Frannie put her arms around Stu and hugged him.
"That's that," he said. He said it over and over again, speaking in a slow and toneless way that frightened her. "That's that. All over. That's that. That's that."
"You did the best you could," she said, and hugged him even tighter, as if he might fly away.
"That's that," he said again, with dull finality.
Frannie hugged him. Despite all her thoughts of the last three and a half weeks, despite her "crushable crush," she had not made a single overt move. She had been almost painfully careful not to show the way she felt. The situation with Harold was just too much on a hair trigger. And she was not showing the true way she felt about Stu even now, not really. It was not a lover's hug she was bestowing on him. It was simply one survivor clinging to another. Stu seemed to understand this. His hands came up to her shoulders and pressed them firmly, leaving bloody handprints on her khaki shirt, marking her in a way which seemed to make them partners in some unhappy crime. Somewhere a jay cawed harshly, and closer at hand Perion began to weep.
Harold Lauder, who did not know the difference between the hugs survivors and lovers may bestow on each other, gazed at Frannie and Stu with dawning suspicion and fear. After a long moment he crashed furiously off into the brush and didn't come back until long after supper.
She woke up early the next morning. Someone was shaking her. I'll open my eyes and it'll be Glen or Harold, she thought sleepily. We're going to go through it again, and we'll keep going through it until we get it right. Those who do not learn from history -
But it was Stu. And it was already daylight of a sort; creeping dawn, muffled in early mist like fresh gold wrapped in thin cotton. The others were sleeping humps.
"What is it?" she asked, sitting up. "Is something wrong?"
"I was dreaming again," he said. "Not the old woman, the... the other one. The dark man. I was scared, so I..."
"Stop it," she said, frightened by the look on his face. "Say what you mean, please."
"It's Perion. The Veronal. She got the Veronal out of Glen's pack."
She hissed in breath.
"Oh boy," Stu said brokenly. "She's dead, Frannie. Oh Lord, ain't this some mess."
She tried to speak and found she could not.
"I guess I've got to wake the other two up," Stu said in an absent sort of way. He rubbed at his cheek, which was sandpapery with beard. Fran could still remember how it had felt against her own cheek yesterday, when she had hugged him. He turned back to her, bewildered. "When does it end?"
She said softly: "I don't think it ever will."
Their eyes locked in the early dawn.
From Fran Goldsmith's Diary
July 12, 1990
We're camped just west of Guilderland (NY) tonight, have finally made it onto the Big Highway, Route 80/90. The excitement of meeting Mark and Perion (don't you think that's a pretty name? I do) yesterday afternoon has more or less abated. They have agreed to throw in with us... in fact, they made the suggestion before any of us could.
Not that I'm sure Harold would have offered. You know how he is. And he was a little put off (I think Glen was, too) by all the hardware they were carrying, including semiautomatic rifles (two). But mostly Harold just had to have his little song and dance... he has to register his presence, you know.
I guess I have filled up pages and pages with THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HAROLD, and if you don't know him by now, you never will. Underneath his swagger and all those pompous pronouncements, there is a very insecure little boy. He can't really believe that things have changed. Part of him - quite a large part, I think - has to go on believing that all his high school tormentors are going to rise out of their graves one fine day and start shooting spitballs at him again or maybe calling him Whack-Off Lauder, as Amy said they used to do. Sometimes I think it would have been better for him (and maybe me too) if we hadn't hooked up back in Ogunquit. I'm part of his old life, I was best friends with his sister once upon a time, and so on and so on. What sums up my weird relationship with Harold is this: strange as it may seem, knowing what I know now, I would probably pick Harold to be friends with instead of Amy, who was mostly dizzy about boys with nice cars and clothes from Sweetie's, and who was (God forgive me for saying Cruddy Things about the Dead but it's true) a real Ogunquit Snob, the way only a year-round townie can be one. Harold is, in his own weird way, sort of cool. When he's not concentrating all his mental energies on being an ass**le, that is. But, you see, Harold could never believe that anyone could think he was cool. Part of him has such a huge investment in being square. He is determined to carry all of his problems right along with him into this not-so-brave new world. He might as well have them packed right inside his knapsack along with those chocolate Payday candy bars he likes to eat.