Tully ran all the way to the bus stop on Forty-fifth. "Bitch," she muttered, wiping her eyes.

When the bus came, she paid her fare and climbed aboard, muttering, "Bitch," twice more as she found a seat and sat down.

"Bitch," she said again, but this time the word leaked out, sounding forlorn.

He answered almost instantly, dressed in a pair of old gray sweats and a Rolling Stones T-shirt. She could tell by the way he smiled at her that he had expected her. "Hey, Tully."

How could Kate have said those things to her?

"Take me to bed," she whispered throatily, pushing her hands up underneath his shirt.

The bus stopped less than a block from Chad's house. She rushed up the sidewalk toward the small Craftsman-style home and knocked on the door.

They made their fumbling, kissing way through the house and to the small bedroom in the back. She stayed close to him, locked in his arms, kissing him deeply. She didn't look at him, couldn't, but it didn't matter. By the time they fell onto the bed, they were both naked and greedy.

Tully lost herself and her pain in the pleasure of his hands and mouth, and when it was over and they lay there, entwined, she tried not to think of anything except how good he made her feel.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She stared up at the plain, high-pitched ceiling that had become as familiar to her as her own dreams. "What do you mean?"

"Come on, Tully."

He touched her face in a gentle caress. "You and Kate fought about me, and I know how much her opinion means to you."

She rolled on to her side and stared at him, propping her head into her hand.

The words surprised her, though they shouldn't have. In the time they'd been sleeping together, she'd somehow begun to reveal pieces of herself to him. It had begun accidentally, a comment here or there after sex or while they were drinking, and somehow grown from there. She felt safe in his bed, free from judgment or censure. They were lovers who didn't love each other, and that made talking easier. Still, she saw now that he'd listened to all of her babble and let the words form a picture. The knowledge of that made her feel less lonely all of a sudden, and even though it scared her, she couldn't help being comforted by it.

"I don't care," she said fiercely, wiping her eyes. "She's my best friend. She's supposed to support me no matter what." Her voice broke on the last words, the promise they'd made to each other all those years ago.

"It is wrong, Tully. We both know that."

"She's right, Tully. You should listen to her."

"She thinks it's wrong."

"I'm falling in love with you, Tully, and I wish I weren't." He smiled sadly. "Don't look so scared. I know you don't believe in it."

She heard something in his voice, a barely-there quaver that made her look deeply into his eyes. In them, she saw a sadness that confused her. "How can you say that?"

The truth of that settled heavily on her, made her feel old suddenly. "Maybe someday I will." She wanted to believe that, at least.

"She won't talk to me, Mom." Kate leaned back against the cushioned wall of the tiny cubby known as the phone room. She'd had to wait almost an hour for her turn on this Sunday afternoon.

"I hope so." He kissed her gently on the lips. "And now, what are you going to do about Kate?"

"Your vast experience with men tells you this?"

"That you don't like her boyfriend."

"She didn't go to the last dance because he didn't want to. She's missing out on college life."

"Is there more?"

Kate rolled her eyes. Always there was the subtle -- and not so subtle -- pressure to be like Tully. "We're not talking about my future. Focus, Mom."

"I know. I just hung up with her."

"No," she said quickly. "He's all wrong for her, Mom."

"Did you really think Tully would be your average sorority girl? Come on, Katie. She's… dramatic. Full of dreams. It wouldn't hurt you to have a little of that fire, by the way."

Of course Tully would call first. Kate didn't know why that irritated her. She heard the telltale lighting of a cigarette through the phone lines. "What did she tell you?"

"That's all?" Kate had to be careful. If Mom found out Chad's age, she'd blow a gasket and Tully would really be pissed if she thought Kate had turned Mom against her.

"I'm just saying --"

"I heard you. So what do I do? She is avoiding me completely. I was trying to be a good friend."

Through the phone line came the hiss of exhaled smoke. "I do know that she's going to be in the editing room at KVTS at one o'clock."

