“And you’re still into trees?” I didn’t know if he was making fun of me. I’d seen him one other time after the night in the snow. A blizzard had hit us in March, followed by an ice storm, felling branches and trees across the mountain. I’d hiked down as far as Valley Creek to see the damage. The creek had frozen, a white sheet with a single dark seam threaded down the center where water was still moving below the surface. Trees bowed under the frozen weight, and ice daggers crashed from branches across the woods. So much water was melting around me that it sounded like rain. I was trying to take a rubbing from a black walnut that grew out of the bank, but it wouldn’t work because the tree was damp and the paper was disintegrating. I was leaning within inches of the tree when I heard voices on the trail that ran alongside the creek. I kept my hands on the trunk and looked over. Jack Griffith and his dad. I turned back to the tree and put my forehead against it, hoping they wouldn’t see me.

“Be careful near that ice,” Mr. Griffith called. “It can be very deceptive.”

“I will, Mr. Griffith.”

Jack waved. “I’m just looking at the bark of this tree,” I said, to explain why my cheek was against its bole.

The merry-go-round had come to a stop. “My dad thinks you’re a very strange girl,” Jack said. “He means that as a compliment.”

Across the field someone shouted “Pool-hopping!” Cheers and whooping followed.

“Come on.” Jack stood up and held out his hand. I took it. The shadows from the field were already running up the path to the fenced perimeter of the Mountain Swim Club, about fifty yards up the hill.

“Are you coming?”

“I better wait for Sage,” I said, looking around.

“Sage is probably climbing the fence by now. Come on.”

I stood, and we ran toward the hill. It was only when we were halfway up that I realized Jack Griffith was still holding my hand.

The Mountain Swim Club was surrounded by a high chain-link fence with foot-length barbed wire angled at the top. I had been on guard before, ready to sound the warning if the cops came—three hammer blows to the imitation Liberty Bell that swung on a trestle outside the front gate. I whooped with the others as we fled through the woods, the police lights bouncing off naked bodies as we ran. But while I was part of the escape, I had never climbed the fence and gone in.