After dunch—or linner—they went over to Pete’s and shoveled out the mailbox at the end of his driveway. And shoveled a path to the oil fill so Mr. Pelletier could deliver his heating oil, too.

And then they went tubing on the hill behind Pete’s house.

And then they made pizza with Pete’s mom and dad. And ate it for dinner.

And then they played chess.

And Ginette won. And Pete sulked a little.

And then Pete’s mom asked them what they were going to do their science projects on, which were due on Monday.

Pete had chosen to do his on map projections. And no one quite knew what map projections were, so he explained, “The Earth is a globe, right?”

And everyone said, “Yeah.”

“Yeah, and when you try to represent its three-dimensional surface in two dimensions, it creates distortions. Like, if you draw a map on an orange, say, with a marker, and then peel it and flatten it out, the images at the ‘poles’ get distorted—they get bigger. Which is why Canada and Russia and Greenland look so giant on maps. So I’m gonna talk about that.”

Pete’s dad fake-yawned and groaned, “Snoozefest,” and he grabbed his son and gave him a noogie to let him know he was kidding and everyone laughed and Pete’s mom said, “Guess somebody’s gotta think about … maps.” And then she asked Ginette what she was going to do her presentation on, and Ginette said, “The northern lights.” And Pete’s mom said, “Ooh!” And Ginette explained that the northern lights appear when massive storms on the sun shoot streams of tiny charged particles into space. Those particles hurtle toward the Earth and collide with atoms in the atmosphere, exciting them and disrupting their natural state. The excited atoms want to return to their normal states, and when they do, the energy they give off is manifested in colorful little bursts of light, called photons. When enough photons are present, the northern lights appear.

Pete’s dad was impressed with Ginette’s presentation, because he had seen the northern lights his whole life and had never known what caused them. “Now that,” he proclaimed, “is a whole lot more interesting than maps!” And everybody laughed, and as they did, Pete took Ginette’s hand, because he was proud that she had impressed his dad.

And Ginette felt that strange lightness again. This time it felt like the northern lights were inside her. And she felt like Pete was one of those charged particles from the sun and he was disrupting her natural state and creating bursts of light inside her.

And she wondered what it meant.

And then she wondered what it meant that she and Pete were holding hands in front of his parents. Did it mean that they were more than just friends? Did it mean that they were boyfriend and girlfriend? And that they were dating?

She wanted to know. She wanted to name whatever it was that they were.

But naming what they were would mean assigning words to whatever it was that was happening between them. Which might minimize whatever it was that was happening between them. Because words can make things that seem huge in your heart seem small and insignificant.