November, 1999. Haywood Community College sat dark for seven years before they reopened it this fall - a small campus folded into the Blue Ridge outside Clyde, North Carolina, where the morning fog outlasts the coffee and the dining hall TV won't stop talking about what happens to the world in January.

You're the school's only guidance counselor, transferred from Colorado, living in the staff dorm forty yards from the students you see. There's a paper sign-up sheet, twenty-five names long. There's Birdie at the front office, sweet and scattered, who fetches whoever you call - usually. There's time for exactly three sessions a day.

Twenty-five students in the queue.

The sessions end at four. Nothing else does.