I hadn't seen Jennie for five years. We used to live side by side in San Jose. I remember how she used to trap mice in a cage - in secret, because her father was trying to exterminate them -and give them birthday parties. She would bake chocolate cupcakes, and I'd bring a crumb of bacon wrapped in tissue as a present, and then she and I and the mouse would devour the goodies. After the party, she'd release the mouse in her backyard. I'm sure it moved right back into her house, hoping to be caught again.

When I got a squirmy little golden retriever pup, Jennie baked chocolate chip cookies and fed them, one by one, to the puppy, who ate until his belly bulged out and then fell asleep on Jennie's foot, occasionally giving off contented little chocolate burps. From then on, that dog was ready to be Jennie's friend for life. So was I.

Jennie in my memory was a chunky, pixie-haired, animal-loving, happy-go-lucky chocoholic.

Now we were fourteen years old.

The moment she stepped out of the car, I saw a different Jennie: long hair gathered in a purple scrunchee, purple eye shadow that looked like a bruise, a purple shirt tied to reveal a purple tattoo of a guitar on her belly - on second glance, not a real tattoo but the press-on kind. She was wearing headphones.

"Hi, Franny."

"Hi, Jennie."

We hugged. It was a leaning forward, lightly touching hug. When my head was next to hers, I could hear music in her headphones.

"God, you've like totally changed!" she said.

"I've changed? You look so - "

"Your hair's like red."

"Jennie, it's always been red."

"I thought it was brown."

How could she forget the color of my hair?

We'd been best friends all our lives - until our world cracked apart. Jennie's parents had divorced, and Jennie had moved with her mother to Pomona. Then I moved with my family to the mountains - to Loma Prieta, halfway between San Jose and Santa Cruz - to an old shoe of a cabin where I had to share a room with my brother.

We'd tried writing letters, but they came less and less often. Jennie's last letter almost two years ago had said

I think of our life together in San Jose as a time when everything was simple and happy. I thought it would last forever. Now I know that nothing is simple. And nothing lasts forever.

This was a new Jennie. I didn't know how to talk to her. My eyes fell to the tattoo on her belly. Inside the guitar were the letters BIG UGLY.

"What's Big Ugly?" I asked.

Jennie looked at me with surprise. But she didn't say anything.

Louder, I said, "What - or who - is Big Ugly?"

Without a word, Jennie handed me the headphones. The wire stretched from her waist.

I listened to a sound like somebody stomping on watermelons. And a voice that was a raw shout.

I handed back the headphones and asked, "Is Big Ugly a person? Or a band?"

"Franny. . ." Her voice was a whine. "Haven't you seen them on TV?"

"No. I can't."

Suddenly Jennie looked worried. "Don't you get - like - cable? MTV?"

"I think so. But . . . you see . . . we don't have a television."

Now Jennie looked sick.

"Are you all right?"

"What are we going to do?" Jennie wailed.

I'd thought we might talk. Catch up on our lives. Reminisce. Maybe catch mice.

People change, I told myself. Lives change. Kids grow. Parents divorce. Families move. Nothing is permanent. Maybe that was why in school I was feeling more and more drawn to science, where the laws don't change. Earth is earth. Rock is rock.

As I was standing awkwardly outside with Jennie, wondering what to say, Lara came out of the house, barking. Lara was the squirmy golden retriever puppy who Jennie had befriended with chocolate chip cookies, years ago. Now Lara was a ninety pound dog, lazy as a shaggy golden boulder, but she had bestirred herself to come out and woof at this stranger.

"Is that Lara?" Jennie asked. "She's totally huge. Why is she barking? Doesn't she recognize me?"

Lara definitely did not recognize her. I'm not sure I would have recognized Jennie, either, if I hadn't been expecting her.

"Lara! It's me! Like - remember?"

Woof woof.

Jennie unzipped a pocket of her overnight bag and pulled out a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Lara stopped barking and sat. Her tail wagged back and forth in the dust like a hairy broom. Jennie unwrapped the Reese's and held it out.

Delicately, with her front teeth, Lara removed the peanut butter cup from Jennie's fingers. Then - gulp - it was gone. And once again, Lara was Jennie's friend for life.

I was relieved. Here, at least, was one part of Jennie that hadn't changed. I hoped we had some chocolate in the kitchen. Maybe if I gave some to Jennie, she'd be my friend for life again, too.

My father had gone into the house. Now he returned to the car. "Got to run," he said. "Wish me luck. Go, Giants!" With a spray of gravel, he launched out of the driveway.

My father was a diehard Giants fan. So was Jennie's mom. And that was why Jennie and I were finally back together again for a couple of nights: The Giants were in the World Series. My father and mother plus Jennie's mother were all going to the game at Candlestick Park. Jennie and her mom had flown up from Pomona. My mom took Jennie's mom to a restaurant while my dad drove Jennie to our house. Jennie would stay with me and help to baby-sit for my little brother, Sidney until our parents got home, which with ballpark traffic would be very late at night.

As my father drove away, Sidney came out of the house.

