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Show Moon -121 stopped her with his hand. "Stay. Give me a chance. I know everything about you. You have no home to go back to. You have no idea what to do next." She drew in her breath, for this was precisely what she'd just been thinking about. She'd soon be qualified to teach, but it was hard for her to speak in front of a group. She did not feel authority within her thoughts or in the timbre of her voice. Her parents wouldn't be back from Manila for another year, but no matter where they were she could never live with them again. Many of her friends had dropped out of school and were backpacking in India searching for Nirvana or hunkering down to acid and dope in the East Village. Where, then, should she go? His eyes seemed to reach into her mind like a net dragging a river. "I can help you," he said with his knowing smile, as if he were stating a fact. That her heart rose up when he said this told her how very much she longed for help. The nightmares had gotten worse. Sometimes she dreamed that she was trying to go home to her mother, but she had to cross crumbling bridges, impossible stone walls, electric fences, gutters filled with yammering rats. She woke up crying and couldn't stop until she went outside and saw the world in motion again. Perhaps with a man like Mark, the depths of herself would float up to the sunlight, and maybe it would all roll away like mist on the water. Missed on the water: Alec, who played the bass viol like it was a woman. The moon sliding past the porthole. All those people from the past who'd vanished in the waves. Ruth shaking a wooden spoon. Esther squinting her sun-gold eyes. Alice on her knees in the garden. Daddy under the stars saying, "Do you |