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be crying in public like some four-year-old, and besides that, he looked really, really upset.

"Alex?" Claire let go of Shane's hand and motioned for him to stay put while she crossed the last few feet to the boy. "Hey, Alex? Are you okay?"

He gulped and swiped at his eyes, blinking furiously. Then he glared at her. "Leave me alone." There was so much ferocity in his voice that Claire instinctively held up both hands and took a step back.

"Okay, sure, I'm sorry. I'm Claire, remember? From the Science Building? I just wanted to help."

He looked confused then, as well as angry. He scrambled to his feet and looked around, then lunged for Claire and grabbed her arm. His eyes were wild. "Who are you?" he said. "Where am I?"

"Hey, man, let go!" Shane stepped in and batted Alex's hand away. "Chill. She was trying to help, okay?"

That seemed to make him angrier. Alex shouted right in their faces, "Where am I? How did you get me here?"

Shane looked at Claire and mimed drinking, then shook his head. "Must have been one hell of a party," he whispered. "Who is this guy?"

"Just somebody from school."

"Hey!" Alex was shouting again, getting red in the face. "You tell me how I got here or I'm calling the cops!"

"Um . . ." Claire pointed behind him. One block away were the gates of Texas Prairie University. "You're not exactly lost. I don't know how you got here, but all you have to do is turn around and go back to the dorm--"

Alex looked over his shoulder, then snapped his head back around to focus on her. "I don't know what kind of sick joke you think you're playing, but you'd better tell me what's going on right now."

"Hey, enough. Back off," Shane said, and pulled Claire out of easy reach. "Go sober up, man. And find some kind of rehab, because, damn."

"I'm not drunk!"

Shane steered Claire away, then across the street to the other sidewalk. Alex just stood there, shouting at them like a crazy man. Shane shook his head. "Man. Frat guys. They really can screw up their lives."

"I don't think he was drunk," Claire said doubtfully. "He didn't really look drunk."

"Yeah, because you'd be the expert on that." Shane sent her an ironic look, and she remembered, with a flash of shame, that he was the expert; his dad had been a drunk, and so had his mom, toward the end. Shane wasn't exactly a saint, either. "Okay, maybe he wasn't drinking, but he was definitely wrecked. What are the fratties taking these days? Maybe it was meth."

Well, Claire really didn't know anything much about drugs. It wasn't that she was a prude; she just had a fear of anything that would screw up the way she thought. "This is your brain on drugs" and all that. "He probably needs help," she decided, and pulled out her phone to dial Chief Moses. She told Hannah about the boy, feeling more than a little like maybe she ought to have minded her own business, but still. That had not been the Alex she'd met at school.

As she put the phone away, Claire remembered hearing that voice--Michael's voice--through the bathroom door this morning. Mom?

She shivered as a cool breeze skittered by.

But really, it was a beautiful day, and she didn't know why she was feeling so weird.

Visiting her folks was every bit as awkward as Claire had imagined. First, her mom opened the door, got a look of delight on her face as she saw Claire, and then immediately dimmed it down to a strained welcome when she spotted Shane standing behind her. "Claire, honey, so glad you're here! And Shane, of course." Somehow, that last part sounded like a total lie. "Come in; I was just cleaning up the kitchen. I'm grilling chicken for lunch; can you stay?"

That was Mom all over, offering food in the second breath. It made Claire feel at home. She traded a quick look with Shane, and then said, "Well, actually, we've already got plans, Mom, but thanks."

"Oh. Of course." Her mother was looking better these days--not as thin and haunted as she had been when they'd first come to Morganville. In fact, she looked like she'd gained a little weight, which was good, and she was dressing a bit less like a character in one of those black-and-white movies where women wore pearls to vacuum--more normal. Claire actually kind of liked her shirt. For Mom clothes.

"How's Dad?"