"Is that - like - little Sidney?" Jennie exclaimed. When she'd last seen him, he was two years old.

"What's that on your stomach?" Sidney asked.

"Tattoo."

"It looks like a bullet hole."

Sidney is living proof of genetic mutation. There's no other explanation for how he and I could come from the same parents. Sidney was the reason that my father gave our perfectly good nineteen-inch Sony Trinitron to the Salvation Army.

Sidney liked cop shows and war movies (though he wasn't allowed to watch them). Sidney played violent video games (in other kids' houses). Sidney kept asking my dad to take him to a junkyard so he could see all the smashed cars. Sidney said that his second-grade teacher was made of reconstructed liposuction. She was a sweet old lady who happened to be obese. Sidney called her Mrs. Lipo.

Sidney was precocious, but he gave me the creeps. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I saw Sidney get up and watch forbidden, bloody TV shows with the sound turned off. It seemed to relax him - like a mug of warm milk.

One night a couple of months ago, my dad caught him.

My dad was a medic in Vietnam. He tried to make Sidney understand that blood and gore were real, that it happened to real people, that it was horrible. He told Sidney about a man who had his right arm blown off, who picked it up with his left hand and carried it to my dad with a dazed look on his face and asked, "Do you want this?"

And Sidney said, "Cool."

My dad told Sidney about bodies burned like overdone marshmallow, about intestines dripping out into a man's lap, about body bags and helicopter evacuations under fire.

And Sidney said, "Wow."

That's when my dad decided to get rid of our television.

Sidney pretended he didn't care. I noticed, though, that he was thrashing in bed at night at times when he used to get up and watch the silent, bloody shows that so strangely settled him down.

For me it was weird for a week or two, not being able to switch on the TV when I got bored. Pretty soon, though, I found I was spending more time making earrings - sort of a hobby of mine - more time taking walks with Lara and running into friends of mine - in particular happening to pass the house of a boy named Eric who always just happened to be coming out the door as Lara and I were passing by and just happened to feel like taking the time to chat - and I wasn't bored at all. In fact, I think watching the tube had made me bored. Television wasn't the solution. It had been the problem.

Sometimes, though, when my friends started talking about a show they'd seen the night before, I felt left out. They made fun of commercials I'd never heard. It was as if they had a secret language.

Giving up TV was more of a sacrifice for my dad. Without the tube, he couldn't watch the World Series at home. But then he got tickets. And so I was baby-sitting for Sidney. And Jennie.

At least, it felt as if I was her sitter. First thing in the house, I'd check the kitchen for chocolate.

Jennie was moping. She said, "I've got a feeling that there is like totally nothing to do here."

"Like, totally," Sidney said.

"Don't make fun of the way I talk."

"Like, okay."

"Shut up."

"Totally." But he didn't shut up. Instead, he sang her a song. Sidney always had songs, and I was never sure which ones he made up and which ones he'd heard from someone else. This one went to the tune of "Joy to the World," the Christmas carol:

Joy to the world!
Jennie is dead.
They barbecued her head.
Oh, where is her body?
They flushed it down the potty.
And round and round it goes,
And round and round it goes,
And rou-ound, and rou-ow-ound, and round it goes.

"That is totally disgusting," Jennie said.

Sidney turned to me and sang:

Joy to the world!
There goes Franny's jaw.
They sliced it with a chainsaw.
Oh, see her great big bottom-us,
Looks like a hippopotamus
And bouncy bounce it goes
And bouncy bounce it goes. . .

I tried to ignore him. I knew that if I responded in any way, he'd start calling me Franny-Big-Fanny.

I don't have a big fanny.

I walked into the house, which meant walking up a gangplank to an opening with no door. We were adding on to the cabin. The carpenters had gone home for the day.

"Like, how do you live here?" Jennie asked.

"It's crowded," I said. "But it's temporary."

Quickly I checked the kitchen. Alas, no chocolate.

We lived in the old part of the house: two bedrooms built as a summer cabin fifty years ago. In one room Jennie could see a bunk bed with the top half neatly made - mine - and the bottom - Sidney's - looking as if it had been the site of a dogfight.

"Where will I sleep?" Jennie asked.

"I thought we'd share my bed."

We used to share beds. We used to be a lot smaller, too. And we used to have rooms of our own without a little brother in the bottom bunk.

This whole visit was turning into a disaster. We should have waited until the house was finished. But then, the World Series wouldn't wait. And Jennie would still be a stranger.

The carpenters were adding four new rooms and a deck. It still wouldn't be a large house, but it was all my folks could afford. Anyway, compared to the two rooms we were crammed into, the addition seemed immense. So far, only stud walls divided the inside, but soon one of those stud walls would be mine in a room that would be mine where I wouldn't have to listen to Sidney making rude noises with his hand in his armpit when I was trying to sleep. In my room I'd have a work table where I could make earrings out of gems and wire.

