SHE IS JUST ABOUT TO COME, he is sure of it, when he hears a vehicle pull up and honk. They are in the evergreen bushes which separate Tilly’s apartment complex from the power station. It is April 22, 1980, Tilly’s 16th birthday, and they have just gotten back from watching John Frankenheimer’s Prophecy: The Monster Movie at the Fox Theater in downtown Spokane. He ignores it at first, continuing to kiss her and to wiggle his finger, wanting desperately to please her; but gives up on the fourth honk, fearing that her mother, hearing the commotion, will come searching. Tilly steps into her panties and hitches them up beneath her dress as he peers between the branches—sees his father’s work truck parked at the curb in the gray late-afternoon drizzle. Something about the image reminds him that