"Only you can answer that. My days of being your Jiminy Cricket are long past."

"Love you, too."

"Thanks, Mom. I love you."

"That's what she said."

"Sometimes being a good friend means saying nothing."

"You're sure?"

"So what do I do?"

"I'm just supposed to watch her make a mistake?"

"Sometimes, yes. And then you stand by to pick up the pieces. Tully's such a big personality; it's easy to forget her background and how easily she can be hurt."

"No more life-is speeches, huh? Great. Just when I could have used one."

She made her way across campus in record time. It was easy. This late in the quarter people were busy studying for finals. At the door to KVTS, she paused, steeling herself as if for battle, and then went inside.

Kate hung up and hurried back to her room, where she dressed quickly and put on a little makeup: concealer, mostly, to cover the zits that had broken out across her forehead since their fight.

"So that was our mistake." Tully swallowed, tried to smile. Failed.

"I swear." Kate meant it with every fiber of her being. If she had to staple her tongue down, she'd do it. Their friendship was more important than any relationship. Guys would come and go; girlfriends were forever. They knew that. "Now it's your turn."

"I'm sorry," Kate said.

"I wouldn't hurt you for the world. You're my best friend. I'm sorry."

"What do you mean?"

"Swear it won't happen again. No guy will ever come between us."

"Swear you won't bail on me again without talking. These last three days really sucked."

"Well, well," Tully said, standing up. "If it isn't the head of the Moral Majority."

Tully's face crumpled at that, as if she'd been holding her breath in and suddenly let it go. "You were a real bitch."

She found Tully exactly where Mom had predicted: hunched in front of a monitor, logging the raw footage and interviews. At Kate's entrance, she looked up.

"I shouldn't have said all that. It's just… we've never held back from each other."

And, of course, he was her mentor. In their time together he'd taught her things it would have taken her years to discover by herself.

Tully wasn't quite sure how it had happened, but somehow this sleeping with her professor had graduated into a full-blown affair. No pun intended. Perhaps Kate had been right and it had begun as a kind of career move for her; she no longer remembered. All she knew was that in his arms she felt content, and that was a new emotion for her.

More importantly, he'd shown her what making love was. His bed had become her port; his arms her life ring. When she kissed him and let him touch her with an unimaginable intimacy, she forgot that she didn't believe in love. Her first time, back in those dark Snohomish woods, faded from her memory a little more each day, until one day she discovered that she no longer carried it around inside of her. It would always be a part of her, a scar on her soul, but like all scars, it faded in time from a bright and burning red to a slim, silvery line that could only sometimes be seen.

"I swear it."

But even with all that, with all that he'd shown and given her, it was beginning not to be enough. By fall semester of her senior year, she was growing impatient with the rarefied world of college. CNN had changed the face of broadcasting. Out in the real world, things were happening, things that mattered. John Lennon had been shot and killed outside his New York apartment; a guy named Hinckley had shot President Reagan in a pathetic attempt to impress Jodie Foster; Sandra Day O'Conner had become the first female Supreme Court justice; and Diana Spencer had married Prince Charles in a ceremony so fairy-tale perfect that every girl in America believed in love and happy endings for the entire summer. Kate talked about the wedding so often and in such detail you'd think she'd been invited.

All of it was headline news, made during Tully's life, and yet because she was in school, it was before her time. Oh, sure, she wrote the articles for the school paper and sometimes even got to read a few sentences here and there on air, but it was all make-believe, warm-up exercises for a game she wasn't yet allowed to play.

She yearned to swim in the real waters of local or national news. She'd grown even more tired of sorority dances and frat parties and that most archaic of all rituals -- the candle passings. Why all those sorority girls wanted to get engaged was beyond her. Didn't they know what was going on in the world, didn't they see the possibilities?

She'd done everything UW had to offer, taken every broadcast and print journalism class that mattered, and learned what she could from a year's worth of interning at the public affairs station. It was time now to jump into the dog-eat-dog world of TV news. She wanted to surge into the crowd of reporters and elbow her way to the front.

