he was doing well in school. And Faye seemed to see a lot of him for lunch. He hadn't had much time himself. He'd been putting together the package for another big film deal, and he had a lot on his mind. But the boy looked all right. At least none of their brood had gone haywire with this flower child nonsense, and none of them were into drugs, although he frequently warned Faye to keep an eye on Val. That child was too damn seductive by far, and she seemed to have a knack for hanging out with older boys. She had turned up with some character in May who admitted to being twenty-four, and he had squashed that romance fast enough. But there was no denying she was hard to control. There was one in every brood, he'd been told, and Val was theirs. But so far, despite the wild garb, the makeup, and the older boys, she seemed to have stayed within the bounds of some kind of propriety.
The party they gave Greg that night differed radically from Lionel's the year before. By midnight everyone was not only drunk on beer, but most of them were naked in the pool. Faye wanted to have them all thrown out, but Ward prevailed and told her to let them have their fun. He wanted her to send Anne and the twins to bed, and Faye said that was impossible. You either had to close the whole show down or let them be, but the police made the decision for them shortly after two o'clock. They told them to turn the music off and tone it down. Every neighbor on their street had complained, especially the couple next door, when a chorus line of twelve hefty young men had appeared on the front lawn, and mooned them before leaping into their pool. Ward had thought the whole thing in good fun, but he was amused by almost everything Greg did. Faye was slightly less amused. There had been no complaints at all over Lionel's party the previous year. By the time the police came, Greg was sprawled out on a chaise longue, a towel wrapped around his naked waist, and an arm draped across his date, both of them drunk on beer and sound asleep. Neither of them woke up when the rest of the guests left, talking about what a great party it had been. Faye was just grateful that none of them had come into the house. Only one couple had wandered in and had been necking heavily in Greg's room, but Faye had seen them tiptoeing in and had asked them to go outside immediately. Sheepishly they had, and they had left early with a few others, who wanted to do some serious groping before going home. But for the most part they were more interested in pushing each other into the pool and consuming as much beer as they could before they had to leave.
And when the last guest left, Lionel and John Wells were still sitting a little distance from the pool, in a comfortable old double swing, under a tree. They were talking about UCLA, and Lionel was telling him which classes he liked best, and about his projects in film. John had gotten his desire of years, and he had been accepted there too.
The swing moved slowly back and forth as they watched the revelers beyond. Lionel had escaped quite a while before, and John had found him sitting in the swing. “I've been thinking about fine arts a lot,” John said. He was still Greg's best friend, officially, but in the last year they seemed to spend less and less time together. John was still on the football team too, but he didn't care about it as much as Greg did, and he was relieved to be free of it now. He never wanted to play football again, no matter how well suited to it he was. Greg had told him he was nuts. He had been offered a football scholarship at Georgia Tech, and had actually turned it down. And oddly enough, the friendship hadn't been as close after that. Greg just couldn't understand his giving up an opportunity like that. He had stared at his childhood friend in disgust and disbelief, and every time they met now, John felt as though he had to explain it again, as though he had committed an unpardonable sin. And in Greg's eyes he