"I went to homecoming," she offers. Prom would've been the spring after everything changed, but she'd been thinking about it in a distant sort of way. The whole idea would've been miles away--continents away, light-years away--from reality just a few weeks ago. Things have changed since then, but they're still a long way from anything that might look like the nights Byerly describes. "But they aren't going to have something like that up in the mountains."

What would they serve, more groats? She tries her best not to be drawn into his digression--asking him is, she suspects, exactly what he wants, and she doesn't really want to give it to him--but it's there tempting her regardless. How does anybody get banned so many times over? Exactly how he says, of course, by being a thoughtless jerk, but it's still crazy. And a little impressive, in its way.