"You're not ready," Chad said, sighing. It was the third time he'd said it in as many minutes.

"You're wrong," she said, leaning toward the mirror above his dresser, applying one more coat of mascara. In the glam early eighties, you couldn't wear too much makeup or have too big a hairdo. "You've made me ready and we both know it. You got me to change my hair to this boring Jane Pauley bob. Every suit I own is black and my shoes look like a suburban housewife's." She put the mascara brush back in the holder and slowly turned around, studying the Lee press-on nails she'd applied this morning. "What more do I need?"

He sat up in bed. From this distance he looked either saddened by their discussion or tired; she wasn't sure which. "You know the answer to that question," he said softly.

This was the one criticism that bugged her. She'd spent years not feeling things. Now she was suddenly supposed to be both compassionate and objective at the same time. Empathetic but professional. She couldn't quite pull it off and she and Chad both knew it. "I'm not talking about the networks yet. It's just one interview for a part-time job until graduation." She walked over to the bed. In her black suit and white blouse, she was the picture of conservative chic. She'd even tamed the sexiness of her shoulder-length hair by pulling it back into a banana clip. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, she pushed a long lock of hair away from his eyes. "You're just not ready for me to go out into the world."

She dug through her purse for another color of lipstick. "I'm sick of college. I need to get into the real world."

"You're not ready, Tully. A reporter needs to exhibit a perfect mix of objectivity and compassion. You're too objective, too cold."

"Break a leg," Chad said.

He sighed, touched her jawline with his knuckle. "It's true I prefer you in my bed to out of it."

Smiling triumphantly, she kissed him -- hard -- then got up and grabbed her vinyl briefcase. Inside it was a handful of résumés printed on heavy ivory stock; several business cards that read, Tallulah Hart, TV news reporter; and a videotape of a story she'd done on-air for KVTS.

"Admit it: I'm ready." She'd intended to sound sexy and grown-up, but the vulnerable tremble in her voice betrayed her. She needed his approval like she needed air or sunlight. She'd go without it, of course, but less confidently, and today she needed every scrap of confidence she could find.

"I will." She caught the bus in front of the Kidd Valley hamburger stand. Even though she was a senior, she hadn't bothered with bringing her car to school. Parking was expensive and hard to find. Besides, the Mularkeys loved having her gran's old land yacht.

"Ah, Tully," he said finally. "You were born ready."

All the way through the U District and into the city, she thought about what she knew about the man she was going to meet. At twenty-six, he was already a well-respected former on-air reporter who'd won some big reporting award during a Central American conflict. Something -- none of the articles said what -- had brought him home, where he'd suddenly changed career tracks. Now he was a producer for the smaller office of one of the local stations. She had practiced endlessly what she would say.

It's nice to meet you, too, Mr. Ryan.

Yes, I have had an impressive amount of experience for a woman of my age.

I'm committed to being a first-rate journalist and hope, no, expect to --

The bus came to a smoking, wheezing stop on the corner of First and Broad.

For a moment Tully was actually taken aback. The man standing in front of her was gorgeous -- unruly black hair, electric-blue eyes, shadowy stubble of a beard. Not what she'd expected at all.

The small concrete building with curtainless windows sat in the middle of the block with a parking lot beside it. Inside, she consulted the tenant board and found what she was looking for: KCPO -- SUITE 201.

She hurried off the bus and down the steps. As she stood beneath the bus stop sign, consulting her notes, it started to rain, not hard enough to require an umbrella or a hood, but just enough to ruin her hair and poke her in the eyes. She ducked her head to protect her makeup and ran up the block to her destination.

She perfected her posture, smiled professionally, and went up to Suite 201.

There, she opened the door and almost walked right into someone.

"Are you Tallulah Hart?"

She extended her hand. "I am. Are you Mr. Ryan?"

