Now she took the small wrapped box beside her and walked down the gravel drive in her white uniform dress. She heard laughing and so stepped into the woods, creeping over pine needles that stuck to the soles of her shoes. When she was just outside the spray of light from the kitchen she leaned one shoulder against a wet pine trunk and she saw Leo, framed there in the first window, sitting next to his father laughing terribly hard at something a large bald man was saying. They were all laughing, and it was terrible, for it was the last thing she could have imagined Leo doing just two days after that standoff behind Spoon Hill, when he had looked so hurt and she had felt so dirty, then angry for feeling dirty, then guilty for feeling angry when Leo was so hurt. Now she watched him laugh. He sipped from his beer can and was still smiling as his father dealt cards around the table.

Allie took a deep breath, but there wasn’t enough air in the woods. She could hear the river moving over rocks down the hill. She put her hand to her face and smelled fryolator grease. She heard one of the men laugh again, and she wanted to step out of the trees and throw Leo’s present right through the glass window. But the fireflies in her belly had moved into her arms and legs and face. She felt so suddenly weak, all her strength could be gone in minutes. But she would not cry; she’d cried enough. She dropped the wrapped package to the ground and walked back to the road. Her hair snagged once on a branch, and the hem of her UFO skirt caught at the backs of her legs.

It was early Saturday morning and Leo was walking down Paper Boulevard in his new suit. His striped tie felt tight at the throat, his dress shirt was a little baggy at the waist, and he could only hunch his shoulders for so long before his hands hung at their natural place a good inch out the sleeves of his navy blue jacket with the gold buttons. Earlier, after Jim drove off to work a weekend shift for Bill O’Donnell, Leo had shined his own black dress shoes. But they were a year too small and now they squeezed his feet like clamps.