Chapter 22: The Pan

Hallie came up the stairs with a suitcase on one shoulder and a frying pan in her free hand.

"Is this him?" she said to the landing.

Owen was holding the door of my flat open.

He looked at the pan.

"That depends what the pan is for."

"It's for you if you're bad."

"Then I'll try to be good."

"Hallie," I said, and she dropped the suitcase and hugged me so hard my feet left the floor.

She smelled of airport and gum and the leather jacket that was two sizes too big.

"You look great," she said into my ear. "You look rested. Did you sleep with him?"

"Yes."

"Good," said Hallie. "Are you happy?"

"Yes."

"Good." She set me down and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "Then I can stop practising what I was going to say if you weren't."

By eight o'clock all four of us were in my kitchen.

Piper sat on the counter with a mug of tea and a library book.

Owen cooked pasta and said he preferred having something to do with his hands.

Hallie sat at the table with the pan in front of her.

"Okay," she said. "I've heard the whole story. I want to tell the new one the thing that wasn't in the group call."

"There is no pan," I said.

"There is a pan." She turned to Owen. "Sophomore year, Corinne bought one good pan. Nonstick, forty dollars, a lot of money for us. We guarded it."

"I'm listening," said Owen.

"Dylan asks to borrow it for a cookout. A weekend, he says. He returns it three weeks later."

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