"I am." He shook her hand. "Come in." He led her through a small front room cluttered with papers and cameras and stacks of newspapers everywhere. A couple of open doors revealed other empty offices. Another guy stood in the corner, smoking a cigarette. He was huge, at least six-foot-five, with shaggy blond hair and clothes that looked as if he'd slept in them. A giant marijuana leaf decorated his T-shirt. At their entrance, he looked up.

The big guy grunted. "She the one with the letters?"

That made them both laugh and the sound of their laughter only cemented her anxiety that she was too young for this.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Mutt."

"This is Tallulah Hart," Mr. Ryan said by way of introduction.

"That's her." Mr. Ryan smiled at Tully. "He's Mutt. Our cameraman."

He led her into a corner office and pointed to a metal chair in front of a wooden desk. "Have a seat," he said, closing the door behind him.

He took a seat behind the desk and looked at her.

"The nonexistent one, you mean."

"And you'll be good one day. You've got that thing."

"Did you read my articles and watch my tapes?"

"Actually, that's why you're here. When I realized you weren't going to stop sending me audition tapes, I figured I might as well watch one."

One day? Will be?

"But you're a long way from ready."

She sat up straight, trying to look older.

"And?"

"I know. I wrote them." Leaning back in his chair, he wishboned his arms behind his head.

"That's why I want this internship."

"That what your letters said."

"So, you're the one who has been clogging my mail with tapes and résumés. I'm sure, with all your ambition, you've researched us. We're the Seattle team for KCPO in Tacoma. We don't have an internship program here."

"I'll work twenty to thirty hours a week for free, and I don't care if I get college credit or not. I'll write copy, fact-check, do research. Anything. How can you go wrong?"

"Anything?" He was looking at her intently now. "Will you make coffee and vacuum and clean the bathroom?"

"I'll be here."

"Who does all that now?"

"I will."

He sat back, studying her closely. "You understand you'd be a grunt, and an unpaid one at that."

"You can count on me, Mr. Ryan."

At the door, Mr. Ryan paused and looked at her. "I hope you intend to take this job seriously, Ms. Hart. Or this is an experiment that will have a shorter shelf life than milk."

Finally he said, "Okay, Tallulah Hart." He stood up. "Show me what you can do."

"Mutt and me. And Carol, when she's not following a story."

"Cool," Mutt said, not looking up from the camera equipment in his lap.

She played and replayed the encounter over and over in her head as she walked briskly down the street to the bus stop and caught a ride.

"I understand. I could work Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays."

He walked her back through the office. "Hey, Mutt, this is our new intern, Tully Hart."

"So you'll do whatever it takes."

"Then absolutely I will."

"I will." She smiled. "And it's Tully."

"Call me Johnny. I'll see you Friday. Say eight A. M.?"

She'd actually made her own internship. Someday, when Phil Donahue interviewed her, she'll tell this story to show her gutsy determination.

Yes, Phil. It was a bold move, but you know broadcasting. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I was a girl with ambition.

This was the start of their dream.

The cherry trees in the Quad marked the passing of time better than any calendar. Pink and full of blossoms in the spring; lush and green in the warm, quiet days of summer; gloriously hued for the start of school; and now, bare on this November day in 1981.

But she'd tell Katie first. Nothing was quite perfect until she shared it with Kate.

For Kate, life was moving much too quickly. She was light-years away from the shy, quiet girl she'd been on arrival. In her years at UW, she'd learned to direct Rush Week skits, to organize and plan a dance for three hundred people, to chug a glass of beer and shoot a raw oyster, to work the room at a frat party and be comfortable around people she didn't know, to write edgy news stories with a hook and a splash, and to film that same story even if she was moving while it happened. Her journalism professors had graded her highly and told her repeatedly that she had a gift.

The problem, it seemed, was her heart. Unlike Tully, who could barrel forward and ask any question, Kate found it hard to intrude on people's grief. More and more often lately, she held back on her own stories and edited Tully's instead.

