Corinne thought she would suffocate under the blankets in the backseat of her aunt's car; all she could smell was engine exhaust as the last few vehicles were loaded into the ferry around her. Aunt Sylvia had tried to be the last on line without jeopardizing their getting on at all. Sometimes the ticket-sellers overbooked, she had said; this way they would be among the first off.

She felt air sucked away as her aunt flipped the front seat forward and leaned in under the pretense of getting her totebag. "I'm going up to the lounge," Sylvia said in a brisk, low voice. "Try not to be frightened, kiddo. Just a few hours more."

Corinne flinched as the car door slammed shut by her head, and the lock clicked into place. This was going to be the worst part, lying here, sweltering, waiting to be caught.

She tried to think about something, anything, else. But worries bobbed to the surface of her thoughts and would not sink again. She missed Peter so much that she had to blink back tears.

Tears were a luxury she was going to have to leave behind, like the belongings discarded in her haste to leave. Like her childhood.

Only a day ago, her concerns had all been postponable: Would she give up her career to marry Peter? Would he go, if he was drafted right out of school, or would he evade, as some of their older schoolmates already had? No answers were required then; graduation had seemed eons in the future. She never dreamed that she, a female, would be the one making this trip, and so soon.

Now Peter wouldn't even have the chance to run, if anyone found out--if he got convicted of premarital. He'd be sent off to the front lines in North Africa before he had taken two steps toward any border.

She would never forgive herself for wanting him so much--it might get them both killed yet. But he had used a condom; it wasn't their fault the black-market thing had broken, wasn't her fault that she was, as her father had put it as he stormed out of their Portland house, "more fertile than fresh crap."

A new pain stabbed her at the memory of Dad's face, irate and betrayed. The vision swam before her as if borne on the salt waves of the sea below her, as if borne on her tears.

"Aw, Corinne," he said, sitting in his big stuffed chair. He put down his drink and lifted one hand, then waved the hand from side to side, wincing and turning his head, as if it took every muscle in his body to keep from slamming something. At last the hand balled into a fist and smashed the arm of the chair as he exploded, "God damn it, Corinne!"

She stood before him, the word "pregnant" hanging in the air between them; she had stood before him that way to report A's and perfect test scores. She had stood before him that way, only closer, when she was five, as he proved to her that ripping a Band-Aid off fast hurt less than peeling it off slowly.

Dad started to dial a minister he knew who would perform a wedding on short notice. "We probably caught it in time," he said. "With any luck the baby will be small enough to call premature. We'll go down to the courthouse tomorrow morning, if that no-good boyfriend of yours lives that long." How could he look at her swelling belly, no longer concealed under stylishly baggy shirts, and think they had caught it in time?

Then Mom came in, just as Corinne halted Dad in mid-dial by saying that she wasn't going to marry Peter, even though it meant she would do a year at a rehab retreat and her out-of-wedlock baby would be put in an institution. The phone, ignored, began a panicked beeping. Her father smashed it down so hard it cracked.

Mom already knew. She had asked Corinne not to tell Dad yet, but Corinne couldn't wait. Now Mom was tight-lipped with frustration. But the expected battle never came. All Dad did was look at Corinne, in the fed-up way he looked at people who did utterly stupid, careless things. Then he snatched his car keys from beside the front door and left, his swearing punctuated by the stomp of his boots down the porch steps.

Mom sat her down. "I called my sister, sweetie," she said. "I just wish you hadn't told your father; I hadn't even rung off when he picked the phone up. It would have been better for you to let me deal with him. But it's done now." She paused and looked at Corinne's midriff, shaking her head as if amazed that she had herself been deceived for so long. Then she raised her eyes to Corinne's face and forced a smile. "It's okay, darling," she said, to reassure. "I'm proud of your decision to stay single, to go to college. I know it isn't easy. Now, if you want to, Corinne--and please, hon, consider this very carefully--Sylvia will meet us tomorrow afternoon in Bar Harbor and take you back across on the ferry...."

After that it was a blur of packing, of Mom telling her ten times that no she could not call Peter, of terror when Dad came home raging drunk, of heartsickness the next morning as Mom scribbled a note that she was taking Corinne shopping to cheer her up, pinning it to the fridge with the red "Home Is Where the Heart Is" magnet--

Corinne heard voices around the car, tensed, then relaxed as they faded away. She gritted her teeth. In six months she would be eighteen; she would have her career, and her life, if they made it to Sylvia's in Halifax.

She didn't know what would happen to either of them if they didn't make it. She didn't even know if Mom and Sylvia knew what they were doing, but she trusted them, and she had told her mother, in the awful quiet of the big house, that she would terminate the pregnancy if possible--that she understood the legal implications. All she could do now, to keep the fear at bay, and the longing for Peter's wiry, comforting arms, and the abyss of regret at leaving her mother, was to focus on making it across the endless water.