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purpose until the next year, when
Afros became fashionable. He was wearing that headband the first time she saw him. December 1, 1969. He was playing touch
football with his friends on one of the grass fields on campus. He had tied the bandanna across his forehead to keep his long,
curly hair out of his face and to sop up the sweat that streamed from his hairline. He looked like a medieval knight. His
dog, a small shepherd mix, wore a matching scarf around his neck and waited patiently on the sidelines. A boy and his dog.
The dog's name was Siddhartha. Philip was really into existentialism then. She pretended she understood Hesse and Sartre and
Camus, but she never saw what all the fuss was about. Later, she wondered whether Philip had pretended too. He never reread
those books, and man's essential isolation never seemed to concern him again.
    Katharine had noticed Sid — even his master quickly forgot his more lofty name — before she noticed Philip. Sid had a pleasant
grin, and even though Katharine wasn't much good at it, he let her throw the Frisbee for him — probably, she suspected, because
nobody else would. When Philip and his friends somehow decided that their game was finished, he came over to retrieve Sid,
who was happily stationed on her feet.
    “He's a nice dog” was the only thing she could think to say.
    Philip agreed, quickly dismissing her.
    But they ended up walking in the same direction. Katharine lagged behind, so he wouldn't have to feel like he had to escort
her, but Sid trotted by her side, forcing Philip to drop back and join them. He told her that he and his friends were trying
to forget what was going to happen that night — the draft lottery. He had tried to get a deferment, a medical discharge, but
nothing worked. His birth date was in the glass jug, and his balls were on the chopping block.
    That night she waited and listened to the dates being drawn. March 9, Philip's birthday, was called at number 317; he would
not be drafted. The next day she baked chocolate chip cookies and, marveling at her courage, took them to him in congratulations.
She woke him up. He and his friends had gotten totally blotto — in celebration of good numbers, in denial of bad ones — after
the draw. She sat on the edge of his bed while he tried to focus. He ate a couple of cookies and rebounded, telling her that
cookies were a great cure for hangovers. They sat on his bed all that day talking — about the war, the meaning of life, the
future of mankind — and in the early evening, she utterly amazed herself by crawling under the covers with him.
    Then he said,
That
was the best cure for a hangover.
    For a long time afterward, whenever he woke up with a hangover, she baked him chocolate chip cookies.
    She hadn't baked him chocolate chip cookies in years.
    No, I can't think about that now
. It was best that she go to sleep, and with the dawning of a new day, she would awake feeling fine. She would attack the
bedroom and find out exactly what day it was. It was a Plan.

    She woke up, clutching her stomach as it spasmed. She tried to pull herself protectively into the fetal position, but both
calves cramped and jerked her legs into a full extension. She quickly flexed her heels to ease the cramps. When there was
a lull in the pain, Katharine realized it was long past dawn.
And I feel like shit. So much for the Plan
.
    She lay in bed and wanted to stay there, but she was cold. She had sweat through her clothes, the bedsheets were damp, and
she stank like some sort of feral animal.
    She ached for the smell of coffee; Philip was always up before the rest of the family to start a pot and read the sports page
in peace and quiet. The light of day was all wrong here too, coming from the left through Thisby's bedroom window instead
of like at home, slowly approaching the foot of the bed, only to slant off down the hallway before reaching the covers. She
looked away.
    The sun was streaming onto the kitchen table from the