And now Ginette was hurt and sad and confused—and leaving Pete behind.

And she shouldn’t have been leaving Pete.

She should have been staying with him and sitting on the bench with him, basking in some sort of afterglow or something.

But she wasn’t staying and sitting and basking in any sort of glow.

She was leaving. Because when she poured her heart out to Pete and told him that she thought she was about as close to him as she could possibly be, he said, “Not really.”

He could have said, “Yeah.”

Or, “Cool.”

Or nothing.

But he said, “Not really.” And then went on to say that Ginette wasn’t really close to him at all. That she was actually about as far away from him as she could possibly be.

What did he mean?

And why had he said that—when he had said it?

Soon the path merged with the Road to Nowhere, and Ginette crossed the road for safety, so she would be walking against traffic, so she could see the headlights of oncoming vehicles before they saw her.

She stayed close to the snowbanks—which were almost as tall as she was. And continued west.

And, at 7:50, she came to the Gallaghers’ potato farm, where Ginette’s mom had picked potatoes when she was a teenager, back when the farm was still operational. Schools in northern Maine closed for three weeks every fall so high schoolers could help farmers get their crop out of the ground. Not many farmers employed hand pickers anymore, so Ginette hadn’t been able to find work over the last few harvests. But she’d be sixteen in the summer—old enough to work on one of the Norsworthys’ mechanical harvesters in the coming fall. And she hoped Mrs. Norsworthy would hire her.

As Ginette walked, she wondered what she was going to do with the rest of her evening.

She’d be home—alone. Because her mom was working.

And she wasn’t sure she wanted to be alone.

But that’s what she was.

And then she started wallowing in her loneliness—and wondered if she was going to be alone for the rest of her life. Like the Gallaghers’ son, East—who was about to experience one of the extraordinary things that did or didn’t happen on that Friday night.

But East Gallagher didn’t feel like he was about to experience anything extraordinary when Ginette walked by his house.

It had been a pretty ordinary day.

He had plowed some driveways.

And shoveled some walkways and paths to oil fills and propane tanks.

And now he was eating his dinner: noodles with hamburger and butter and some peas and potatoes.

When he was done, he let Hound lick off his plate, and then he put it in the white enamel-coated cast-iron basin in his kitchen.

He looked at the Wildflowers of Maine clock over the sink and it told him it was 8:20. Time for bed. East still woke up at 4:30 a.m. like he did when he was a farmer. So he still went to bed at 8:30.