She dreamed lately of other things, of going on to law school so that she could fight the injustices she reported on, or writing novels that made people see the world in a better, more positive light… or -- and this was the most hidden dream of all -- falling in love. But how could she tell Tully these things?

She didn't have what it took to be a network news producer or a first-rate reporter. Every day, as she sat in her broadcast and communications classes, she was lying to herself.

Tully, who had taken her hand all those years ago when no one else would, who'd spun the gossamer dream of their lives as partners in TV news. How could she tell her best friend that she no longer shared their dream?

It should be easy to say. They'd been girls all those years ago when they'd chosen to embark on their tandem life. In the years between then and now, the world had changed so much. The war in Vietnam had been lost, Nixon had resigned, Mount St. Helens had blown up, and cocaine had become the Chex mix for a new generation of partygoers. The U. S. hockey team had pulled off a miracle win at the Olympics and a B-rate actor was president. Dreams could hardly remain static in such uncertain times.

She tossed her backpack to the floor and found a spot on the floor between Charlotte and Mary Kay. "Has it started?"

If only she really had a dream of her own, something to replace the twin-TV news stars. Tully might accept that; Kate's vague, I don't know, wouldn't hold much water with Tropical Storm Tully.

She simply had to stand up to Tully, for once, and tell her the truth, say, Those are your dreams, Tully, and I'm proud of you, but I'm not fourteen anymore and I can't follow you forever.

"Maybe today," she said aloud, dragging her backpack along beside her as she walked through the gray, foggy campus.

About thirty people shushed her as the General Hospital theme music started. Laura's face filled the screen. She looked beautiful and dewy-eyed in a gorgeous white headdress. A collective sigh went around the room.

On the edge of campus, she merged into the stream of kids and crossed the street, smiling and waving at friends as she passed them. At the sorority house, she went right to the living room, where girls sat packed like hot dogs on the sofas and chairs and on every patch of the celery-green carpet.

Then Luke appeared in his gray morning suit, smiling at his bride-to-be.

"Ssshhh," everyone said at once.

Tully squatted behind Kate. "We need to talk."

"Shhh."

Tully sighed dramatically and crossed her arms.

"But --"

"SHHH."

Tully sank to her knees, mumbling, "How can you all be so gaga over some skinny white guy with a bad perm? And he's a rapist. I think --"

"Shh. Luke and Laura are getting married. You can tell me about your interview -- you got it: congratulations -- when it's over. Now be quiet."

Just then, the sorority door banged open. "Kate!" Tully yelled, walking into the room.

As soon as it was over and the music started up again, she popped to her feet. "Come on, Katie. We need to talk." She grabbed Kate's hand and led her away from the publicness of the TV room, through the halls, and down a flight of stairs to the sorority's dirty little secret: the smoking lounge. It was a tiny room, tucked behind the kitchen, with two love seats, a coffee table littered with full ashtrays, and air so thick and blue it hurt your eyes, even when no one was in the room. It was the place for after-party gossip and late-night laughter.

"Don't be ridiculous. You still want to be a team, don't you?" Tully paused, stared at Kate, who screwed up her courage and opened her mouth. Then Tully laughed. "Of course you do. I knew it. You were just messing with me. Very funny. I'll talk to Mr. Ryan -- he's my new boss -- just as soon as he can't live without me. Now I gotta run. Chad will want to hear about the interview, but I had to tell you first." Tully hugged her fiercely and left.

Tully grinned. "I did. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Some weekends. We're on our way, Katie. I'll nail this job and by the time we graduate, I'll talk them into hiring you. We'll be a team, just like we always said."

Kate hated it down here. The habit that had seemed so cool and defiant at thirteen was gross and stupid now. "So, tell me everything. You got the internship, right?"

Kate took a deep breath. Do it. Tell her. "You shouldn't be worrying about me, Tully. This is your day, your start."

Kate stood there, in the small, ugly room that smelled of stale cigarettes, staring at the open door. "No," she said softly. "I don't want to do that."

There was no one listening.