholding the morphine the doctors had wanted to give. Earlier, it's true, as I'd followed Lisa out of the paths, it had seemed to me that I'd felt her presence, but now that seemed no more than the product of wishful thinking and a grieving, guilty heart.

"Like you noticed yourself," Eric said, "the station fades in and out. It's a weak signal. So Lisa and me started tracking it."

"That's what you were doing tonight," I said to Lisa as she walked over to stand beside Eric and slipped an arm around his ample waist.

"We were both out there chasing it," she said. "Eric just got home first."

"We bought ourselves a couple of walkie-talkies and started driving around the paths at night, noting down where it got stronger, where it got weaker, where it faded out altogether."

"And the times, too," Lisa added. "I mean, it only happened at night, and only between certain hours."

"Which turned out to be no earlier than around ten-twenty, and no later than a little before midnight. In case you were wondering, that's when they figure he strung himself up and when he was found by the side of the road."

The map was thumbtacked to the wall. It was fairly large, a square about three feet to a side. It showed all the roads, parks, lakes, developments, and bike paths of Reston. It was bounded by Leesburg Pike to the north, the Fairfax County Parkway to the west, Lawyers Road to the south, and Hunter Mill Road to the east. Within those borders were clustered hundreds of pushpins with different-colored heads. From a distance, the thing had resembled a pointillist abstraction. Up close, no pattern of colors leaped out at me, but it was clear that most of the pins were in and around the same area I'd driven earlier, which made sense, as much as any of this did, because it was close to Craig's parents' house, near the woods where he'd hung himself, though no one knew the exact spot, since he'd managed to crawl out to Glade Drive.

"And this is why you've stayed in Reston all these years?" I asked. "Chasing a fucking ghost?"

"I think he needs us," Lisa said. "I think Craigy is stuck or something. He needs our help to move on. To find peace. And we owe him that, Johnny. You know we do."

"The problem is," said Eric, "two people isn't enough. Lis and me have never been able to get a fix on the source. We've come close, I think, following the signal when it's at its clearest and strongest, but it always fades out before we can home in. With three people, though, I bet we can do it. We can triangulate on the motherfucker!"

"And then what?" I asked. "What do you expect to find out there, Eric?"

"An answer, that's what." He gave me a cold-eyed, challenging look. "So, what do you say, Dweeber? Are you in? I've got an extra walkie-talkie you can use."

"I told you," I said. "I've got to be back in New York tomorrow. I've got my ticket and everything."

"Don't be a pussy," Eric said. "Your mom just died, okay? You can take an extra day off work or whatever. Nobody's going to deny you that."

"Please, Johnny," said Lisa.

"Don't beg for his help," Eric snapped.

The truth was, my own words had shamed me more than Eric ever could. "I think the two of you are out of your fucking minds," I said. "But I'll do it."

"Good man, Dweeber," said Eric, and gave my shoulder a hearty thump as Lisa leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. "Come by around ten; that'll give us enough time to get high first."

"Does that help?" I asked, genuinely curious.

Eric winked. "It don't hurt."

Back at my mom's, I dragged my ass to bed and fell asleep at once, waking late the next morning with a dry mouth and a pervasive lethargy that kept me in bed for another hour. By then, it was too late to make my train, even if I'd wanted to. I got up, drank a cup of coffee, ate some cereal, did my stretches, and went for my usual run along the bike paths.

As I jogged, sweating out the poisons of the night, I began to regret my decision to help Lisa and Eric. The firmness of the path beneath my feet was a rebuke to everything they'd told me, everything I'd experienced, or thought I'd experienced. In the brilliant light of day, so much of it seemed improbable, foolish. I had no doubt that something deeply weird was going on, but their explanation for it, to say nothing of their proposed remedy, struck me as equally weird, if not more so. I told myself that I could still leave, catch a later train. But by the time I'd finished my run and showered, I knew that I wasn't going anywhere. I wanted to find that station again. Prove to myself that it really existed. Or that it didn't. But one way or the other, I had to know.

"C'mon in, Dweeber." Eric's voice issued from inside. "It's open!"

I found the two of them exactly where I'd left them: Eric sprawled in the recliner, Lisa seated on the couch. With the drapes drawn, a miasma of pot and tobacco smoke drifting through the air, and Fear of Music playing on the stereo, I could almost believe that I'd circled back in time, entering the apartment just seconds after I'd closed the door behind me the night before. Only the fact that they were dressed differently dispelled the illusion.

"Jesus," I said. "This place reeks of dope. Aren't you worried about the neighbors?"

"Hell, they're my best customers," said Eric. "The whole fucking floor is nothing but heads. Relax, Dweeber." He held up the blue bong. "Have a toke."

"Thanks, but I'll pass. Whatever happens tonight, I want a clear head."

"Shit, my head's so clear, it's fucking transparent," laughed Eric, and Lisa laughed along with him, then asked me if I wanted a beer.

"Thanks, Lis. Don't get up; I'll get it myself. Where's the kitchen?"

"Straight on back."

"Bring me one, too," said Eric.

"How about you, Lis?"

"I'm fine."

To my surprise, the kitchen was immaculate. There were two refrigerators, one normal-sized, the other a mini, like the fridge I'd had in my college dorm room. Instinct steered me there, and sure enough, it was filled with bottles of Rolling Rock. I pulled out two, twisted off the caps, and returned to the living room, where I handed one of the bottles to Eric.

"My man!"

"You're in a good mood," I commented after a swallow of ice-cold beer.

"Fuckin'-A," he agreed. "Tonight's the night. I feel it."

"Don't get your hopes up too high, Eric," Lisa cautioned.

"Are you kidding? With Johnny here, we can't miss."

I didn't share his confidence. I wasn't even sure what I wanted to happen. "Shouldn't we get going?"

"That's the spirit," said Eric with a grin. "Lis, give the man his walkie-talkie."

Lisa rose from the couch and handed me a black device slightly larger than a cell-phone. She demonstrated its use, then led me over to the map. "We'll each enter the paths from a different point," she said, indicating them to me with the antenna of her own walkie-talkie, like a commando explaining a mission. "You'll use the same entrance you did last night, by the pool. I'll get on near where they found him, on Glade. Eric's going to come in from the east, from over by Steeplechase. Tune in to the station and follow it as best you can; if it starts to fade out, backtrack and go in a different direction until it comes in stronger."

"We'll use the walkie-talkies to stay in touch," Eric said. "Now, here's the thing, Dweeber. The bike paths don't go everywhere, right?"

I nodded. I'd been wondering about this.

"But check it out: the walkie-talkies can pick up the FM band. So once we've driven as far as we can, we ditch our cars and start walking into the woods, converging on ground fucking zero." His eyes glittered with enthusiasm. "Just keep the station strong and steady, and it'll guide us right where we want to go."

"Aren't you guys afraid of what we might find there?" I asked.

"Fuck, no," said Eric. "I know what I'm gonna find."

"What's that?"

"Redemption, Dweeber," he said in a voice that sent a chill down my spine, as if he were defining that word in a very different way from any dictionary I knew. "Sweet, fucking redemption."