engaged to this nice familyapproved guy with lots of money and a big name around here and she's probably scared to death that something will spoil it all. Namely me, that hated ghost from the past she wants so much to forget. Hence, the nasty cracks. People do peculiar things when they're afraid, Toni."

"Nuts!" Toni remarked inelegantly. "She knows perfectly well that there are at least ten gals here who would be much more likely to spill the beans than you would. She's not scared. She's just got some kind of a thing about beating you. She wants to win this tournament, by fair means or foul, more than she wants to marry that joker, even!"

Dana felt, uneasily, that Toni's last remark was true, but she could not understand why it should be so. She had completely forgotten Clare Emerson's existence until she had noticed the name among the entries to the Riverdale Invitational Tournament. The girl's intense hatred and driving obsession to win--both perfectly obvious to everyone from the start-had shocked and disturbed her for she could find no real reason for it. While their parting five years before had been extremely abrupt (Clare had simply climbed into her car after a tournament in which she had not even placed, and driven away without a word to anyone), they had been the best of friends until then. Clare Emerson always had been a hard loser, but this thing driving her now was more than a normal desire to win, it seemed to be almost a matter of life or death to her. But why? Her open antagonism and vicious gossip were a little easier to understand. Dana believed her explanation of them

to be correct, but they, too, seemed extremely unjustified.

Dana shrugged. It didn't really matter. Someone would win tomorrow and by the next day Clare Emerson and Riverdale would have receded into the all-butforgotten past with hundreds of other tournaments.

"If I don't get a shower and a drink within the next five minutes, Dana said, "I am going to collapse on the spot. Toni, you've already changed-be a darling and bring a tall, cold Tom Collins down to the locker room, will you?"

An artistic sign (pale yellow plastic letters on a shiny black plastic background) on the door read: LADIES' LOCKER ROOM-MEMBERS ONLY Please Remove Golf Shoes Before Entering.

As Dana pushed the door open, ignoring the plea about golf shoes (as the gouged tiles testified many had done before her) the chill air conditioning struck her wet body like a blow. She was glad to see that there were no MEMBERS present when she entered the depressingly "modernistic" room, for she was in no mood to answer the monotonously identical questions they always asked,

Kathy Johannsen (affectionately known as Rip Van Winkle), a chubby girl with fuzzy pink hair and a great many freckles, lay on a chartreuse plastic couch in the corner, sound asleep as usual. She was wearing only a slip, the rest of her sweaty clothes lay in a heap on the floor and a battered DO NOT DISTURB sign, stolen from some long-forgotten hotel, hung crookedly from the chrome arm of the couch.

Phyllis Winters, a tall, stat-