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friends—to a nearby club, where up-and-coming bands tried out their new songs on effervescent students.
    Flannery did not dance in order to pair off, which sometimes baffled her partners. For a while she would pay attention to whoever was dancing across from her, whether man or woman; she would nod, thrust her shoulders, slink her hips forward in sync with the other one’s movements. While dancing, she forgot her awkward feet and virginal modesty. She came closer to moving with the freedom she dreamed about. The rooms were hot, humid with gin breath and sweat and pickup lines shouted into ears, which were answered with grinning nods, as if the listener had heard, when, crowd-deafened, they mostly hadn’t. Like everyone else, Flannery wore scanty tops and jeans, sleeveless T-shirts and leggings: clothing that clung, and encouraged others’ hungering intentions. She was wanted. She knew it, a little, in the back of her shy mind, but she kept her distance and somehow stayed out of arm’s reach.
    There always came a time in the night or the dance when Flannery retreated, fell back into herself. She’d close her eyes and go. Her partners, her company could feel it, as if they had just lost this lean, sultry girl over some unseen edge, and all that was left before them was a pretty shell, a body-ghost, someone empty to their touch. Sometimes it was so noticeable that they did touch her—her arm or her shoulder—to bring her back. She’d smile, open her eyes, and maybe toss her head, snap her fingers, take a few steps forward or back. But it was clear she remained unreached. And mysteriously unreachable.
    There was someone with her when she danced, though. When Flannery closed her eyes, lost her head to the drink and the music, there was one person she had in her mind, one person for whom she dipped and writhed, swayed and swung. When her hands shaped the air, it was that person’s form they were seeking.
    Then, one night, as one of her favorite songs throbbed to its close, Flannery suddenly opened her eyes, wide. Two in the morning, drunk and steamy, in a stranger’s friendly, frenzied apartment.
    And there she was.

I n front of her. As if Flannery had imagined her into life. As if her creative powers were, after all, that strong.
    “Hi, Flannery.”
    Anne’s face, in the low party light, seemed shockingly benign. Then again, Flannery was drunk.
    “Hi.”
    So she didn’t wear the leather jacket every single waking minute: here she was bare-shouldered, in a sleeveless white cotton vest. Black jeans. Simple. But her shoulders seemed so vulnerable, exposed, that Flannery had an odd gallant impulse. Surely they should be covered, those delicate shoulders, with a wrap or a coat. Even a protective arm. Anne seemed so small here.
    “Great party,” Flannery said, stupidly. But what else could she say?
    “Yeah. Do you know Cameron?” Anne gestured toward a blond, floppy-haired figure who was leaning lustfully into a short black man beside him.
    Flannery nodded, smiled, and shrugged in some vague combination that she hoped didn’t commit her one way or another. Actually, she had no idea whose party this was; she couldn’t even remember who had brought her here. Where had she put her drink? Down on some speaker somewhere?
    “You looked like you were getting into the music,” Anne said. Still smiling! What was the matter with her? “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” She glanced at the friend Flannery had been dancing with, who was now moving slinkily over to someone else.
    “No, no. I was—just getting ready to go, anyway. It’s late.” Flannery wiped the sweat from her face. She felt so tall, standing over Anne. It seemed all wrong.
    “You don’t have to leave just because I’m here.” The woman gazed at her with something more like the expected sarcasm. “I’m not grading you, you know.”
    “Yeah.” Flannery couldn’t figure out where to put her hands: she had nothing to hold on to. “Listen—do you