Chapter One

Berkely, California   mid nineties

Dana glanced into the bathroom mirror edgily. Her hair was fine, her makeup looked good. She flashed her teeth briefly, smiling at the pearly white reflection.

"You’ll be fine. Loosen up, Fairbanks."

From the bedroom, Shane’s lazy drawl could be heard as she shouted, "What’s that, Dane? Are you ready to go?"

The tennis player shook her head stubbornly before realizing that Shane couldn’t see her. Grinning abashedly, she trippingly called out, "Nothing! No, not quite. A few more minutes!"

She heard Shane go back to talking on the phone and Dana settled comfortably back into the land of self-doubt and borderline agoraphobia that she happily inhabited.

She had met Shane two days before and while the half-wild girl with the shock of messy hair was not a person she would have been friends with back in high school, Dana found herself instantly at ease with her. It had taken Dana months to convince her parents that going pot-luck on a roommate for the dorms would be acceptable. They’d wanted her to room with Norm and Suzy Reynold’s daughter Lane. Dana knew that rooming with the blonde, cheerful girl she’d known since the age of five would be like a death sentence. She would have used poor Lane as a crutch and never met a soul.

So while Shane’s easy charm and bravado might have scared the hell out of Dana, she knew almost immediately that they would be friends. They’d spent the previous two days catching up like long lost pals as they unpacked their stuff and went out to pick up various things for their suite. Shane’s side of the room was relatively spartan in layout. A few posters lined the wall and a few picture frames. Already, Dana could tell that Shane was a reticent person by nature where certain aspects of her personal life were concerned. She was raised in Texas and Dana heard the hint of an accent in her speech every now and then but not too much.

Shane had also used a brilliant combination of guilt, coersion, and force to convince Dana to come out to a bar where her friend Alice’s band was playing that evening.

Shane had been so uncharacteristically excited about it that Dana had eventually had to relent.