"Meg", Bernard Abrahmsen started, "when the guys say they think you're tasty, they don't literally mean that they want to eat you." I just had to tell everybody about that, didn't it? But they had kept asking us about what had made us run, and the immediacy was there. I was in the moment. I wasn't thinking. I held their attention, that was for sure, but still - strike one, Meg. All that I could do was try not to let the pitcher catch me off base while I was still at bat. How to explain this with a crustacean listening in?

"Yes", I sighed with exaggerated force, "I know that, but I guess you didn't hear the whole story about the fire on Central. One of those firemen comes into the kitchen after the fire has been put out, opens the over door, looks in and finds ..."

"Don't need to know", screamed one of the girls. "Sorry, he asked", I said, pointing to Barney. A disgusted look from me completed the thought. "Oh." What more was there to say? The Barnacle had attached himself to me tonight, and there was no scraping him loose. Every girl in the neighborhood knew what that was like. Best part - I didn't even have to complete the fib that I was about to tell. The girl's imagination had done all of the work for me, and if later somebody found no mention of severed human heads or body parts cooked to a beautiful golden brown, was I to be blamed if somebody had lept to her own conclusions? She had not even let me finish. All a misunderstanding.

Which might sound like a lie, but sometimes a greater truth is to be found in one's lies, one that overshadows the untruths they contain. I wasn't spastic, and that was the truth, the important truth. Other women could sit there and say that they knew what being tracked down was like, but they didn't, not until it happened to them. As for the guys, even then they would never really know. How could they? But they'd judge me all the same, passing judgements about that which they didn't understand. If a little fib led them back to the truth, then wasn't that the most honest fib there ever was?

Why was Barnacle looking at me like that, like a little puppy who'd just been kicked? Why did I just ask myself that? Why was I carrying on this conversation with myself in my my head, when I was surrounded by real people to talk to?

Echo, echo, echo. Everybody looking at me, while I'm saying nothing.

Fine. Throw the dog a bone, like I couldn't tell that he already had one. "It's cool, man. Thanks for worrying about me, but it's all good." He seemed to accept this, but with the polyp, one was never completely sure. "Are we cool?", I asked. "Yeah". Abrupt, and not sounding very convinced, but as much as I was going to get without seeming needy. Off I went, wondering if I was now the queen bitch, having crushed this little dude who was just trying to help. I need not have worried, at least about how people would see me, even if I did wonder about how Barney was seeing himself.

My popularity seemed beyond dispute tonight. The boys greeted me, everybody wanting to know my name, smiling as if greeting a badly missed friend as we made our first introductions. Never had I felt so desired by so many, and with such intensity. In the wrong place, I might have been worried, but these people were here to rally around me for support. "Cool", "brave", "gutsy" and ... "beautiful"? "Sexy"? Maybe not 100% appropriate under the circumstances, but was anything less appropriate at our age than being appropriate? I'd take it, gladly. Hadn't I been complaining that I had nowhere to be but at that mouldy old church? Isn't that what lured me into these circumstances, in the first place?

I had been worried about cattiness, the other girls getting jealous because they were being ignored, but I guessed that they had picked up on the discomfort that was mixed in with my joy, because they had those "we're here for you" looks. This was my first time to really be out, so maybe they thought that thus attention was a natural, passing thing, something that they had all experienced once? I didn't know. I was feeling that good kind of badness, like the first time you go on a date. You know, you feel so conspicuous and so wrong and right, you can't believe that you're really here and want to run, but at the same time, you wouldn't want to be anywhere else? And somehow, even though none of that makes sense, it all does? That's what I was feeling, right then, without the fear that somebody would think it was funny to leave a $20 on my nightstand. "High praise, Meg!" "No, a $100 would have been high praise. $20 is cab fare, and I'm home." One has to be practical about these things.

Everybody was so curious about the simplest things, especially the guys. "Aren't you a little old to be living with your mom, Meg?" A point of disagreement, I said - I thought so, but Mom didn't, so we compromised by having Mom come over a lot. "Being sure to call first?" Of course, I said, adding that this really wasn't completely a compromise, because honestly, I wanted her to come. "She brings food?", asked the brave and hungry soul who'd gone to retrieve the pot we'd left on the stove. Yes, she does, I said, smiling, but more importantly she brings herself. The only kind of second chance that death gives - we think about all we wish we had done with those we've lost, and we make sure to not procrastinate as much with those we who remain. I thought about all of the stupid things I had frittered my time away on, when we still had Dad, the memories we'd never have the chance to make, and decided to do better with the parent I had left.

That threw a hush over the conversation for a moment, but the awkwardness passed. "Lighten up, Meg", I thought to myself, until I noticed people nodding.Strike two, but at least I wasn't out of the game, yet.

Why was everybody looking at me that way?