Our house was on a ridge of the mountain Loma Prieta in the Santa Cruz Mountains. From the new deck you could see across a canyon to hill after rolling hill all the way to the Pacific Ocean. It's gorgeous. I love this spot. Sunset is my favorite time. The ridges grow violet and hazy in the distance; fog snakes up the valleys; clouds turn pink, then darken to purple; the sun turns into a soft orange globe that flattens as it settles into the water. My father said he'd rather have a large view than a large house, and that's exactly what we had.

Jennie was checking out the view, standing at a brand-new window, with a big masking tape X stuck on the glass from corner to corner. Lara lay down at her feet.

"Why do they always - like - tape up new windows?" Jennie asked. Suddenly she reached a hand toward my face and touched my ear. "Neat earrings.

What is that?"

Aha! Something we could talk about.

"Agate," I said. "I found it on a great little beach that practically nobody knows about. I made the earrings myself. I make a lot of - "

"Neat," Jennie said, but her eyes went out of focus as some sound in the headphones required her full attention.

I wished Sidney would pour maple syrup into those headphones.

Jennie stood at the window staring moodily out between the lines of tape, tapping her foot to something only she could hear.

Sidney was packing sawdust into a pile and shaping it into a volcano. He was lying on the plywood floor of the space that was going to be our new living room. The walls were bare studs with plywood on the outside. There was the wet, sappy smell of freshly cut lumber and the chemical smell of plywood glue. Scattered around on the floor were dropped nails and empty tubes of caulk.

As Sidney packed his volcano of sawdust, he went on quietly singing his awful song.

He was too young to know what he was saying. He couldn't imagine a head on a barbecue spit, roasting slowly over a fire. He couldn't see bloody body parts swirling down a toilet bowl. Or could he? I couldn't believe he would sing such a song if he knew what he was actually saying. But if he made it up, wouldn't he have to know what it meant?

"Sidney? Did you make up that song?"

"Somebody had to."

"Did you?"

"Hey Franny. Watch this."

Sidney jumped up and down on the plywood floor. With each stomp of his feet, the volcano shook. Little landslides of sawdust ran down the sides of his mountain; the cone collapsed; cracks formed and disappeared.

Lara groaned at the stomping, rolled over, and rested her head on Jennie's foot.

Sidney got down on his knees and started shaping it all over again. As he was rounding out the cone, he ran his hand over something sharp - a tiny scrap of sheet metal that had mixed with the sawdust.

"Ow!"

He held up his palm.

"I'm bleeding."

It wasn't a crisis. But it was a cut.

Before I could move, Jennie had crossed the room and found the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. In a few seconds she returned with a wash cloth, towel, and Band-Aid. Without a word she wiped Sidney's palm clean, dried it, then placed the Band-Aid over the cut. She still had her headphones on.

This was the old Jennie, too. She used to bandage all her dolls. Her room had always looked like a hospital ward.

"Thank you," Sidney said sheepishly.

"You're totally welcome," Jennie said sincerely. And then she returned to her window, back to the sounds of her own private world, back, I supposed, to stomping watermelons.

Sidney studied the Band-Aid on his palm. He asked, "Has the baseball game started yet?"

I looked at the time on the microwave oven: 5:02 P.M.

"No, Sidney, not yet."

Suddenly Lara whined. She'd been lying stretched out between Jennie's feet with sawdust coating her fur like breadcrumbs on fried chicken. On a hot day like today, she could sleep from sunrise to sunset.

With the whine, Lara stood up. She slipped out from under Jennie, whimpered at us once, and cocked her head. I had the distinct impression that she was trying to tell us something.

"What is it, Lara?"

She seemed to be in pain. She flicked her ears as if reacting to some sound. I couldn't hear anything. Then again she whined. With her tail between her legs she trotted across the floor, out the open doorframe, and down the gangplank.

I watched from the doorway. With her tail still tucked between her legs, Lara trotted through some Scotch broom - it's a brushy weed - and disappeared behind some blackberry bushes. I smelled sunbaked evergreen air. I loved that smell. It was the scent of the mountains in summer - though it was autumn. A hot day in autumn.

"She's hurt," Sidney said. He'd come to my side.

"Maybe a bee stung her," I said.

We both knew lazy Lara. We knew that little short of dynamite would move that dog out of the house, especially at a trot, on a hot day.

"Maybe she had a nightmare," Sidney said. "Maybe she dreamed she was drowning in a burning vat of vulture vomit."

I stared down at Sidney - the sweet brown eyes, the cowlicked hair. I said, "She's never heard of vulture vomit."

"Maybe she knows. Dogs know lots of things without anybody teaching them. It's instink."

"Instinct."

"Right."

So we had our warning. Lara knew something was wrong. We just didn't know what. Sidney was thinking about burning vats of vulture vomit. I was enjoying the crisp hot evergreen scent and wondering why Lara had so suddenly seemed to be in pain - maybe it was indigestion from the peanut butter cup. Jennie was still inside at the new window, tapping her toe against a stud. Unknown to us, miles beneath our feet, the city of Los Angeles was about to move six feet closer to the city of San Francisco.

I stepped down the gangplank. Sidney stepped behind me. We moved toward where Lara had disappeared. The Scotch broom came up to my waist and to Sidney's chin.

Then it began.

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